Students’ experiences of supervision in academic and industry settings: results of an Australian study

Abstract

The joint supervision of Research Higher Degree (RHD) students by an industry and university supervisor is likely to increase in forthcoming years with a rise in the number of university–industry collaborations. Research students may become involved in these collaborative arrangements for a variety of reasons and may launch into their RHD without considering how they will serve two masters, and how this complex relationship will affect their RHD experience. Moreover, little research has been conducted to assess the impact of these arrangements on current RHD students’ experiences. The experiences of students with academic and industry supervisors were, therefore, explored in a survey of confirmed RHD students at an Australian research‐intensive university. This paper investigates whether RHD students conducting research in traditional academic settings have a different experience to students working on industry‐related projects in industry settings, specifically in regards to supervision and institutional access and engagement.

Keywords:

• industry–university collaboration
• Research Higher Degree students
• student experience
• supervision

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Gillian Yeo, Elisha Frederiks, Angela Parsons and Leah Zajdlewicz for survey discussions, development and preliminary data analysis, and Laura Cox for assisting with the final data analysis. Thanks also to Alan Lawson, Christa Critchley, Gary Johnson and Paul Jackson for their invaluable assistance and support services with regard to survey design and administration. Special thanks to the Cooperative Research Centre for Sugar Industry Innovation through Biotechnology for providing the funding that made this research project possible. And lastly, thanks to the RHD students who took the time and effort to participate in the research. This paper was developed from a poster presented at the 2008 Quality in Postgraduate Research Conference, Adelaide, Australia.