The doxa of doctoral education: Tacit values, hidden rules, and the making of ‘good’ scholars

Doctoral education is often framed as a transformative journey of identity change; however, this process is frequently mediated by invisible, doxic norms that normalise student struggle and maintain systemic inequality. This paper employs a qualitative lens to investigate how established academic structures and unspoken rules intersect to influence the lived experiences of doctoral researchers. By identifying eight core doxic norms, we illustrate how academic legitimacy is often (re)produced through mechanisms that compromise student wellbeing and intellectual agency. Our findings reveal that these norms manifest in ways that foster anxiety, imposterism, and moral injury, particularly for those positioned outside dominant academic networks. We argue that addressing these challenges requires a radical shift from individualised resilience models toward an embedded, ethical, and reflexive praxis. We propose a multi-dimensional framework for structural reform, encompassing compassionate supervision, administrative transparency, and the formal recognition of epistemic diversity. Ultimately, this paper advocates reimagining the academy as a human-centric community in which learning is a collaborative and transformative process, ensuring a more rigorous, diverse, and sustainable future for higher education.