Asian universities step up semiconductor programmes

The field of semiconductor technology is progressing at a very swift pace, according to experts, and is emerging as a major area of university-industry cooperation in East Asia, which dominates global chip production.

With a worldwide shortage of semiconductors, and projected huge demand from speeded up digitalisation since the COVID-19 pandemic, together with the advent of new technologies from autonomous vehicles and 5G telecommunications to artificial intelligence (AI)-driven technologies, universities in Asia are stepping up courses specialising in semiconductors with backing from their governments and in collaboration with industry.

Taiwan, the world’s largest producer of semiconductor chips, accounting for 65% of global chip manufacturing by revenue, announced in July that the government and its semiconductor industry will invest the equivalent of US$338 million over 12 years in newly created graduate courses to counter the high-end skills shortage – in part also caused by a brain drain to the United States and China.

Some 4,800 masters and doctoral students will benefit from the scheme over 12 years beginning early next year. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), which is the world’s largest chip maker, already last year started offering doctoral scholarships worth US$18,000 per year for up to five years, with mentoring and internship opportunities thrown in. MediaTek, another Taiwanese chip design company, also offers semiconductor related PhD scholarships.

Four new semiconductor research centres are being set up at National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei, National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Hsinchu City, and National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, according to a statement from Taiwan’s education ministry in late September, saying it had also approved new research institutes in other key advanced technologies including artificial intelligence and smart manufacturing, in a drive to stay ahead of global competition in these fields.

The universities selected will also be able to hire up to 15 additional full-time professors in these fields, according to the ministry, as well as bolstering cooperation between universities and industry, after Taiwan enacted its ‘Act for National Key Fields Industry-University Cooperation and Skilled Personnel’ in May.

Attending the opening ceremony of the Academy of Innovative Semiconductor and Sustainable Manufacturing at National Cheng Kung University on Friday 22 October – the first of the four new university centres – Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said talent was the most important strategic investment for Taiwan’s semiconductors, and was also the purpose for the establishment of the semiconductor academy.

Tsai was quoted by Taiwan’s Central News Agency as saying that the success of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry was not only due to the joint efforts of industry and academia, but also thanks to the industry’s advanced technology and investment, as well as joint construction of infrastructure, a stable system and a good investment environment.

But the most important was Taiwan’s outstanding talents, she said on Friday, noting that the new academy was collaborating with 15 top companies.

South Korean universities set up with industry

Backed by a government plan in 2019 to boost the number of semiconductor professionals by 3,400 by 2030 with special four-year undergraduate programmes, South Korea which accounts for 18% of global chip manufacturing, set up a new interdisciplinary programme in semiconductor technology at Seoul National University, which opened last year with enrolment pegged at 80.

Other top Korean universities such as Yonsei University in Seoul and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daegon have announced new semiconductor degrees in cooperation with Korean electronics giant Samsung. Korea University in Seoul announced a new degree in semiconductors jointly with the company SK hynix from this year.

The Korean companies are providing scholarships and job placements for the students and financial support to the universities to set up the new departments.

Taiwan: three-way cooperation

Chang Yao-Wen, dean of the NTU College of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, told University World News semiconductor talent is a priority for both industry and government in Taiwan, and the university already has considerable experience working with industry.

“We already have quite a few new research centres relating to AI, semiconductors and other technologies, including the newly-established NTU Graduate School of Advanced Technology for high-quality forward-looking R&D products – many are semiconductor (products),” Chang said.

He added that the graduate school was co-founded by TSMC, MediaTek and Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC), in addition to the NTU-TSMC and NTU-MediaTek joint research centres that have existed for some time.

Chang pointed to a new course in the new AI-NTU Centre funded by Taiwan’s Ministry of Science and Technology with strong support from industry and with professors from different departments coming together to leverage AI research and the semiconductor industry.

It includes a new course in computing architecture and system design for AI machine learning “for closing the gap between AI and semiconductors, so it is highly relevant. It teaches students to design hardware (chips) for processing neural networks (in machine learning)”, he explained.

“It is crucial to have three-way cooperation between government, industry and academia to create an outstanding ecosystem for AI and semiconductor research and development,” he said, not just focusing on university-industry collaboration.

“The government typically devises high-level policies to promote specific areas of teaching and research and provides funding to support faculty to cultivate more talent.”

But industry and academia can advise government, he said, noting that the push for special educational programmes for semiconductors came from industry, particularly from companies like TSMC.

“Academics can advise on advanced research ideas that are not directly related to the product but will be used in the future across the industry to create a win-win scenario – this is key to Taiwan’s success in the semiconductor industry,” Chang said.

Largest faculty

NTU has more than 50 members of faculty (mostly in the department of electrical engineering and computer science) teaching and researching semiconductors – one of the largest in Asia specialising in this field.

“We are trying to recruit more professors from industry to provide our students with more real-world experience and a more balanced perspective in teaching and research in information, AI and semiconductor areas,” he said.

“We are trying to make the (advanced technology) talent pie bigger so that we do not create shortages in other science and technology fields,” he added, pointing to NTU’s advanced courses that attract students from departments like psychology and economics to semiconductor and AI courses.

“The reason why our AI and semiconductor courses are so popular is that we have sufficient job opportunities in Taiwan from domestic as well as international companies such as TSMC, MediaTek, Microsoft and many startups. That is the strongest force to attract students to this field.”

National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) is another of the four Taiwanese universities slated to set up a semiconductor school, with 120 masters and PhD places beginning from spring 2022, with approximately US$6 million per year from TSMC, PSMC, MediaTek, Foxconn (which produces Apple smartphones), Novatek Microelectronics, Wistron and Avantech funding the courses.

Some of these will be international students after NYCU signed cooperation agreements with four Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) – IIT-Bombay in Mumbai, IIT-Delhi, IIT-Kanpur and IIT-Madras.

Taiwan’s National Tsing Hua University is setting up a new College of Semiconductor Research covering four main fields – device engineering, design, processes and semiconductor materials, with annual cohorts of 80 masters and 20 PhD students from spring 2022 onwards.

A US$4.66 million endowment has been set up this year which includes funding from international companies such as US-based Micron Technology and Japan’s Tokyo Electron as well as the main Taiwan semiconductor companies.

Burn-Jeng Lin, inaugural dean of the College of Semiconductor Research, said in August that as Taiwan universities already turn out plenty of graduates for the semiconductor industry in Taiwan, the college’s main focus would be “raising the nation’s competitiveness” in that field.

Global competitiveness

Remaining globally competitive has become a mantra as other countries and regions step up investment in semiconductor manufacture and training.

The US is investing $52 billion in semiconductor manufacturing in the coming years, as part of the US$250 billion US Innovation and Competition Act passed in the Senate in June. The bill includes US$5.22 billion for STEM student scholarships, US$8.43 billion for STEM workforce programmes and US$9.57 million for university technology centres and innovation institutes.

The EU has set a target to produce 20% of chips globally by 2030 with individual European countries announcing university programmes.

Some fear Taiwan’s experienced workforce will move to other countries including the US, Japan and mainland China which had been poaching Taiwanese experts to help build up its own industry and university research in semiconductors.

But NTU’s Chang is sanguine about the departures, which he sees as part of brain circulation rather than a drain. “We are not really worried about the brain drain to advanced countries like the US or UK, because many returned to Taiwan in the past, bringing advanced technologies with them,” he said.

Chang added: “We try to initiate more educational programmes to improve our environment, our ecosystem for the AI and semiconductor industry and to create a higher value for our talent to stay in Taiwan.”

“We constantly add new research findings into our course content to provide the students with state of the art technologies,” he added.

Talent poaching

Nonetheless, the poaching of Taiwan’s semiconductor talent has become a major issue in Taiwan, particularly as tensions with China have risen.

Civil society groups including some academics and the National Students’ Union of Taiwan earlier this year called for specific regulations in the government’s plans for semiconductor institutes in Taiwan to protect from China syphoning off talent and technology. They maintain that an exchange agreement between NTHU in Taiwan and Tsinghua University in Beijing had been used to poach talent.

This year China’s ministry of education made semiconductor sciences and engineering a priority area for academic programmes, and is encouraging universities to set up new departments specialising in the field. In May the ministry released a list of a dozen new semiconductor schools at top universities.

Last year, the department of electrical engineering of Tsinghua University – the country’s top STEM university – produced only 46 PhDs. In April it set up the School of Integrated Circuits, as chips are also known, billed as the first in China to offer specialised masters and research degrees in semiconductors with an initial intake of 44 masters students this year.

Peking University in Beijing inaugurated its School of Integrated Circuits on 15 July for training top talent in semiconductor design and manufacturing, with Chinese chip manufacturing companies attending the inauguration ceremony. Companies such as Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) – China’s largest and most advanced chip manufacturer – and Yangtze Memory Technologies signed agreements with the university to conduct joint talent training.

Hao Ping, dean of Peking University, said during the ceremony he hoped “the school will strengthen cooperation with companies in the semiconductor field to create an ‘innovation community’”, according to a statement from the university.

The same month Huazhong University of Science and Technology established a Future Technology College and a College of Integrated Circuits in Wuhan, while Shenzhen Technology University said in May it would set up a new semiconductor school in cooperation with SMIC, enrolling 60 students in its inaugural semester last month.

Talent shortage

China’s share of world semiconductor production is just 5% – dropping from 6% last year, hampered by US trade sanctions.

China has said it needs as many as 230,000 more semiconductor engineers by 2022, according to various industry estimates. But Li Jingbo, dean of the School of Semiconductor Science and Technology at South China Normal University in Guangzhou, Southern Guangdong province, was cited by Beijing News in July as saying, “If you add up all affected areas, our national chip talent gap is probably about 600,000 specialists.”

China’s urgent need for semiconductor talent derives from its drive to become self-sufficient in semiconductors because of the ongoing trade war with the US which includes US sanctions for chip supplies targeting Chinese technology companies such as Huawei.

In December 2020, the US added China’s top chip maker SMIC to its blacklist of Chinese companies which the US alleges have military connections, subjecting them to export controls.

In addition, China has strained relations with other important countries in semiconductor manufacturing such as Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. Experts said these countries, as well as the US, are concerned about the security implications of losing top talent to China, as well as other concerns such as intellectual property theft in the case of university collaborations.

But with specialised talent unlikely to come on stream within three to four years, experts believe China’s shortage will get worse. Lack of expertise has led to a number of non-specialised Chinese companies rushing into semiconductor manufacturing, spurred on by local government subsidies and tax breaks, but then going to the wall.

The most high-profile company to run into trouble is Tsinghua Unigroup, a huge chip-making conglomerate, majority-owned by Tsinghua University, which has racked up an estimated US$15.5 million in debt after failing to generate income swiftly.

“When an industry develops rapidly, it is inevitable that there will be a shortage of talent, and the rapid development of the industry has led to a large demand for talent, which is the fundamental reason,” Ye Tianchun, vice chairman and secretary-general of China Integrated Circuit Innovation Alliance, was quoted as saying by the official Global Times.