Industry funded research and graduate engineering education: A national survey of chemical and electrical engineering students.

摘要

Given the increasing number and type of industry/university cooperative research ventures, an understanding of the impacts of such arrangements on the academic environment is needed. Observers have argued that there are great potential benefits as well as risks to industry/university cooperation. A major gap in the literature has been an understanding how such arrangements influence graduate students' educational and research experiences.; The present study was a nonprobability sample survey of graduate students in chemical and electrical engineering departments at six universities. A two-stage sampling strategy was used to select universities with varying proportions of their R&D funding from industry. All students in each of the sampled departments were mailed an instrument that assessed domains of demographics, goals and motivations for pursuing graduate work, funding sources, interaction with sponsors, attitudes towards industry, climate for academic freedom and scholarly productivity.; Results suggest that there is little difference between industry and government funding in terms of how research is conducted, the nature of the research, the climate for academic freedom, scientific publication rates or creation of intellectual property. Most significant differences were between sponsored (either industry or government) and unsponsored research. Exploratory analyses identified some significant differences between the two departments, and between citizens and noncitizens. In general, the utility of examining multiple levels of analysis was supported. A need for models of how academic disciplines differ and how citizenship status affects graduate research experiences was identified.