Does working with industry come at a price? A study of doctoral candidates’ performance in collaborative vs. non-collaborative PhD projects

The increasing involvement of industry in academic research raised concerns whether university-industry projects actually meet the same academic standards as university projects in-house. Looking at the academic output and impact of collaborative versus non-collaborative Ph.D. projects at Eindhoven University of Technology, we observe – unexpectedly – that doctoral candidates who conducted a collaborative Ph.D. project outperform their peers in academic performance. Less surprisingly, collaborative projects also lead to more patents and patent citations compared to non-collaborative projects. Science policy implications follow.