mario calderini, politecnico di torino

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Mario Calderini,

Politecnico di Torino

Reinventing European Higher Education in Light of Technological Change .HE, Higher Education or Hidden Engine?

Strasbourg, 21° november 2007

The university between humanism and market: redifining its values and

functions for the 21st century

2 Reinventing Higher Education in Light of Technological ChangeMario Calderini

Good news and bad news (at the macro level)

Real GDP Growth (EU-27), absolute and relative

Filling the Innovation Gap

Universities and Higher Education core ingredients for structural change.

Larger market, larger technological variance, high expectations.


Decomposing the EU-25 Innovation Gap with USSource: EIS 2006


Technological change: scenario

Increasing pace of technological change Systemic knowledge Major technological breakthrough

• Digitalization (infosciences)• Miniaturization (nanosciensces)• Techno-Bio Convergence (biosciences)

Accessibility of knowledge Multiple sources of technological progress New models of innovation and technology management

• Non linear• User driven• Open innovation, R&C instead of R&D

Larger critical mass Commoditization of technology No identity between industries, technologies and science domains Intangible assets


Technology as a commodity?

Three technological success stories:

which higher education enables these innovations?


The emerging EC’s vision

Communication on the role of the Universities in the Europe of knowledge (February 2003).

• Identified the university as the institution most suitable for meeting Europe’s critical needs in the epoch of “knowledge driveneconomic growth”;

• Viewed the universities, grandes ecoles, polytechnics, and fachoschulen collectively as having the potential to be more effective than European industry at the business of technologically-driven innovation;

• Pointed to institutional reforms -- patterned on the U.S.’s “Bayh-Dole experiment” – aimed at promoting greater direct participation of Europe’s universities in commercializing faculty research findings;

• Intimated that such reforms could simultaneously meet the rising costs of public tertiarty education and research, and raise the share of the share of EU gross domestic product that is investedin R&D.


A general critique of the EC diagnosis

The EC’s assessment and proposals, and related national policy initiatives, proceed from an inadequate assessment of the system of which the universities form one part, and of some basic structural weaknesses and unmet challenges confronting the European Research Area.

Emphasis on university-based innovation reflects an un-substantiated causal reading of the concurrence of two developments in the U.S. since the mid-1990’s:

• a remarkable increase in “university patenting” and “academic entrepreneurship”

• an acceleration of macroeconomic growth featuring the revival of rapid gains in measured total factor productivity

Enthusiasm for a “Bayh-Dole solution” ignores available evidence from U.S. Experience, indicating that for most of the EU university sector this “remedy” would be (at best) ineffectual and wasteful, or (at worst) destructive of a vital part of the institutional infrastructure of Europeanscience and culture.


As a matter of fact, at the member states level….

Overwhelming rethoric of entrepreneurial Academia

“Supply side – only” economics of knowledge

Oblivious of market failure based policy analysis

Poor integration of education & research policies and funding schemes (any success story of integrated programs using both ESF and ERDF?)

Connectionist approach to technology transfer (vs TT by head), no role for higher education in TT (TT by students)


Entrepreneurial Academia?

More precisely, a multi-tasking University:• Education• Research• Technology transfer• Technology services• Innovation policy• Technological prospection and absorption presidium

Unintended consequences?• Crowd-out effect• Complex design of incentives and funding schemes, act of balance more

and more fragile• Social accountability?• Increasing returns and learning effect, towards heterogeneity of

institutions?• Boils down to the investment ve exploitation (short vs long term) trade off?


Meeting Lisbon Agenda, supply side only?

A long way from incentives to R&D investment.

How to get back to spontaneous private incentives to investing in the creation of knowledge?

• Leveraging on students is by far and large the higher return policy (e.g. 4 teaching hours of IPR management in a medium sized technical university would increase the propension to patenting by a rate of 30% in 1.000 companies per year.

Systemic approach: increase average level of education.

Incubators, science parks, bricks and walls: proximity counts, where is teaching?


The quintessential demand-side ingredients: PhD and mobility

More PhD only if a land of opportunity is created around the Academia and within the industry (endogenous)

Hands-on program

Life long learning

Open-gates university


Another way to look to demand side: educating for a more technology concious context

Pace of diffusion of technology linked to conciousness of adopters

User generated innovation

Technological risk assessment

Financing technology


Improving EU’s innovative capacity: a systemic policy approach

Stimulating Capacity building

• Public knowledge infrastructure

• Education in general and Higher Education in particular (S&E researchers)

• Stimulating Private R&D expenditures by investment in education

Framework conditions to improve incentives for innovation, especially

• clear IPR regimes, regulations and standards;

• Large integrated product markets (single market

• Well functioning product markets (competition and ease of entry), labour markets (labour mobility), (venture) capital markets

Improving Technology Transfer/Diffusion ( Eg clear property rights, ISL mechanisms, absorptive capacity of users, investment in complementary assets),


The need for reforms: key challenges faced

Increasing demand for HE (increasing returns from education)

Improving access to HE (upper-secundary education)

Governance problem in supplying HE services (too small, insufficient focus, bureaucracy, over-regulation, lack of autonomy)

Increasing international competition

Taken from Rehinilde Veugelers at EPC


Reforming HE in Europe

More performance based funding

More concentration of funding on excellence

More private funding

Better fee and subsidy structure

Addressing “access” through income-contingent loans

More competition among universities

Better internal governance of universities



Scope for EU in HE policy

EU scale capacity building (Phd, specific special areas..) eg EIT, EUI

Facilitator of intra-EU cooperation: eg European courses offered jointly by consortia and leading to joint degrees

EU as facilitator of global coordination in education policy and global mobility

• Migration visa packages for researchers to enhance international mobility

• Erasmus Mundus…



Conclusion: HE: Higher Education or Hidden Engine

HE at the very centre of the whole technological progress process

HE is an efficient substitute for a wide range of unsuccesful R&D and TT policies

HE models deeply affected by evolving Technological Regimes

The EC 2007-2013 structural funds: more money than good ideas and opportunities.

Supply of Higher Education bound to co-evolve with technology-based labour market

mario calderini, politecnico di torino

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