Revolutionize Ph.D. Training in Academia-industry Collaboration

For the past decade, the PhD enrollment rate dropped sharply in Taiwan. According to statistics of the Ministry of Education (MOE), the number of PhD students has decreased by 17.6% from 34,178 to 28,167 in the past decade. Although Engineering has the highest number of PhD students among all disciplines, the declination is also observed from 11,955 to 7,849. Meanwhile, the dropout rate among PhD students is on the rise to make the case even worse. Most of the remaining PhD students have their eyes on entering professorship instead of the industry despite the limited position available. To reverse the above scenarios and to enhance the research capacity of the industry, hence the national economy, MOE has launched Industry-Academia Cooperative PhD (IAPhD) Project since 2014. IAPhD Project is to bridge academia and industry for a win-win situation, and better yet a three-wins including the PhD graduates by supporting PhD students with stipends throughout their university training. In return, the PhD students are engaged in developing their dissertation with a heavily industry-centered orientation and contributing to the technology advancement for the companies they work with. Outcomes of the students are expected to be different from their peers who are in the traditional scholarship track. The current study investigates the IAPhD Project's implementation and outcomes by analyzing the student performance of the students who are supported by the IAPhD Project and the employment status of the 22 graduates. Such analyses shall shed light on the policy aspects of the Project and support MOE in gathering evidence of effectiveness on the public resources spent.