Universities told to look out from their ivory towers

The European Commission called for the higher education sector to have greater interaction with the wider economy, proposing new initiatives to encourage this, including the development of European Industrial Doctorates and the creation of partnerships between universities and companies to design courses, in its plan for reforming the sector published on Tuesday (20 September).

The strategy, “Supporting growth and jobs – an agenda for the modernisation of Europe's higher education systems,” says reaching the EU’s target of investing 3 per cent of GDP in research is not just about putting more money into R&D, it will also need bodies with the skills to fill an estimated one million new research jobs.

Currently, the EU lags behind in the share of researchers in the total labour force at six per 100, compared to nine in the US and eleven in Japan. And while 35 per cent of all jobs in the EU will require high-level qualifications by 2020, only 26 per cent of the workforce currently has a higher education qualification.

Both public and private sector employers increasingly report mismatches and difficulties in finding the right skills and the Commission says this calls for higher education institutes to work with industry in increasing the supply of doctoral candidates and equipping the existing workforce with research skills.

It also means that universities need to commit to making the ‘knowledge triangle’ work, by encouraging new types of co-operation with external research organisations and business. At present, “The capacity of higher education institutions to integrate research results and innovative practice into the educational offer, and to exploit the potential for marketable products and services, remains weak,” says the Commission.

The strategy chimes with the views of the Science|Business Innovation Board, which last month called for higher education to align more closely with industry.

EU student loans

The Commission also aims to increase the mobility of students, researchers and staff, through measures such as a student loan guarantee facility to enable students to study for a Master’s degree in another EU country, and support for researchers to move from one member state to another.

Another strand of the wide-ranging strategy will promote the EU as a destination for top students and researchers from around the world, with visa rules amended to make it easier to undertake short stays.

The plan, “Puts higher education at the centre of Europe’s strategy for growth and jobs,” said European Commissioner for Education, Androulla Vassiliou, said as she unveiled the proposals.

The Commission is lining up Education, Training and Youth for one of the biggest budget increases in the next financial period from 2014-2020, proposing a 73 per cent rise to €15.2 billion over seven years. This week’s strategy starts to flesh out where the Commission sees its priorities in spending that money. Vassiliou said that a more detailed plan setting out how much money each programme will get, will be adopted on November 23.

The European Union has approximately 4,000 universities and more than 19 million students.  The number of institutions and of students has gone up over recent years but funding, governance structures and curricula have often failed to keep pace. As a result, “Higher education is not performing well enough to provide Europe with enough people with the right kinds of skills to create jobs and growth,” the Commission says.

Lagging in league tables

Meanwhile, worldwide, Europe’s competitors, especially the emerging economies, are rapidly increasing their investment in higher education. As a result, with some notable exceptions, Europe finds its higher education institutions are lagging in international league tables.

For instance, only around 200 of Europe's 4,000 higher education institutions are included in the top 500, and only 3 in the top 20, of the latest Academic Ranking of World Universities. And there has been no real improvement over the past years.

As one riposte, the Commission is to launch U-Multirank, its performance-based ranking and information tool for profiling higher education institutions. This is intended to improve transparency, moving beyond the focus current league tables put on research as the sole measure of excellence and allowing users to create individualised rankings based on a range of different criteria. The Commission says this will inform choice and decision-making by all higher education stakeholders.

Responsibility for higher education lies at member state level, and many EU countries are prioritising the modernisation of their universities. Despite such improvements, the Commission says the potential of European higher education institutions to contribute to Europe's prosperity and fulfil their wider role in society remains underexploited. This is the reason why the Europe 2020 strategy has set a target for 40 per cent of Europe's young people to have a higher education qualification by the end of this decade.

Some things are in its gift, and the Commission is aiming to nearly double the number of young people, teachers and researchers who get EU grants for study and training abroad, from 400,000 per year now to almost 800,000 in future.

The Commission is also proposing European Industrial Doctorates and Doctoral Schools, which according to Vassiliou will, “Establish a greater role for business in doctoral training and equip researchers with the business flair that turns research into a commercial proposition.”

New partnerships, or “Knowledge Alliances” that bring together industry and universities to design and develop new courses will also get Commission funding after pilot projects delivered promising results.

The Erasmus Master’s Degree Mobility scheme, due to launch in 2014, will be supported through a European student loan guarantee facility of around €100 million a year, allowing students to study in another member state.

For researchers, the Commission said it will put its weight behind the European Framework for Research Careers to help researchers identify job offers, and employers to find suitable candidates. Measures to remove obstacles to researcher mobility and cross-border cooperation will be supported by the European Research Area framework to be presented early next year.

Attempts to make the EU more attractive to talented students and researchers from non-EU countries will include fully implementing existing Directives on students and researchers and the EU Visa Code. “Although some member states are a very attractive study destination, the EU as a whole needs to attract the best students and researchers if it is to compete with the US,” the Commission said.