Cross-Sector Partnerships in Undergraduate Engineering: Exploring U.S. Public and Private Sector Perspectives on Collaboration Processes

Abstract

The United States' economic viability relies on a strong engineering workforce. There is a widening gap between the needs of the workforce and engineering graduates' skills, contributing to the growing threats to the United States' competitiveness as labor markets are fundamentally transformed by technology innovation. Partnerships between industry, government, and academia are created to bridge knowledge gaps, underscored by the belief that education systems better achieve desired outcomes with external influence. These partnerships often fail, however, and we have limited knowledge of what makes them successful. Because of this knowledge gap, the purpose of my study is to advance the understanding of cross-sector partnerships in undergraduate engineering by focusing on antecedents to partnerships and the process aspects of their implementation. To develop this understanding, I designed a qualitative study to explore the perspectives of U.S. public and private sector partners of undergraduate engineering. I conducted semi-structured interviews with twenty individuals representing these non-academic stakeholders. Through a lens of inter-organizational collaboration theory, I interpreted their storytelling and generated insights into how they described their partnership experiences. Findings highlight how the value perceptions of non-academic organizations impact who they choose to partner with and how partnerships are implemented. Some organizations seek tangible benefits that impact their bottom line such as recruiting talented students—participants who worked for for-profit organizations tended to emphasize this value proposition. Others seek intangible benefits such as supporting student learning, emphasized more by non-profit and government-affiliated organizations. Differing goals can create tension in partnerships, which can be reconciled through mutual understanding, compromise, and open communication. Findings also highlight how individual relationships drive collaboration processes and influence organizational behaviors, and how alumni networks can create strategic advantages to partnering organizations by enabling new partnership opportunities and creating efficiencies in process. Conclusions emphasize the importance of tailoring approaches to each partnership situation, extending current conversations in engineering education research on cross-sector partnerships, contributing new knowledge to support the advancement of partnerships research and related theory, and providing practitioners and policymakers with actionable insights to inform their approach and influence on partnerships, respectively.