Placing the Cyprus Higher Education Landscape on the Doctoral Map of Europe

Abstract

Despite the very recent history of university education in the Republic of Cyprus, an island nation with less than a million population, the country might be a unique case in the European higher education area in terms of the proportion of universities to its population and area. Similarly, as pointed out in this chapter, the proportionate number of doctoral programmes offered in the Republic of Cyprus is surprisingly high and cover most major disciplines, ranging from Business, Humanities and the Social Sciences, to Natural and Applied Sciences. The recently established Cyprus Agency of Quality Assurance and Accreditation in Higher Education (CY.Q.A.A.), responsible for ensuring and supporting the quality of higher education, set a series of common criteria on the structure and operation of doctoral studies, which apply for the accreditation and offering of any such programme of study in Cyprus. Despite these common criteria, this chapter depicts the existing variation in major characteristics of currently offered doctoral programmes as regards doctoral admission and completion requirements, structure, and other. This chapter claims that a higher level of homogeneity in the structure and qualitative characteristics of doctoral programmes, as well as a substantial increase in national doctoral funding schemes, would have several benefits for doctoral education in Cyprus, should the aim is for the country to become, the envisioned higher education and research hub in Europe and the Middle East.