My wife did her mathematics PhD under an analogous structure in Germany where it’s fairly common. She was supervised by a professor at the University of Munich and a lab at Bosch, wrote and defended a thesis as usual. Employed in industry immediately after graduating. A great experience.
While I understand the upside, the reality of why it’s being pursued in the United States is that this is intended to drive academia into an advanced version of a trade school.
Do the math: The number of professorial positions is not growing (or not very quickly). Under steady-state, each professor only needs to train one single tenure-track PhD in their entire career. (Or maybe 10 professors need to train 11-12 students, to account for various forms of attrition.)
If you want more PhD's than that, you have to figure out a place for them to work; industry is a good "pressure relief valve".
That sounds like an excellent thing based on that last sentence. Anecdotally, I hear people talk about trade school as being much more practical compared to the majority of traditional 4 year degrees. So I am interpreting a "move towards trade school" as an increase in practicality and therefore utility to the student.
I just wanted to echo your comment. Most people, in my experience, pursue an undergrad program with the intention of being employable. This is my personal experience, but also a learned opinion from being a teaching assistant for some years. Places like waterloo stress co-op, it is built in to the program. IMO the average person seeking an education are served under a model that places them in or near industry related work at some point. While I understand the original post is relating to PHDs, I think most programs (or rather, participants in programs) would love to have this sort of integration despite it being a hard problem.
Interestingly enough, Kitchener, adjacent to Waterloo has a large population of German-descent. I wonder if the OP's spouse's experience in Germany has any relation.
There is no reason to assume it is “more practical” or that it will increase utility for the student. Especially at the graduate level, the deeper you are able to explore a subject and the more you can connect that subject to a broader range of topics the more utility you get from the degree. Less time to finish a degree means you are less able to do that. I would think this will decrease the likelihood of new ideas being developed which will quickly become a problem for society in general. Also no one gets a PhD because it is practical, you get it because you want to explore a topic and push the boundaries of human knowledge.
Germans are big on trade schools. Despite being one of the richest western european countries, Germany (and Switzerland) have along the lowest college graduation rates, because they prioritize trade schools.
In all OECD countries, but in particular in Germany, there seems to be an enormous overproduction of PhDs – in case one sees a PhD as the starting point of an academic career or as an important asset on the job market.
I am aware of that system, doing a PhD in a company as an external PhD student. The "research" is extremely applied. That is good for the company, possibly even a better career choice, but has limited scientific value. You are also unlikely to switch back to academia and become a professor.
Most people mistake "feeling" for "thinking". Just because you don't like my post, does not mean it is not true.
Looking at the $$$ awarded -- that's interesting: $37k/year, and while there's a $22,000 "ancillary expenses" component, institutions administer it, and can use it like any other indirect cost $$$. Conversely, industry funders have to stump up at least $100,000/year per student.
I did my PhD funded for 3 years off of NIH and the remaining year and so off of corporate research grants. I really valued the fact that I was working on an industrial project, and could see it come to life with real funding and real backing.
The critical part imho will be allowing for enough independence in research, and that the time isn't just wasted filling in remedial RAs pushing pipettes around. Real safeguards will be needed, likely overseen by the PI and committee.
I genuinely hope it works and helps industry "figure out" that R&D is more than just simply productizing over the next quarter.
I don't love the increasing move towards industry research instead of traditional academia. It is just going to mean more closely-held, proprietary advancements.
Additionally, as a former industry researcher myself who now teaches at a community college, there is less research freedom in industry, especially with very free places like 1970-era Bell Labs and Xerox PARC half a century in the rear view mirror. Focused industry research is definitely valuable, but there seems to be fewer places in modern society that allow a researcher to be driven primarily by curiosity.
v.s. politicking forever, enslaving grad students and making only a passable salary? Not to mention being incentivized to lie, cheat and steal when publishing in order to maintain your position?
Academia as we know it has been dead for a while, and AI is the final harbinger. The reproducibility crisis got that much worse now that the papers that nobody ever bothered to reproduce have grown 10x in number with the press of a button.
At least the industry research jobs pay well, even if they suffer many of the same issues.
There’s already a 3-4 year advanced degree in the United States with an optional thesis component that companies in relevant industries can intervene in and direct if they so desire.
So why are they calling it a doctorate? I don’t see the point. It’s not like the NSF under this administration is particularly fond of STEM doctorates.
I’m open to any theories about what the real point of this is.
It is ideology. It's very obvious the current US government thinks that universities are a waste of money, and that industry is where everything happens. This industry PhD shuffles money from the university's pockets into industry pockets. It's in line with the recent shrinking of PhD visa lengths in the US (from technically-infinite-but-usually-6-to-7-years to 4 years)
Are there professional degrees like that for, say, mathematics or physics?
An aside, the Actuarial profession's fellowship credentials (FSA/FCAS) are considered to be roughly equivalent in content to a professional doctorate (not counting a medical residency), and have a completely different format.
It's mostly exam based from pure self study, and aspiring actuaries typically work full time in the industry after passing the first 2-3 exams and finishing a bachelor's (which can be in any subject). Typical travel time from the first exam to the fellowship credential is 6-8 years, IIRC. Employers pay employees for some study time and for exam leave for each exam, with a bonus for each one passed.
I bring this all up because there are a lot of other ways for education to be structured outside of the BS -> MS -> PhD pathway, and there are ways for learning to be integrated with industry.
Funneling money from the government to private research that doesn't have to be disclosed, as the public funding won't be for research, but for student placement.
> There’s already a 3-4 year advanced degree in the United States with an optional thesis component...
There isn't.
And if you are trying to snarkily describe an MS, then most MS programs are too short.
> So why are they calling it a doctorate? I don’t see the point. It’s not like the NSF under this administration is particularly fond of STEM doctorates.
The I-PhD is basically a formalization of industry-sponsored PhDs based on the program site [0]
No. It's basically allocating funding for 250 PhD seats across a couple top engineering programs (CMU, UCSD, UIUC, Columbia SEAS, Penn SEAS, etc) with the expectation that said research would be linked with an industrial partner (eg. HPE, Bayer, Nvidia)
Edit: I just reread your comment. I think it is for students who are already doing their MS or have previously done so and are applying to PhD programs
Probably also for students with “just” a bachelor’s. Most PhD students don’t enter with a master’s.
I do wonder if NSF is hoping to seed more industry-sponsored PhDs as well, e.g., the first will be funded by NSF to establish the program, and industry will fund more once the program gets going.
Definitely makes sense to me they call it a PhD, not a master’s. A PhD is more prestigious and signals the holder is ready and eager to do cutting-edge research and has some experience doing so.
There are all kinds of master’s degrees (I say as someone who has one) and reasons for getting them, so they’re not as strong a signal of anything in particular. And they can mean someone switched careers, someone dropped out of a PhD program, someone took advanced classes during undergrad, someone got a bachelor’s in one country and wanted to study and work in another, etc.
Re: Bayer - the non-health industry side? I'm surprised NIH hasn't rolled out something like this earlier, to be honest, with their increasing emphasis on commercialisation.
> There’s already a 3-4 year advanced degree in the United States with an optional thesis component that companies in relevant industries can intervene in and direct if they so desire.
You're making this up as you go. No MS lasts 3-4 years, almost all MS theses are book reports/unpublished because the student is primarily attending classes, almost none are directed by industry (see points 1 and 2).
sometimes an institution will give an ms as a consolation prize for time spent not being able to finish a phd [0]. in those cases they can be upwards of 5 years, but they certainly aren't industry driven
[0] often a leadership or personality failure of the PI
I mean, how common is a terminal master’s program in STEM fields?
I imagine there are departments where it’s more common to get a master’s by dropping out of the PhD program early than through any other path. Especially for people with a bachelor’s in the same field.
My wife did her mathematics PhD under an analogous structure in Germany where it’s fairly common. She was supervised by a professor at the University of Munich and a lab at Bosch, wrote and defended a thesis as usual. Employed in industry immediately after graduating. A great experience.
While I understand the upside, the reality of why it’s being pursued in the United States is that this is intended to drive academia into an advanced version of a trade school.
Do the math: The number of professorial positions is not growing (or not very quickly). Under steady-state, each professor only needs to train one single tenure-track PhD in their entire career. (Or maybe 10 professors need to train 11-12 students, to account for various forms of attrition.)
If you want more PhD's than that, you have to figure out a place for them to work; industry is a good "pressure relief valve".
With the aging population, we also hit peak college attendance 15 years ago.
That sounds like an excellent thing based on that last sentence. Anecdotally, I hear people talk about trade school as being much more practical compared to the majority of traditional 4 year degrees. So I am interpreting a "move towards trade school" as an increase in practicality and therefore utility to the student.
I just wanted to echo your comment. Most people, in my experience, pursue an undergrad program with the intention of being employable. This is my personal experience, but also a learned opinion from being a teaching assistant for some years. Places like waterloo stress co-op, it is built in to the program. IMO the average person seeking an education are served under a model that places them in or near industry related work at some point. While I understand the original post is relating to PHDs, I think most programs (or rather, participants in programs) would love to have this sort of integration despite it being a hard problem.
Interestingly enough, Kitchener, adjacent to Waterloo has a large population of German-descent. I wonder if the OP's spouse's experience in Germany has any relation.
There is no reason to assume it is “more practical” or that it will increase utility for the student. Especially at the graduate level, the deeper you are able to explore a subject and the more you can connect that subject to a broader range of topics the more utility you get from the degree. Less time to finish a degree means you are less able to do that. I would think this will decrease the likelihood of new ideas being developed which will quickly become a problem for society in general. Also no one gets a PhD because it is practical, you get it because you want to explore a topic and push the boundaries of human knowledge.
Germans are big on trade schools. Despite being one of the richest western european countries, Germany (and Switzerland) have along the lowest college graduation rates, because they prioritize trade schools.
This is just because of the PhD inflation in Germany. It has little scientific value.
Why the Downvote?
What are you referring to?
Why does my post get downvoted?
In all OECD countries, but in particular in Germany, there seems to be an enormous overproduction of PhDs – in case one sees a PhD as the starting point of an academic career or as an important asset on the job market.
https://socialscienceworks.org/2015/07/243/are-there-too-man...
I am aware of that system, doing a PhD in a company as an external PhD student. The "research" is extremely applied. That is good for the company, possibly even a better career choice, but has limited scientific value. You are also unlikely to switch back to academia and become a professor.
Most people mistake "feeling" for "thinking". Just because you don't like my post, does not mean it is not true.
If you want to skip the fluff, the actual funded program abstract here:
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2624416
Appropriately enough for a pilot, there's a structured usual cohort-mentoring and outcomes evaluation component.
(NSF brings 3 years of $$$, but as it is, it doesn't seem like attempt to nudge people screwed over by GRFP restrictions towards industry.)
I'd recommend the I-PhD's page instead of the NSF grant as it goes deeper into the partners as well as the program.
https://uidp.org/i-phd-scholars/
Thanks - the program guide at the very bottom seems to have the most detail.
https://uidp.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/UIDP-I-PhD-Schol...
Looking at the $$$ awarded -- that's interesting: $37k/year, and while there's a $22,000 "ancillary expenses" component, institutions administer it, and can use it like any other indirect cost $$$. Conversely, industry funders have to stump up at least $100,000/year per student.
I did my PhD funded for 3 years off of NIH and the remaining year and so off of corporate research grants. I really valued the fact that I was working on an industrial project, and could see it come to life with real funding and real backing.
The critical part imho will be allowing for enough independence in research, and that the time isn't just wasted filling in remedial RAs pushing pipettes around. Real safeguards will be needed, likely overseen by the PI and committee.
I genuinely hope it works and helps industry "figure out" that R&D is more than just simply productizing over the next quarter.
I don't love the increasing move towards industry research instead of traditional academia. It is just going to mean more closely-held, proprietary advancements.
Additionally, as a former industry researcher myself who now teaches at a community college, there is less research freedom in industry, especially with very free places like 1970-era Bell Labs and Xerox PARC half a century in the rear view mirror. Focused industry research is definitely valuable, but there seems to be fewer places in modern society that allow a researcher to be driven primarily by curiosity.
v.s. politicking forever, enslaving grad students and making only a passable salary? Not to mention being incentivized to lie, cheat and steal when publishing in order to maintain your position?
Academia as we know it has been dead for a while, and AI is the final harbinger. The reproducibility crisis got that much worse now that the papers that nobody ever bothered to reproduce have grown 10x in number with the press of a button.
At least the industry research jobs pay well, even if they suffer many of the same issues.
How do you feel about internships?
I can't figure out where I'd apply for this program as a student. Does anyone know?
Here is the I-PhD program's website - https://uidp.org/i-phd-scholars/
Reader read NFS v4 and was disappointed in their title comprehension.
Very perplexing.
There’s already a 3-4 year advanced degree in the United States with an optional thesis component that companies in relevant industries can intervene in and direct if they so desire.
So why are they calling it a doctorate? I don’t see the point. It’s not like the NSF under this administration is particularly fond of STEM doctorates.
I’m open to any theories about what the real point of this is.
It is ideology. It's very obvious the current US government thinks that universities are a waste of money, and that industry is where everything happens. This industry PhD shuffles money from the university's pockets into industry pockets. It's in line with the recent shrinking of PhD visa lengths in the US (from technically-infinite-but-usually-6-to-7-years to 4 years)
Sorry, I’m a bit thrown off. What degree are you referring to?
Masters is usually about 2 years, though it could be longer in some cases or if worked on part-time. PhD is often 4-6+.
What 3-4 year degree did you mean? Bachelors?
I assume they're referring to Professional (Graduate) degrees, like JD or MD.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_degree#United_Sta...
Are there professional degrees like that for, say, mathematics or physics?
An aside, the Actuarial profession's fellowship credentials (FSA/FCAS) are considered to be roughly equivalent in content to a professional doctorate (not counting a medical residency), and have a completely different format.
It's mostly exam based from pure self study, and aspiring actuaries typically work full time in the industry after passing the first 2-3 exams and finishing a bachelor's (which can be in any subject). Typical travel time from the first exam to the fellowship credential is 6-8 years, IIRC. Employers pay employees for some study time and for exam leave for each exam, with a bonus for each one passed.
I bring this all up because there are a lot of other ways for education to be structured outside of the BS -> MS -> PhD pathway, and there are ways for learning to be integrated with industry.
Funneling money from the government to private research that doesn't have to be disclosed, as the public funding won't be for research, but for student placement.
Ah. That makes more sense, thanks.
> There’s already a 3-4 year advanced degree in the United States with an optional thesis component...
There isn't.
And if you are trying to snarkily describe an MS, then most MS programs are too short.
> So why are they calling it a doctorate? I don’t see the point. It’s not like the NSF under this administration is particularly fond of STEM doctorates.
The I-PhD is basically a formalization of industry-sponsored PhDs based on the program site [0]
[0] - https://uidp.org/i-phd-scholars/
Is this for people who already have an MS, so 6 total?
No. It's basically allocating funding for 250 PhD seats across a couple top engineering programs (CMU, UCSD, UIUC, Columbia SEAS, Penn SEAS, etc) with the expectation that said research would be linked with an industrial partner (eg. HPE, Bayer, Nvidia)
Edit: I just reread your comment. I think it is for students who are already doing their MS or have previously done so and are applying to PhD programs
Probably also for students with “just” a bachelor’s. Most PhD students don’t enter with a master’s.
I do wonder if NSF is hoping to seed more industry-sponsored PhDs as well, e.g., the first will be funded by NSF to establish the program, and industry will fund more once the program gets going.
Definitely makes sense to me they call it a PhD, not a master’s. A PhD is more prestigious and signals the holder is ready and eager to do cutting-edge research and has some experience doing so.
There are all kinds of master’s degrees (I say as someone who has one) and reasons for getting them, so they’re not as strong a signal of anything in particular. And they can mean someone switched careers, someone dropped out of a PhD program, someone took advanced classes during undergrad, someone got a bachelor’s in one country and wanted to study and work in another, etc.
Re: Bayer - the non-health industry side? I'm surprised NIH hasn't rolled out something like this earlier, to be honest, with their increasing emphasis on commercialisation.
Huh, odd. I could see trying to get back to everyone normally finishing in 6. But 4 seems really short.
> There isn't.
My coworkers holding such degrees would beg to differ.
> And if you are trying to snarkily describe an MS, then most MS programs are too short.
It wasn’t snarky, it was a listing of common points between the two. I don’t see what distinguishes this from a MS.
A year still isn’t enough time to write a doctoral-level thesis, so if the I-PhD is supposed to represent a “longer MS” then it’s still insufficient.
Where does an MS take more then 2 years?
I guess people doing night school maybe? That’s pretty clearly not what this is.
> There’s already a 3-4 year advanced degree in the United States with an optional thesis component that companies in relevant industries can intervene in and direct if they so desire.
You're making this up as you go. No MS lasts 3-4 years, almost all MS theses are book reports/unpublished because the student is primarily attending classes, almost none are directed by industry (see points 1 and 2).
sometimes an institution will give an ms as a consolation prize for time spent not being able to finish a phd [0]. in those cases they can be upwards of 5 years, but they certainly aren't industry driven
[0] often a leadership or personality failure of the PI
My program had an exam after 2 years. You could fail completely, do well enough to leave with a MS, or fully pass and continue to a PhD.
Why do people do this kind of "well actually" thing? Yes you're correct but it has nothing to do with whether the degree itself is intended for that.
I mean, how common is a terminal master’s program in STEM fields?
I imagine there are departments where it’s more common to get a master’s by dropping out of the PhD program early than through any other path. Especially for people with a bachelor’s in the same field.
> mean, how common is a terminal master’s program in STEM fields?
Lololol extremely. They're cash cows because of foreign students paying full price and not getting tuition waivers.
> Especially for people with a bachelor’s in the same field.
Lol bruh an enormous number of schools have 4+1 programs to enable students getting terminal MS even easier.