Industry-funding for Ph.D. students : benefits and challenges

This paper investigates employment outcomes for a large sample of Ph.D. students who were enrolled in a doctoral training program in Italy in the period 2008–14. The empirical analysis is based on survey data obtained from a questionnaire distributed to 23,500 individuals in 2016. In Italy, student enrolment in a Ph.D. involves a university-based selection process; most students then receive either government or private sector financial support covering their study period. We are interested in the influence of privately funded scholarships on subsequent success in obtaining a job in academia or in the business sector or choosing self-employment. We hypothesize that receipt of private funding will increase the probability that the student will go on to pursue a career in the private sector. We find that private sector funding/scholarships have a tangible effect on steering the students toward employment in the private sector only if during their study period they have an opportunity to collaborate with a company. If the aim is to promote employment of graduates by private firms, then our results suggest that private companies should seek to be more closely involved in university Ph.D. programs.Funding Information:Among the determinants of employment outcomes, we focus on financial support provided for Ph.D. students. That is, we investigate whether and how Ph.D. students receive financial support for their Ph.D. studies and how they affect their career choice. Some studies show that receiving financial support increases the chance of remaining in academia (Main, Wang, and Tan ; Walters, Zarifa, and Etmanski ; Wang and Main ). For example, Wang and Main () found that American Ph.D. students who received scholarship are more likely to become postdocs, and Walters, Zarifa, and Etmanski () similarly found that scholarship recipients in Canada are more likely to attain full-time faculty position. Also, Main, Wang, and Tan () showed that Ph.D.s who were self-funded were less likely than students benefiting from scholarships or research assistantships to take up a postdoc position in engineering in the US. On the other hand, Herrera and Nieto () showed that students who receive national or international grants tend to pursue non-academic careers in the Spanish context. Finally, Marini () found no significant effect of financial support on students’ career choice regardless of the funding sources in the Italian context. Thus, the previous studies demonstrated mixed effects of financial support on employment outcomes