La reconfiguration des universités selon l'OCDE

Abstract

Reconfiguring the universities according to the OECD. Knowledge-based economy and innovation policy Since the publication in 1996 of an OECD report entitled "The Knowledge-Based Economy", the analytical framework set forth in this report has generally been standardized in the discourse of international organizations and public authorities. Closely associated with the notion of the "new economy", this theory has gradually become the paradigm for OECD countries' public policy and more particularly for their "innovation policies". The performative character this conceptual framework is part of an international strategy to reconfigure the place of universities in the context the globalization of the production, diffusion and utilization of knowledge. The "new knowledge-production theory" proclaims (despite the ample disagreements it has sparked) that the standardization of "national systems of innovation" (linking firms, universities and governments) is a necessity: it would enable stabilization of the job market through education and adequate training of the "highly qualified personnel" evermore indispensable to the economic growth of industrialized countries. The analysis of universities proposed by the OECD is all too often limited to accounting for a small number of "exemplary practices" serving to showcase public authorities' "innovation policies". But this is done without the consequences of these "institutional arrangements" (lifelong learning, university-business partnerships, university entrepreneurship, etc.) having been examined with the attention required by such a redefinition of the role of higher education.