ECA-DOC - European Doctoral Programme in Career Guidance and Counselling

Closely connected with this vision, is the ambition to create the structures and personal resources necessary for longitudinal, large scale, international research in our field.

Regarding the multidisciplinarity, practice-orientation and specificity of our field, we have a lot to gain from joining forces in educating our most promising people: On the one hand, the number of promising doctoral candidates, available research projects and mentors will be large enough at European level to continuously carry out such a program (scale). On the other hand, considering how comparatively small – and partially isolated – academic research and training efforts in our field are nationally, we can gain significant momentum in positioning our discipline through close collaboration in promoting the next generation of academic leaders in our field.

In a nutshell, the EDP shall aim at fostering the development of top-notch academics in our field all over Europe and fully establishing research and higher education in our field.

The ECA-DOC project focus on offering particularly promising doctoral candidates (DC’s) the opportunity of becoming the spearhead of CGC-related research and higher education in Europe suggests that the program needs to be particularly attractive for highly motivated and well-prepared individuals. The program can only become sustainable and live up to its aspiration of becoming a central source of innovation and expertise in our field, if such DC’s may expect great benefits from participating in the EDP – instead of investing in individualized programs only.

Parallel to this activity the ECA-DOC is developing a joint research agenda in this field (lead: Uni Heidelberg, Dr. Peter Weber) and is preparing a Horizon 2020 project application.