The EU Innovation Agenda: Challenges for European Higher
Education and Research
"For European higher education and research institutions, the
development of effective institutional strategies may well be the
major challenge of the current EU higher education and research
policies. These strategies should include the educational, research
and knowledge transfer profiles the institutions want to pursue, as
well as the financial arrangements that should be related to those
profiles. In coming years, European higher education and research
institutions will have to find strategic institutional answers to
the challenges of the EU innovation agenda."
Lisbon Agenda
Clearly different from the days before the Lisbon Agenda, the
European Union has become a major higher education and research
policy actor, and many universities and academics have experienced
its conditions and effects. The supranational EU policy level has
become part of the multi-level governance system that European
higher education and research organisations are dealing with.
There appears to be an increasing alignment of EU higher
education and research policies with the various national policies.
The "re-launched" Lisbon strategy creates extra pressure on member
states to align their national policy efforts to the EU innovation
agenda. As a result, higher education and research institutions are
working in a multi-level policy context in which the focus is
increasingly on the roles institutions can play in enhancing
innovation.
Academic stratification
There appear to be two effects of the dynamics of this
multi-level governance system that create important challenges for
EU higher education and research institutions. The first of these
can be described as the academic stratification of the European
higher education system, with increasing vertical diversity.
This is the combined result of the changing participation
processes of European higher education institutions in the research
framework programmes and the counterproductive consequence of the
reinforcement policy on the interaction between higher education
and industry. With regard to the former, it has been noted that
past success in the framework programmes appears to be an indicator
of successful future participation in these programmes (David and
Keeley, 2003).
What appears to be emerging is the well-known Matthew Effect
where research groups that have been successful in obtaining
funding appear to increase their chances of winning future funds.
The other process is the counterproductive effect of the European
Union's push towards closer links between higher education and
industry.
It appears that those institutions in a relatively weak
financial position are increasingly forced to accept industrial
funding for often routine contract research. Faced with the
impossibility of charging real research costs, these institutions
are often confronted with a further weakening of their financial
situation and a decrease in their capacity to undertake academic
research (Geuna, 1999). The combined outcome of these processes is
an increasing differentiation between academically and financially
stronger and weaker institutions, and hence a growing vertical
diversity in the overall European higher education system.
Regional differentiation
The second unintended effect is a growing regional
differentiation in European higher education and research. This
appears to be the outcome of three interrelated processes emerging
from EU research and innovation policies (Frenken et al., 2008).
The first is the preference of researchers in "excellent regions"
to collaborate with each other, rather than with colleagues in
lagging regions.
EU research policy appears to stimulate the concentration of
talent in the richer and academically better-equipped regions of
Europe. Lagging regions find it difficult to participate in
successful EU research networks and appear to have to cross a
threshold of quality and size before they can do so. Secondly, the
EU policy objective of the free movement of people appears to not
only lead to an increased mobility of researchers but also to the
concentration of talent in a selected number of excellent regions.
The most talented researchers compete for positions at the most
prestigious universities, rendering it difficult for lagging
regions to retain talent. Thirdly, the sectoral structure of the
poorer European regions is usually characterised by a dominance of
low-tech and medium-tech activities that do not fit the thematic
priorities of EU research policy.
The framework programmes almost exclusively concern high-tech
sectors, thus creating a situation in which the research subsidies
are becoming concentrated in the richer regions. The result is an
unintended but nevertheless real effect of regional
differentiation.
The geography of European higher education and research is
changing from one based on the priority of national borders into
one based on the clustering of talent. Wealthier regions are
increasingly able to profit from the general European innovation
policy, while poorer regions are left with the resources of the
cohesion policy. This process also appears to contribute to the
growing academic stratification in the EU higher education and
research system.
Challenge
Academic stratification and regional differentiation confront
European higher education and research institutions with the
challenge to increase their strategic behaviour at the European
level. The innovation agenda appears to have increased competition
for funding and reputation.
Higher education and research institutions cannot ignore the
effects of the multi¬level processes they are governed by. They
need to design and implement institutional strategies that allow
them to play their own roles in the new system dynamics of EU
higher education and research. For European higher education and
research institutions, the development of effective institutional
strategies may well be the major challenge of the current EU higher
education and research policies.
These strategies should include the educational, research and
knowledge transfer profiles the institutions want to pursue, as
well as the financial arrangements that should be related to those
profiles. In coming years, European higher education and research
institutions will have to find strategic institutional answers to
the challenges of the EU innovation agenda.
F.A. van Vught
Annette Roeters reageert in een
recensie op Van Vughts essay over de
aanpak van de inpectie op het punt van de Europese profilering van
HO-instellingen.