Does academic engagement with industry come at a cost for early career scientists? Evidence from high-tech enterprises' Ph.D. funding programs

Academic engagement with industry is now practiced by more scientists than ever before. Despite broad consensus regarding the positive effect on senior and successful scientists' research productivity, its effects on early career scientists have remained insufficiently investigated. Utilizing a novel dataset drawn from both awardees and nominees in the case of high-tech enterprises' Ph. D. funding programs from 2010 to 2017, we combine difference-in-differences estimation and data mining to explore the future research impact (research productivity and direction) of industrial Ph.D. funding. We find that awardees granted industrial Ph.D. funding outperform nominees in terms of both the quantity and quality of subsequent scientific production, with a more salient improvement of research performance in developing countries. Such discernible improvement in scientific production does not come at the cost of altering the research direction of beneficiaries. The results are robust to different specifications and measurements. Practical and policy implications are discussed for entrepreneurs and science policymakers to favor scientific knowledge production and transfer by strengthening science-industry relations between high-tech enterprises and early career scientists.