Barriers and Incentives for setting-up Industrial Ph.D. in Greece

Abstract

Higher education, and its links with research and innovation, plays a crucial role in individual and societal advancement. Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) provides the highly skilled human capital that contemporary Europe needs to create jobs, economic growth and prosperity. However, in meeting the in-creased demand for industrial workers and cross-cutting researchers, higher edu-cation training methodology must be better aligned with the needs of the knowledge-intensive labour market and in particular with the requirements of small and medium-sized enterprises. GIENAHS Alliance intends to contribute to the strengthening of the "knowledge triangle", linking education, research and innovation, improving at the same time, the quality of teaching and learning, the future mobility of students and staff and cross-border cooperation. Based on our experiences from the GIENAHS project we present the current key aspects emerged in Greece that can help Greek SMEs to develop their internal skills to face innovation in a more structured and systematic way and, on other side, the Greek HEIs to understand industrial practice for improving their interaction with SMEs.