EUROPE: Joint PhDs becoming popular

A major two-year project undertaken by the European University Association with the support of the European Commission and involving 33 universities in 20 European countries has found that collaborative doctoral programmes are growing in importance in Europe and offering real value to universities and industry.

The study, Collaborative Doctoral Education: University-Industry Partnerships for Enhancing Knowledge Exchange, concluded that "doctoral education is the bridge linking the European Higher Education Area and the European Research Area, and that, as the first stage of a research career, excellent conditions for doctoral level work will be crucial in determining the attractiveness of the choice of staying in and coming to Europe".

The EUA itself has been working actively to improve the research environment and grant and contract conditions to enhance the contribution of Europe's universities and create a globally competitive European Research Area. It has been gathering empirical evidence on the rapid development of doctoral programmes and schools seeking to offer greater critical mass, enhanced supervision and widened employment opportunities for doctorate holders in public and private sectors.

The EUA said that collaborative doctoral education was of growing importance in Europe given the increased focus on innovation through R&D to advance towards a more knowledge- based economy. It also reflected the present reality that a majority of doctorate graduates were destined for careers outside academia in research and non-research positions.

"Transdisciplinarity is also recognised to be essential for innovation, and universities are unique environments where high academic standards and a vast range of disciplines meet and flourish. R&D oriented business are becoming more aware of its potential," said the EUA.

The study accepted that concerns had been expressed about aspects of collaborative research, noting that "the discussion on transferable skills proved to be the most controversial aspect of the dialogue".

There was a general agreement that such skills were important but there was less consensus on the extent to which they should be a structural element of doctoral education: "Small and medium-sized companies placed a higher value in doctorate holders having 'soft skills' to complement their research capabilities at the moment of being employed, while for large R&D companies, the value of hiring a doctorate holder usually lies, in the first instance, in a deep knowledge of a relevant subject and broader competencies that are likely to equip the person to handle subsequent career challenges," said the report.

Even though these and other concerns were frequently expressed, the evidence was that they could be overcome in an efficient manner with appropriate management processes and attitudes by all parties.

"Dialogue between university and industry on collaborative research is reaching a level of maturity that provides opportunities for effective action to promote durable relations between the academic and business worlds," said the study.

It noted there were distinctive European ways of responding to university-industry collaboration challenges which needed further development and might offer a different approach from that practised in North America and other regions of the world

The EUA concluded that in general companies were satisfied with the acquired knowledge and research skills of doctorate holders educated in Europe. But they also pointed to the need for greater communication skills, and the limited awareness of intellectual property issues and understanding of how businesses operate.

Comment:
The essential value of doctoral studies is the intellectual and personal development of the scholar and not the acquisition of particular skills, though that indeed is a by-product that in practice is rarely used. Our scholars and our society will be joint losers if the European universities adopt a strategy of directing research studies to meet the specific needs of industry. Any analysis of the contributions graduates have made to society will clearly demonstrate that they bear little relationship to the skills they accumulated at university but overwhelmingly to the intellectual power they developed in their studies.

Professor John Kelly