Evaluating industry-based doctoral research programs: perspectives and outcomes of Australian Cooperative Research Centre graduates

Abstract

Researchers of the future will need to be able to work across the increasingly porous boundaries between university, industry, government and community sectors. Concerns have been raised internationally for several decades about the content and approaches adopted in doctoral programs. Innovative doctoral programs that facilitate students' experiences of industry-based research have been introduced around the globe as one approach to addressing these concerns. While some of these new national approaches have been studied, systematic evaluations that track research graduates' actual employment preparation and outcomes remain patchy. This article reports on a comprehensive study of graduate preparation and employment outcomes of an Australian doctoral program that has been designed to produce industry-ready graduates: the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) program. This article argues that CRC doctoral programs appear to provide greater experience of industry and access to professional development, that result in higher numbers of graduates gaining employment in industry and in public sector research organisations.

Keywords:

• doctoral programs
• industry-ready graduates
• Cooperative Research Centre
• evaluation

Acknowledgements

This article was first developed as a research report (Pitt, Cox, and Manathunga 2010) and presented at the 2010 Quality in Postgraduate Research conference and as an invited address to the 2010 CRC Association Conference. This research was funded by: the Australian Research Council, Rio Tinto, CSR Sugar, the Queensland Government Department of State Development, Innovation and Trade and the CRC for Sugar Industry Innovation through Biotechnology; with advisory support also provided by Meat & Livestock Australia Ltd. The authors would like to acknowledge Christa Critchley, a Chief Investigator who is now retired, for her contribution to the project over a number of years. The authors would like to acknowledge the involvement of I-view in the online conducting of the survey. Finally, we would like to thank the research assistants on the project – Jacqueline Davis, Jegar Pitchforth and Rex King.

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