Joint Doctorates

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ITEM has been involved in a project on joint doctorates titled 'LINK EDU-RES': a project aimed to increase cooperation in the field of joint doctorates in Europe. A summary of our research findings were presented during the YERUN-event on 21 September in Bremen.

The YERUN Event 'Staff Week: From Cotutelles to Joint Programmes – Challenges and Opportunities' was held from 21-23 September and hosted by the University of Bremen. The three-day event explored the challenges and opportunities of cross-border collaboration of joint programmes at a doctorate level. Discussing, as well as exchanging the success of the LINK-EDU RES-project.

LINK-EDU RES - an Erasmus+ Key Action 2 initiative
“Joint programmes at Doctorate Level in a European university network: Linking Education and Research towards the European Education Network”
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YERUN (Young European Research Universities)

ITEM's research in particular involved a legal analysis and a comparative exercise of the existing regulations, both national and institutional. The extent to which common ground among these regulations could be identified, could uncover collaboration opportunities among European universities. The research has been carried out in the interest of transparency of regulations among YERUN-universities, and therefore offers universities an insight into the potential collaboration opportunities at hand.

The institutional regulations of each of the 17 YERUN-universities were analysed, as well as the national regulations of each of the 12 European countries that applied.

From the comparative overview one could point out that all member universities offer joint degrees and the majority offers double degrees. Cotutelle degrees are less common, appearing in only 5 of the institutional regulations. What needs to be considered overall, is that the most variety exist in the admission requirements.

As presented by ITEM Researcher Dr. Lavinia Kortese, the recommendations are in the area of transparency and retrievability of regulations. Besides online availability of regulations and faculties/departments, it would be valuable to include contact persons, go as far as to assign dedicated coordinators. Furthermore, advantages can be taken from EU funding programmes.

The research on behalf of ITEM was done by Prof. dr. H. Schneider, Dr. L. Kortese and S. Sivonen, LL.M.