DUZ Spotlight | Best Practices: Recruiting and retaining international PhD students

Universities around the world are increasingly striving for increased internationalisation at all levels. International doctoral candidates occupy a central position here: at the interface between studies and research, they enrich themselves with their diverse experience and assume the role of knowledge brokers in both the country of origin and the country of their doctorate study. Furthermore, in addition to international doctorates, in many cases future cross-border university and research cooperations will also arise. The recruitment of international doctoral candidates therefore pays off for universities, but under what conditions is it successful?

Data from the global university ranking U-Multirank show that, although German universities perform comparatively well in most scientific subjects in the proportion of international doctorates, the proportion of study subjects in the social sciences and humanities is lower in comparison. Particularly striking differences can be observed in the study subject Business Studies, where only about ten percent of all completed doctorates in Germany are obtained by international scientists.

We then pose the questions, which factors enable the targeted recruitment of international doctoral candidates and how should internationalisation strategies of universities be designed in order to successfully accompany this group of doctoral candidates? On the basis of best practice examples from abroad, these questions are focused on in the present issue of the "DUZ (Deutsche Universitaetszeitung) Spotlight – Gute Praxis International" (German University Newspaper – International Good Practices) to see which insights can be transferred to Germany. In this latest edition, the impulses come from Spain.

To access the latest DUZ Magazine, visit their website. To download our DUZ Spotlight on international PhD students, click the download link above.