Developing a Services Science Graduation Programme at the University of Twente

Abstract

The recent growth in the services sector implies that more people must be trained in this area. This inspired us to develop a Services Science Graduation Programme at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. We propose a study programme of five years, consisting of a Master phase of two years and a PhD phase of three years. This paper reports on our efforts to develop our Services Science Graduation Programme. Our approach in the development of this programme consisted of two phases: 1. we performed a survey of the programmes of other institutions in order to identify service concerns to be covered, but also patterns and strategies, and 2. we defined a programme with enough coverage, taking into consideration the local resources (course and lecturers) so that the programme can start immediately. In our survey we catalogued 386 courses offered in 35 programmes related to Services Science worldwide. The topics have been organised according to generic service activities, in an attempt to define the elements that should or could be covered by a Services Science programme. We conclude that although we have reused available courses, we have defined a Services Science programme with acceptable coverage of service concerns. Furthermore, specialisation can be attained by means of projects and traineeships in particular areas or application domains.