With funding support from the Volkswagen Foundation, the first gradSERU Research Symposium was held on October 4-5, 2018 in Hannover, Germany. The Symposium provided a forum to analyze responses from the gradSERU Survey thus far collected, to discuss further development of the survey instrument, the challenges faced by top research universities to improve the graduate experience and to be competitive for talent globally, and recruitment and expansion of the network of gradSERU campuses.
Representatives from top-tier universities in North America, the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, China, Japan, New Zealand, Switzerland, and Russia participated, most of which are current and prospective SERU Consortium member campuses.
Chaired by SERU Founding PI and CSHE researcher John Aubrey Douglass, the first day focused on the following topics: Perspectives of Doctoral Education in Industry, Global Markets and the Competition for Talent, Tensions between Doctoral Education and Research Training, Reforms and Challenges for Graduate Education. Keynote speeches by Wilhelm Krull, Secretary General VW Stiftung and Jürgen Leohold (Director of the AutoUni) were accompanied by panel sessions that included Marijk van der Wende (Professor of Higher Education Systems, Utrecht University), David Bogle (University College London, LERU Doctoral Education Group), Hongjie Chen (Peking University), Erika Kothe (Uniwind and Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena) on global markets for graduate talent. Other sessions focused on challenges and reform efforts related to graduate education in North America, in Europe, and in Asia and Oceania.
For a full recap of the Symposium, read the event summary on the CSHE Spotlight.