PhD students’ work conditions and study environment in university- and industry-based PhD programmes

Abstract

During the last 10 years, new models of funding and training PhD students have been established in Denmark in order to integrate industry into the entire PhD education. Several programmes have been conducted where it is possible to co-finance PhD scholarships or to become an employee as an industrial PhD in a company. An important question is what impact these new conditions will have on the PhD students' training, work conditions and study environment. In this article, the new type of programmes will be presented together with data analysis of PhD students'work conditions and study environment in various programmes mainly based on a research project from 2006. The results of this study show no significant difference between PhD students in a traditional university PhD programme and PhD students in an industrial programme concerning working environment. However, the study shows significant differences in the intercultural dimension, where foreign PhD students are significantly more satisfied with their study environment compared with Danish PhD students. In general the workload is very high and the environment is stressful for all PhD students.

Effects of appointment types on the availability of research infrastructure, work pressure, stress, and career attitudes of PhD candidates of a Dutch university

“…Interestingly, internationals reported a higher overall satisfaction with their experience as a PhD student in the same study. In Denmark, international PhD candidates experience their work environment as less stressful than their Danish counterparts (Kolmos, Kofoed, & Du, 2008). These latter two findings may be related to the literature on job satisfaction as described above: international PhD students may compare their situation to the situation of PhD students in their home country and feel that in comparison, their own situation is better, leading to high satisfaction levels.…”

Articulating expectations for PhD candidature upon commencement: ensuring supervisor/student ‘best fit’

“…A strong belief of both the candidate and the supervisor was that a warm supportive relationship was important for successful candidature. As reflected in the literature, it is a relationship that goes beyond that of the traditional student academic role (Connell & Manathunga, 2012;Kolmos et al, 2008;Maxwell & Smyth, 2011;Minichiello & Kottler, 2010). Being cognisant of reasons for becoming a PhD supervisor (Lidell et al, 2008) is important as the actions and reactions of the supervisor may be based on their personal PhD experience, which is often the case (Hammond, Ryland, Tennant, & Boud, 2010) and on untested and perceived expectations of the candidate.…”

Challenges in engineering education: A view towards the future

“…Peer assessment has been studied in various situations and actively pursued as a means by which students are given more control over their learning and achievement [5]. In order to integrate industry into the entire PhD education, new models of funding and training PhD students have been established [6]. The results of this study showed that there were no significant differences between PhD students in traditional university PhD programmes and PhD students in an industrial programme concerning the working environment.…”