Schools and industry: working together

Schools and industry have a long history of working together to their mutual benefit. Industry has funded research and scholarships. In turn, the universities produced the next generation of skilled engineers and business leaders. Today, both schools and companies maintain closer ties than ever. Due to cutbacks in government funding, both have come to rely on these ties. Schools and industry work together in many ways, from summer work experience for students to sending engineers to schools on sabbaticals. Best known is the co-op program, where students work in a company for three to six months. The federal government has also encouraged cooperation between schools and industry. In some programs, for example, grant money is given only to those proposals which have school-industry cooperation. In other cases, the government has provided funding to establish university-industry consortia, where universities work on projects of interest to a group of companies. These programs have the advantage of encouraging relevant research, without tying funding to a single company. This reduces the effect of one company changing directions, and provides some stability to funding.