Doctorate

Saving the Future of the Engineering Doctorate

A position paper of TU9 German Institutes of Technology
- This translation follows the original German text as close as possible; in cases of doubts only the German text is valid.-

1. Introduction
Unlike engineering graduates in many other countries holders of the German university degree Diplom-Ingenieur (Dr.-Ing.) often aim at achieving the degree of a Doktor-Ingenieur, a process called in German Promotion. The Promotion is normally the outcome of an activity as scientific co-worker in a research unit. The surplus value of such an engineering doctorate is advanced knowledge and competence often of relevance to the industrial practice. Doctoral candidates at German universities are employees under short-term contract, not students, even though they might register as students aiming at the degree Dr.-Ing.. Some of them are sponsored by scholarship organisations.

66% of the holders of the Doktor-Ingenieur degree in Germany are graduates of the TU9 universities. (Stat. Bundesamt, 2003).

2. Contents of the engineering doctorate

An engineering doctorate comprises  - in addition to research work – also activities such as :

• planning and mangement of R&D projects
• cooperation with industrial partners in form of experiments, professional discussions, reports and presentations
• organisation and management of professional meetings and scientific conferences
• working in and leading of teams
• evaluation and reports
• involvement in legal and administrative matters, e.g. patenting
• cost management
• teaching
• publications.

These activities enable doctoral candidates at German universities to acquire competences that reach beyond the regular qualification profile of a professional engineer and are highly relevant to industry. Employers honour this by paying higher initial salaries to Dr.-Ing. holders and place them positions of higher responsibility.

 
3. Development of  success model “Engineering Doctorate”
In the future the TU9 universities will arrange the engineering doctorate in a way that 15%-20% of the time budget will be dedicated to the systematic promotion of the competences listed in section 2. . Specific modules of instruction, e.g. seminars, colloquiums,  will be developed, by which the elements mentioned become a regular part of the Promotion and can be documented in the final Dr.-Ing. certificate, in order to make them visible for national and international employers. The core activity of the Promotion, the elaboration of new knowledge to be presented in a thesis (Dissertation) as proof of independent research  competence, will remain unchanged.

TU9 sees graduate schools as initiated by the DFG-Exzellenzinitiative as the ideal structure for the engineering doctorate.

4. TU9 political postulate
The doctorate in engineering and science should not be transformed into a study programme by subordinating it to curricular regulations. The elements mentioned above, contributing to high-level compentence development of engineers need to be maintained. Their disappearance would essentially damage the qualification of engineering doctors.

Nevertheless TU9 aims at a speedy process of the doctorate: Five years should be the maximum duration, which requires that the research duties of the doctoral candidates should be respectively dimensioned and the time for research work should not exceed 3 years.

TU9 explicitley states, that the doctorate is not the third cycle of academic education, but the first phase of independent research activitities, preparing for the profession.

TU9 emphatically calls on the German Federal Goverment, the Governments of the German Länder and on the Kultusministerkonferenz, to commit themselves for the retention of the successful model of the  engineering doctorate at German universities and to promote it in the European Union.