NEW GUIDELINES on research degrees published this week by the ÖйúAƬ Quality Council have been snubbed by the research councils.

Designed to help institutions check the quality of their research degree courses, the guidelines won approval after consultation with vice chancellors and principals, the UK Council for Graduate Education, and the National Postgraduate Student Committee.

But research council heads described them as "little more than motherhood and apple pie".

The 28-page publication is the result of consultation with academics, agencies and commercial and industrial organisations with an interest in sponsoring research.

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Its release follows calls for a sector-wide code of practice for postgraduate research education from the joint review of postgraduate education by the ÖйúAƬ Funding Council for England, the Committee of Vice Chancellors and Principals and the Standing Conference of Principals.

Richard Brook, chairman of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, said: "We have toyed with the idea of guidelines, but it's a bit like the extent to which you can define the objectives of research where you can cramp spontaneity."

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David Brown, head of awards and training for the Natural Environmental Research Council, said the guidelines failed to address adequately difficult issues like support for students on placements outside of institutions.

Chris Haslam, assistant director of the HEQC's quality assurance group, said: "The research councils were given the opportunity to comment and some declined. We could not write it by committee, or it would have taken an age to publish."

Guidelines on the Quality Assurance of Research Degrees, available from the Distribution Department, UCAS, Fulton House, Jessop Avenue, Cheltenham, price Pounds 8.