Taking the establishment of structured doctoral programmes in Germany as an example, this paper focuses on how knowledge production in certain academic fields reshapes their doctoral education in a widely changing policy context. Based on case studies of eight graduate schools in three research fields, namely economics, life sciences, and literature--cultural studies, this paper illustrates the different components of structured doctoral programmes in the above three fields, and analyses the heterogeneity in the motivation and pathways of doctoral education reform. This paper concludes that the structured doctoral programmes in Germany manifest several characteristics of the new mode of knowledge production. However, these characteristics have very different implications for different academic fields, which should be taken into consideration when making relevant policies.