Young life scientists have been increasingly abandoning academia, a seismic shift that has fueled calls for rethinking graduate education. On Wednesday, the Trump administration announced that it’s funding a pilot program to test a new strategy: Giving Ph.D. students industry experience — and dollars — as part of their training.
The program is creating four-year Ph.D. programs that are jointly bankrolled by universities and industry partners, with additional support from the National Science Foundation. During their Ph.D. studies, participants will spend at least one year conducting research at a company site.
Around 30 university-industry pairs plan to participate, with academic partners including the University of California, San Diego, and Northwestern, Purdue, and Columbia universities. The companies include life science instrument and service firm Agilent Technologies, as well as chemical company DuPont and Bayer’s Crop Science division. The industry-university partners have signed letters of intent, though they have not signed final agreements.
“I think more industry research in Ph.D. programs is a good thing,” said Donna Ginther, a labor economist at the University of Kansas who studies the scientific workforce. “I think it’s great to have these options, but it shouldn’t be the only option.”
The pilot program was first reported by the media company Pirate Wires.
NSF will spend $47 million over the next five years to support the more than 250 students expected to participate. Students working in fields eligible for NSF funding will be able to participate, including chemistry, engineering, and basic life science research that doesn’t deal directly with the treatment of disease.
Michael Kratsios, science adviser to President Trump and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, praised the initiative. He recently laid out the White House’s vision for the future of American science, which called for more industry involvement and greater support for early-career scientists.
“Last week we laid out the blueprint for a new Golden Age of American Science, and this week, we are already delivering on it,” Kratsios said in a press release. “The majority of STEM Ph.D. recipients today build careers beyond the university, yet American industry has had few opportunities to invest directly into how our doctoral researchers are trained. The NSF’s groundbreaking pilot opens that door, drawing on the strengths of industry research to reflect the full breadth of where American science happens today.”
The program, set to start this fall, comes as federal funding for science has become increasingly unpredictable, with the Trump administration requesting major budget cuts to agencies that fund grants and terminating, freezing, or delaying thousands of awards since last year, including a substantial number of training grants that support early-career researchers.
But the pilot’s primary goal isn’t to secure nonfederal support for graduate training, and the effort’s origins predate the administration’s disruptions to science funding, according to Anthony Boccanfuso, president and CEO of the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership (UIDP), the nonprofit leading this effort.
Instead, the group was spurred to action by stark statistics showing an unprecedented exodus of researchers from the Ivory Tower. In 2010, 25% of life science Ph.D. graduates with a job lined up were headed to industry, while 49% went on to work in academia, according to NSF data. By 2021, the share of industry-bound grads ballooned to 49%, while those taking academic positions dipped to 31%.
Graduate training, however, remains largely focused on preparing students for faculty jobs that are few and far between. UIDP started brainstorming how to change that in 2021, drawing inspiration from existing university-industry Ph.D. programs in Europe as well as a program at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.
During the pilot, known as the Industry-Integrated PhD (I-PhD) Scholars Program, students will be funded by their university during their first year and then by NSF and the industry partner during years two through four. During each of the last three years, students will receive a $37,000 stipend, $16,000 to cover tuition, and $22,000 for additional expenses related to their work. Companies have to contribute at least $100,000 per student, including $25,000 upfront.
It’s an effort that raises complicated questions about publication and intellectual property. Who owns the IP when a student makes a discovery: the company or the university? And while publishing papers is central to advancing an academic career, companies tend to closely guard findings that could give a competitor an edge.
Rather than dictate how these questions should be resolved, UIDP has left it to each university-industry partner to reach their own agreement on these and other points. When asked what would happen if a Ph.D. student needed more than four years to complete a project, Boccanfuso said that decision would be up to the university.
The UIDP CEO said the group will offer additional online training to participating students to help them develop industry-specific skills. But he won’t consider it a failure if trainees don’t go on to work for companies, as the main goal is to give them enough exposure to know if industry is right for them.
“You’re going to find some students who do it and are like, ‘This is awesome,’ and others [who say], ‘I never want to work in industry,’” Boccanfuso said. “And that’s OK.”
The organization has recruited an outside firm to evaluate the success of the program. Boccanfuso believes they should have data on how the pilot is progressing before 2031, when NSF funding expires, but that an initial assessment will take at least a year because participating students won’t join until the fall. Those findings will help decide whether the pilot effort is eventually expanded to include more universities and companies.
STAT’s coverage of the federal government’s impact on the biomedical workforce is supported by a grant from the Dana Foundation and the Boston Foundation. Our financial supporters are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.
