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It is not a great time to be working in higher education, or as I have recently termed it, the Zombie University (Brabazon 2016). Brains are consumed and the only solution is to run away from the threat. It is even less pleasant to be committed to—and believing in—doctoral education. Many “universities” are blurring and aligning with further education institutions, forging a post-expertise university. (Higher) education and training merge, compress and conflate. Stanley Aronowitz’s The Knowledge Factory (2000) – the theoretical dystopia he summoned in 2000 – is now the operating system in our universities. Senior managers in higher education are no longer drawn from the database of outstanding teachers and researchers. These men and women have taken the third path—administration—to “manage” academics and scholarly portfolios in areas in which they have not themselves been successful. What happens to supervision, students and supervisors in this post-expertise knowledge factory? How can we manage power and research dissemination in a different way? How can we claim our space, claim our expertise and fight back against an anti-intellectual wave? How can we balance individual expertise and excellence against co-learning and collaboration? (Sze n.d.) In response to these questions, this article is theoretical and practical, political and punchy, providing strategies that confirm the role and place of standards, rigor and excellence in the modern university. My goal is to ensure that there remains a space and place for high quality doctoral education. I argue that supervisors, doctoral candidates and universities deploy digitization and online learning in a way that increases the reflection, research capacity, and rigor in a PhD program. My title is used with intent. Five minutes to hell—time to tell the truth—is derived from the final episode of series 9 of Doctor Who (Moffat 2015). The Doctor travelled to the end of the universe, attempting to save the life of his companion Clara. He failed, but met the last immortal – Ashildr – who reminded him with stark honesty, “Five minutes to hell. Time to tell the truth” (Moffat 2015, 53). This seems profoundly appropriate at this point in the history of universities. If we lose the standards within our doctoral programs, then we lose the point of our institutions and our future: to create and enable the scholars who will replace us. The context in which this succession planning is taking place may be described – at best – as tumultuous. Imogen Tyler confirmed that, “we are living through a turbulent period in world history in which several man-made catastrophes including environmental change, peak oil, terrorism and warfare and global economic recession, are converging with ruinous consequences” (2013, 5). We are five minutes to hell. Time to tell the truth. The death of Ben Agger—a friend, advisor, editor and personal inspiration—has provided the initiative for this article. His commitment to entwine and align complex theorizations of the political economy with media transformations has provided leadership for generations of scholars and scholarship. Yet it is Ben Agger as a teacher and doctoral supervisor that I wish to summon, remember, and acknowledge in this article. His international role as a rigorous and respectful examiner changed the lives of many of my doctoral candidates and hundreds of emerging 5 Minutes to Hell. Time to Tell the Truth. The Disintermediated Doctoral Student