ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. Higher Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1682874
On the Impact of Industrial Placements in Professional Master Education: An Empirical Study
Provisionally accepted
- 1Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
- 2University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing, Cambridge, United Kingdom
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Despite the rapid expansion of China's Professional Master of Engineering (PME) pro-grams, empirical research on the role of industrial placements remains scarce. This study addresses this gap through a mixed-methods investigation of Mechanical Engineering PME students, drawing on survey responses from 133 participants. Descriptive and thematic analyses reveal moderate to high levels of satisfaction, with communication and time management identified as key skill gains. Students also expressed strong demand for expanded internship opportunities, clearer university support, and stronger company commitment to mentorship, compensation, and working conditions. Hypothesis testing showed no significant differences in satisfaction across gender, year of study, program type, or career plans (all p > .05), though limited statistical power due to unbalanced sample sizes warrants caution in interpretation. These findings provide new insights into the understudied context of PME industrial placements in China and highlight practical directions for enhancing university–industry collaboration. The absence of demographic differences contrasts with international evidence and suggests preliminary signs of equitable benefits, but further research with larger, multi-institutional, and longitudinal samples is needed to validate and extend these conclusions.
Keywords: Professional master of engineering, Industrial placement, anova, Thematiccoding, Group differences, stem education
Received: 09 Aug 2025; Accepted: 03 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Xu, Guo, Zhang, Xia, Wang and Xiang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yuyao Guo, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
Zelin Zhang, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
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