University-Industry collaboration in higher education : Industry views on investing in industrial PhD students

• University collaboration and networking with society and practice are of crucial importance in contemporary society. Contemporary societal challenges, on all levels from local to global, are complexand often call for the inclusion of many perspectives and competences. There is thus a demand for increased university-society collaboration generating learning, new knowledge, dissemination ofresearch findings, innovation and societal impact. One aspect of this is the collaboration between universities and industry through industrial PhD students who are active in the university-industryinterface, i.e., employed in industry during their PhD third-cycle education, while at the same time they are involved in both theory and practice. The aim of this paper is to explore university-industrycollaboration by focusing on industry perspectives in investing in industrial PhD students, third-cycle education. The research is conducted as an explorative case study, focusing on collaborations betweenindustry and the discipline of informatics with the specialization of work-integrated learning at University West in Sweden. Qualitative methods were applied including semi-structured interviews with fiverespondents from industry. Findings showed benefits to industry such as the mutual benefits of applying the WIL concept, knowledge creation and dissemination, short-term societal research impact,competence development, product development, innovation and increased organizational legitimacy.Some challenges were identified that need to be considered in order to strengthen the industrial PhD program as well as the university-industry collaboration. The industrial PhD students generatedknowledge and learning as both short-term and long-term dissemination of research results. The continuous opportunities for validation and testing of results in the organization was highly valued. Thisstudy contributes furthermore by broadening the work-integrated learning concept to include the category of industrial PhD education.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Keyword

university-industry collaboration

industrial phd students

third-cycle education

work-integrated learning

practice

Arbetsintegrerat lärande

informatik

företagsekonomi

innovation management

samhällsvetenskap

Business administration

Företagsekonomi

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)