Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education: The New Alchemy

321 Pages·2010·0.9 MB·English

by  John Harpur (auth.)

Innovation, Profit and the
Common Good in Higher
Education
The New Alchemy
John Harpur
Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher
Education
Issues in Higher Education
Titles include:
Jürgen Enders and Egbert de Weert (editors)
THE CHANGING FACE OF ACADEMIC LIFE
Analytical and Comparative Perspectives
John Harpur
INNOVATION, PROFIT AND THE COMMON GOOD IN HIGHER EDUCATION
The New Alchemy
V. Lynn Meek
HIGHER EDUCATION, RESEARCH, AND KNOWLEDGE IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC
REGION
Guy Neave
THE EUROPEAN RESEARCH UNIVERSITY
Mary Ann Danowitz Sagaria
WOMEN, UNIVERSITIES, AND CHANGE
Snejana Slantcheva
PRIVATE HIGHER EDUCATION IN POST-COMMUNIST EUROPE
Sverker Sörlin
KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY VS. KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY
Voldemar Tomusk
THE OPEN WORLD AND CLOSED SOCIETIES
Issues in Higher Education
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Innovation, Profit and the
Common Good in Higher
Education
The New Alchemy
John Harpur
National University of Ireland, Maynooth
© John Harpur 2010
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2010 978-0-230-53787-3
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First published 2010 by
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DOI 10.1057/9780230274624
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Contents
List of Tables vi
Preface vii
Series Preface ix
1 Prolegomenon 1
2 Shopping in the Aula Maxima 34
3 Atlantic Mouse Becomes Celtic Tiger 52
4 Science and Universities: Shilling for a Living? 110
5 Firing up the New Alchemy – the Furnace of Innovation 164
6 Secrets – the Future of the Future University 210
Notes 244
References 276
Index 307
v
List of Tables
3.1 Enrolments of full-time students in institutions aided 58
by the Department of Education by level and year
3.2 Third-level colleges aided by the Department of 58
Education, 2005/6
3.3 Number of full-time students in institutions aided by the 59
Department of Education, 2005/6
3.4 Numbers of students per subject area, 2000–6 103
vi
Preface
There is a saying in the Holy Land that only those who believe in miracles
are realists. With a similar sense of a daunting challenge, this work is
an examination of current higher education commercialization and inno-
vation policies. Despite their ambiguities and thin evidence base the policies
are “not for turning.” They are politically too convenient.
The higher education (HE) sector consists of a binarysystem which divides
HE into an academic or theoretical leg and an applied or vocational one.
The latter includes the various types of technical institutes knows as Hoch-
schulen in Germany, polytechnics in the UK and institutes of technology in
Ireland. Little direct comment on this category appears in the text. Firstly,
many of these institutes offer academic programs similar to the univers-
ities. Secondly, traditional binary higher education has become unstuck by
a drift in the vocational sector towards a university model, and vice versa.
Ethical questions that affect, even afflict, the universities are relevant to
the institutes. Guy Neave, commenting on the likely complexion of the
post “Bologna process” university, stresses that “Bologna” has returned an
explicit sense of vocational mission to the university sector.1 What was
once outside the university, under the banner of institutional diversity, is
now firmly inside it.
Hand in glove with these changes, certainly in Europe, has been the
consolidation of economic aspirations by national governments to vary-
ing degrees. Put simply, governments are much keener on their HE sector
playing a greater role in domestic economic prosperity. Research and develop-
ment driven by serendipity are unwelcome. Itinerant wanderings in science
and technology, and their ever-broadening cognate disciplines, are dis-
appearing. New R&D highways are more certain of their staging points.
Each research milestone inscribes both the scholarly distance traveled and
the economic points accrued. Failure to travel fast enough in both dimen-
sions presents academics with difficulties at career tollgates. Yoking research
“done” with economic potential is essentialfor continued success in research
awards and, at an institutional level, government funding.
Coupling national economic aspirations with university success has pro-
foundly affected governance, scholarship, teaching and the institutions’
public orientation. It entails many risks, including the loss of the traditional
standing enjoyed by the sector. One should not be too precious, however.
Throughout history academics engaged in commerce and politics, but the
scale and mode of these engagements post-Second World War are vastly
different. Now commitments to research commercialization, through patent-
ing, licensing and product development, increasingly reflect institutional,
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viii Preface
industrial and governmental priorities. Many associate the concentration
of such interests in postwar America with the astonishing economic growth
of that period and its resulting technoscientific global dominance. Under-
standably, the “American university” is the de facto reference model for
societies seeking to connect academic productivity with industrial needs
and economic development. A tireless search for policies to underwrite this
panacea is tackled with a resolve that saw the ancient alchemists blending all
and sundry to transform mere “stuff” into gold. The contemporary philo-
sopher’s stone is not an esoteric gewgaw, but innovation policies have similar
intent – to transform knowledge into economic growth by unifying disparate
and often conflicting resources. This faith licenses almost any action on the
fabric of HE. Once the economic “spin-off,” “spinout” or “spillover” has been
sanctioned, few strictures are considered. Superfluous are the boffin in his
garden shed, the college dropout who founded a technology empire or the
barrow-boy with a global merchandising chain. These geniuses are embarrass-
ing “nonacademic” anomalies. Faith in research innovation can explain some
success, less than policy makers admit, but enough politically to justify its
continuation. Faced with global challenges, governments are open to being
convinced that research commercialization is a viable industrial development
policy.
Assuaging the anxieties of political masters is never far from the minds of
university executives. Ireland is one of a few countries that have whole-
heartedly embraced research commercialization, believing that it will lift
the economy. From being bit players providing skills for the economy, the
universities have been elevated to national strategic importance in the
quest for economic growth. Naturally, comments on Irish policies pepper
the text. Ironically, as this work was in the final furlong, the Celtic Tiger
collapsed, smothered under a mountain of real estate debt.
Guy Neave afforded me the opportunity to undertake this work. I am enor-
mously grateful to him and for the patience of the staff at Palgrave Macmillan.
Professor Liam Downey gave me a perspective on Irish HE. I picked over some
early ideas on innovation with Professor Finbarr Bradley. The human side
of academia was laid bare in my trade union work, particularly as a vice
president of the Irish Federation of University Teachers between 2002 and
2006. My experiences while acting as Head of the Computer Science prompted
several conclusions, and an acknowledgment is due to Professor John Hughes,
President of NUI Maynooth. Responsibility for errors is solely mine. Email
comments to [email protected]
JOHNHARPUR
Series Preface
Little in higher education has not undergone radical change in the course
of the past quarter century though one thing remains constant. This con-
stant is the general consensus of governments, international organizations
and intergovernmental agencies, as well as rapidly coalescing continent-wide
trading blocs, that the success of their particular agendas and the vision they
entertain of the world as they believe it ought to be, passes through education
in general and higher education very specifically.
Higher education has become the central instrument for boosting national
efficiency. It is seen as a sensitive and indispensable pointer to the place of
individual nations in the global economy. Its ability to constantly adapt is
anxiously scrutinized, weighed in the balance and that with increasing fre-
quency and rigor. Never have so many agencies and interests, both public and
private, been engaged in ascertaining and interpreting the trends, feats, short-
comings, and performance of higher education as they are today. And rarely
have the consequences of their judgement been so influential upon the way
interests within the nation, be they public or private, perceive higher edu-
cation itself. Indeed, across different nations, such bodies play a crucial role in
determining the support higher education may expect from public opinion.
At the very least, higher education is seen either as maintaining the place
the nation thinks it ought to have in the burgeoning knowledge society or
knowledge economy. Or, on a less optimistic note, as confirming the fears
that some anticipate of “national slippage” from a once confident place in
the sun to a less enviable one in that constantly changing strife involved in
the “delivery of educational services” and the “attractiveness” of a country’s
higher education system at home and abroad.
Higher education is a highly dynamic system. And such dynamism is easily
represented. The number of higher education establishments worldwide
grows yearly. And while not all are of university level, still the “density” of the
higher education infrastructure worldwide has grown remarkably in the past
decade. In 1993, the world stock of university-level institutions of higher edu-
cation stood in the region of over 4000. Ten years on, the corresponding
figure has doubled to 8100 – a dramatic pointer to higher education’s place in
the wider process of globalization.
As the pace of internationalization speeds up, as systems of higher edu-
cation are drawn more deeply into the swirling transnational traffic of ideas,
applications, training, personnel, students and experiences, so the series Issues
in Higher Education brings the best of timely, relevant and focused scholar-
ship from around the world to address matters of central concern to both
ix