The Knowledge Economy, the Techno-Preneur and the Problematic Future of the University

Abstract

Knowledge economy policies are currently very powerful drivers of change in contemporary university approaches to research. They typically orientate universities to a national innovation system which both positions knowledge as the key factor of economic growth and sees the main purpose of knowledge as contributing to such growth. In this article, the authors explain the economic logic informing such policy interventions in university research and look at the conceptualisation of national innovation systems in various national and international policy sites around the world. Their interest is in what these particular sets of policies have in common, not in how they differ. They introduce three key themes of such systems and the academics they seek to produce. These themes are their techno-scientific orientation, network characteristics and commercial imperatives. The corresponding implied subjects are the techno-scientist, the knowledge networker and the entrepreneur. The authors make the case that evident in such constructions of the future of universities are some unacknowledged and under-acknowledged problems, one of which is a failure to recognise the power of the gift economies of academic culture.

Knowledge transfer and transformation: moving knowledge from research to policy

“…Policy for knowledge production thus becomes closely aligned with economic policy, and universities and their research are important objects of policy development. Growth is highly dependent on maximising the outputs of knowledge workers and the productivity of knowledge resources (KENWAY;BULLEN;ROBB, 2004;PETERS, 2001). In the specifi c fi eld of education, policy is increasingly preoccupied with attempts to build the new KE.…”

“…Research funding organisation and quality assessment are all aff ected by these developments. Kenway, Bullen and Robb (2004) illustrate the trend towards prioritising techno-scientifi c research and its modes of operation and organisation, so that research is increasingly concentrated in designated centres of excellence, organised in teams and characterised by diff erences in conditions of work and employment rights. Traditional intellectual autonomy is challenged by the need to meet industry needs and, as a consequence, science is becoming 'less a public good than a tradable commodity'.…”

Building One-Dimensional Places: Death by the Power of Audit

“…That reductive and mechanistic image of chase and capture belongs with the action-oriented schema of the technoscience of performativity, whose goals are power and efficiency, not truth (Lyotard, 1984;Cowan, 1996). The proliferation of knowledge transfer and knowledge-economy conceptions of the appropriate trajectory for universities can be characterised as reflecting commodification (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1996;Scottish Higher Education Funding Council, 2000;World Bank, 2002;Her Majesty's Treasury, 2003;Wilmott, 2003;Kenway et al, 2004). An anonymous voice from the World Bank report states:…”

Innovation in higher education; will there be a role for “the academe/university” in 2025?

“…They typically orientate universities to a national innovation system which both positions knowledge as the key factor of economic growth and sees the main purpose of knowledge as contributing to such growth [7]. In Texas, Arlington, for example, the universities have joined into an initially privately funded venture to bring technological innovations to fruition through a commercial entity TechFW [8].…”