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DOC-CAREERS II Final Conference highlights benefits of collaborative doctoral education
February 02, 2012
This week (30-31 January), EUA organised the final conference of the DOC-CAREERS II project, which examined how universities are increasingly working with a range of external partners to provide collaborative doctoral education.
Over a day and half, over 100 participants from across Europe gathered in Brussels to discuss a series of issues related to these types of collaboration. These included defining the elements of success in collaborative PhDs, how universities and industry manage intellectual property rights, how to embed employability perspectives in doctoral education and what value European-level initiatives can add to such programmes. Among the speakers were a number of doctoral candidates/doctorate holders and representatives from universities, companies, external partners and the European Commission.
The project has built on the findings of the first DOC-CAREERS project that identified, as a distinctive characteristic of collaborative doctoral programmes, the joint supervision by the university and the external partner, such as a company, NGO or public-sector organisation, involved in the research.
In DOC-CAREERS II, the organisation of five regional workshops brought together universities, external partners and doctoral candidates/doctorate holders to present their experiences as “best practices” of the range and types of collaborative doctoral education currently in place across Europe. The project also proved the feasibility of initiating regional workshops as a way to foster collaboration between universities and businesses/enterprises or other external partners.
The DOC-CAREERS II Final Conference in Brussels presented highlights of the series of the five regional workshops held consecutively in 1) Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), Ireland, 2) École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, 3) Kaunas University of Technology (KTU), Lithuania, 4) Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway, 5) University of Camerino (Unicam), Italy.
In this Final Conference, as in all the preceding regional workshops, presentations were in the form of “double acts” (academia-industry) or “triple acts” (academia-industry-doctoral candidate/doctorate holder) offering views and experiences in collaborative doctoral education and focussing on key questions (listed below). A special session on intellectual property rights provided insights and suggestions for balancing interests from the three main stakeholders.
Although academia and industry often have different needs and timelines, especially with regard to intellectual property rights and the publication of research results, speakers agreed that there are great benefits for all parties concerned. For example, companies are given a chance to train specialists with an awareness of their needs, doctoral candidates have enhanced research career opportunities, and universities can foster their long-term relationships with businesses, which help to strengthen and sustain their research missions.
In the ensuing debates, participants also noted that this development could lead to a positive spill-over effect for traditional doctoral programmes, in terms of new approaches to supervision and raising awareness of the potential impact of research outside the academic world. While most collaborative PhDs have tended to focus on partnerships between the scientific, engineering and technology fields and private industry, conference presentations showed how doctoral collaboration could develop between the social sciences, arts and humanities and industry broadly defined to include public agencies such as health authorities.
EUA announced that the main outcomes of DOC-CAREERS II would be published later this year including the highlighting of examples of successful collaborative doctoral programmes. The project was funded by the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).
More information on the conference and to view the presentations, click here.