Employability of the students - Satelit project

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SATELIT: Academic Solutions for the Euro-Mediterranean Region - Leader in high-quality innovation and technology transfer

 

Beyond developing knowledge, universities have an important role to play in the economic development and the employability of the students it has trained, especially the PhD students who produce scientific results. These outputs can even be a source of innovation and generate employment.

However, in some North African Universities, the lack of infrastructures dedicated to Innovation and Technology Transfer or, when they have already been created, the need to consolidate their position in the innovation ecosystem, is creating a fundamental problem in the world race for Innovation and University performance. This is particularly pressing as the needs of businesses in terms of support for Innovation are developing.

In answer to this, SATELIT proposes solutions at several levels: locally by reinforcing skills and the exchange of good practices, nationally (through national programme modernisation) and at Mediterranean scale (polarising Education and Innovation) by mobilising the driving forces and the stakeholders of the area.

The SATELIT project involves 22 Partners from 6 countries in the Western Mediterranean region (France, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria), public or private.

Improving the recruitment of PhDs by businesses in the Maghreb countries

Céreq is taking part in the European Eramus+ Satelit project coordinated by Téthys, the consortium of Mediterranean universities and more specifically by the University of Aix-Marseille, in order to strengthen the position of Maghreb universities in the innovation ecosystem. The aim, at the local level, is to strengthen capacities and exchanges of good practices and, at national level, to modernise programmes. As part of its contribution to this project, Céreq is conducting a survey of the university innovation ecosystem with a particular focus on enhancing the skills of doctoral students.

 

Initial results after Céreq's round of interviews in the doctoral schools of Maghreb universities.

The initial results of these interviews show that PhDs experience real difficulties in joining private companies because very few companies in the Maghreb have R&D departments and university-business links within doctoral programmes are extremely underdeveloped. In Morocco and Tunisia, few PhDs express a wish to work in the private sector despite the existence in doctoral programmes of measures intended to improve students' employability and stiff competition for permanent jobs in publicly-funded research. In Algeria, the question has proved to be of little relevance, since most PhDs succeed sooner or later in obtaining permanent jobs in publicly-funded research.

 

Contact (Céreq): Matteo Sgarzi, Julien Calmand

Start date: 15 octobre 2016

Finish date: 14 octobre 2018

 

Further reading:

http://www.satelit-project.com/fr

 

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