A successful cooperation between academia and industry in higher rail education. the postgraduate course in “Railway Infrastructure and Systems Engineering” at Sapienza

The aim of this paper is to describe the postgraduate course in “Railway Infrastructure and Systems Engineering” at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, funded by rail companies operating in Italy. It represents a successful example of cooperation between academia and industry in the field of railway transport. The success of the program is attested by its placement (the 90% of the graduates find an employment within six months in the companies which support the course; this percentage reached the 98% in the last three editions) and by the fact that every year it receives many more applications (almost 400 last year) than the maximum number of students that can attend the course (30). The main factors that make this course successful are its multidisciplinary training and the very close collaboration between the University and partner companies. In fact, the program of each module is designed both by academics and by managers of the companies in order to ensure an up-to-date teaching, which provides both the academic and the industrial point of view of any rail subject; this enables students to obtain a complete vision of the railway system, so to be able to work in any of the partner companies.