The peak postgrad lobby wants to codify the time it really takes to complete a PhD.

The Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations calls on the Noonan Review of the Australian Qualifications Framework to specify the real-time taken for a PhD as four to five years.

According to CAPA this is necessary to protect students; “The current funding environment for PhDs is such that universities are incentivised to graduate their students quickly. This has led to shorter candidature times and scholarship durations (of the minimum three years) at many universities. … Doctoral students are under immense amounts of pressure due to this mis-match between the strenuous requirements of the PhD and the amount of candidature time allowed.”

It is also needed to protect the qualification’s quality; “the current inappropriately short volume of learning for the PhD impacts the quality …. Pressure for universities to shuttle through doctoral students quickly can also have the effect of decreasing the course requirements at some universities,” CAPA claims