This university is not that university. Can the chip university model solve the problem of talent gap?

Jiwei.com reported that as early as a month ago, Professor Shi Longxing, director of the National Research Center for ASIC System Technology and dean of the School of Integrated Circuits at Southeast University, publicly stated that it is possible to establish a university dedicated to training chip talents in Nanjing - Nanjing Integrated Circuit University.

On October 22, Nanjing Integrated Circuit University, jointly established by Nanjing Jiangbei New Area, enterprises and universities, officially held its unveiling ceremony in the Human Resources Industrial Park of Nanjing Jiangbei New Area.

As soon as the news came out, it immediately attracted the attention of the integrated circuit industry and education circles. It is understood that Nanjing Integrated Circuit University is known as China's first chip university. This "chip university" is not a traditional university, but a special "school" established by the government. It aims to integrate industry and university resources to cultivate professional integrated circuit talents into an innovative industry-education integration platform.

So can the establishment of Nanjing Integrated Circuit University play a positive role in addressing the growing talent gap? What is the difference between the model of "chip university" and the integrated circuit majors in universities that we generally understand? Finally, what is the significance of this talent training model for industrial talent training?

Expected to be a supplement and extension of higher education

For many years, talent shortage has become a major factor restricting the development of my country's integrated circuit industry. According to the "2019 Chip Talent Data Insights", by 2020, the chip talent gap will exceed 300,000. In terms of the academic qualifications of chip-related talents, undergraduates account for as high as 73.76%, and those with a master's degree or above account for only 6.53%.

Data from the "White Paper on Talents in China's Integrated Circuit Industry (2019-2020 Edition)" shows that by 2022, my country will need 745,400 people to work in the integrated circuit industry. In 2019, the number of employed people was around 512,000, an increase of 11% year-on-year, while the average salary of the entire industry increased by 4.75% year-on-year. However, judging from the current development trend of the industry, the total supply of integrated circuit talents is still insufficient, and there are also structural imbalances. It is urgent to solve the problems of disconnection between industry and education, and mismatch between supply and demand through the construction of integrated circuit first-level disciplines and industry-education integration education platforms. Especially under the wave of rapid development of semiconductors, the demand for chip talents is gradually increasing.

Integrated circuit education under the traditional system is still dominated by integrated circuit majors in domestic universities. The number of universities offering integrated circuit majors is gradually increasing, among which the more famous ones are Tsinghua University, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Xidian University, and Huazhong University of Science and Technology. However, under the current circumstances, the number of students enrolled in integrated circuit majors in most universities is still relatively small. Taking Tsinghua University as an example, only about ten to twenty integrated circuit undergraduates are trained each year, while other integrated circuit majors in colleges and universities train hundreds of talents.

Dozens of colleges and universities across the country cannot meet the talent needs of the integrated circuit industry, and the total amount of talent training is not optimistic. The supply of industry talents does not match the growth rate of industrial development. In addition, since the integrated circuit professional system is extremely complex and very large, it still takes a certain amount of time for students to go from theoretical teaching to practice, which indirectly causes the speed of talent training to be unable to fill the gap in the industry in time.

It can be said that Nanjing Integrated Circuit University is a chip university established in this environment. Compared with traditional universities, it mainly differs in four aspects: the organizing entity, positioning, integer and title. The purpose is to enable the university to cultivate talents around the development of the industry.

Huang Letian, associate professor of the School of Electronic Science and Engineering at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, said in an interview with Jiwei.com that "this university is not that university." He told reporters that the mission of the Integrated Circuit University should be more similar to the previous "employee university", but the operation mode and training mode are very different from the "employee university" in the planned economy era. Of course, it is also different from "Huawei University" and "Chery University" established by companies for training their own employees, agents and customer service personnel, and technology promotion.

Speaking of "workers' universities", they are the product of a specific historical development stage in my country. In the late 1970s, after the implementation of reform and opening up, talent became the key to changing China's situation of being in a state of disrepair and participating in international competition. In order to improve the management level of existing cadres and the quality of employees within their systems, some state ministries and relevant units established their own colleges and universities. With the deepening of market-oriented reforms and the development of the overall education level of society, the tasks of improving the management level of cadres and the quality of employees faced by "management cadre colleges" and "workers' universities" when they were first established have been basically completed, and they have gradually embarked on the road of merger and reform.

Under the current circumstances, our country's integrated circuit industry is actually facing a similar situation as when the workers' university was first established. Professor Huang Letian believes: "At present, the domestic integrated circuit industry is short of talents, especially high-end talents. Under the current international situation, it not only affects the development of the industry, but also restricts the country's overall strategy and development. Therefore, we need to establish such a special institution to improve the quality of personnel in the industry, accelerate the growth of talents, and cultivate more high-end talents with higher quality for the industry."

From the perspective of talent cultivation, this "chip university" institution will play a gathering role as expected. Compared with the "internal training" of various companies, it is more efficient. At the same time, this institution focuses on vocational education and pre-vocational education, which is a beneficial supplement and extension to the academic education of colleges and universities.

Responsible for "pre-professional" education

The rapid development of integrated circuits in my country is inconsistent with the speed of talent training, which is the main reason for the current talent gap. Since this year, the country has promoted integrated circuits to a first-level discipline and supported the development of integrated circuit teaching in colleges and universities from a national strategic level. So in what aspects will the establishment of institutions such as integrated circuit universities play their role?

Professor Huang Letian said that the inclusion of integrated circuits in the first-level discipline ensures that this discipline has independent discipline construction funds, as well as a separate evaluation system in subsequent assessments, scientific research projects, etc. This has laid a good foundation for the development of future scientific research and the training of graduate-level talents, but it does not solve the current short-term implementation problems of insufficient personnel quality and lack of high-end talents in the industry.

At present, physical design in integrated circuit design is a very important and "experience-intensive" part, but this work does not belong to "scientific research" or "innovation and creation". With the current discipline management methods and training functions of colleges and universities, it is very difficult to train such talents with strong practicality and engineering skills. However, such talents are very important in the related industries of integrated circuits. The extremely high trial and error cost of the integrated circuit industry determines the need for a large number of such high-end engineering and application talents.

Therefore, from this perspective, integrated circuit universities play a more important role in cultivating such talents than traditional universities.

Professor Huang Letian said that the first-level discipline mainly refers to the postgraduate training stage, while the major mainly refers to the undergraduate training stage. He told reporters that after nearly 20 years of adjustment, our country's undergraduate education has basically completed the transformation from the former Soviet Union's "specialized" education to the "liberal arts" education of the United Kingdom and the United States. Therefore, the current undergraduate education is more of a "broad-caliber" way to cultivate talents. This training method certainly has great benefits, but it is also obvious that it is impossible for talents trained in a "liberal arts" way to adapt to a specific position. "

Since the training model of universities does not fully match the talent needs of industrial development, there is a great demand for "pre-professional" education. For integrated circuit-related work, which is highly professional and has a complex knowledge system, it is very necessary to supplement sufficient basic knowledge and practical skills through "pre-professional" education.