The direct and indirect role of higher education in industrial innovation: What should we expect?

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IN THE LAST ten years, universities have been encouraged and pressed to assume a more direct role in the generation and introduction of new technologies in primary, secondary and tertiary industries. Such encouragements and pressures are not restricted to the United Kingdom. The main explanations of these widespread attempts to change the role of universities are the sharp reductions in economic growth in the 1970s and 1980s, and the belief that--at least in information technology and biotechnology--science and technology are merging to such an extent that university scientists and engineers could now play an important and maybe a key role in industrial innovation. In the United Kingdom a reconsideration of the role of universities came rather earlier than in other West European countries. That was because the growth rate in Great Britain was persistently lower than in other countries in the European Community. Between 1950 and 1973 the annual productivity growth rate in the United Kingdom averaged 3.1 per cent compared to between 4 and 5 per cent in Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands, and between 5 and 6 per cent in France, Italy and Germany. Following the successes of "science at war" and the writings of some eminent scientists and economists, post-war governments in Britain were persuaded that greater expenditure on higher education and research would generate continuing high rates of economic growth. Although for 25 years after the war growth rates in the United Kingdom were higher than ever before, British growth rates did not match those of other mature economies, and British universities were given part of the blame. The indirect and direct contributions of British universities to the introduction and diffusion of new or improved processes and products were insufficiently large, it was argued, because their anti-industrial culture made their courses and research programmes "too academic".