China’s top defence university is piloting a scheme that allows PhD students to graduate with a product or design instead of a thesis in an effort to solve “bottleneck” engineering problems amid the tech race with the United States.

Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT) – dubbed one of China’s “Seven Sons of National Defence” because of its contributions to defence research and technology – is exploring new approaches to fostering engineers. These include removing traditional academic papers as a mandatory degree requirement, according to a report by the China Science Daily last week.

In September, Wei Lianfeng, an engineer-turned-doctoral candidate, became the university’s first PhD student to successfully pass his oral defence and obtain his degree based solely on practical results.

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