Preparing for the quantum revolution: What is the role of higher education?

Quantum sensing, quantum networking and communication, and quantum computing have attracted significant attention recently, as these quantum technologies could offer significant advantages over existing technologies. In order to accelerate the commercialization of these quantum technologies, the workforce must be equipped with the necessary skills. Through a qualitative study of the quantum industry, in a series of interviews with 21 U.S. companies carried out in Fall 2019, we describe the types of activities being carried out in the quantum industry, profile the types of jobs that exist, and describe the skills valued across the quantum industry, as well as in each type of job. The current routes into the quantum industry are detailed, providing a picture of the current role of higher education in training the quantum workforce. Finally, we present the training and hiring challenges the quantum industry is facing and how higher education may optimize the important role it is currently playing.

Figure 1

Distribution of companies in the U.S. quantum industry. (a) The number of companies with letters of intent signed with the QED-C as of February 2020 (blue) and the number of companies interviewed (red) plotted against the types of activities. Each individual company may be involved in more than one activity, so the blue bars do not sum to equal the 87 companies in the QED-C, nor do the red bars sum to equal the 21 companies interviewed. Twenty companies in the QED-C were not categorized due to lack of information about their activities. (b) The distribution of the 21 companies interviewed based on the total number of employees in the company: Small is less than 20; medium is between 20 and 200 inclusive; large is greater than 200. The corresponding information for QED-C companies was harder to assess reliably, and, therefore, has not been included (most of the presented numbers were ascertained during the interviews).

Figure 2

Jobs within the quantum industry. (a) For all major job types. (b) For only job types identified as engineering. In both (a) and (b), each bar represents the percentage of the 21 companies interviewed that indicated they have employees in the types of jobs labeled. Jobs that were identified by only one company are not included in the analysis to avoid identification of that company.

Figure 3

The types of skills and knowledge that may be relevant for a possible course on “real-world quantum information theory.” The grayed region indicates skills that are shared across multiple courses (see Supplemental Material, Sec. S. V [20] for tables for other courses). The examples given are quotes from our interview study and are provided to give context to how the skills are useful in the quantum industry.

Figure 4

The top 13 degree and subject combinations found in the quantum industry. The percentage corresponds to the number of companies, of the 21 in our sample, reporting at least one employee with the given combination of degree and subject.

Figure 5

Jobs by degree level and degree subject. Each colored box represents the response of one company where they indicated at least one existing employee occupied the given job (denoted by the color of the box) and had studied the given subject to the degree level shown. The number of rows and columns assigned to each subject and degree is an aesthetic choice. Note, this figure does not represent the number of employees with each job. Figure 4 gives a better representation of the distribution of employees by degree level and subject. For a discussion of the limitations to the numbers in this plot see Sec. 2.