HIGHER EDUCATION IN HIGH-TECH INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT
|
259
training in emerging fields of science. They can provide institutional support for start-ups, although these are unlikely to be characterized as science based. Relevant research universities are characterized by their ability to be more directly involved in commercialization of scientific knowledge. These universities can also provide high-level postgraduate training in emerging fields to supply key skills for emerging industry. They tend to develop and attract appropriate ecosystems (such as venture capital and professional support services) for science-based start-ups over time. Industrial demand for the contributions of universities is likely to become more stringent. Global competitive pressures will demand constant upgrading and redefinition of industry’s competitive advantage. Universities will need to provide “higherorder” contributions, and to do so, they will need to move along at least one of the three dimensions. A good supply of cheap generic scientists and engineers may have been enough to start high-tech industry yesterday, but the growth of such industry will lead to higher wages, which in turn will demand redefinition of its competitive advantage. By enhancing responsiveness, basic research orientation, or selectivity, the power of university support to industry can be strengthened. The paper has also proposed that moving universities along any of the dimensions requires nontrivial effort. Governments can be an important influence in orienting and guiding institutional development, in subtle or not so subtle ways. Responsiveness does not appear to emerge naturally; in all the cases examined, some specific interventions had occurred to instill the culture of responsiveness, often at the time of founding, and often with government intervention. There is no simple recipe for encouraging institutions to become responsive. The demand to which institutions must be sensitive is often local, intangible, and ill defined. Governments may require that institutions provide new educational programs or expand existing ones, but simply following a top-down requirement does not make an institution responsive. The Korean government’s central requirement of maintaining a quota for engineering programs may not have encouraged responsiveness. Indeed, it is possible that the more frequently a government interferes through regulations or even through financial incentives, the less institutions learn to be creative and strategic about what they do. In Ireland and Finland new groups of institutions were established by government from scratch in order to build responsiveness into the system. Peer pressures and academic norms tend to push universities to become nonresponsive over time—toward becoming basic research universities or academically oriented teaching institutions. On the whole, there appear to be more cases in which institutions developed responsiveness first and then evolved toward a fundamental science orientation than vice versa. (A good example is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; see Etzkowitz 2002.) It is probably easier to develop in that order than the other way around. Today, economic responsiveness on the part of universities has become a global mantra. The last decade has seen an ever-increasing number of government policies seeking to push universities to develop such a dimension, and this has led to changes in academic values. For instance, it would be unusual to meet an academic in any OECD country who would contest the need for a university to be economically relevant. Notwithstanding this dynamic change, most institutions have a long way to