What Makes a University Capable of Offering Doctor of Philosophy?

Abstract

An important role of the universities, whether private or public, is creating new knowledge through research. Since 1993, the private universities (PvU) in Bangladesh have made remarkable improvement in providing quality education and established themselves as reputed centres of research and excellence. Some have acquired expertise, capabilities, and research-base to create new knowledge by offering PhD or doctoral degrees. Currently, there is no set of 'Key Capability Indicators (KCIs)' for evaluating the suitability of PvU for offering a PhD. As such it is crucial to identify the capability indications i.e., what really makes a university capable of offering PhD. Therefore, research question is; what are the capabilities which contribute for acquiring research ability towards offering PhD degrees by a university? The research objective of this study is to identify a set of KCIs towards offering PhD. The study evaluates the research capabilities of top PvU to contextualize the capabilities of Bangladeshi PvUs towards offering PhD