The semiconductor industry needs compound talents, and it needs patience and determination to cultivate sophisticated semiconductor talents. As the semiconductor industry plays an increasingly important role in the global economy, the talents as the basis for its development have become a hot issue of the industry. Cultivating semiconductor talents is not only a matter of education, but also a matter of interest to enterprises and governments. Therefore, since 2023, many countries and regions have been focusing on new attracting policies for semiconductor talent plans, and a global competition for semiconductor talent is starting.
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South Korea will train more than 2000 top semiconductor talents in ten years
According to South Korean media reports, in order to enhance the competitiveness of the semiconductor industry, the South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and the South Korean Semiconductor Industry Association have signed a memorandum of understanding and agreed to invest 223 billion won in the next 10 years to jointly cultivate more than 2300 top talents in the semiconductor field in the next 10 years to maintain global technological strength.
Such a big deal reflects South Korea’s concern about the lack of top talents. According to the data of the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association (KSIA), the labor force in this industry is expected to increase from 177000 in 2021 to 304000 in 2031, with a CAGR of 5.6% during this period, but Korean universities and colleges only train about 5000 new semiconductor professionals each year. Park Jung-ho, vice chairman of SK Hynix, once said that according to KSIA’s estimate, there will be 54000 bachelor’s and master’s and doctoral talents in 2031. He went on to say that the difficulty of talent cultivation is a functional problem that needs to be solved, just like the problem of low birth rate.
The pace of cultivating semiconductor talents in South Korea has never stopped. On September 4, 2022, as a follow-up measure to the “semiconductor-related talent training program” issued in July, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and a total of 15 institutions from the government, industry and the research community jointly signed the “Business Agreement of the Semiconductor Talent Training Support Cooperation Center”, aiming to provide an operational basis for the implementation of the semi-conductor talent training program, It is also responsible for investigating the training status of semiconductor-related talents and dealing with difficulties in the training process. The signing institutions of the agreement include government departments represented by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Resources, the Ministry of Science and Technology, Information and Communication of the Republic of Korea, educational institutions represented by the Korea University Education Agreement Association, the Korea Junior College Education Agreement Association, and industrial institutions with Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and the Korea Semiconductor Industry Association as the core. At that time, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea planned to take this business agreement as an opportunity to build a cooperation network connecting universities, vocational schools, semiconductor companies and research institutions, and to cultivate high-quality semiconductor professionals through information sharing and cooperation among institutions.
Semiconductor companies have also invested heavily in cultivating talent, providing students with generous scholarships, graduate work, and other benefits. Samsung has established 10 departments with 7 universities, of which 5 are related to semiconductors, and the rest are related to fields such as artificial intelligence and next-generation communication. However, it is still difficult to recruit new students from semiconductor related departments at Korean universities.
Many universities report poor admission results for semiconductor related majors because excellent students are more willing to study at medical universities. According to the report, the Department of System Semiconductor Engineering of Yanshi University, which was newly established in cooperation with Samsung, all the first batch of qualified students formally enrolled gave up their registration qualifications. The Department of Semiconductor Engineering of Hanyang University, sponsored by SK Hercules, also has 44 applicants who have given up their admission qualifications, far higher than the enrollment quota of 16.
In order to retain talents, Samsung and SK Hynix have provided significant performance bonuses or profit dividends for key engineers. Samsung also introduced an advanced tracking system to allow highly skilled employees to continue to work for the company after retirement, while SK Hynix also set up a “master” system for retired talents to prevent their outflow.
All these efforts reflect the urgency of developing local semiconductor talents in South Korea, while some countries hope to rapidly expand the reserve of domestic semiconductor talents by attracting skilled immigrants.
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Western countries make efforts to attract talents
German Prime Minister Olaf Schultz said at the press conference held with Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the two countries need to cooperate in the research and development of IT and software. Schultz said that his country intends to introduce more qualified talents related to the electronics industry from India. He said that India could provide many talents and hoped to recruit them to Germany and hire them in the industrial sector of Germany. Schultz said that Germany will achieve the goal of relaxing visa procedures.
Many people in India regard their role in the technology industry as a stepping stone to work in another country. Although many Indians who make this choice will send money home or bring their professional knowledge back to India to start a business, the data shows that Indian immigrants with skills to go abroad usually stay abroad. According to the research unit of the Center for Security and Emerging Technologies (CSET), a US policy think tank, 87% of Indian nationals holding STEM doctorates stayed in the United States after graduating from local universities in the United States. Many American technology companies are willing to hire Indian technicians on H-1B. However, due to the recent wave of layoffs, H-1B holders who have lost their jobs can only obtain a replacement job or visa within 60 days before being required to leave the United States. This gives Germany and other European countries the opportunity to attract relevant employees who leave the United States.
Although this approach in Germany can rapidly enrich semiconductor staff, it will not bring much help to the research and development of advanced semiconductor technology in Germany in essence. After all, the United States also knows the importance of high-end semiconductor talents. In order to ensure the leading position of semiconductor research in the United States, what the United States is doing is to keep the most critical talents in the United States.
According to the 2020 semiconductor industry research report of Georgetown University in the United States, the proportion of international doctoral graduates in semiconductor related fields in the United States who migrate to stay in the United States after completing their degrees is as high as 80%. From 2000 to 2010, the United States had a net inflow of about 100000 integrated circuit related patent holders, while India and China had a large net outflow. Yin Qiming, former Minister of Economy of Taiwan, China, also confirmed the attraction of the United States to Taiwanese talents. He said that “coming to Taiwan, China University and going to the United States” was the folk school atmosphere in Taiwan about 25 years ago. At that time, many talents would live in the United States once they went abroad.
The attraction of the United States for semiconductor talents is obvious. The United States has by far the best research university system in the world, many of which have provided courses and engaged in research directly related to semiconductor manufacturing. American research universities have a long history in developing and providing courses and research cooperation related to the needs of the semiconductor industry. It can be said that the research cooperation between American universities and industry is relatively mature. For students majoring in semiconductors, going to the United States for further study will make their research more secure.
A good talent flow should be “talent outflow” plus “talent return”, which can constitute a talent dividend. The chip and science act of the United States is providing more than US $13 billion in federal funds for semiconductor research and training, including funds for the National Semiconductor Technology Center and the Ministry of Defense plan to establish a university-based microelectronics research community, as well as a strong education and training system in this field. For example, the bill allocates US $200 million to the National Science Foundation of the United States for microelectronics education and training. Recently, the United States government said that the United States plans to have two large ecological clusters by 2030, each of which will employ thousands of highly paid workers. By using policy tools, the United States government can not only retain talents, but also achieve the goal of “attracting talents”.
Western countries can attract a considerable number of talents by taking advantage of the objective conditions of their developed countries, but this does not seem to be the path that China can reproduce. It is a “tough battle” for China to cultivate a group of “capable” semiconductor talents.
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A tough battle to build China’s semiconductor talent team
First of all, we should attach importance to the construction of basic disciplines.
China’s first march towards semiconductors began in 1956. Huang Kun, the founder of solid state physics and semiconductor physics in China, proposed and organized the implementation of the “five universities’ joint semiconductor physics specialization”. The senior students and relevant teachers of physics departments of five universities, including Peking University, Fudan University, Jida University, Xiamen University and Nantah University, concentrated in the training of Peking University; In the past two years, more than 300 first-generation semiconductor professionals in China have been trained. However, the Ministry of Education canceled the major of semiconductor physics and devices in 1997. Today, 67 years later, China’s basic research talents of semiconductors have withered, and the number of people engaged in theoretical research of semiconductors is few.
The construction of basic disciplines is no longer limited to higher education. We will support the development of key disciplines, emerging disciplines, unpopular disciplines and weak disciplines, carry out the “Talents Program for Middle School Students”, “Strong Foundation Program” and “Top Students Training Program for Basic Disciplines” in depth, do a good job in the addition of science education in the “double reduction”, and cultivate young people with the potential of scientists who are willing to devote themselves to scientific research.
Secondly, we should also strengthen cooperation between universities and enterprises.
At present, the efficiency of the industry-university-research cooperation model in China still needs to be improved. The students jointly trained by enterprises and universities may not eventually enter the job. The training of students’ practical ability is not related to the evaluation mechanism of university teachers. The rights and responsibilities of school-enterprise cooperation training are not clear enough, which leads to the failure of the industry-university-research cooperation model to achieve win-win results. According to the survey, the technological progress of the integrated circuit industry has accelerated, and some professional courses have not been updated in time according to the actual engineering needs of the industry, which is quite different from the current mainstream technology. If the cooperation mode between universities and enterprises is not improved, this problem is difficult to solve.
In addition, the development of Chinese semiconductors also needs to attract overseas high-end talents.
The driving role of overseas returnees in China’s semiconductor industry is visible to the naked eye. While ensuring the training of local talents, we should also maximize the introduction of overseas talents. By attracting talents in the key technical fields of international integrated circuits, including non-Chinese people, in a larger scope, in a broader field and at a higher level, and building a multi-level and multi-level international talent team and cooperation platform, it is conducive to China’s formation of a truly systematic construction of integrated circuit talents with core technology capabilities. After all, for China’s semiconductor industry, the top priority is to be leaders.
To build competitiveness in the field of advanced semiconductor technology, the most important thing is talent. In short, talent is the green hill of China’s semiconductor industry.https://www.stoneitech.com/
What will China do in the global competition for semiconductor?
