I&#x27;m not in academia per se, but (in Germany) just getting to do my (equivalent of a) Master&#x27;s thesis at a company (still with a supervisor at university) was hard enough - because sometimes they just seem to search for people to do work based on their topic suggestions and if you want to do something that&#x27;s a little off the tracks... Let&#x27;s just say there were no real arguments, mostly just &quot;we don&#x27;t like companies that are not university spin-offs and oh shock that company might reuse that thesis to advertise their exploits instead of granting the kudos to the university.<p>But maybe that&#x27;s not the general case, but as someone coming from the tech sector to get a degree (and not the other way round) this sounds all too similar :)