Engaging Universities and Regions:

Knowledge Contributions to Regional Economic Development in Australia

Executive summary

The confluence of issues associated with the emergence and growth of the global, local and knowledge-based economies has created a new agenda for policy makers, higher education institution managers and regional leaders to consider. If pursued, stronger engagement between universities and the regions they are located in has the potential to generate national, regional and institutional returns across a wide spectrum of societal objectives.

To date, the international research into this new area has focused predominantly on describing engagement through various case study situations. While useful in highlighting the possibilities and impediments associated with engagement, these approaches are not sufficient to influence more broadly applicable resource allocation decision-making behaviour by institutional or regional actors and agencies.

The first monograph, ‘Creative associations in special places': Enhancing the partnership role of universities in building competitive regional economies, published in 1998 through the EIP series, introduced the university-region engagement agenda in the Australian context. It explored in a general way some of the issues for universities, regional communities and government policy from an economic development perspective.

This second volume explores the university-region engagement agenda in more detail. The analysis is at the campus level, rather than the whole of institution level, because this is where engagement is more noticeable and meaningful for the various actors and agencies involved.

The research makes advances on two fronts. First, it focuses on the human capital, social capital and employment and economic project priority outcomes of engagement. Second, it decomposes the structural and operational determinants of engagement across a range of university and regional situations.

There are more than 150 university campuses throughout Australia in a range of different institutional situations and regional settings engaging in a range of different ways. The study is based on a number of surveys of sixteen university campuses and the 15 regions in which they are located that are selected to ensure structural diversity is fully represented. A range of other spatial and institutional data is also used.

A typology of universities and regions is established according to structural characteristics using cluster analysis and a framework to determine relative degrees of engagement is established. Four university-region engagement situations are identified based on structural data to assist with the analysis of outcomes and determinants later in the report.

High growth region and strong campus engagement;
High growth region and weak campus engagement;
Low growth region and strong campus engagement; and
Low growth region and weak campus engagement.

Human capital outcomes through university campus-region engagement are explored by linking undergraduate and graduate student flows (including and excluding external students) for each campus and region using postcode data. Four categories of university campus and region human capital engagement are identified.

Strong university campus and closed region situation. This is a highly engaged situation where there is a tight relationship between the regional origin of undergraduate students and the regional workplace destination of graduates for the local campus. These may be high or low growth regions, however the campus is structurally strong.
Strong university campus and open region situation, where the region's campus is a strong attractor of local undergraduate students but graduate students working in the region are not dependent on the local university campus and there is strong in-migration of graduates from other campuses. These are high growth structure regions.
Weak university campus and closed region situation, where a relatively low proportion of campus undergraduate supply come from the local region but where graduates of the local campus tend to remain in the region for work purposes. These may be high growth regions, however the campus is usually not structurally strong.
Weak university and open region situation. This is a weak engagement situation where the campus not only attracts a low proportion of its undergraduates from the local region but where also a low proportion of graduate students of the campus remain in the local region for work purposes. These are generally low growth regions and structurally weak campuses.

While there is a small degree of category swapping when external and non-external students are examined, structural factors appear to be the main driving factor in determining patterns of human resource engagement by campuses at the regional level. High growth regions and campuses with strong structural relationships appear to influence strong human resource engagement while low growth regions and campuses with weak structural connections appear to generate weak human resource engagement.

A number of campuses and regions are taking specific initiatives to strengthen human resource outcomes in their areas, either to foster greater undergraduate intake from the local region or retain graduates in the region, and these are highlighted.

The realisation of regional economic development priorities for employment, exports and investment growth through university campus engagement are examined at three levels of convergence between campus and regional community economic development priorities.

At the highest level of engagement, universities connect in a strategic, whole-of-institution way by providing an on-the-ground package of leadership, infrastructure, collaboration and multi-disciplinary research and teaching targeted at areas of regionally identified economic development priority that are consistent with campus priorities.

At the middle level of engagement, regional economic development priority achievement engagement is more ad-hoc in focus, project-specific in implementation, staff member-specific and enterprise-specific in targeting. At the lowest level of engagement for the achievement of regional economic development priorities, there is no direct connection between the campus' knowledge-based program, infrastructure and leadership and the articulated priorities of the region.

Degrees of engagement in this area were disappointing with all but one campus and region falling into the second and third levels of engagement. Internal operation and performance factors in the university and the region appear to be the main determinants of these outcomes rather than university or regional structural factors.

In the case of regions, there may not have been a clearly articulated set of priority economic development areas, the leadership group may be either poorly organised, non-existent or leadership may not be clear among a number of competing or overlapping groups. In the case of campuses, there appeared to be only a focus on regional initiatives where there was the real prospect of grant monies being available and there was no organised approach by campus/institutional leadership to strengthen the strategic response of the university toward regional priorities.

Again, a number of regions and campuses were putting in place specific initiatives to strengthen engagement in this area and these are described.

Social capital was seen as embodying a broad range of engagement initiatives that drew on the skills, information, leadership, infrastructure and civic attitude of the university campus in the region.

Four broad areas, and a range of indicators, were used to explore degrees of social capital engagement and their determinants. They include:

Leadership and strategic focus. This includes whether there is a spatial dimension to the legislative underpinning of the university and campus, the process employed in framing the strategic plan, reasons behind the campus location, and campus management initiatives and mechanisms designed to strengthen engagement and leadership initiatives.
Knowledge enhancing programs. This involves the tailoring and targeting of teaching and research to regional priorities.
Information and promotion. This involves the extent to which the campus' marketing and promotion are part of similar programs within the community. It also includes the extent to which the campus undertakes ‘pro-bono’ work on behalf of the regional community, whether the campus engages in a ‘buy-local’ purchasing program, and whether the campus provides information and analysis support for the region.
Infrastructure support for economic development such as through industrial development centres, science and technology parks and incubators, laboratories, hospitals/clinics, internet services and so on.

High social capital engagement is where a university campus and its region score against all of the indicators of social capital engagement. A medium level of social capital engagement is where the campus and the region scores against most indicators and low level engagement is where only a few indicators are scored against.

The results show that campus structural factors rather than either regional structural factors or operational factors appear to be most significant in determining social capital engagement. There are several exceptions to this where local operational determinants have strengthened engagement in this area.

Again, specific initiatives by regions and campuses to strengthen their social capital engagement outcomes are reported.

Enablers and impediments to greater operational engagement by regional communities and universities campuses are also identified in the study. They occur at three levels.

At the university campus level, enablers and impediments are explored through a range of management (human resources, strategic and financial management) and organisation design indicators.

At the regional community level, enablers and impediments are explored in terms of leadership, organisation arrangements, strategic planning processes and the achievement of project milestones.

At the government level, while there has been some recent policy and program changes to increase spatial aspects of higher education, these are still of a peripheral nature. There is a need to incorporate spatial aspects as part of the mainstream higher education funding and to develop a comprehensive spatial policy that recognises the role of higher education institutions in a knowledge-enhancing context.

The report concludes by emphasising the importance for institutional managers, regional leaders and policy and program managers of taking into account the structural and operational circumstances of higher education institutions and their regions when designing and implementing initiatives to generate economic development outcomes through engagement strategies.

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