PhDs worldwide are having a shake up — why now?

Yifan Wang didn’t realize that his thesis would be the first of its kind when he started his PhD, although he knew it was likely to be more applied than most. By the beginning of his project in electrical engineering and telecommunications at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, Wang had already established a connection with an industry partner to gather insights from network traffic patterns — such as how users stream videos.

But after Wang began his research, Australia rolled out its National Industry PhD Programme, in which students undertake research projects co-designed by universities and companies in return for a funding boost from the government and industry partners. The goal, according to the programme’s website, is to “create a flexible pipeline of researchers who can transition between academia and industry and have multiple career pathways open to them after completing their PhD”.

Wang joined the programme’s inaugural class in 2023 and spent the remaining three years of his degree not only with an eye towards practical applications, but also with a community of peers spread across Australia. And in May, he became the first student in the programme to submit his thesis.

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“At the beginning of my PhD, I was a bit hesitant about whether I would want to do an engineering industry job or a research job,” Wang says. “But now, I’ve found my interest. I’m really determined to find a research position that solves real industry problems.”

As of June, the Australian programme has funded 448 awards and has received more than 1,000 applications during seven funding rounds. And it’s just one of many innovative PhD models. Governments in many other countries have launched programmes supporting industry-oriented PhDs.

“There’s certainly a lot of [experimental programmes] occurring around the world,” says Anthony Boccanfuso, chief executive of the University–Industry Demonstration Partnership, a non-profit organization in Columbia, South Carolina. The partnership leads the Industry-Integrated PhD (I-PhD) programme in the United States, which was launched in July. Although Boccanfuso says that conversations about re-evaluating the PhD model have existed for the past 15–20 years, there’s now a “sense of urgency because of this need for talent” in high-demand fields.

At the same time, researchers worry that the programmes might take away from fundamental research. When the I-PhD programme launched, chemistry Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi wrote on the social-media website Bluesky that “most PhD students pursue industry jobs anyways — that has always been true. Use NSF funds to support basic science that industry won’t support”.

Aligning interests

Boccanfuso’s organization will oversee more than 250 students with funding from the US National Science Foundation — which will make a US$47-million investment over the next five years — along with industry and university partners. Students are jointly mentored by university and industry advisers and are expected to spend at least one year completing on-site industry research. The programme aims to reduce the time taken to complete a PhD in the United States, from an average of 5.6 years to just 4 years. It will also prepare STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students for industry careers, which is where most of them are going, Boccanfuso says. Although the initiative is only just beginning, it’s already received “overwhelming interest” from students and universities, he adds. Elsewhere in the world, including in China and the European Union, similar programmes have taken off.

As for why there’s been such a boom in these national-level initiatives, “it’s pretty straightforward”, says João Pereira, a civil engineer at the University of Minho in Guimarães, Portugal, who manages one EU-funded initiative. “It’s much easier to justify applied research than fundamental research because of the proximity to yielding results.” It can take decades for fundamental research to come to fruition, whereas applied research can deliver commercial applications — and therefore money and economic growth — “not immediately, but pretty close to it”, he adds.

Joshua Twiggs, who works in the medical technology industry in Sydney, Australia, and has supervised industry PhDs, says that these initiatives aim to harness a country’s already sophisticated education system as a driver of innovation. “How do we leverage the incredibly smart work happening in universities through to actual industry implementations?” Twiggs says.

Such programmes reflect “the growing recognition that knowledge is a key driver of economic competitiveness and innovation”, says Hans Parmar, a spokesperson from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada in Ottawa, a government department focused on industry, commerce and scientific research. “Modern innovations are often too complex for a single individual, organization or even sector to develop alone,” Parmar adds. But these spanning initiatives mean that governments, universities and industries can all align their interests.

The trend can also be assigned to “the fact that academic positions in universities can only absorb a small fraction of PhD graduates”, says an official at the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch. That makes “industrial PhDs very attractive with regards to future employment”.

Around the world

Meanwhile, China awarded its first batch of ‘practical PhDs’ in September last year. Rather than completing a conventional thesis, these students develop an innovative product, project or technique — such as intelligent manufacturing in rail transit systems. Since the law allowing these PhDs came into effect last year, more than 60 researchers have received practical PhDs.

“We encourage students to implement ideas that can meet real demand in society, rather than just coming up with concepts,” says Liu Chun, executive dean of the National College of Elite Engineers at Tongji University in Shanghai. Candidates’ success could be measured by “how many patents a student has, how many international or domestic industry standards they have participated in setting and whether their product has successfully passed a pilot test”, Chun says.

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The European Union’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) programme offers applicants the opportunity to be part of industrial-doctorate networks of students, all of whom are focused on a single research topic. Each student has both an academic and a non-academic supervisor and must spend at least half of their fellowship on the premises of the non-academic partner. When all the cohort members and their supervisors come together, “it’s almost like a small conference”, says Pereira, who is part of a network that explores sustainable construction. “All these interactions force students to create a set of skills they won’t get anywhere else.”

One of the programme’s main goals, according to the European Commission official, is to “nourish the talent pipeline for boosting employability in industry”. A 2025 study found that two years after completing their fellowships, 66% of industrial doctorate graduates were working outside academia, compared with just 43% of graduates from the MSCA’s standard doctoral networks¹.