(Yicai) July 8 -- Experts from educational institutions and corporate heads have called for the establishment of more industry PhD programs, which are jointly promoted by universities and enterprises.

"My suggestion is to increase the enrollment scale of industry PhD based on industry needs to cultivate scientific thinking in universities and solve practical technical problems in enterprises," Zhu Hongming, PhD supervisor at Tongji University in Shanghai, told Yicai.

Countries such as Germany, Japan, and the United Kingdom have already begun reforms to allow PhD students to receive training and paid internships during their research or collaborate with enterprises to complete their research.

In China, these university-enterprise cooperations have also appeared in several fields. For example, the Dongfang Vascular Device Innovation Institute under the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology is recruiting PhD students based on market demand for innovative medical devices, aiming to solve technical challenges at the intersection of medicine and engineering.

"We must change doctoral education and cultivate talents who meet market demand," an executive from a company that participated in an industry PhD told Yicai. "Students' innovative, analytical, and critical thinking abilities are all highly valued in the job market.

"We call on enterprises and universities to build a multi-party collaborative innovation alliance and accelerate the deep integration of industry, academia, and research," the executive noted.

PhD program applications in China have increased in recent years, mainly because of the natural continuation of students' career paths and the intense competition in the job market among master's graduates, who believe a doctoral degree gives them an advantage, Zhu said.

The PhD boom is also closely related to the growth in research funding and projects in the past decade, a professor from a US university told Yicai. "When research funds are abundant, many principal investigators have the opportunity to recruit a large number of PhD students."

However, as many universities and research institutions in the United States are now facing budget cuts, the number of positions available for PhD graduates will inevitably decrease, the professor noted, adding that this implies that individuals who once hoped to pursue academic careers through doctoral studies may need to seek job opportunities in non-academic fields.

Increasing the number of industry PhD programs could also help graduates better adapt to the rapidly changing job market.

Over the past decades, the number of global PhD graduates has grown steadily, especially in countries like China and India, according to weekly scientific journal Nature. However, there are not enough academic positions in research institutions to meet the demand from all PhD graduates, and many universities do not offer adequate preparation for their careers outside academia.

The number of PhD students in China doubled to over 600,000 in 2023 from around 300,0000 in 2013, according to data from Nature.

Editor: Futura Costaglione