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The aim of this paper is to report the motivations and perceived benefits of companies that collaborate with universities by offering student work-placement positions.

The study follows a mixed methodology based on (1) a literature review on the topic, (2) a case study survey including companies that collaborate with one Spanish university in student work-placements and (3) meetings with collaborating companies in different countries and universities.

The most important reasons for collaborating in student work-placements were related to social duty, the opportunity of training students in company needs and as a source of staff recruitment. Conversely, the less rated motivators were improving the company's position within the sector, benefitting from university services and saving time in the selection of personnel.

Future research should include a bigger corpus of the number of universities and companies, as well as the type of collaborations with universities, in order to identify any resulting differences.

The conclusions highlight the need to define/improve the mechanisms that contribute to a win-win context. This is the only way that collaboration can advance towards a genuine partnership that will provide an effective framework for universities and companies to effectively share the same objectives in training future employees.

These results are relevant because of the lack of quantitative and qualitative research on this topic.

European policy is placing an increasing emphasis on involving employers and labour market institutions in the design and delivery of higher education (HE) programmes that match curricula to current and future needs of the economy. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the curriculum development process for work-based learning (WBL) programmes and to connect it to the basic pillars, organizational and pedagogical strategies and key stages that enable higher education institutions (HEIs) to foster students’ learning, employability and innovation.

Case studies of 14 European WBL programmes in HE are reported using interviews and document analysis. These case studies are used to develop a final framework and examples of practice.

A framework was designed to develop WBL programmes that include three basic pillars and the interactions between them to enhance learning quality (doctrine), provide authentic experiences (authenticity) and respect the ways of developing and delivering WBL (culture).

While selecting the cases on this “best practices” basis, some important pitfalls were not discussed. Thus, rather than offering a definitive theory, the authors provide a framework of issues that should at least be taken into account in the different stages of planning, delivery and reflection.

The framework is simultaneously a kind of “checklist” for WBL curriculum developers.

The research presents 14 case studies from programmes recognized in six European countries and develops an original WBL programme planning, delivery and evaluation framework that can also be used as a checklist for HEIs offering WBL programmes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between educational orientation and employer influenced pedagogy and to consider some implications for work-based learning (WBL) higher education (HE) policy and practice in Europe.

The paper draws on purposefully selected case studies to describe the key attributes of WBL related pedagogy associated with three HE programmes in Finland, Spain and the UK.

The national regulatory environment has a key role to play in issues associated with WBL pedagogy. The case studies also demonstrate a pluralistic approach to pedagogy and the key role that employers play in both providing regular intelligence to inform curriculum design and contributing to pedagogy.

The small number of case studies limits the opportunity for generalisation and the level of analysis masks subtle and interesting differentiations in pedagogy worthy of further exploration.

The paper highlights implications for government to provide the vision and regulatory environment to encourage WBL and for universities and academics to design and implement innovative, pluralist pedagogies.

The paper provides a new framework and a unique analysis of programme level case studies from three European countries.