I feel like engineering and graduate education are linked in the US too. I've worked for many large companies where staff were also Ph.D students using their w

I feel like engineering and graduate education are linked in the US too. I've worked for many large companies where staff were also Ph.D students using their work as their thesis. Granted, every one of these companies were European, and I worked in R&D labs. But I suspect this is reasonably common in engineering.