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		‘Creative Associations in Special Places’: Enhancing the Partnership Role of Universities in Building Competitive Regional Economies
		98/4   Steve Garlick Southern Cross Regional Research Institute Southern Cross University   April 1998
		Evaluations and Investigations Program Higher Education Division Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs

©Commonwealth of Australia 1998

ISBN 0 642 23759 X

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This report is funded under the Evaluation and Investigations Programme 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.

Executive Summary

This project has investigated the relationship between universities in Australia and their regional communities from an economic development perspective.

The project is stimulated by the confluence of three trends:

1. the increasing location of universities in regional areas throughout Australia;
2. the increasing requirement for regional communities to pursue their own initiatives to maintain the viability of their ‘sense of place’ and add more to the competitiveness of the nation in the context of their economic positioning in a rapidly changing global economy; and
3. the increasing requirement for universities to be more entrepreneurial, corporately efficient and financially independent.

Information for the study was obtained from a number of sources, the two main sources being a comprehensive survey of the management aspects of university location decisions and their connections with the regional community and six facilitated university/regional community workshops.

The project identifies a range of policy and other actions to enhance the economic relationship between universities and their regional communities and identifies a number of examples of good practice which universities and their communities may wish to consider in their management planning.

The main conclusions of the investigation are:

• there is an increasing will on the part of universities and their regional communities for closer economic relationships that go to the heart of the contribution the university can make via its teaching, research, leadership, information and networking and other strengths;
• universities can make a far more substantial contribution to the economic development needs and viability of regional communities beyond that of being a simple employer and local purchaser, and can contribute more to university and national objectives, by being more assertive in the way they involve themselves with the economics of the region they are located in;
• while there is evidence of good practice in a number of universities in terms of their economic connections with the regional community at a project level, there is at present no consistent or concerted effort on a whole-of-organisation and whole-of-community basis; and
• there are a number of impediments at a government policy, university management and at a community level which are holding back the strengthening of these relations.

The study makes recommendations for government, universities and communities.

Changes are recommended to the formula criteria that underpin university operating grant funding and changes to specific-purpose and grant programs targeted at universities or to enhancing general economic competitiveness for the Commonwealth to take more explicit account of the economic potential of regional communities and the university’s role in fostering this. In this regard, the Commonwealth should also examine how universities, in association with their regional communities, can play a role in ensuring the integrated delivery of government projects and programs to best meet the identified economic development priorities of different regional areas.

It is also recommended that there be a continuation and expansion of some of the university/community workshop discussion initiatives begun in this study to enhance the relationship between universities and their regional economies in more strategic and practical ways on a wider front and provide support for learning to occur between universities on a national basis in relation to the initiatives they have put in place with their regional communities.

At the university level, it is recommended that there be management attention across a number of strategic, human resource, organisational design, access, collaboration, communication, leadership, promotion and other areas so as to make more of the growing interest in fostering strong and meaningful relations in an economic development sense with the local regional economy.

At the community level, there needs to be more efforts at better articulating the economic development requirements in which they expect the local university to collaborate with them on.

Finally, it is suggested that this study should be seen as a starting point for other investigations that seek to explore ways in which universities may contribute to and benefit from stronger economic development associations with the regional communities they are located in.

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