The competition for the best researchers is hard and Sweden has a significant challenge in recruiting and retaining researchers with a diversified background. If Sweden is to be a competitive and innovative country, it needs to be attractive to be a researcher. This applies to the research environments of many universities as well as to industry. The Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ) has described the challenge in postgraduate education, where many, mainly foreign, doctoral students leave Sweden three years after graduation. In order to meet this challenge, higher education needs to develop innovative forms of engaging students in research already during their education.

At University West in Sweden a research project called “Vertically integrated projects for work-integrated learning - VIP4WIL” is conducted. The model takes inspiration from university initiatives in both the US and United Kingdom, where the concept of "vertically integrated projects" (VIPs) was first developed in the engineering courses, but then spread to more areas. VIPs involve students from multiple disciplines working together on a long-term, team-based research project that is guided by faculty mentors and industry partners. VIPs have gained popularity in recent years as a method for promoting work-integrated learning (WIL) in higher education, and where work in this sense is regarded as “research work”. The project will develop a new educational model with the aim of getting more students interested in postgraduate education and a future career as a researcher. This takes place through pedagogical innovation of how students can participate in research projects and research environments already in their undergraduate education through peer-to-peer and work-integrated learning formats.

The aim of the paper is to explore whether such an educational concept can be spread to other higher education institutions in order to strengthen competence provision and contribute to academic renewal. The paper will provide an overview of VIPs and their connection to WIL. The paper will introduce and discuss its possibilities for developing the international VIP concept in a Swedish context and how it will be developed at University West, in a work-integrated learning format. The paper will include the newly developed VIP4WIL model, which will be presented and discussed. Furthermore, it will address two important perspectives: i) how universities and industry can introduce and engage students with a broaden recruitment perspective; ii) how students can learn from research work with a sustainability perspective. The overall goal is to attract more, better prepared researchers, who more accurately reflect the Swedish population both in terms of gender and academic background, and who continue to work with research and sustainability in both within academia and industry.

We argue that VIPs are a valuable tool for promoting WIL in higher education. By providing students with the opportunity to work on and train in research that is transdisciplinary, sustainable and team-based, VIPs help students develop a range of skills that are essential for success in the workforce. Further research is needed to explore the long-term impact of VIPs for WIL and to identify best practices for implementing VIPs as WIL in different educational contexts.

Keywords: Vertical integrated projects, work-integrated learning, research education, educational model, broadened recruitment, sustainability.