Academic vs. industry background

How much of each institution’s faculty has worked outside academia — a private-sector position or a founder/executive role — from self-reported ORCID career histories. A signal of how practice-connected a faculty is.

Georgia Tech

856 faculty with an ORCID CV

Any industry role

25%

Founder / executive

22%

UGA

993 faculty with an ORCID CV

Any industry role

21%

Founder / executive

22%

Georgia State

500 faculty with an ORCID CV

Any industry role

17%

Founder / executive

19%

Kennesaw State

330 faculty with an ORCID CV

Any industry role

24%

Founder / executive

25%

By the numbers

Institution	Faculty (ORCID CV)	Any industry	Founder / exec	Postdoc history
Georgia Tech	856	25% · 214	22% · 189	13% · 115
UGA	993	21% · 205	22% · 215	11% · 111
Georgia State	500	17% · 83	19% · 95	7% · 36
Kennesaw State	330	24% · 78	25% · 84	10% · 34

A floor, not a census

This counts only faculty who have a matched ORCID record with employment history, attributed to their institution by their salary organization. It is a lower bound: ORCID is self-reported and academics routinely omit private-sector and founder roles (a known GT founder listed none), and LinkedIn — where those roles live — is off-limits by its terms. So the true industry/founder share is higher than shown, and the gap between institutions partly reflects differing ORCID-completion habits, not just real background. Treat these as a directional floor, not a measurement.

“Any industry role” = at least one non-academic employer in the ORCID history; “founder / executive” = a role whose title indicates founding or C-suite leadership. University-assigned patents (Milestone 11) confirm invention but not company affiliation, so they don’t fill this gap.