Doctoral education in the entrepreneurial university : enhanced employability?

Sammanfattning: This dissertation explores the issue of employability of doctorate holders through the theoretical lens of the model of the entrepreneurial university. It starts from the observation that there is a bottleneck in the academic labour market in many countries, making it increasingly difficult for recent doctoral graduates to engage in an academic career. Traditionally, doctoral education was designed for a career in academia; but the employment situations of doctorate holders call for more relevance of doctoral education and doctoral-level skills on the non-academic labour market. The main argument of this dissertation is that the openness and the interactions of the entrepreneurial university with its environment, in particular its region, makes it a relevant model to enhance the employability of doctorate holders outside academia. The thesis is based on five publications written either solely by the author or in collaboration with other scholars, mostly case studies compiling both qualitative and quantitative data and approaches.Three main findings can be highlighted from the research: (i) the entrepreneurial university increases its socioeconomic impact by building an alignment with regional stakeholders over the years and thanks to key individuals, by retaining human and social capital within itself and by broadening the scope of its activities and stakeholders; (ii) doctorate holders’ employability is key in the entrepreneurial university’s regional socioeconomic impact, as they are increasingly employed outside academia but are likely to experience job mismatches in this situation, mainly related to education and skills; (iii) regional stakeholders can take different types of initiatives to enhance the employability of doctorate holders, and increase the entrepreneurial university’s socioeconomic impact: more specifically, doctorate holders and non-academic employers can get to know each other better; intermediaries such as Science Parks can support them through the creation of meeting places.The dissertation contributes to the literature on the entrepreneurial university by focusing on the population of doctoral students and doctorate holders, at the crossroads of its three missions (education, research and ‘third mission’). It also suggests the following main recommendations: to universities, beyond adapting the content of doctoral education to the needs of non-academic employers, put emphasis on marketing it to them, so that they understand what it is worth; to doctorate holders, expand their knowledge of career possibilities, and behave entrepreneurially by initiating activities to complement what could be missing in their education; to non-academic employers, collaborate with universities and communicate their needs to them to influence the design of curricula.