Industrial PhD Students and their Projects

In the usual case a PhD student is enrolled and supervised at an academic faculty, in Sweden also most often employed at a department of the university. The whole doctoral education takes part in one single environment. Younger universities in Sweden have the opportunity to enroll “classes” of industrial PhD students in industrial graduate schools. The PhD student is in these cases most often employed by a company, in some cases by a research institute. Each PhD student has at least one academic supervisor, but also an industrial mentor. Sometimes the industrial mentor also holds a PhD and can formally also be an industrial advisor or co-supervisor.Even if the funding of the PhD student is a research project, the doctoral work is often not performed as a project. There are often severe delays of the dissertation. The public defense often happens a year or so after the funded time period. Delays represent a large cost for the university (when the student is employed there) or for the company (in the case of industrial PhD students). There is a large risk for the company that the effort will not pay off entirely. The progression of the student lies outside the control of both the university management and the funding company. It is more in the hands of the supervisor and the student him/herself.We have conducted a case study to explore the organizing of PhD work with the purpose to describe whether project methodology could or could not support progress of industrial PhD students towards a PhD.