Producing ‘industry‐ready’ doctorates: Australian Cooperative Research Centre approaches to doctoral education

Abstract

How the experience of science‐based Ph.D. students working in or funded by Australian Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs) compares with their peers in regular university science‐based departments is the key focus of this article. CRC doctoral programmes that integrate industry needs with professional development offer an alternative to traditional research training, emphasizing producing ‘industry‐ready’ graduates with a broader educational experience linked to the needs of research users. The overall experience of both groups, their attitudes to collaboration with industry and where their studies are leading them are analysed. Of particular interest is whether CRC‐related Ph.D. students have more positive attitudes towards their training, towards industry and research and development (R&D) partnerships with industry than those outside CRCs and to what extent both favour the idea of careers in industry. Findings, based on a survey of Ph.D. students in two Australian research‐intensive universities, indicate that the CRC research training experience has much to commend it. This suggests that in reforming doctoral education programmes, universities would do well to further examine the effectiveness of aspects of this alternative.

Notes

Centre for Higher Education Management and Policy, School of Professional Development and Leadership, University of New England, Armidale, NSW 2351, Australia. Email: kharman@ metz.une.edu.au

However, while the increase is much welcomed by research institutions, it will only go part of the way to closing the gap between the 1.5% that Australia currently spends on R&D as a percentage of GDP and the international target of 3%.

The Commonwealth has announced that funding will no longer be forthcoming for CRCs without a commercialization focus, i.e. to those designated ‘public good’. The Minister for Education, Science and Training has also announced an overhaul of the Research and Research Training Scheme (Nelson, 2004, p. 3).

Likewise, doctoral students working on project‐based doctorates and Australian Research Council‐supported Linkage projects experience more direction from their supervisors (Powles, 1995).

This CRC is one of the ‘public good’ CRCs which will not receive further funding support when its current funding ceases.