Sandra Santos, Iris Barbosa, Carla Freire, Hugo Figueiredo e Manuel João Costa: “This pilot study was conducted to analyse the feasibility of adapting the Multiple Mini-Interviews (MMI) method with 10 stations to assess transversal competencies across different scientific fields. The examinees were 16 students from two Portuguese universities of different scientific fields (e.g., Economics, Education). The results indicated that the MMI method allowed to discriminate participants according to the target transversal competencies and that it gathered good reliability indices for internal consistency and interrater agreement. The analysis of the participants’ perceptions revealed that, overall, the MMI is potentially a method fit for the purpose of assessing transversal competencies necessary for the job market.”

Sandra Santos, Carla Freire, Iris Barbosa, Hugo Figueiredo e Manuel João Costa: “This paper aims to present an answer to this challenge and describe the adaptation of the Multiple Mini-Interviews (MMI) method (internationally used for the assessment of transversal competencies in Healthcare education selection procedures), to assess transversal competencies of graduate students from several education areas, focusing on different work contexts. This was the first step towards the construction of a method aimed at supporting HEIs in the assessment of their students’ transversal competencies profile, their readiness for the transition for the labour market and, potentially, in the identification of gaps for improvement.”

Pedro Teixeira e Hugo Figueiredo, em co-autoria com Victor Rudakov e Sergey Roshchin: “The study is devoted to the evaluation of the determinants of job-education mismatches and their impact on salaries of university graduates. We use a comprehensive and representative national level survey of Russian university graduates. The study employs a self-evaluated measure of mismatch and a statistical variant for robustness and interpretation purposes. We find that one third of graduates in Russia are horizontally mismatched. Moreover, graduates from fields that generate more general human capital or where low pay is common are more likely to be mismatched. On the contrary, graduates in Medicine, a field which generates more specific human capital, are more likely to be matched. We find that mismatches negatively affect the earnings of university graduates and the higher is the degree of mismatch, the higher is the penalty for the mismatch. The study depicts that mismatch is penalized in the majority of fields except for low-paid ones.”

Maria Isabel Araújo, orientada por Anabela Carvalho: “This doctoral dissertation comprises three essays on skill mismatches. The first essay studies the incidence of the over- and undereducation phenomenon and its impact on individual wages. The second essay analyses the career dynamics of workers who entered the labor market for the first time in a job for which they were overqualified. Finally, in the third essay, the aim is to compare the mobility pattern of recent graduates who entered the labor market for the first time in 2006 or 2007 overqualified with the mobility pattern of recent graduates who entered the labor market for the first time in 2006 or 2007 well-matched.”

Miguel Portela, João Cerejeira, Carla Sá, Pedro Teixeira e Hugo Figueiredo, em coautoria com André Almeida e C. Braga: “Postgraduates' relative wages are on the rise despite large increases in the number of workers with such qualifications. In this presentation, we propose an innovative way to measure the importance of different sources of the postgraduates' earnings premium in a context of rapid massification. Using an off-the-shelf non-parametric matching technique, we disentangle two different sources of postgraduates' relative earnings: wage premiums within occupations and the assignment to better paid and more complex occupations. We show that both sources are relevant but the relative importance of the former has been steadily increasing overtime. This evidence suggests that postgraduate degrees have largely worked as a way to avoid falling down the occupational ladder or, in other words, to hold on to a higher ground.”

Orlanda Tavares, Cristina Sin e Diana Soares: “This chapter analyses whether the profile of students enrolled in industrial doctorates in Portugal reflects the dual culture of industry and academia. Based on student perceptions, the following aspects are analysed: motivations and expectations, the personality traits perceived to be in tune with the demands of industrial doctorates and the skills and competences acquired during the programme. Findings suggest that the profile of Portuguese industrial doctorate students has a great potential to bridge two apparently distant worlds, academia and industry. Students develop a more pragmatic profile focused on combining synergies, taking advantage of academic research tools to solve real-world problems posed by the industry. This profile points to the emergence of a different professional identity than the one typically associated with PhD holders”.

Sónia Cardoso, Orlanda Tavares, Cristina Sin e Teresa Carvalho: ‘This book analyses the structural and institutional transformations undergone by doctoral education’. These transformations are examined at the macro, meso and micro levels. At the micro level, the book addresses' the doctoral candidates' experiences of the doctoral degree, their motivations and expectations of the degree during and after the research training '. The corresponding chapters explore and problematize ‘the changes in the PhD labour market’, ‘the labour market preferences of doctorate holders’, the ‘issue of a broader skillset’ for PhD students, and ‘the motivations and expectations’ behind the enrolment in new types of doctoral degrees, such as the industrial doctorate.

Hugo Figueiredo: “Highly skilled women have, however, experienced significant occupational upgrading due to higher educational attainment and the rise in demand for interpersonal skills, namely, in care work and customer services, which have worked to bias the polarization of the job structure in their favor”.

Sónia Cardoso, Orlanda Tavares e Cristina Sin: “University-industry collaboration emerges as extremely appealing for doctoral candidates, especially because of the acquired skills and employability potential beyond academia, due to their practical or more applied nature".

Orlanda Tavares, Diana Soares e Cristina Sin: “The findings suggest that industrial doctoral students recognise a divergence between university and industry, mainly regarding research outputs, and particularly industry’s need to keep data confidential and the university’s need to disseminate knowledge via the publication of articles. Convergence was noted at the level of joint supervision, sometimes facilitated by the fact that academics were also entrepreneurs. The success of this kind of collaborative doctorate depends on compromise between the two parties and on how students can manage this relationship.”