PhD courses and the intersectoral experience: a comprehensive survey

Abstract

[EN] It has been found that most PhD graduates (>85%) do not achieve a long-term academic career and thus there is a growing need to re-imagine PhD education that incentivizes doctoral students to engage with research consumers, not only within their discipline, but also, across other disciplines and sectors to have real social impact for an improved society. The aim of this work is to identify intersectoral/interdisciplinary courses that are considered to broaden student career outside and inside academia. For this purpose, a survey was designed to identify modules which lead to the improvement of students' skills while an analysis of their attributes was also performed. Two target groups have been considered: (a) young researchers and (b) program directors each of which can provide different information regarding the courses of interest. 52 students and 11 directors from 5 European Universities, participated in the study. An absence of such courses in the standard PhD program was observed, while any intersectoral/interdisciplinary activities were conducted outside the PhD program, and organized by collaboration of academia and other organizations. The survey findings reveal the need to restructure the PhD programs.