Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs
Associate Professor Tim Turpin
Mr David Aylward
Dr. Sam Garrett-Jones
The Centre for Research Policy
University of Wollongong
Professor Ron Johnston
Australian Centre for Innovation and International Competitiveness
December 1996
96/17
Evaluations and Investigations Program
Higher Education Division ©
Commonwealth of Australia 1996
ISBN 0 644 47311 8
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concerning reproduction and rights should be addressed to the manager, Commonwealth
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This report is funded under the Evaluations and Investigations Program of
the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.
The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views
of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs.
1. Cooperation Between Universities and Industry in Australia
2. The Australian Industry and University Collaborative Environment
3. The Current Status of Australian Industry and University Cooperation
4. Motivations, Constraints and Outcomes
Case Studies
Appendices
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The rapid growth in the economies of the Pacific Rim and resulting shortages of human resources in areas of key demand have led to the need for universities to reconsider their role as suppliers of the skilled personnel required to sustain continued economic growth. A key element of the transformation of the higher education sector in Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member countries is recognised to be cooperation between higher education institutions and business enterprises.
This recognition has led the APEC Working Group on Human Resource Development to instigate a series of studies on the modalities of university-industry cooperation in a number of member countries, leading to an international workshop in Bangkok in September 1996. The current report, prepared by a research team from the Centre for Research Policy (CRP), University of Wollongong (a partner in the Australian APEC Studies Centre), and the Australian Centre for Innovation and International Competitiveness (ACIIC), Sydney, is Australia's contribution to that project. The study was funded through the Evaluations and Investigations Program of the Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DEETYA).
APEC's brief for the project draws attention to the different types of cooperative activities or 'modalities' through which cooperation occurs; namely, training, research and development, and consulting, and the principal delivery mechanisms involved, such as training centres, consulting units, research laboratories/institutes, cooperative and interdisciplinary research centres, science parks and incubators, and technology councils (that is, intersectoral coordination and advisory forums). This is an important starting point in generating a comparative regional perspective; however, the present report extends that framework to ensure that the unique features of the Australian situation are not obscured.
Australia has a long and evolutionary history of the development of university-industry cooperative linkages. New forms of university-industry organisation are emerging to fulfil the demands for managers of the knowledge-based systems that integrate industrial, scientific and commercial outcomes. The APEC project recognises that other member countries are in a nascent stage of the development of university-industry links and are in a position to benefit from the experience of countries like Australia. The report and its conclusions are intended to assist the development of policies supporting university-industry links in APEC-member countries and defining fruitful areas of collaboration between countries.
Three detailed case studies were carried out to illustrate the depth and breadth of university-industry links in Australia. We thank our respondents in BHP, the wine and grape industry and Telstra for their willing and valuable contributions to the case studies.
In preparing the report, the project team was ably supported by an Advisory Team comprising:
We are very much indebted to them for their helpful comments and suggestions during the course of the study.
We also thank our colleagues in other APEC countries who were involved in the project and provided stimulating comments and ideas at a preliminary workshop in Bangkok in April this year. In particular we thank our colleagues in Thailand, Dr Peter Brimble and Dr Chatri Sripaipan who developed the study and the preliminary analytical framework and the team from the Thailand Ministry of University Affairs who organised and coordinated the overall regional study.
This Australian study was a team effort and we would like to thank all the
staff from the Centre for Research Policy and the Australian Centre for
Innovation and International Competitiveness who contributed time and ideas
and provided such a stimulating research environment. Finally, we gratefully
acknowledge the contribution of Ms Priscilla Kendall for her skill and patience
in producing this report. Responsibility for the data and conclusions presented
in the report remains with the project team.
Associate Professor Tim Turpin
Director, Centre for Research Policy
August 1996
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Conclusions and Policy Implications
This report, prepared for the APEC Working Group on Human Resource Development, reviews the current status and increasing significance of 'knowledge-based' cooperative arrangements between universities and industry in Australia. It draws upon recent studies and on new case studies in three diverse industries: steel processing and products, grape and wine production and telecommunications.
The report finds that industry-university links in Australia:
There is strong international evidence that transfers between academic research and industry commercialisation of research are led by the movement of people and the establishment of broad-ranging personal networks. The Australian case studies in this report, reflect this pattern of 'informal' cooperation. But at the same time there is evidence of more formal cooperative arrangements-not supplanting informal arrangements but rather dependent on them. Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs) are currently the most significant formal structure for collaborative research and research training in Australia.
Industry-university research links are often developed in the Australian context through the activities of intermediaries-groups such as advisory bodies, funding bodies or joint committees for establishing future research directions and priorities which effectively combine industry, university and government interests. Examples from the case studies are the Grape and Wine Research and Development Corporation and the Australian Wine Research Institute.
The report emphasises the importance of developing a balance between project-based funding and longer term cooperative mechanisms such as research centres. Centre-based programs, although creating new challenges for traditional models of university administration, are building links between universities and industry over long time frames. Project grants, on the other hand, are more short-term and oriented to the support of research cooperation between individual researchers across the two sectors. Successful examples include the 'industry collaborative' grants and scholarships funded by the Australian Research Council.
In education and training the forms of cooperation between universities and industry can be divided into two categories-'traditional' and 'new'. Cooperation in the traditional mode is typically associated with the professions (such as medicine, law, engineering and nursing) where course content and delivery is to a significant extent set by the governing body of the profession, and there are monitoring and review procedures to ensure that these standards are maintained. Also within the traditional form, there has been a growth in cooperative programs which provide for substantial work experience as a component of a course, in addition to the more common vacation work experience pattern. These traditional forms of cooperation have generally remained independent of the practices and culture of either universities or firms. They may be mediated through industry bodies such as, in one case study, the Australian Council of Viticulture.
New forms of cooperation are more far-reaching, a response to industry's call for the delivery of more 'enterprise-based' university training, for example from major Australian companies like Elders and BHP. In many cases, they represent a substantial transformation in the missions of universities, the objectives and importance of education in company planning, and in the nature of the relationship between the two players. They involve a much higher level of joint ownership, with course design, delivery, student assessment and overall evaluation being the product of a shared initiative involving committed staff from both sectors.
There is also evidence that cooperation in education and training is becoming more closely linked with research support through mechanisms such as Cooperative Research Centres, Key Centres of Teaching and Research and Advanced Engineering Centres.
In Australia, a wide range of consulting and other services are provided by universities for industry clients. Such activities range from providing technical or policy advice through to testing and even product development. Personal networks provide the most important mechanism for establishing these sorts of cooperative arrangements.
Through the 1980s most Australian universities established 'commercial arms' or 'consulting companies' to manage these sorts of cooperative links and to assist academics with the commercialisation of their technologies. A large proportion of the activities carried out through these enterprises comprises consulting and/or service activities.
Some features of university-industry cooperation are particular to Australia. Notable is the strong role played by the major government research agency CSIRO as a third arm of public sector-industry collaboration in research and research training. Co-location of cooperation, such as in science parks or technology incubators, appears less significant in Australia than in some other countries.
Conclusions and Policy Implications
Both personal networks and 'consulting companies' enable cooperation to continue independently of the general mission of the universities and of industrial enterprises involved. This separation between the sectors has often produced major barriers to further cooperation because it fails to allow any meaningful integration of expectations, objectives or rewards. Industry relationships have now evolved to the extent that they are now seen as part of the 'core business' of the university. The management task ahead appears to be to foster an even balance between the expectations and resource demands on each sector. Continuing barriers to cooperation are reflected in disputes over intellectual property rights, 'knowledge culture', timeliness and commercial focus.
The task for government agencies and university managers is to recognise the need to provide and use a wide range of possible alternatives for supporting cooperative links with industrial enterprises. Large, technology-oriented companies like BHP and Telstra are involved in many forms of cooperation and sponsorship for research and training. The diversity of government schemes associated with the promotion of university-industry cooperation reflects the actual complexity of networks.
With the growing global activities of firms, science and education, there is a need to consider the development of international or regional 'networked' knowledge systems. The report suggests two areas where future scientific and industrial cooperation between APEC economies may be improved through:
Finally, the report provides ample evidence of a considerable blurring between the boundaries of teaching, research and consulting. There is a good case within APEC for giving a high priority to regional technology management programs that seek to integrate, rather than differentiate, training, science and business objectives.