university–enterprise cooperation

26
In order to support universities to build
up entrepreneurial attitudes, it will be
recommendable to create local “clusters
for knowledge creation and transfer” or
business liaison, joint research or knowledge
transfer offices serving as an interface with
local/regional economic operators. This also
implies that development of entrepreneurial,
management and innovation skills should
become an integral part of graduate
education, research training and Life-long
learning strategies for university staff.
2-Provide the right mix of skills and
competencies for the labour market: university
programmes should be structured to enhance
directly the employability of graduates
overcoming persistent mismatches between
graduate qualifications and the needs of
the labour market. Very important is also
to stimulate an entrepreneurial mindset
amongst students and researchers, and to
help Life-long learning aptitudes.
3-Activate knowledge through interaction with
society: universities need to communicate
the relevance of their activities, by sharing
knowledge with society and reinforcing the
dialogue with all stakeholders. Working
together with earlier formal and non-formal
education and with business (including
SMEs and other small entities) will also play
a role in this respect.
4-Reward excellence at the highest level: to
help development of challenging working
environment for university and industry,
it is necessary to increase competition,
combining it with more mobility and
further concentration of resources. This also
helps attraction of the best academics and
researchers and encourages development of
new knowledge and accomplishment of new
scientific results.
5-Make the European higher education area
and the European research area more visible
and attractive in the world: continuing
globalisation means that education and
research must be fully open to the world
and become worldwide competitive players.
This is possible through development of
more structured international cooperation’s,
with research and industry. The existence of
more “European” courses, offered jointly by
consortia of universities and leading to joint
or double degrees at Master or Doctorate
level, would also help to make Europe more
attractive to students, researchers and
companies from the rest of the world.
In general actions for modernization of
university can help enterprise cooperation.
These will necessarily include:
1-Break down the barriers around universities
in Europe: geographical and inter-sectoral
mobility needs has to be increased, both for
graduating students and for researchers. Also
by 2010 Bologna reforms should be achieved,
with comparable qualifications, flexible,
modernized curricula at all levels which
correspond to the needs of the labour market.
2-Ensure real autonomy and accountability
for universities: new internal governance
systems are needed, together with actions
to overcome fragmentation to target efforts
collectively on institutional priorities for
research, teaching and services.
3-Reduce the funding gap and make funding
work more effectively in education and
research: international and national political
actions should pursue the goal of investing
3% of GDP in R&D by 2010 and to devote at
least 2% of GDP by 2016 to a modernized
higher education sector. Actions will have
to balance core, competitive and outcomebased
funding.
4-Enhance interdisciplinarity and
transdisciplinarity: universities should focus
less on scientific disciplines and more
on research domains (e.g. green energy,
nanotechnology), associating them more
closely with related or complementary fields
and fostering mobility and interaction
between students, researchers and industry.