An education design architecture for the future Australian doctorate Hamish Coates 1 & Gwilym Croucher 2 & Umesha Weerakkody 2 & Kenneth Moore 2 & Mollie Dollinger 3 & Paula Kelly 4 & Emmaline Bexley 3 & Ilke Grosemans 5 # Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Abstract Doctoral training continues to grow in scale and scope in Australia, but has been subjected to far less design and improvement compared with other facets of higher education. Governments and universities engage in ongoing change which helps respond to opportunities and challenges but also leads to a proliferation of options and ap- proaches. The current research study was seeded and shaped by the ambitious view that despite such refinement the doctorate remains in need of much bolder and deeper design, and particularly design with an education focus. This paper reports outcomes from a four-year national project which sought to articulate a doctoral design architecture. The paper discusses framing contexts and concepts, design and characteristics of the doctoral architecture, then implications for sectoral, institutional and individual practice. It con- cludes that this kind of architecture can provide a useful guide for growth. Keywords Doctoral education . Programme design . Education reform . Academic productivity Introduction This paper articulates a research-driven education architecture for building the future doctorate in Australia. The contribution stems from a four-year study commissioned by the Australian Government and co-created with universities and experts across the country and internation- ally. This study was spurred by a growing perception that despite ongoing improvement by universities, the Australian doctorate while effective is not optimised to best serve future interests of students, academia or industry. With the growing significance of the doctorate, there remains ample room for thinking about how to reframe the degree in ways that increase internal productivity and external impact, and inspire even greater confidence in its future. Doctoral training continues to grow in scale and scope in Australia. Australia had 43,700 doctoral students in 2001, growing to 66,400 by 2016 (DOET 2018). The current research Higher Education https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00397-1 * Hamish Coates hamishcoates@tsinghua.edu.cn Extended author information available on the last page of the article