The expanding demographic of doctoral candidates disrupts the myth of the PhD as a linear academic pursuit for young, full-time scholars, revealing instead a diverse cohort of adult learners engaging with research as part of a wider lifelong learning continuum, where personal growth, professional recalibration and intellectual curiosity converge; this shift challenges the deficit-driven assumptions embedded in traditional supervision models, which continue to assume students are underprepared, in need of assimilation, and headed for postdoctoral academia, when in fact the motivations and trajectories have diversified beyond institutional nostalgia, with students such as experienced surgeons enrolling in PhDs by Prior Publication not as a gateway to the academy but as a means to consolidate decades of professional praxis into recognized research contributions, drawing attention to the insufficiency of the master-apprentice dynamic and the urgent need for a more andragogical, equity-oriented approach that acknowledges existing expertise and values multiplicity over standardization; institutional inertia and supervisor bias often manifest as invisible barriers—particularly for older students—where ageism and structural elitism conspire to deny legitimacy to alternative intellectual pathways, despite evidence showing that such students often outperform traditional candidates in completion and impact, while also enriching academic environments with intergenerational knowledge transfer and interdisciplinary bridges; reframing the doctorate through abundance-based pedagogy and dismantling the deficit lens not only reduces attrition but also activates the true potential of doctoral research as a public good, empowering learners at all stages to contribute meaningfully to scholarship, society and policy without being filtered through narrow, outdated expectations of what a PhD ‘should’ be, thereby affirming that a revitalized doctoral culture rooted in respect, rigour and difference is both necessary and possible.