Development of appropriate educational structures for industrial graduate students is becoming increasingly important, as industry's demand for graduate-educated employees increases. In the past few years, a special investment has been made in industrial graduate schools, with the aim ofbringing graduate education and industry together, and increasing industry's access to doctoral graduates. In this study, we followed a group of doctoral students in the Graduate School for Applied IT and Software Engineering, in order to document their experiences and identify problems and factors relevant to their progress in graduate education and in industry. In an extensive interview study, twenty-three graduate students present their situation and experience of graduate education, conducted partly through placement in a company. In a stepwise analysis of the material, diff erent environmental factors are identi:fied, that can be related to a structured interpretation of their experience, dependent on the nature of their industrial environment. The result is related to earlier research on traditional graduate education and supervision. Questions elucidated in the material and analysis include the graduate students' experience oftheir situation, how they handle the responsibility for their education, which people they experience as most signi:ficant, what in±luence their company has exercised over their subject choice and publication and how the acadernic environment interacts with the company environment. The study provides a comprehensive survey of a so-far fairly unknown educational situation characterized by great variation in study conditions, and presents a model for analysis of the graduate educational prodess for industrial doctoral students.