External Doctorate in Germany: Earning a PhD While Working

You want the doctoral title but you do not want to give up your job? Then sooner or later you will arrive at the external doctorate. In the German-speaking world, it is the classic route to a dissertation for working professionals, and at the same time the route with the most misconceptions. So let me start with the definition: An external doctorate is a doctorate without employment at the university. A chair supervises your dissertation, you conduct your research independently, and you carry both funding and time yourself. In this article, I show you how to find a supervisor, why external doctorates fail in practice, and which alternatives exist if you need more structure.

What Is an External Doctorate?

With an internal doctorate, you are employed at the university as a research associate. You receive a salary, work at the chair, teach, and do research as part of a team. With an external doctorate, all of that falls away. You register as an external doctoral candidate at a faculty, a professor takes over the supervision, and you organise everything else yourself: your income comes from your job, your research time from evenings, weekends, and days of leave.

At first, that sounds like a disadvantage. For many working professionals, however, it is exactly the right setup. You keep your full salary, continue building professional experience, and can often derive your research topic directly from your own practice. If you work in controlling and write a doctorate on management control systems in mid-sized companies, you combine both and have real access to data that internal candidates first have to build up.

Important to know: the admission requirements are the same as for an internal doctorate. As a rule, you need a master's degree, a Magister, a Diplom, or a comparable qualification, plus a viable research topic. The label "external" says nothing about the value of your doctoral title. At the end stands the same certificate from the same faculty.

External Doctorate Compared: Internal, External, or Structured

Besides internal and external, there is a third route that is becoming more important for working professionals: structured doctoral programmes with fixed modules, colloquia, and milestones. The table shows the differences at a glance.

These figures are based on experience and vary by field, university, and life situation. An external doctorate can move faster if your topic is narrowly defined and your supervisor remains reliably available. It can also drag on for many years if both are missing.

Finding a Supervisor: The Hardest Part of the External Doctorate

With the external doctorate, almost everything is decided at one point: the supervision commitment. Without a doctoral supervisor, there is no admission as a doctoral candidate, no matter how good your degrees are. And this is exactly where most attempts fail, often before they have properly begun.

The key is the research proposal, the exposé. It typically runs 10 to 20 pages and answers four questions: What is your research question? What does the current state of research say about it? Which methodology will you use to answer it? And within what timeframe? A professor can tell within minutes whether you can work academically. A weak proposal cannot be compensated by any cover letter, however well written.

The second factor is the thematic fit. Professors supervise topics that match their research focus, not topics that are foreign to them. Before you contact anyone, read the chair's publications from recent years. If your research question connects to them, your chances rise considerably. If not, you are better off looking for another chair instead of bending your topic.

The approach itself is short and personal: two to three paragraphs on why you are enquiring at this specific chair, with your proposal and CV attached. The typical rejection reasons come up again and again in my consultations: the chair has no capacity, the topic does not match the research profile, the proposal is too broad, or the methodology remains unclear. And recognisable mass emails to twenty professors at once are usually not answered at all.

Why Many External Doctorates Fail

The uncomfortable truth first: a considerable share of external doctorates is never completed. That is rarely due to academic ability. It comes down to three structural problems you should know before you start.

The first is isolation. Internal doctoral candidates sit in a team, exchange ideas daily, and see how others deal with the same hurdles. As an external candidate, you work alone, often for years. Without deliberate countermeasures, the project quietly slips out of your everyday life.

The second is supervision intensity. Your supervisor thinks first of the internal candidates they see every week. You are the email that can still be answered next week. That is not ill will, it is everyday logic, and you have to actively push against it.

The third is the time conflict with the job. A project without a submission deadline loses against every urgent deadline at the office. If you only work on your dissertation when there happens to be time left, you effectively never work on it.

There are proven remedies for all three problems. Block fixed writing slots in your calendar, for example two evenings per week plus half a day at the weekend, and treat them like client appointments. Attend doctoral colloquia, also as an external participant: they give you feedback, deadlines, and the exchange you otherwise lack. Agree on fixed milestones with dates with your supervisor instead of vague arrangements. And choose your topic realistically: a narrowly defined research question you can manage alongside your job takes you further than the perfect large-scale project that stalls after two years.

External doctorates do not fail because of intelligence. They fail because of structure. Build the structure yourself, and you will get there.

Alternatives to the External Doctorate: Structured Programmes and EU Programmes

If reading this has made you realise that the classic external doctorate feels too uncertain for you, there are plannable alternatives. The most important are structured doctoral programmes: you complete fixed modules on research methodology and academic writing, work on your dissertation in parallel, and have colloquia and milestones firmly in your calendar. Supervision is part of the programme, you do not have to fight for it. You can find an overview of this route on my page about the part-time doctoral programme.

A second option are EU programmes outside the German-speaking countries. State universities, for example in Bulgaria, offer structured doctoral programmes designed for working professionals: supervision in English, few on-site phases, a fixed duration. The result is a doctoral degree from a state EU university following the Bologna framework; how the title may be used in your country needs to be checked case by case. I show you what such a programme looks like in practice using the example of the doctorate in Bulgaria at ULSIT, where I am pursuing my own doctorate. The programme is designed for 2 to 3 years, and I actively place candidates in it: if this route interests you, contact me directly.

A brief mention goes to the DBA, the Doctor of Business Administration. It is aimed at executives with application-driven research questions and is more strongly geared towards business practice than the classic doctoral degree. For some profiles it is the better choice, for others it is not. That depends on your goal: an academic career, a title for your professional path, or both.

Conclusion: Is the External Doctorate Right for You?

The external doctorate is the most flexible and most affordable route to a doctoral title alongside your job, and at the same time the route with the highest demands on your self-organisation. It suits you if you have a narrowly defined topic, find a chair that conducts research in that area, and can work with discipline over several years. If fixed structures matter more to you than maximum freedom, you are usually better served by a structured programme or an EU programme. If you are unsure which route fits your profile, book a free initial consultation. I will look at your qualifications and your topic and tell you honestly which door is open for you.