The Higher Education Sector and its Role in Research: Status and Impact of International Future-Oriented Technology Analysis

Abstract

In recent years, the higher education sector has increasingly been perceived as a key part of innovation systems at all levels of analysis, including national and regional, and through the eco-system which links large and small firms together and with their collaborators (Coombs and Georghiou 2002). The core functions of Universities, training and basic research, have been subject to external forces, some of which have already made their effects felt, while others are keenly debated as societal expectations of the sector change. These activities have been supplemented by a drive towards the Third Mission, relating Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to their socio-economic and cultural context. As with, what are in many cases longstanding institutions which are either in the public sector or rely heavily upon its funding, the sector has also felt the pressures of public sector reform in its managerial and accountability structures. Despite an experience of major changes such as massification of student access, technological change, funding models, specialisation of mission, growth of research activity and internationalisation in all respects, there is a continuing expectation that further changes are coming and hence an apparent need for Future-Oriented Technology Analysis (FTA) activity to help institutions and their stakeholders to go forward. There is a growing politicisation of the Higher Education (HE) sector manifested in ongoing reform processes at different levels, for example in the EU Member States, where Lambert and Butler (2006) have summarised the challenges faced. In Japan the transformation of National Universities to “independent administrative institutions” (agency status) has been accompanied by a wide range of further restructuring and reform. As an example of a comprehensive national review the work of the United Kingdom’s National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (Dearing Report 1997) could be cited. Commissioned to advise on the development of Higher Education on a 20-year time horizon this implicitly involved development of a future vision but also resolved a particular political problem, that of how to introduce student fees into a system that had previously been paid for entirely by government. Change has also proceeded at regional and university levels. The range of stakeholders engaged in the international (worldwide) debate over the