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Doctorate in Switzerland
The doctorate is situated at the intersection between teaching and research. The core of the doctorate is to gain scientific competence by means of a personal and original contribution to research. The central objectives of the doctorate are acquiring subject-specific, methodical and transferable knowledge and skills, as well as academic collaboration and network building.
The doctorate is structured by individual universities, taking account of institution- and discipline-specific conditions. They support collaboration with other types of higher education and research institutions, depending on the research areas and specialisations of the institutions concerned.
Doctoral students usually have access to various educational offers, such as courses, seminars, or summer schools. A frequent way of financing doctoral studies is by working in a university department as an assistant, or through funding (for individuals or projects/programmes) obtained from third parties.
The doctoral degree grants candidates the right to use the university-defined title of Dr (...), which corresponds to the PhD used in English.
Further information regarding the development of the doctoral degree by swissuniversities can be found on the website of swissuniversities.Admission is the responsibility of the individual universities and is decided case-by-case on the basis of individual qualifications. As a rule, a higher education institution Master's degree is prerequisite for access to the doctorate. There may also be further admission requirements.
Doctoral students plan and write their dissertations within the framework of a traditional doctorate or within the framework of "schools" or "programmes". In a traditional doctorate, potential students must find a supervisor who is willing to admit them and who has specific expertise on the topic on which the person wants to research. To find a potential supervisor for your thesis in Switzerland, we recommend contacting a professor known through his or her publications or meet at a conference or on another occasion. Within the framework of a doctoral programme, the institution may help interested people in the admission process and in the research for a supervisor. Contact your EURAXESS centre for information.
In addition, this is a (non-exhaustive) list of existing doctoral programmes in Switzerland:- studyprogrammes.ch: If you filter by level and your area of study/research, you will be shown the Swiss institutions that offer PhD programmes in that area.
- Doctoral Programs of the Conférence des universités de Suisse occidentale (CUSO): The training programmes each cover a scientific discipline and are open to a minimum of ten doctoral students from one or several Swiss universities participating actively in the programme.
CUSO programmes do not cover the salaries of doctoral students. Candidates wishing to participate in a programme doctoral should contact the person(s) responsible for the programme directly.
Joint doctoral degrees are based on an agreement between the respective institutions, the doctoral thesis being completed under the direction of two supervisors. The State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) awards funding which covers travel and living expenses for such cotutelle de thèse projects (for which sample agreements are available here).
Another specific type of collaboration involves universities of applied sciences and arts as well as universities of teacher education that collaborate with universities in Switzerland or abroad to offer doctoral studies. If admission criteria for those universities are met, foreign researchers have the possibility to enrol in existing doctoral programmes, do a doctorate on a project basis or as an individual doctorate. swissuniversities funds such collaborative structures, which enable each type of universities to be involved in the qualification of their young talents and contribute its specific specialist skills. The corresponding program (the information is only available in German and French) addresses institutional structures and not researchers directly.
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A PhD is prerequisite for access to a postdoc. The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pursue additional research, training, or teaching in order to have better skills to pursue a career in academia or in other fields.
Each Swiss higher education institution offers postdoctoral positions, sometimes in collaboration with large companies or research centres. There is no official duration for a postdoc position, but it usually lasts between 1 and 6 years depending on the research field and the higher education institution. -
Send a complete application dossier, as requested in the job advert. Information on the application process is available here.
Find job opportunities on the EURAXESS jobs database, and funding opportunities on the EURAXESS funding database.
Switzerland
