GLOBAL: Economic crisis speeded up innovation

The economic crisis has accelerated the trends towards university and college mergers, the search for new sources of income and collaboration agreements such as shared services, according to speakers at the Reinventing Higher Education conference held at IE University in Madrid on 17-18 October.

The conference, co-hosted by IE University and The Chronicle of Higher Education, gathered together university administrators, academics and students, policy-makers, entrepreneurs and media representatives to discuss "the current status and future evolution of higher education" and debate new directions for research, learning, and university governance and management.

Nigel Thrift, vice-chancellor of the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom, said: "All sorts of things have been revved into top gear."

For example, Warwick University has found a new source of income by collaborating with Jaguar Land Rover to locate the vehicle manufacturer's advanced research group at the university's renowned WMG (formerly Warwick Manufacturing Group) operation. "There are 170 Jaguar Land Rover employees on campus, and we are now designing cars," Thrift said.

In an innovative collaboration, it has also established a successful temping agency for use by students, and then franchised this idea to other universities. "Shared services do not produce much money but they can produce better quality," said Thrift.

Thomas Estermann, head of governance, autonomy and funding at the European University Association, which has 850 member universities, said: "Countries like Greece, Italy and Ireland have experienced up to 30% cuts in public funding and this has speeded up mergers and collaboration at system level."

He said the crisis had resulted in more performance-based funding in all areas, and there were more initiatives that fostered excellence across European countries, such as Germany's 'excellence initiative', which is now also in France and Spain.

In Russia, the conference heard that one key problem had been the sharp fall in the number of school students, resulting in a drop from one million to 600,000 graduates in the past five years.

Vladimir Mau, rector of the Russian Presidential Academy, said his institution, which has 160,000 full-time students, had responded by developing customised education programmes that, for example, encourage children to bring their parents into the academy to study.

In another pioneering programme the academy runs a management course for priests of all denominations, "because they have to know how to rebuild their churches", said Mau. In fact, 200 rooms in a hotel were recently booked to accommodate the priests during a course that will address funding, economic and accounting issues.

In response to a question about global competition,the UK's Nigel Thrift argued that there were around 50 universities who could "choose their terms of trade".

"Institutions like the LSE (London School of Economics) will carry on exactly as they are because they do not need to have campuses around the world; in fact there is a danger in them scaling up because they become like the others.

"However, most universities do not have the money to invest and have to cooperate with other institutions. There are a few that are even willing to share research, have university representatives attending each other's meetings and make joint appointments," said Thrift.

"There are practical problems to do with staff contracts, for example, but there are also consultants who know how to deal with these problems. In fact specialist institutions can thrive, and in some ways have more advantages, in the current climate."

The discussion concluded on the issue of shifting student needs.

David Zandt, president of The New School in New York, argued that in broad terms he supported the demand for social change made by his students, who are currently occupying Wall Street.

"I can't imagine that," Vladimir Mau retorted. "Students who go to Moscow State University return as pro-capitalist."