Objective In 2022, the State Council Academic Degree Committee and the Ministry of Education issued the Catalogue of Disciplines and Specialties in Postgraduate Education (2022), upgrading the graduate degree of landscape architecture from a professional master’s degree to a professional doctoral degree. In 2023, the Opinions of the Ministry of Education on Further Promoting the Classification and Development of Graduate Education for Academic and Professional Degrees proposed that it is necessary to attach equal importance to the academic and professional degrees of graduate education, and to strengthen their differentiation. With professional degree becoming the strategic focus of the reform and development of China’s degree and graduate education, how to respond to the practical needs of urban and rural ecological civilization construction in the new era has become a key challenge for doctoral education in landscape architecture at present, for which there is an urgent need to clarify the differentiated requirements between academic and professional degrees. China’s doctoral education in landscape architecture is still in its infancy, and most of the existing researches are confined to individual countries and regions in terms of geographic location, focus on the doctor of philosophy (Ph.D.) in terms of type, or tend to focus on a single aspect in terms of breadth. Focusing on English-taught doctoral programs related to landscape architecture at universities in the United States, Commonwealth countries, and some continental European countries, this research comparatively analyzes various aspects of the training process of such programs and identifies their strategies for responding to practical issues, so as to provide a reference for the reform of professional doctoral education in landscape architecture in China.

Methods In this research, “doctor” and “landscape architecture” are used as the combined keywords to search online information about doctoral degree programs related to landscape architecture through the Google search engine, supplemented by related programs mentioned in the literature searched in the WoS (Web of Science) core collection, based on which the doctoral degree programs initially searched are screened according to four criteria. The research figures out 29 universities with doctoral degree programs related to landscape architecture, which offer a total of 33 doctoral degree programs related to landscape architecture, including 29 Ph.D. programs and 4 Doctor of Design (DDes) ones. Using the information about doctoral degree program searched from the official websites of the universities as the main data source, this research comparatively analyzes the doctoral training modes related to landscape architecture of the 29 European and American universities to reveal the similarities and differences between the related degree programs from the 6 perspectives of enrollment, training process, learning mode, research field, dissertation, and financial support, and to identify the specific strategies they have adopted to respond to practical needs.

Results The doctoral graduate education in landscape architecture at 29 European and American universities has three training modes overall, namely full-time Ph.D. training (17 universities), parallel full-time and part-time Ph.D. training (8 universities), and dual-track separate Ph.D. and DDes training (4 universities). The mode of full-time Ph.D. training tends to favor purely academic research on the whole, but it also adopts three strategies to take into account practical needs, including limiting the requirements for admission, integrating the field of research with contemporary economic and social needs, and permitting diversified forms of dissertations. The parallel full-time and part-time Ph.D. training provides both full-time and part-time training modes in the traditional Ph.D. degree training system, and adopt Internet-based distance learning and diversified dissertation forms. As to the dual-track separate training mode, both Ph.D. and DDes training take course learning, qualifying examination, opening report, and dissertation as mandatory parts, but they also have obvious differences in enrollment target, learning mode, training process, dissertation, and financial support. Generally speaking, these training modes respond to the practical needs mainly from three aspects: first, highlight the professional attributes in terms of training targets, and do well in qualification review; second, adhere to the academic basis and cater to social needs in terms of training contents; and third, explore the flexibility of teaching and innovating learning modes in terms of training process.

Conclusion While doctoral education in landscape architecture certainly needs to get rid of the path dependence on traditional academic doctoral training modes, the academic attributes of the doctoral degree cannot be ignored. It is necessary to continue to take classical theories and research methods as the core teaching contents, and at the same time to strengthen the professional attributes and the scientific exploration based on applied research in terms of admission qualification review, dissertation topic and learning mode, so as to integrate academic research and professional practice. This research fails to deeply explore the development history and social context of doctoral programs related to landscape architecture at the 29 European and American universities, neither does it cover non-English-taught doctoral programs related to landscape architecture in other countries and regions, leaving room for future research to deepen and expand.