On Improving Academic-Industry Collaboration

摘要

Academic expectations from Academic-Industry partnerships in Engineering are partly motivated by providing opportunities for students to apply their acquired knowledge on real-world problems in an industry environment. The expected result is that the students will become better engineers by acquiring knowledge and experience from working on real world engineering problems. However, the industry expectations are not the same which means there is a gap that must be bridged. The paper addresses several aspects of Academic-Industry partnerships; e.g., the needs and motives of both sides, provides examples of negative interactions and provides a discussion of what needs to be changed to make the collaboration more effective.