It’s Time to Accept Higher Education’s Growing Role in the Economy

August 20, 2013, 11:12 am

By Nigel Thrift

Higher education is becoming more and more integral to national economies, especially as universities find new ways to work together.

I began thinking about their expanding roles after reading Finches of Mars, the latest book by the British science-fiction author Brian Aldiss. While it is not exactly a literary triumph, what is interesting about the book is that it posits that in the near future an international association of universities will have jointly colonized Mars. Instead of the U.N., what Aldiss calls the U.U. will make its mark.

An interuniversity expedition to Mars, it has to be said, seems unlikely anytime soon. But it does prompt some interesting thoughts about collaboration, and in particular about higher education’s economic role.

In the past, universities have often been seen as flagships for national projects of renewal, or at least as signposts of economic progress. They are no longer thought of, if they ever were, as “ivory towers” (a phrase beautifully unpacked recently by Steven Shapin).

But now we seem to be reaching another stage in this story: Universities are increasingly coming together, like the U.U., as concerted agents of economic growth. Indeed, in a period of grinding austerity in so many countries, it would be impossible to argue that universities don’t have a responsibility, even a duty, to be doing precisely that.

Universities are now often perceived as key economic actors in urban and regional development (as a British government report argues). They act as strategic economic hunter-gatherers through efforts like science parks. They act as incubators of small and medium-sized businesses, and they operate their own commercial companies.

In countries like Britain, universities are one of the only means of producing applied research and innovation when businesses have come to regard research as a cost rather than an investment. Though it may not be how they all necessarily see their role, universities are now the chief supplier of skilled labor for the labor market. In turn, they employ many people—in many cities they are among the largest employers. Consequently they amount to a significant industrial sector.

As they have grown in scale and affect more aspects of the economy, so too have universities done more to act together on specific national and international economic goals, instead of behaving like economic islands with only loose links to one another.

Despite books like Elizabeth Popp Berman’s Creating the Market University, academic staff and students still often think in stereotypes when discussing the economic role of higher education. As a result, their critiques of universities’ engagement with the economy can appear out of touch with what has actually happened.

Some would argue for a return to the days when a university’s range of activities could revolve solely around teaching and research. But most universities for some time now have routinely encompassed a much wider range of ventures. Some, even in the midst of austerity measures, argue for more public funds to be diverted to universities on the most idealistic of grounds—grounds with which I have considerable sympathy, but which, sad to say, don’t resonate with politicians or the general population.

So are we seeing the unwinding of the university as it has been generally understood, and its replacement by “corporatized” behemoths?

I am sure the answer is no. Still, it’s worth discussing what can be done to ensure that universities continue to serve a wider public good. There are, I think, four approaches. One is immunization. A very few universities have endowments large enough that they can cut themselves off, to some extent, from wider economic currents.

The second is partition. Perhaps a good way of balancing economic imperatives and traditional academic imperatives is to concentrate economic activity in select parts of the university.

The third is to instigate a form of economic citizenship alongside the usual forms of academic citizenship.

And the fourth is to seek an accommodation that can suit all partners: academic, economic, or otherwise. In the end, that is probably the only route that will be available to most universities. As those who run these organizations know all too well, there will be no simple answers.

Reinventing the university deserves a high priority. But we have to start from what exists, not from what we want to exist.