Industry–university collaboration in industrial doctorates: A trouble-free marriage?

Abstract

This article explores the perceptions of Portuguese students enrolled in industrial doctorates, regarding potential conflicts that may arise from their supervision, their research topic and their research outputs. The study uses data collected from focus groups and subjected to content analysis. The findings suggest that industrial doctoral students recognise a divergence between university and industry, mainly regarding research outputs, and particularly industry’s need to keep data confidential and the university’s need to disseminate knowledge via the publication of articles. Convergence was noted at the level of joint supervision, sometimes facilitated by the fact that academics were also entrepreneurs. The success of this kind of collaborative doctorate depends on compromise between the two parties and on how students can manage this relationship. Therefore, their perspectives are an important source of information worth consideration.

Keywords

Academic dissemination data confidentiality industrial doctorates research topic research outputs supervision

Higher education has been called on to respond to current economic, social and cultural challenges, which implies taking into consideration the interests of employers, the demands of policymakers and the needs of students. In order to accommodate these interests, a higher value has been ascribed to knowledge with the potential for application in the real world, initiating a shift in knowledge production from Mode 1 to Mode 2 (Gibbons et al., 1994). Mode 2 knowledge often entails transdisciplinarity and collaborations among diverse actors (Bienkowska and Klofsten, 2012).

Universities around the world have been encouraged to establish collaborations with industry, intensifying research partnerships, at the level of the daily exchange of knowledge with firms and involving scholars and students (e.g. spin-out companies, science parks, incubator units) (Borrel-Damian et al., 2010). Industrial doctorates are a paradigmatic example of such collaborations, as they are funded by industry or government programmes that require industrial participation. Industry’s financial participation in these doctorates varies from 25% to 80% of the costs (Borrell-Damian et al., 2015). Many European countries, including Denmark, Estonia, France, Finland, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom, have fostered such collaboration through government-led schemes (Borrell-Damian et al., 2010; Cardoso et al., 2019). Such collaborations in doctoral programmes are not always a result of top-down initiatives encouraged by the government; they are also driven by the bottom-up endeavours of institutions or companies. What is widely recognised is that public support is crucial, not only regarding funding but also concerning suitable policies and legislation to foster university–business partnerships in doctoral education (Borrell-Damian et al., 2010). The emergence of industrial doctorates is also a consequence of dissatisfaction among industrial employers and graduates, who have criticised doctoral training for being too narrow and specialised, failing to qualify graduates for non-academic work (Jung, 2018; Kyvik and Olsen, 2012). Therefore, these degrees aim at preparing a new generation of researchers with ties to and competences relevant for other sectors and professions beyond academia (Borrell-Damian et al., 2015).

Industrial doctorates, in Portugal as elsewhere, are meant to be beneficial for both sides: universities should have access to industrial data and the industry should gain access to new knowledge and technologies to develop new products (Azman et al., 2019). Moreover, doctoral students not only add fresh ideas to existing knowledge in industry, developing the company’s stock of scientific knowledge, but also create scientific knowledge that becomes part of the company’s competitive advantage and intellectual capital (Kihlander et al., 2011).

However, collaboration between universities and companies is not always trouble-free. The different aims, purposes, organisational characteristics and operational capabilities of partners often challenge the sustainability and implementation of these partnerships (Azman et al., 2019; Roolaht, 2015). As doctoral students play a central role in such collaborations, the aim of this study is to ascertain whether Portuguese students enrolled in industrial doctorates perceive the collaboration between university and industry as convergent or divergent, particularly regarding their supervision, their research topic and their expected research outputs. First, a review of the literature on the points of convergence and divergence between universities and industry is conducted, taking into consideration the position of doctoral candidates in this relationship. Then, the methodology and the main findings are presented and conclusions are drawn.

Convergence and divergence in university–industry collaborations

One criticism often addressed to doctoral education is its lack of relevance outside academia, because it apparently fails to prepare doctoral students to work in other sectors of society and industry (De Grande et al., 2014; Kyvik and Olsen, 2012; Roberts, 2018) – although more than half of doctoral graduates tend to find employment outside academia (Borrell-Damian et al., 2010). In this context, doctoral degrees involving collaboration with industry have emerged, frequently designated in the literature as industrial or collaborative doctorates. These doctorates involve interaction between a university, a company and a doctoral candidate. The fact that industry experts play an active role in these collaborative doctorates, especially at the level of supervision and assessment, makes them different from other, traditional doctorates (Borrell-Damian et al., 2015).

As the academia’s capacity to integrate increasing numbers of doctoral graduates is limited, industrial doctorates aim to ensure wider career prospects and the diversification of labour market outcomes for doctorate holders (Roberts 2018, Wardenaar et al., 2014, Thune, 2010). While being an industrial doctorate student implies that the research is closely related to the company, it also involves affiliation to a research department at a university. Therefore, an industrial doctorate student is exposed to a dual culture (Kihlander et al., 2011).

The relationship between higher education and the economic sector is described in the literature as challenging, as the former has been increasingly considered as subordinated to the needs of society and the economy (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004). Higher education has seen an expansion of its responsibilities to include, beyond teaching and research, the ‘third mission’, which presupposes that knowledge production contributes to social and economic development (Pinheiro et al., 2015). As a result, many universities around the world have reshaped their structures and mission as ‘entrepreneurial universities’ (Clark, 1998). This instrumental role assigned to higher education has been controversial for several reasons. As far as the teaching mission is concerned, recent debates have addressed the nature of degrees and the extent to which these should develop cognitive skills and/or other skills relevant to the labour market (Etzkowitz et al., 2012). Training for the labour market is considered reductionist and instrumental because higher education has a broader purpose, related to the holistic development of the learner and bildung, as advocated by Humboldt (Karseth and Solbrekke, 2016). Another Humboldtian ideal was the pursuit of impartial truth through research and teaching, and universities were seen as places that sought knowledge ‘for its own sake’.

While it is recognised that a key component of the engagement between universities and companies is knowledge (Chiang, 2011), the two cultures are considered to have different knowledge dispositions. Universities have, according to Chiang (2011), an expert knowledge disposition, which means that academics are concerned with knowledge dissemination, publishing, peer recognition, reputation, academic freedom, independence, open science, public good, basic and upstream research, discovery, openness and sharing. In contrast, companies have a commercialised knowledge disposition (Chiang, 2011), mainly focusing on applied and downstream research, profit, end products and secrecy to protect their own commercial interests and preserve their competitiveness in the market (Chiang, 2011). In this commercialised knowledge disposition, the value of knowledge is judged on the basis of its potential financial profitability, which leads to secrecy within a closed scientific system. The secrecy attached to the commercialised knowledge held by industry has the potential to become incompatible with open science and academic freedom (Sauermann and Roach, 2014). Indeed, as companies operate primarily in a market-based system, they tend to restrict the disclosure of fresh knowledge, considering secrecy to be the most effective mechanism for competitive advantage (Sauermann and Roach, 2014). Therefore, issues related to intellectual property, scientific communication and the credibility of scientific results are some of the conflicts of interests that might arise from this collaboration.

The collaboration between these two cultures, when coming together through industrial doctorates, is therefore challenged by barriers arising from the different natures of the partners (Azman et al., 2019): goal-oriented, which include different institutional goals, inadequate understanding of how the other operates, different time horizons, dissimilarity of reward structures and funding mechanisms, and conflict of interests; mission-oriented, which refer to the distinct and inconsistent missions of both partners which may include the university’s idea of free and open enquiry contrasting with the proprietary nature of industrial research; contract-related, which include ownership issues particularly those concerning intellectual property rights such as licensing; and personnel-related, which involve the lack of a strategy for communication, inflexibility of universities, and cultural differences in values, priorities and time schedules. Moreover, industrial doctorates have, according to Borrell-Damian (2009), an unwarranted focus on non-academic activities. A partnership with a company implies being involved in applied research or short-term practical tasks, while the publication of academic results is irrelevant for the company but important for the university. Therefore, the problems of implementing industrial doctorates are related to the non-academic focus of the research tasks, restrictions on the publication of research outcomes and intellectual property rights (Roolaht, 2015).

Despite this, the interests of universities and industry may converge if both partners are willing to compromise or when the disciplinary area of the researchers involved is related to industrial products, when the participating companies are highly research-driven, and when the researchers have a portfolio of different types of relationship with industry (Kihlander et al., 2011). Besides, the effects of industrial and collaborative doctorates on academic freedom, especially regarding intellectual property or the freedom to communicate findings, are mixed (Thune, 2009). While some studies report negative effects (Gemme and Gringas, 2004; Slaughter et al., 2002), others do not find an adverse effect on academic freedom (Behrens and Gray, 2001; Sauermann and Roach, 2014). Moreover, the fact that students who intend to pursue an industrial career, unlike those who aim to pursue an academic career, assign less value to knowledge publication and dissemination may also be an aspect that favours convergence between industry and academia (Roolaht, 2015). Assuming that students enrolled in industrial doctorates tend to be more willing to pursue a career in industry, they may be less interested in defining their own research projects, interacting with others at scientific conferences or publishing their results than those who decide to pursue an academic career, with a bigger ‘taste for science’ (Roach and Sauermann, 2010). The more pragmatic profile of students enrolled in industrial doctorates would then imply that these students do not feel their academic freedom under threat, as they would not value it as much as traditional doctorate students.

Methodology

In the Portuguese context, only universities (14 are public and 10 are private) can award doctoral degrees, the majority of which are traditional research doctorates. Students pay doctoral tuition fees except when scholarships are granted by the main funding body (the Foundation for Science and Technology – FCT) which supports doctoral education either through doctoral programmes or through individual doctoral scholarships. The doctoral programmes can be national, industrial and international (FCT, 2018).

This study collected data from six focus groups (FGs) which were conducted with 30 industrial doctorate students in total (see Table 1), each group corresponding to a different industrial doctorate programme (only six doctoral programmes in collaboration with industry are in operation in Portugal, funded by the Portuguese FCT). These programmes belong primarily to two disciplinary areas: Engineering (Refining, Petrochemical and Chemical Engineering, Advanced Engineering Systems and Biomedical Engineering) and Health and Medical Sciences (Animal Science, Health Sciences and Pharmaceutical Sciences).

Table 1.

Participant characteristics.

	FG1 (n = 6)	FG2 (n = 4)	FG3 (n = 6)	FG4 (n = 6)	FG5 (n = 3)	FG6 (n = 5)	All (n = 30)
Gender
Male	4	1	3	3	1	3	15 (50%)
Female	2	3	3	3	2	2	15 (50%)
Mean age, years (range)	28 (25–31)	30 (27–34)	29 (26–35)	26 (25–38)	29 (27–30)	30 (28–35)	28.7 (25–38)
Disciplinary area	Engineering (Advanced Engineering Systems)	Health and Medical Sciences (Pharmaceutical Sciences)	Health and Medical Sciences (Animal Science)	Engineering (Biomedical Engineering)	Engineering (Refining, Petrochemical and Chemical Engineering)	Health and Medical Sciences (Health Sciences)
Full-time student	6	4	5	6	3	5	29 (96.7%)
Previous professional experience	6	4	4	2	2	3	21 (70%)

All but one of the students in the FGs had a Master’s degree in the same or a related disciplinary area of the doctorate. Generally, these students had achieved a good academic result in their previous degree, with an average grade of 16 out of 20. The FG participants were half female and half male and the average age was 28.7 (see Table 1). The participants believed that flexibility, resilience and proactivity were key personal attributes for students in industrial doctorates. Moreover, they felt motivated by the possibilities the doctorates offered regarding research application and broader career prospects, more aligned with their pragmatic profile (Tavares et al., 2020).

The FGs were facilitated by two researchers and addressed a wide range of topics relating to students’ experiences and challenges, from the moment of application up to the point at which they found themselves at the time of the interview. In this study, the focus is on three broad areas: ‘supervision’, ‘research topic’ and ‘research outputs’. These were selected because they are the dimensions that mostly require collaboration between industry and academia (Cardoso et al., 2019). Therefore, they are the areas in which conflicts and compromises are most likely to occur and these will be reflected in the students’ perceptions.

A content analysis of each FG was carried out using the MAXQDA software (Version 12). Data were analysed using both a deductive approach, based on the literature review, and an inductive approach (Braun and Clarke, 2006; Hennink, 2013). Each transcription was read and coded to identify themes that were acknowledged in the literature review as key dimensions of an industrial doctorate experience. The coding was performed by two of the authors and the emerging themes in the interpretation of the data were reached through consensus during ongoing discussions, which allowed for the challenging of assumptions and the reduction of possible individual biases. Themes were categorised under the above key dimensions of the doctoral student’s experience: (1) ‘supervision’; (2) ‘research topic’ and (3) ‘research outputs’. The transcripts were also coded under the meta-categories convergence and divergence, in order to capture the nature of the relationship between the university and industry. The relationship was considered divergent when the goals and priorities of academia and industry were in conflict and negatively affected the students’ experiences. It was considered convergent when, despite the differences in goals, industry and academia were willing to compromise, which was reflected in students’ positive experiences. In a last step, the codifications related to supervision, research topic and research outputs were crossed with the codifications of convergence or divergence in order to identify intersections and therefore to obtain an idea of the students’ experiences of the relationship between the two worlds.

Findings

This section presents a general overview of the students’ perceptions about their supervision, their research topic and the expected research outputs. This is followed by a discussion of the points of convergence and divergence between industry and academia in relation to these topics.

Supervision, research topic and research outputs

According to the perceptions of FG participants, supervision was mainly shared by industry representatives and academics. Students’ experiences were generally positive regarding this aspect, and they describe the relationship with their supervisors as close, informal and supportive. They also reported easy access to supervisors and regular communication through different channels (email, skype, phone, meetings) which enabled the exchange of ideas, brainstorming and feedback on their progress. The students also mentioned cases in which their university supervisors were also running or working in companies (mainly start-ups and spin-offs) which, in their perceptions, made it easier for the two worlds to communicate and reach consensus, as the following transcript illustrates:

It is a company that is also located in the university. Therefore the industrial supervisor is also an academic and if I need anything he is always available. But in terms of supervision, it has been mainly done by the academic supervisor. It is obvious that they also have privileged contacts with each other, and when I have meetings with the academic supervisor, I also have inputs from the industrial supervisor, which turns out to be a process that is a bit more flexible. (FG2)

In other cases, students felt that their academic supervisors were unaware of the concerns of a private company in terms of the applicability of their research:

Not all academic supervisors have a business or commercial vision. This is sometimes complicated because, in scientific terms, the work can be very, very good, but then the output, in a market sense, it has nothing to offer. It may be important for academic supervisors to be more sensitive to this. (FG6)

Less frequently, some students complained about their supervision being irregular, invoking various reasons, such as busy academic periods, when supervisors were less available, but mostly the unavailability of industrial supervisors either because of time constraints or because supporting students’ research was a secondary priority compared to other tasks. For example, one student said:

But the problem is not in the work itself. It has to do with the fact that not all parties are equally committed. It is very interesting, in theory, a doctorate in partnership, but the commitment to this doctorate is not, in practice, as it should be. Then we have to remember that in the business world, it is always like this: ‘All jobs are necessary as long as no one bothers me. I want it all done, but don’t come to me’. They obviously have their jobs and tasks, so it is difficult for them to be available and support us. […] We have a working group here that is willing to collaborate with us, to work together, but no one has allocated hours of their time. (FG1)

Regarding the research topic, the majority of participants revealed that it was mainly driven by the needs of the industry and that the project they were supposed to develop had already been defined when they applied. However, no evidence emerged of a tension between academia and industry in relation to this:

In my case, the topic was rather general. It was a nanotechnology company; then we contacted an engineering firm and we figured out what could be a useful application for it. From then on, we followed the template that they gave us. (FG3)

Some students, especially those enrolled in one programme (FG1) felt resentful that their voice had not been heard at all:

In these situations, it is almost like starting a race limping. I don’t think it is right for them to send an email, after several months, with the indication of the supervisor and the research topic. It’s a rough way to motivate students, the PhD is a solitary work and it is important for the student to be motivated. But launching a theme in an area I have never heard of and I don’t identify myself with is a reason to get disheartened. (FG1)

In contrast, in another particular programme (FG6), students had to propose a research project to the companies involved in the partnership. Some experienced this large degree of freedom as counterproductive, because companies, in their view, should give more guidance on their needs. The following statement is illustrative of this perception:

I knew that the company had interest in more or less two projects. And that’s it. I ended up fitting in well in the projects. But there were colleagues of mine who had to propose the projects themselves. In my opinion, I think it would be more interesting if the companies proposed the projects. (FG6)

Finally, regarding the research outputs necessary to complete the doctorate, students mentioned articles, academic dissertations or patents, although they generally had no knowledge of the exact formal requirements. Students admitted that there was a clear issue in relation to data confidentiality. Knowledge dissemination was constrained to various degrees: they could publish the results of their research only after the submission of the patent, which ensured that the company could maintain a competitive advantage since the profit potential of the idea would be protected; they could publish selectively – only findings from their research that would not compromise the company’s advantage; or, in an extreme case, the company was opposed to the dissemination of information because commercial secrecy was crucial for a lucrative business. The tension between the different relationships to knowledge in academia versus industry is evident in the following transcripts:

In order to finish the PhD, we have to publish. I mean, any PhD implies innovation, novelty, a new thesis. Everything that is newly discovered, the company doesn’t want to publish, so there has been this conflict because I need articles for my CV and also to finish the PhD. So there is this difficulty. Many times there are parallel projects I’m in so that I can publish and not depend 100% on the company. But then, in the middle of it, the company asks you to do something else and this is left aside. (FG2)

I think there is no conflict because everything is written down. Everything we produce belongs to them, the company and the university. The thing is, if we develop something in the company, it’s obvious that we cannot publish it in an explicit way. I cannot give this ‘juice’ away, it has to stay inside the university or the company. You cannot hand it over to the competing companies. (FG1)

Academic dissemination was the other issue that was given a lot of emphasis during the FG discussions. Despite being aware of the universities’ requirements that PhD students needed to publish articles, the students, especially in two of the groups (Pharmaceutical Sciences and Refining, Petrochemical and Chemical Engineering), disagreed with the importance given to publications in an industrial doctorate, the nature is less theoretical and more applied:

Maybe this is something that needs changing because I don’t know if the fact that we have a lot of articles is important in business, because we are being trained to work in a company and not for a research career. So I don’t know how far articles are that important in this kind of PhD. (FG5)

Negotiation between companies and the university was deemed necessary regarding what could be disclosed and often publications addressed more theoretical topics, such as literature reviews, that did not affect confidentiality:

For what I have published, there was an agreement between the parties involved: the academic supervisor and the industrial supervisor. So far, I have published a lot in theoretical terms, reviews […] and this has nothing to do with the results, but it allows me to have something and meet the requirements. At least the minimum requirements, no matter the results my project may have. (FG2)

Points of divergence and convergence

The category divergence emerged with slightly more weight than convergence during the analysis, which suggests that there is room for improvement in collaborations between industry and academia.

The major point of divergence occurs at the level of research outputs, specifically regarding the handling and purpose of the knowledge produced. Data confidentiality versus the academic dissemination of results stood out with great emphasis in the analysis. As acknowledged in the literature, the different knowledge dispositions of the two cultures (Chiang, 2011) – universities being more oriented towards dissemination, open science, sharing and the public good, and companies being more oriented towards commercialisation, profit, competitiveness and secrecy – clash despite the assumed collaborative nature of the doctorate. Therefore, the mission-oriented and contract-related barriers (Azman et al., 2019) were evident in students’ experiences:

I think that this is related with what was said earlier about data protection. Big companies want to have returns on investment, they want to protect the research in order to have competitive advantage. And they know that by supporting financially a doctoral programme in a university, they may run into this kind of problems which will be difficult to solve further down the road. (FG6)

With much less frequency, divergence was also experienced at the level of supervision, mainly because of the lower commitment and availability of industrial representatives, but also because of conflicting priorities and tasks inside the company:

We can choose an idea and move on. If we work for a month on it and then the supervisor says it makes no sense, that’s work that is lost. When you work for a company, it’s even more important. We can be working on something, even discussing it with the academic supervisor. Then, the company can say they are not interested in it. It’s probably months of lost work because the output has no value for the company, they see no possible application. (FG6)

Sometimes, different priorities in the company can divert students from their research work, as companies unduly involve them in tasks not related to their doctorate. The following complaint is illustrative:

I speak for myself, when the company asks something not related with the PhD and which needs to be done by that deadline […] it’s only about the company, the company and the company. It’s not necessarily about the PhD. Then I have to redo my monthly schedule. (FG2)

Notwithstanding the above divergences, reflecting the same incompatibilities suggested in the literature (Azman et al., 2019; Chiang 2011; Sauermann and Roach, 2014), the analysis also identified points of convergence, mainly at the level of the supervision. The convergence was felt mainly when there was genuine joint supervision, regular meetings and joint discussions to move the research forward:

We have weekly meetings with the academic and industrial supervisors where we touch base and plan the work for the following week. Then we have monthly meetings where we present what we have done, with a PowerPoint presentation, what we intend to do next, it’s all organised. […] My supervisors, both the industrial and the academic one, who are nearby, are regularly with me. So the interaction is frequent. (FG5)

Another aspect which contributed to convergence was the academic supervisor’s entrepreneurial mindset. As explained above, the fact that some supervisors were also involved in start-ups and spin-off companies was deemed to facilitate the relationship between the two worlds because these supervisors were more sensitive to the goals and missions of a company and more practice-oriented:

All our supervisors are in the academia and also run a company, so they are living proof that the two realities can coexist. My other co-supervisor from the company is also a professor and everyone in the company also produces scientific work. (FG4)

Points of convergence were also encountered to a lesser extent in the case of the research outputs, primarily when students were aware of the conditions for publication defined through the contract between all the parties involved – university, company and student.

The definition of the research topic did not seem to cause any divergence despite the fact that it was mainly driven by the interests of the companies. Reaching a consensus in this respect did not appear to be a problem. On the contrary, it appeared to represent an aspect characterised primarily by convergence.

Conclusions

Close collaboration between university and industry is at the centre of industrial doctorate programmes. Although this partnership is meant to be beneficial for both sides, it does not always seem to be a problem-free relationship (Azman et al., 2019; Chiang, 2011; Kihlander et al., 2011). The goals, purposes, organisational environment, time horizons and availabilities of the two partners do not generally converge, placing a strain on their relationship (Azman et al., 2019; Roolaht, 2015). Students are caught between the two worlds and are challenged to manage these tensions. Bearing this in mind, the article has aimed to explore how Portuguese students enrolled in industrial doctorates perceive the relationship between academia and industry – convergent or divergent – and how this affects their experience of the degree with regard to three dimensions: supervision, research topic and research outputs.

In general, the findings suggest that there are both points of convergence and points of divergence in the relationship between academia and industry, although divergence appears slightly stronger. This conflict emerges particularly at the level of research outputs. On the academic side, students are expected to produce and disseminate knowledge, which implies the publication of scientific articles. On the industry side, data confidentiality is paramount, implying that the findings need to be protected from the potential rivals. Students’ discourses stress this dilemma in their experience of the dual culture (Kihlander et al., 2011), combining conflicting knowledge dispositions (Chiang, 2011). The obligations to ensure data confidentiality and, at same time, to publish their research results produce a tension that is difficult to deal with. This tension represents a barrier to open science, restricting academic freedom (Sauermann and Roach, 2014). Divergence was also felt at the level of supervision, particularly regarding the lower commitment and availability of industrial supervisors, as well as their different priorities – among which research was not always prominent. Additionally, industrial doctorate students have to ‘accommodate’ within their tasks several non-academic activities that are relevant for the company although irrelevant for the research, as Borrell-Damian (2009) also highlighted.

In addition to these divergence points, convergence points also exist between academia and industry. Convergence was felt mainly when there was genuine joint supervision, with regular meetings and discussions to move the research forward. Another aspect which contributes to convergence is an entrepreneurial mindset on the part of the academic supervisor through involvement in start-ups and spin-offs. In such cases, the supervisor also acts as facilitator, helping the student to bridge academia and industry, reinforcing the compromise in the relationship between the two worlds (Kihlander, 2011).

The improvement of collaborative doctorates to ensure that students obtain maximum benefit from this form of training through a smooth and trouble-free experience depends on compromise between both parties. The compromise involves, from the company side, more availability and real commitment to supporting students’ research beyond its financial contribution, as well as gaining awareness of and respecting the different mission of the university, which is committed to knowledge dissemination (Altbach, 2001). On the other hand, the university needs to recognise the different nature of industrial doctorates and adapt accordingly its demands in terms of research outputs, which the students also felt to be necessary, given the industrial doctorate’s less theoretical and more applied focus.

Although all industrial doctoral programmes currently operating in Portugal were included in this research, they are limited to two disciplinary fields – Engineering and Health Sciences – which are easy to match with industry areas. Other disciplines might present different and/or additional challenges. The findings are also context-dependent. The Portuguese industry sector is still less developed and competitive, judging by the number of the patent applications, than that of other European countries, and innovation tends to occur in isolated industrial niches (European Patents Office, 2019). Future research could therefore explore the relationship between industry and universities and the consequences for industrial doctorate students in other contexts. Moreover, opinions from other stakeholders beyond students – supervisors, both academic and industrial, as well as employers – could add different perspectives to the account presented here.

This article contributes to the literature on collaborative doctorates by adding students’ perspectives of a partnership in which they are the protagonists, and for the success of which they are therefore vital. Listening to students and giving them a more active voice may be a key step forward towards a trouble-free marriage between industry and university.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research is financially supported by national funds through the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), within the scope of the project PTDC/CED-EDG/29726/2017.

ORCID iD

Orlanda Tavares

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