Working life perspective

The programme is useful and prepares students for an ever-changing working life.

The programme offers enough breadth to allow doctoral students to sufficiently prepare themselves for both an academic career and a career outside academia. Compared to other academic disciplines, architecture as a subject has a thorough integration between research and working life and practice. The programme has broad and continuous connections with the surrounding society. Several of the teachers are active in professional practice and many visiting professors come directly from professional practice. Several of the doctoral students have a history in professional practice or teaching and some have ongoing positions outside academia. The programme invites guest speakers who hold positions outside of the academy. Representatives from professional practice are also included in the ResArc consortium. The self-evaluation also shows that there is an understanding of the importance of increasing the integration of research and practice. For example, the department offers courses that are important for a professional career, such as courses in communication, project management, teaching, project planning and leadership. This ensures the programme will continue to be relevant from a working life perspective.

The programme's design and teaching/learning activities are systematically followed up to ensure that it is useful and prepares for working life. The results of the follow-up are translated, when necessary, into actions for quality improvement, and feedback is given to relevant stakeholders.

Since 2015 the higher education institution has put a stronger emphasis on how to improve the collaborations and career opportunities for doctoral students outside academia. There is also a comprehensive framework in place for follow-up on course evaluations, which has made it possible to continuously adjust courses to make their content more relevant.

It is, however, not clear from the self-evaluation how targets regarding generic skills and competencies relating to working life are monitored or systematically followed up. Besides the general ResArc Alumni survey, which targeted doctoral students who received their PhD at one of the Swedish schools of architecture between 2004 and 2013, it is not clear how alumni are followed up, and there is no evidence of actions taken as a result of the alumni experience.

The assessment panel emphasises the good example of ResArc’s focus on how to enable collaborations and career opportunities for doctoral students outside academia. One example of this work has been to initiate a dialogue with the Swedish Association of Architects. The objective of the initiative is to make architecture firms and city-planning offices more aware of postgraduates' competences and to discuss possible collaborations both at doctoral and post-doctoral levels. Discussions are also held with surrounding communities, such as the City of Malmö.

In the overall assessment, the working life perspective is deemed to be satisfactory.