The current global academic system is limited in the extent to which HEIs invest in external engagement, by the lack of a globally agreed mechanism to better recognise and incentivise engagement.
INTRO
Governments, industry, and not-for-profit organisations, students, alumni, and many academics want HEIs to create processes and structures that encourage, facilitate, and support effective collaboration with external partners. This new way of operating is intended to create two-way mutually beneficial relationships between external parties and the HEI staff within. Extensive research illustrates the benefits from these activities, but no serious attempts have been made to integrate their measurement into the global academic systems, and as a result the contracts of employment, promotional criteria, and incentive structures within HEIs remain focused on the traditional activities of teaching and research.
ARGUMENT
Research for the Time4UNIChange project has emphasised the fertile ground within HEIs for external engagement and entrepreneurial activities once certain nutrients (time, recognition, training etc.) are added. Most notably the research suggests that academics tend to be intrinsically motivated to do good and will follow what is highly regarded by their peers and management, there are many benefits to the education, personal development, and employability of students from these activities, they offer potential access to research funding, and offer considerable positive reputational and economic impacts for HEIs.
Nevertheless, these activities remain predominantly ad-hoc and uncoordinated, mostly dependent on the skills and propensity of the academics who choose to do get involved, they are seldom interwoven into an academic’s role and few institutions clearly support, recognise, and celebrate time spent on these activities.
Traditional education and research remain the predominant priorities of HEIs, naturally, as these remain what is measured, rewarded, and celebrated within the national and global academic community. Why would HEI leadership and management focus resources on external engagement and entrepreneurial activities when they do not produce the outcomes required to successfully achieve what is seen as a positive outcome for an HEI?
This is an issue receiving attention, for example, in 2017, attendees at the Global University Engagement Summit in Melbourne, Australia, asked whether universities should develop a mechanism to better recognise and incentivise university engagement on a global scale. Resultantly King’s College London, the University of Chicago and the University of Melbourne commissioned the development of a framework and engagement indicators1 in 2020 but no further updates are available.
CONCLUSION
I believe that until agreed metrics regarding impacts from these activities are included as what is termed ‘success’ for HEIs (nationally and globally), the supports, processes, and practices regarding these activities will remain fragile and haphazard and HEI’s progress in collaborating and impacting the external world will remain disorganised and arduous.
Author:
LAURA O DONOVAN, RESEARCHER, MTU
- The Nous Group, 2020, Advancing University Engagement: University Engagement and Global League Tables. https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/advancing-university-engagement.pdf ↩︎