Research environment satisfaction and progress measures of a few industry PhD candidates

Abstract

This report presents a limited investigation of the research and working environment for industry PhD students, and how this may relate to success measures defined here as completion according to plan and satisfaction with the post-graduation career. Possible differences in presumptions, conditions, limitations and possibilities in several different aspects between industry PhD students and PhD students employed at the university may cause different research- and working environments. The study was carried out by a survey employing a questionnaire or interviews based on the questionnaire and focused on factors such as working place, employer and progress together with the reactions to supervision and group of supervisors. The responders of the questionnaire and interviews were a limited number of industry PhDs who had completed, or were close to finishing, their PhD studies. In general, most of the responding PhDs were satisfied with their industry PhD program, and those with higher satisfaction of a number of working environment criteria, including supervision, tended to complete their studies within a shorter time frame. On the contrary, there was no clear correlation between the satisfaction of the post-graduation career and the satisfaction during the program. We also could not find a clear relation between the satisfaction of supervision and the co-location or not of student and adviser. Since the number of respondents unfortunately was rather limited it is not possible to make any statistically assured conclusions of the results.