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5.1 National Teaching Fellowship Scheme awards: United Kingdom
BOX 5.1
The United kingdom’s National Teaching Fellowship Scheme (NTFS) awards celebrated outstanding teaching and learning in higher education. Academics from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales were eligible to apply. Each higher education institution could nominate up to three academics.
The awards could be used by the winners for professional development in teaching and learning. In fact, the awards opened new opportunities for career development and progression. Award-winning individuals received recognition within the United kingdom and overseas because the selection process was highly competitive. Award winners also became part of a community of professionals who were passionate about higher education teaching.
Higher education institutions also benefited. According to the NTFS, its awards were “increasingly used as a model to develop and extend university-wide schemes, aiming to raise the status of teaching and instill pride in the profession and student learning” and “enable staff to cross boundaries, collaborating with colleagues in other disciplines and forging links with universities abroad.”
During its more than 19 years of existence, the NTFS offered awards to about 860 NTFS fellows from over 40 academic disciplines.
Source: The Higher Education Academy, England and Wales.
upper-middle-income and high-income economies (Altbach 2013). Sri Lanka’s innovation policy acknowledges the value of universities in promoting innovation-led growth. The older, established universities, such as the more research-oriented universities, could place a greater emphasis on research, leading to innovations and the commercialization of innovations. The funding mechanisms, the incentive framework for academic staff, and the governance systems of these universities could explicitly recognize their roles as developmental universities. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) academics could be encouraged to undertake research and innovation, leading to intellectual property such as patents and industrial designs. Social science and humanities academics could be encouraged to engage in policy-oriented research, which is useful for economic growth and social and cultural development. The latter could also result in intellectual property such as copyrights and trademarks.
Policy initiatives can promote stronger linkages between the developmental universities and industry (Guimon 2013). To this end, University-Business Linkage (UBL) Cells were recently established in universities. They can provide support services to match firms and universities for research and development activities. The UBL Cells can also engage in outreach activities to promote networking and create awareness of the benefits of collaboration between academics and industry. In addition, the UBL Cells can develop technology transfer offices and business incubators in universities. research commercialization activities can be supported through innovation grants to universities and firms for collaborative research and development projects.
A framework for promoting university-industry collaboration in the context of a mission-differentiated higher education system in which some institutions emphasize teaching excellence and other universities emphasize research and innovation is presented in table 5.3. Teaching universities in less developed provinces could seek to improve the labor market relevance of degree programs for
