(304) REINVENTING DOCTORAL EDUCATION THROUGH UNIVERSITYINDUSTRY COLLABORATION: THE CASE OF INDUSTRIAL DOCTORATES IN PORTUGAL

摘要

This study aims to understand how university-industry collaboration unfolds in industrial doctorates in Portugal and the extent to which this ‘reinvented’ form of doctoral education, based on such collaboration, is aligned with the interests and needs of industry and doctoral candidates. It resorts to qualitative analysis of data from interviews conducted with the coordinators of the six industrial doctoral programmes supported by the national research funding body. Findings suggest that industrial doctorates constitute a way through which universities and industry effectively collaborate. Collaboration occurs at several stages during the programme and tends to be more substantial regarding aspects less related to its pedagogical dimension and rather driven by companies’ priorities regarding innovation and research and development (R&D). University-industry collaboration emerges as very appealing for doctoral candidates, especially because of the acquired skills and employability potential beyond academia, due to the industrial doctorates’ practical or more applied nature. It also seems that industrial doctorates are responding to a relatively recent (and still relatively limited) societal and economic demand for highly-qualified scientific work in Portugal. These doctorates assist industry in addressing problems whose solutions require R&D.