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https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-It-Really-Be-True-That/243564

Jesse, the two CHE articles – one on the readership of academic papers, and the other on the suggestions that PhDs are not well-prepared to work beyond academe – despite having some overtone of journalistic sensationalism, reflect the general trend. Long time ago, I have seen a NYT article lamenting something like, it is a shame that society is not fully utilizing the talents of PhDs. These and many others, including your initiative suggest once again that the issue is getting people's attention – well, attention yes, solution who knows.

Earlier in my sentiment (Was it a sentiment?), I tried to say that a PhD faculty loaded with practical industrial experience is in a better position to bring in things interesting, as well as preparing his/her students better, both for academe and industry. 

Here are my further takes on the topic:

• Reading and writing are not some of the strengths of engineers. Engineers tend to care for codes and standards (to comply with regulations, to save themselves and because they are easy to do) more than for academic papers. And writing? Well, many are more keen on calculating numbers – than scholarly writings. Some of this has to do with project constraints associated with scope-cost-schedule. Most PhD engineers, by nature tend to be different than this generalization.    
• PhDs working in the industry are a minority. Therefore there could be some indignation, but also some admiration from colleagues, affecting him/her. I have heard colleagues saying: oh, you have PhD! I have also seen clients canceling certain jobs, because the firm does not have suitable employees with advanced education (MS, PhD). Perhaps, it all depend on the nature and the type of firms and works – some specialist firms need to have people with advanced education, others who mostly cater to routine jobs – that are well-established in codes and standards have less dependence on such people.
• Firms often assume that people with advanced degrees cannot do or are not supposed to do works other than his/her field of studies/specialization – leadership and management are some of the examples. In my judgment, this is a total misunderstanding and should not be entertained. With such assumptions, sometimes it becomes difficult to keep people of higher education in the payroll for long – the result is not what we want to see.
• But there are also instances where some firms have developed some innovative ideas of partnership. I was once at Georgia Tech for a physical modeling experiment with the senior vice president of a prestigious firm (I am withholding his and the firm's name for privacy; he was a PhD himself, highly regarded both in academia and industry). He told me that he was managing a bunch of highly experienced MS and PhD colleagues – but was having difficulty in keeping them fully busy. He then partnered with government agencies and universities to provide services – on sort of a rental basis. The arrangement was beneficial both to his firm (because he can keep and sell their expertise) and to the partners (who are happy to have the expertise, but can do away with regular payroll, but only with short-term remunerations/fees).
• The reason, for this example is that there are ways – only we need appreciation of advanced educations, and willingness to fully utilize something – something which the university, MS or PhD students have invested on – not only to benefit academe, and the industry,but also the society as a whole.          

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Can-It-Really-Be-True-That/243564

Jesse,

This topic is of interest to me. After dropping out of Ph.D. program a number of years ago, I seem to find myself on the interface between academia and industry again.
The two areas where I've seen most direct collaboration between research and practice are in public sector:

• Development of regulations (e.g. EPA regulations for risk based human health and ecological assessment quote and rely on toxicologic research).
• Collaborations between state or municipality engineering departments and universities (e.g. Philadelphia Water Department collaborates with at least three local universities, essentially serving as a client, and driving the direction of research on answering practical questions (e.g. better design of Green Stormwater infrastructure.

• Using ASCE or other research articles is often not a direct process: one may have to skim through a number of them to find a useful one, and an abstract is not always sufficient to make the decision. I found that most (at least smaller) companies don't have journal subscriptions. While asking for $35 for an article you know will help is trivial, asking for $350 to skim through ten article that may or may not help may be infeasible.
• I think we need more research on whether the systems we design perform as designed. For example, a number of assumptions goes into hydrologic and hydraulic calculations. I've seen a number of articles testing performance against design. I am not sure if these results get back to the designers. Although they do influence codes and regulations that ultimately serve as the basis for designs.
• Bodies such as ASCE, WEF etc,  may serve as bridges, bringing together questions from practitioners and answers from the researchers. I don't know enough about the mechanism of how this works in practice. 

Jesse,

This topic is of interest to me. After dropping out of Ph.D. program a number of years ago, I seem to find myself on the interface between academia and industry again.
The two areas where I've seen most direct collaboration between research and practice are in public sector:

• Development of regulations (e.g. EPA regulations for risk based human health and ecological assessment quote and rely on toxicologic research).
• Collaborations between state or municipality engineering departments and universities (e.g. Philadelphia Water Department collaborates with at least three local universities, essentially serving as a client, and driving the direction of research on answering practical questions (e.g. better design of Green Stormwater infrastructure.

• Using ASCE or other research articles is often not a direct process: one may have to skim through a number of them to find a useful one, and an abstract is not always sufficient to make the decision. I found that most (at least smaller) companies don't have journal subscriptions. While asking for $35 for an article you know will help is trivial, asking for $350 to skim through ten article that may or may not help may be infeasible.
• I think we need more research on whether the systems we design perform as designed. For example, a number of assumptions goes into hydrologic and hydraulic calculations. I've seen a number of articles testing performance against design. I am not sure if these results get back to the designers. Although they do influence codes and regulations that ultimately serve as the basis for designs.
• Bodies such as ASCE, WEF etc,  may serve as bridges, bringing together questions from practitioners and answers from the researchers. I don't know enough about the mechanism of how this works in practice.