Doctorate

Co-supervision and infrastructure

At FHV, research and teaching are carried out by academic staff who have already been and are being approved by various universities for co-supervision of dissertations. Most of them work in the environment of one of our research centres.

Co-supervision on site at FHV is possible if your dissertation topic falls within the area of competence of one of our staff members. This means that you have an academic contact person on site with whom you can discuss the content of your research question and, if necessary, gain access to our entire infrastructure at FHV (laboratories, software, library, etc.).

Electives for the Cooperative PhD-Programme

The electives for the Cooperative PhD-Programme provide courses to develop the ability to conduct independent scientific work and research as well as to train and promote young scientists who already graduated at least with a master’s degree on their way to a doctorate.

The courses in this programme are intended to enable our students to carry out theoretical and empirical research and to support them in the analysis and development of research questions, research design and to publish nationally and internationally. The students become familiar with research methods used in their area of expertise and get ready to discuss, analyse and develop these methods critically. The actual creditable selection of courses must be coordinated with the partner university in the respective dissertation case.

The prerequisite for participation is a successfully completed diploma or master's degree programme that entitles you to pursue further PhD studies. As soon as you are enrolled in a PhD-Programme by a recognized university on the basis of your completed studies, it is possible in principle to take advantage of services from the FHV Cooperative PhD-Programme. In terms of content, the focus of possible support from FHV is primarily in the area of technical studies due to its personnel portfolio (see the spectrum of our research centres at www.fhv.at/forschung).
The academic director of the Cooperative PhD-Programme at FHV grants admission based on the following criteria:

• the applicant can provide evidence of at least one supervisor at the university,
• an exposé accepted by the supervisors at the partner university is available,
• an agreement has been reached with the partner university on the courses to be taken at FHV,
• in the case of co-supervision by FHV, the consent of the co-supervisor(s) has been obtained,
• any confidentiality and usage rights have been clarified between the persons, universities and companies involved,
• the education contract with FHV has been signed,
• the FHV can organize the implementation of the agreed services according to the current state of knowledge (e.g., to be clarified if the minimum number of participants is not reached),
• if the maximum number of participants is exceeded, the decision on acceptance will be made after consultation with the supervising research staff. If an increase in the number of participants is not possible, criteria such as research and innovation potential, relevance for strategic competence building at the university, relevance for strategic cooperation with the partner university, assessed probability of success, etc., will be used.

In individual cases, the criteria listed can be extended and adapted by means of additional requirements or agreements with the partner university. The required documents, information sheets and forms can be found on the website of the respective partner university. The admission deadlines of the respective partner university must be observed.

Within the framework of the Cooperative PhD-Programme, the student is entitled to make use of co-supervision at FHV or to attend selected courses, or to make use of co-supervision as well as to attend selected courses. The fees incurred for participation in the Cooperative PhD-Programme (pursuant to FHG §9) are based on the scope of the services used in each case. To get an idea of the possible orders of magnitude, a case study is mentioned here:

• If, for example, you only complete creditable courses amounting to 12 ECTS for your PhD studies at FHV, the fees to be paid currently amount to EUR 6,980.
• If you only use co-supervision for a period of three years (6 semesters), the fees charged amount to EUR 9,980.
• For the total package (creditable courses amounting to 12 ECTS and a three-year co-supervision) you would be charged a total of EUR 15,980.

Subject to change - we will be happy to provide you with more detailed information for your individual requirements at the following contact address.

If you make use of services from the Cooperative PhD-Programme, you will – parallel to enrolment at your university – also be enrolled at FHV as an "extraordinary student" according to the Austrian University of Applied Sciences Act. This is also a prerequisite for proper access to our infrastructure (laboratories, IT infrastructure, library, etc.).