How Universities Are Reshaping the Semiconductor Industry

They’re everywhere around you — powering your cellphone, your computer, your television, and your car. One might even save your life someday, thanks to the medical advances they’ve enabled.

Semiconductors are indeed shaping the future, and higher education is helping to shape an industry that’s projected to crest $2 trillion globally by 2032.

Schools such as Purdue University are engaging in leading-edge research and producing the talent necessary to fuel the continued growth of this vital technology and its emerging applications.

What, exactly, are semiconductors?

In the most basic sense, semiconductors are chips made of materials, typically silicon, that both conduct and block electricity depending on the conditions — hence the semi prefix. These tiny chips form the foundation of today’s electronics, making them smaller, cheaper, and more powerful. You wouldn’t be reading this if not for semiconductors.

They’re critical not only for communications but also for transportation, healthcare, energy, artificial intelligence (AI), and even national security. From a simple light switch to a fighter jet, our world runs on semiconductors.

So does our economy. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), the U.S. leads the world in global semiconductor market share and sales, with $275 billion in 2022. The U.S. is also home to nearly half of the world’s production of semiconductors, with major manufacturing facilities in 18 states and a workforce of 300,000 people.

But other countries are challenging that supremacy, especially China, with whom the U.S. has a troubled relationship, thrusting the semiconductor industry into the crosswinds of a geopolitical standoff. More broadly, the industry continues to rebound from the supply chain bottlenecks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meeting the growing demand for semiconductors requires a domestic workforce trained in all aspects of design, manufacturing, and marketing. The SIA projects the U.S. chip industry’s workforce will increase by nearly 115,000 jobs by 2030, representing 33% growth over current figures.

It also estimates that roughly 67,000 jobs might go unfilled, given today’s degree completion rates in the field.

Nationwide, colleges and universities have stepped up to meet this increasing demand, partly due to the federal government.

In 2022, the Biden administration announced the CHIPS and Science Act, a $50 billion investment in the country’s semiconductor infrastructure that promises to supercharge higher education’s role across the industry, pouring billions of dollars into research and training.

According to one analysis, the CHIPS Act authorizes funding for STEM-related higher education and workforce development at levels that are unprecedented since the early days of the Space Race during the 1950s and 1960s.

The law encourages additional investments from private companies, which have since provided more than $300 billion for semiconductor manufacturing.

Many of these corporate investments involve partnerships with universities:

Another leading institution in the semiconductor space is Purdue University, which in 2022 launched the Semiconductor Degrees Program, a full suite of degrees and credentials in the field, along with opportunities for internships and lab research.

Purdue’s new partnership with SK hynix, Inc. will spur R&D and create a $4 billion advanced packaging fab — short for fabrication facility. The university also teamed with MediaTek to build the company’s first semiconductor chip design center in the Midwest, right on Purdue’s campus.

We are working to train the students to give them the proper background, Nikhilesh Chawla, a professor of materials engineering and co-director of Semiconductor Degree Programs at Purdue, told BestColleges, but equally important, creating that pipeline and facilitating the integration into the workforce.

Purdue designed this effort to reflect the interdisciplinary nature of the semiconductor field — from materials engineering to circuit design to supply chain management — and to accommodate students at every level of their educational journey, Chawla noted.

For some, that journey might begin at nearby Ivy Tech Community College, which recently teamed with Purdue to create a new pathway program toward a bachelor’s degree in engineering at the university. The program also comprises various majors and minors, certificates, master’s degrees, stackable post-graduate credentials, and a range of Ph.D. programs.

This array acknowledges the need for semiconductor professionals at all levels. Chawla explained that the 2030 demand projections for the industry suggest about 40% of jobs will be for technicians below the baccalaureate level, while 35% will be for engineers with bachelor’s degrees. Another 26% will be managerial positions for professionals with advanced degrees, including doctorates.

Salaries in the field can easily exceed $100,000 for those with a bachelor’s degree and above.

Purdue’s programs also reflect the rapidly evolving needs of this dynamic field. To stay current, faculty work with industry professionals serving on the program’s leadership board who advise on curricular matters and facilitate internships and job placements for students and graduates.

Despite these ramped-up efforts at Purdue and other universities to cultivate and educate the next generation of semiconductor professionals, demand continues to outpace supply.

Even if we took every single engineer at Purdue or any of the other Big Ten schools, and they all wanted to go to the semiconductor space, Chawla said, we still wouldn’t meet the demand.

A significant step toward meeting that demand is enabling working professionals to pursue degrees online without the disruption of leaving jobs and either commuting to school or moving closer to campus.

That was the inspiration for Purdue’s interdisciplinary Master of Science in Engineering with a specialization in microelectronics and semiconductors. Launched in 2022, it is the only degree program within a top 10 nationally ranked engineering college exclusively dedicated to semiconductors and microelectronics, according to Purdue’s website.

Chawla said the flexible program is designed for working professionals eager to advance in their careers or pursue new fields but not so eager to leave their jobs.

We’re really trying to reach those students who are already in the workforce, the students who got a bachelor’s degree and perhaps ended up working in a fab and realized they’ve outgrown their current job function, he said.

They want to become a manager. They want to move into AI. They want to move into a new area, but they live somewhere else in the country or somewhere else in the world. They can take these courses online, learn about the cutting-edge technology, and get that seal of approval from Purdue.

Given its interdisciplinary orientation, the program draws from various departments and colleges across the university, including the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business, the Polytechnic Institute, the Elmore Family School of Electrical & Computer Engineering, and the School of Materials Engineering.

Students learn industry essentials such as supply chain management, materials engineering, circuit design, and systems design and must take 18 credit hours in engineering among the 30 required for the degree.

They graduate with either a Master of Science in Engineering (MSE) or the Master of Science (MS), depending on what degree they earned as undergraduates.

Chawla acknowledged the potential limitations of an online program designed for a hands-on field but suggested virtual reality holds promise in this regard. It enables students to immerse themselves in three-dimensional metaverse replicas of labs, working alongside faculty mentors and fellow students.

There’s a real future in those kinds of things as we try to reach a larger and larger scope of folks, he said.