Realize the potential of Work-Study Master’s Programme’s Theses as a Bridge between Academic’ Standards and Business’ Expectations: a Belgian Case-Study

This paper presents how a Belgian university is currently adapting master’s theses in its recent work-study programs to ensure alignment between students’ needs, academic standards and business expectations. The university recently started three work-study master’s programmes, focusing on developing professional skills and experience. Coherently with the rest of the curriculum, the master thesis -thought of as a process, on campus and in workplace settings, (Björck and Willermark 2024), that could be considered as (part of) Work-integrated learning (Ferns et al. 2025; Zegwaard et al. 2023) was designed to be connected to the work environment, making it an active engagement in purposeful work tasks, enabling the integration of theory with meaningful practice, as well as professional development, valorization (Sanojca and Triby 2022) and employability (Björck, 2021; Björck & Willermark, 2024). However, students’ theses quickly showed gaps in alignment with the university’ quality expectation, leading to questions about the thesis format and student’s support but also, on a larger scale, on the role of the master’s thesis in these programmes: how the master’s thesis process could be adapted to respond to students’ needs as well as creating an added value for businesses, while adhering to the expected methodological and quality standards of the university? A root cause report was created, identifying barriers and opportunities in relation with the expectations and needs of the three key stakeholders. We will discuss the several challenges that were identified that led to designing actions and the outcomes of the implementation’s process, among other the question of the epistemological distance that can appear differently in different fields between universities and business’ methods (Fournet & Bedin 1998; Morillon, Grosjean, & Lambotte 2018) that might lead to adapted theses formats and support (Höst, Feldt, & Luders 2010; Knauss 2021).

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Derinöz, S., Lambotte, F., Poncin, I., & Provost, A.-C. (2025). Realize the potential of Work-Study Master’s Programme’s Theses as a Bridge between Academic’ Standards and Business’ Expectations: a Belgian Case-Study. Pedagogy in Action: Bridging Disciplines, Communities, & Industry, Marywood University, USA, and online.