Engineering the future: transversal skills in Engineering Doctoral Education

Abstract

Over the last decade there has been a significant increase in doctoral students and researchers in Engineering. Entry-level skills for these academic positions are often mostly technical and frequently associated with profiles that thrive in analytical and frequently solitary tasks in laboratorial environments. However, success in doctoral programs and research careers is highly dependent on competencies that are both intrapersonal (e.g. time management, self-regulation, emotional intelligence, resilience) and interpersonal (e.g. teamworking, communication, negotiation, etc). Since the recruitment of doctoral graduates has changed significantly due to the decrease in open positions in research and professorship at universities, the transition from academia to industry has been gaining more attention from the Engineering Education community. Despite this, many studies point out that the competencies developed in Portuguese doctoral programs do not motivate nor prepare PhD graduates for a career outside academia and also don't match industry requirements in terms of competencies needed to thrive in such environments. In response, assessment reports and policy papers have been highlighting the need to rethink doctoral programs curricula in order to prepare engineering graduates for their future careers both in academia and industry. The basis for this has been advocated in the development of a specific skill set of transversal competencies. With this study, we intended to identify the transversal skills clusters that result from engineering doctoral education literature, make engineering researchers and managers aware of the importance of transversal skills, identify potential gaps in the literature and avenues for future research. In order to have a broad overview of the transversal competencies of PhD candidates in engineering, a preliminary bibliometric analysis of 2756 papers published in the last two decades was conducted using VOSviewer. The results show evidence of literature clusters related to 1) necessary skills for successfully concluding the PhD program; 2) the shift from the academic world to the labor market; 3) interpersonal competencies. In the discussion of the results, the authors: 1) advocate the emergency for HEIs to develop institutional strategies that contemplate formal opportunities to develop transversal skills during the doctoral path and ensure employability prospects for PhD candidates; b) propose the use of a framework of competencies for PhD candidates in engineering that may orientate the implementation of such institutional strategies and also help candidates to transfer such skills to industry/business in the transition from academia to industry.