Project description
Collaborative PhDs to meet future needs
The job market has transformed significantly over the past few years mainly due to globalisation and technological development. In addition to specialisations emerging in newly created technical sectors, there are many more changes on the horizon. Unfortunately, higher education is not evolving fast enough. This results in a lack of the skills needed to address present societal problems. The EU-funded CHAMELEONS project will create international, intersectoral and interdisciplinary units to increase possibilities for PhD graduates' proper employability. The project will support them to widen their competences and fit the market demands, improving their prospects of further employment in disciplines where they can serve society in the most productive ways.
Objective
Ten years from now, jobs will be more knowledge and skills-intensive than ever before. Globalisation and technological advances indicate that there will be changes in sectoral structure and demand for new types of skills we are not even currently anticipating. Currently only 30% of all doctoral graduates currently stay in academia with the remaining 70% seeking employment outside the academic setting, for example in industry and government . It is therefore clear that these graduates possess many of the required skills for purposeful employment outside academia. A gap has been identified in that current doctoral curricula do not foster big thinkers and creative problem-solvers, graduate attributes that society needs. There is a growing need to re-imagine a PhD education that incentivises doctoral students to engage with research consumers, not only within their discipline, but also, across other disciplines and sectors to have real social impact for an improved society. At a professional and research level, international, interdisciplinary and inter-sectoral networks are on the increase. Such collaborative doctoral programs can assist the knowledge society in finding innovative ways of approaching the world’s problems by asking creative questions and finding creative solutions within multiple employment contexts. To date, there is a lack of research in the area of the interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral doctoral education and the question remains: how do we best design these programmes to ensure that the PhD students’ develop into big thinkers? The overall aim of CHAMELONS is to develop a range of interdisciplinary, inter-sectoral and international modules which are designed to broaden the skills of PhD graduates and improve their employability in academic and non-academic environments.
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CSA - Coordination and support actionCoordinator
4 Dublin
Ireland