Industrial perception of doctoral graduates

Abstract

Within universities there is often an implicit assumption that a doctorate is
preparation for a future academic career. Research has however shown that a
substantial portion of all doctoral graduates at some point end up working within
industry. Thus, as part of the development of doctoral education, considerations of
industrial needs and requirement appears as a valid notion. As an initial input into
the subject, the purpose of the current study was to investigate industry’s perception
of doctoral education and the potential for employing doctoral graduates. This was
done through semi-structured interviews with industrial representatives, thus
allowing for comparable data while at the same time allowing for the participants
to further expand on and add to the posed questions. Based on the performed
interviews it was found that the industry representatives overall had a positive
attitude towards hiring doctoral graduates. The respondents indicated added value
in the doctoral graduates’ knowledge on advance problem solving, seeing the limits
of their own knowledge and their ability to investigate new areas. However, they
wished more training in knowledge development and team work. Previous work
has shown that more students wanted to and believed that they could stay in
academia than were likely to get an employment there. It was indicated that a
possible solution was industry mentoring, where the doctoral students met with a
potential employer in industry during their education.