South Korea will introduce an "industrial doctorate" system that allows researchers to earn a Ph.D. by having research and development projects carried out at companies recognized as academic achievement. The aim is to extend science and technology talent policy, long centered on universities and government-funded research institutes, into industrial workplaces, creating a career path in which corporate researchers can grow into advanced research personnel without leaving the field. Universities and state research institutes will also create a professional research position called "staff scientist," to be hired on a permanent basis, and support for the research and living costs of science and engineering graduate students will be sharply expanded.
The Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) said on the 31st that it had confirmed the 5th Basic Plan for Nurturing and Supporting Science and Technology Talent, covering 2026 through 2030, at a deliberation meeting of the Presidential Advisory Council on Science and Technology. The plan is the highest-level statutory plan for science and technology talent, drawn up every five years under the Special Act on Support for Science and Engineering.
The plan sets out three strategies: building an ecosystem for science and technology talent with clear opportunities and rewards, strengthening the dynamism and diversity of that talent, and establishing a national management system for it. It aims to link the entire process of becoming a researcher — from entering science and engineering fields through education, research, employment and settlement — into a single career path.
The government will first strengthen career paths for industrial researchers, who have been relatively neglected by policy. To develop advanced, practice-oriented talent that industry demands, it will introduce an industrial doctorate system, tentatively called the industrial degree program, under which a Ph.D. can be earned through R&D results rather than a dissertation. The intent is to make proper use of advanced talent already trained, rather than simply increasing the number of master's and doctoral degree holders.
Under the scheme, an engineer at a chipmaker who develops next-generation semiconductor design or process technology, or a researcher at an artificial intelligence company who builds a new AI model, could use those actual R&D projects as research results toward a doctorate. The government plans to set out specific degree-granting methods and evaluation systems through revisions to the Higher Education Act.
The degree structure of in-house corporate colleges, which currently goes no further than a bachelor's degree, will also be widened to master's and doctoral levels to encourage companies to cultivate advanced research personnel. Doing so, however, will require reworking the education system so that the current master's and doctoral framework, built around universities and dissertations, can recognize R&D results produced in industry. Criteria are needed to judge whether a project carried out at a company amounts to research worthy of a doctorate, and the bodies and procedures for conferring degrees must be spelled out. "For industrial master's and doctoral degrees, we are preparing, through a revision of the Higher Education Act, to grant degrees when someone has carried out a company project together with us, rather than on the basis of a dissertation," said Choi Mi-jung, head of the ministry's future talent policy division.
Career structures for researchers at universities and state research institutes will be overhauled as well. The government will develop the role of "staff scientist" — handling research planning, research administration and technology commercialization between principal investigators such as professors and graduate students and postdoctoral researchers — into a professional research support job category. Researchers now perform similar roles, but mostly as non-regular workers, and state research institutes have no separate job classification for them, leaving little in the way of a career structure for building expertise on a stable footing. The government plans to revise the Higher Education Act, launch a pilot program next year on the premise of permanent employment, and begin actual hiring.
In the AI and AI transformation fields, the system for specialized research personnel will be changed from next year so that 120 positions each can be assigned to large companies and state research institutes, for a total of 240, to reduce breaks in research careers caused by military service.
The number of universities receiving research living stipends will rise from about 50 this year to around 70 by 2030, and the number of scholarship recipients will more than triple, from about 3,000 now to about 10,000. The government says it views science and engineering graduate students as talent that will grow into independent researchers and will strengthen the foundation for them to focus on research with financial stability.
The government is reworking researchers' career paths stage by stage because it judges the next five years to be a critical juncture for securing science and technology talent in South Korea. It says a sharp decline in the school-age population and an intensifying preference for medical and pharmaceutical fields are weakening both the quantity and quality of the supply of top science and engineering personnel, and it projects that the number of new master's and doctoral graduates in those fields will fall after 2030. With domestically trained graduates weighing moves abroad, the government wants to create an environment in which talent already secured can keep growing at home, not just train new talent.
Policies to draw in new talent will run in parallel. At the elementary and secondary levels, the ministry will review improvements to mathematics and science curricula with the Ministry of Education and expand the number of AI-focused schools to about 3,000 by 2030. In addition to two gifted schools attached to science and technology institutes now being established, the government will work to convert about three high schools in regions without such schools into gifted schools attached to those institutes. It also aims to attract 2,000 outstanding researchers from abroad by 2030, strengthening package settlement support that links visas with housing and children's education.
"R&D investment has increased a great deal, but conditions in the research field have not improved as much as hoped, and workforce problems have continued to cause difficulties," said Lee Jun-bae, head of the ministry's future talent policy bureau. "We see the next five years as a crisis, and we will pursue R&D investment centered on science and technology talent rather than investment centered on R&D projects."
