Developing non-core regions by establishing new universities

ABSTRACT

We explore the regional engagement of universities in non-core regions in a Global South context and uncover how new universities form and institutionalize regional ties. Through case studies of five new universities in India, we identify three routes – personal, organizational and brokered – through which new universities form regional ties, and four logics – incrementalism, social responsibility, legitimation and rationalization – through which these ties become embedded. We unpack and combine each of the routes and logics into a framework that explains how new ties are formed and developed between a new university and its surrounding non-core region.

KEYWORDS:

• non-core regions
• regional ties
• new universities
• India
• regional development

JEL:

• R0

1. INTRODUCTION

There has been significant scholarly interest in university–region relationships, and several programmes and policies worldwide have positioned universities as drivers of regional growth and development (Johnston & Huggins, 2016; Kitson et al., 2009; Perkmann et al., 2013). The sustained interest in university–region relationships has resulted in key concepts, such as ‘entrepreneurial university’, ‘triple helix’ and ‘regional innovation systems’, emerging in the literature. These concepts have centred on the role of universities in economic development (Guerrero et al., 2015), social innovation, and the sustainability of regions (Cinar & Benneworth, 2021). With research on university–region relationships moving beyond developed countries, scholars have noted that the concepts explaining the regional engagement and roles of universities operate differently across varying regional contexts and university settings (Arocena et al., 2017; Varga & Erdős, 2019). As such, scholars have called for more nuanced understandings of university–region relationships in different settings such as rural regions (Charles, 2016) and developing countries (Arocena et al., 2017).

Establishing new universities, regarded as entrepreneurial, flexible, aspirational and innovative, is one recognized route for developing non-core regions (Altbach et al., 2018).¹ New universities can develop regions by enhancing their competitiveness, innovation and learning capabilities (Charles, 2016; Evers, 2019). Furthermore, the ongoing massification of higher education in various countries in the Global South has led to the establishment of new universities in non-core regions, with the goal of developing regional knowledge-based economies (Robertson & Komljenovic, 2016). Yet, much of the existing research on regional development through universities has focused on established universities in developed countries in the Global North, with studies from the Global South increasingly being added.

We discuss the formation and development of university–region relationships of new universities in non-core regions, through case studies of five new universities in India, which were less than 10 years old. We investigate how and why the activities, roles, and relationships form and evolve between a new university and its surrounding region. We aim to understand the dynamic processes of forming and institutionalizing regional relationships, as developed and experienced by new universities in non-core regions, focusing on the university managers and faculty working on the front line of the third mission.

Establishing new universities in non-core regions is often driven by higher level political agendas and top-down national policies, with uncertainties around the involvement of regional stakeholders. Non-core regions can end up in a somewhat precarious predicament – unsure of how to host a new university and unprepared to benefit from it. Thus, relationships between new universities and their regions need to be gradually evolved and steered through proactive and bottom-up efforts that are contingent on the evolution, aspirations and growth of the new universities (Benneworth, 2019; Charles, 2016). As new universities grow, they develop their structure, identity, attract resources and activate different relationships with their regions. Therefore, the engagement of new universities with non-core regions needs a closer examination of their activities, how university–region relationships develop and the underlying logics therein.

Studies on regional engagement of universities often include an analysis of both universities and corresponding regional actors to provide a complete understanding of the phenomenon. A policy-based discussion of the topic is common due to the well-observed policy push to make universities the drivers of regional development (Radinger-Peer, 2019). These studies consider a diverse set of regional actors – businesses, communities and governments – whereas universities are often treated as one actor, potentially providing an incomplete picture. Instead, our study engages with various actors within universities, and how they approach engaging with and developing the surrounding region. By diving into the ‘black box’ of the university and speaking to different actors involved in management and third-mission activities, we are able to go beyond the usual narratives of institutional engagement and unpack the individual actions and motivations that underpin university–region engagements.

We build empirical depth in our study by including a variety of university actors – faculty, university leaders and managerial staff – across different university domains. By including faculty who are actually involved in implementing regional engagement initiatives, we examine the various boundary spanning roles, including that of technical experts, problem-solvers and engagement champions, that university actors assume in their interactions with the region (Weerts & Sandmann, 2010). We also broaden the focus from the commonly examined formal university structures, such as technology transfer office, research parks, and incubation centres, that have third-mission responsibilities to include informal means of engaging with the region, anchored by individual university actors (i.e., faculty). Our approach that gives full attention to universities, and the actors therein, is not new. Various regional studies scholars have also acknowledged the importance of placing universities at the centre of regional analysis (see Kindt et al., 2022; Harrison & Turok, 2017; and the special issues on Regional Studies on this topic).

Our paper builds on existing studies of non-core regions. Charles (2016) shows that universities in rural regions struggle with economies of scale and scope, and calls for a long-term strategy to foster regional engagement of universities. He argues that the intended outcomes of developing non-core regions through universities takes time and requires university–region relationships to first develop. Fonseca and Nieth (2021) show that universities in peripheral regions take on complex roles, including engagement in strategy-making and governance, to meet the high expectations placed upon them by the regional government. They indicate that university–region relationships are shaped by diverse layers or agents that interact at different times, scales and levels within the regional system. Other studies have examined the impact of universities on specific developmental aspects of non-core regions including labour markets (Evers, 2019), regional productivity (Andersson et al., 2004) and innovation (Charles, 2016), and how universities build smart specializations in peripheral and rural regions (Ferreira et al., 2021; Kempton, 2015). With a focus on the impact of universities on regions, and largely based on single case studies, these studies call for more comprehensive understandings of how university–region relationships develop in non-core regions.

Building on these foundations, we posit three contributions here. First, we expand the arsenal of case studies beyond best case and core regions to include insights from the Global South, building on recent contributions from studies conducted in Vietnam, China and Brazil (Arocena et al., 2017; Thomas & Pugh, 2020; Varga & Erdős, 2019). Second, the experiences of ‘new’ universities being established in non-core regions are scantily represented in the literature (Clark, 1998). There are discussions in the literature about the roles and importance of new universities, but not necessarily taking a regional development perspective (e.g., Shattock, 2017). However, in developing countries, the massification of higher education in recent years through the establishment of new universities in non-core regions has been combined with that of heralding economic and social benefits to the regions through universities, thus leveraging a double impact of universities. Third, most studies focus on the outcomes and impacts of regional engagement of universities, whereas we draw attention to how relationships between regions and universities form and develop. We contribute to discussions that suggest that new regional pathways for universities do not always arise spontaneously but need to be deliberately and proactively constructed in ways specific to regional economic and governance contexts (Benneworth, 2019).

2. POSITIONING OUR STUDY

This study is situated in the context of development of new universities in non-core regions in the Global South. We highlight below the nuances of this context and position this study through three conceptual lenses.

2.1. Developing non-core regions by establishing new universities

The emphasis on knowledge-based regional economic development and the need to increase enrolments in higher education has led to new universities being established in non-core regions (Robertson & Komljenovic, 2016). However, these efforts have not always delivered the expected results in developing non-core regions. Creating world-leading universities encompassing research excellence and international competitiveness, and delivering regional impact can be two opposing issues (Cinar & Benneworth, 2021; Power & Malmberg, 2008). Much of the entrepreneurial university literature assumes an inherent regional development dividend from the ‘push out’ of knowledge from universities to urban regions. However, there might be a mismatch between the kind of knowledge produced by the university and that needed by non-core regions. Regional actors in non-core regions, which are often dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and local communities, may lack the absorptive capacity to use the knowledge produced by universities (Pugh, 2017). Further, the impact universities have on the development of surrounding cities and neighbourhoods – such as gentrification and studentification (Bose, 2015) – are not so relevant for non-core regions with much lower concentrations of urban agglomerations.

Perhaps an appropriate model for developing non-core regions is that of the engaged university, in which the regional focus becomes integrated in all the key functions of universities (Uyarra, 2010). This requires a shift in funding sources to the regions and a policy shift away from national needs to regional contexts. These cannot be taken for granted and may be more complex in developing countries where new universities are often set up in a top-down manner through national policies without adequate involvement of regional stakeholders, and funded and regulated by national governments. Further, new universities in developing countries may have limited capacity and capability to collectively mobilize resources and align the different missions to engage with all facets of regional development (Chatterton & Goddard, 2000). Therefore, instead of normatively applying the existing models of universities to developing countries, our goal is to uncover the structures, processes and norms through which university–region relationships form and develop for new universities.

2.2. Expanding higher education systems in developing countries

Recently, higher education systems in many Asian countries, including China, India and Indonesia, have expanded, following an approach with dual policy rationales of the massification of higher education and regional development (Chapman & Chien, 2014). One effect of such expansion of higher education systems is that new universities emerge in regions that were lacking knowledge infrastructures. In these cases, neither the regions nor the universities are prepared for engaging with each other – making the development of university–region ties a gradual and evolving process. These cases are different to contexts where engaged universities are established and grow with extensive participation from regional stakeholders (Uyarra, 2010).

The widely used entrepreneurial university perspective can be hard to apply to the expanding higher education systems of developing countries, given the criticism that it assumes some homogenizing global effect whereby all universities are moving towards the Anglo-American or commercially oriented model, ignoring alternative rationales such as the European tradition of the Humboldtian model or developmental universities (Arocena et al., 2017; Philpott et al., 2011). Others hold concerns about the neoliberalism, inherent in shifts towards entrepreneurial universities and third-mission characteristics (Jessop, 2017; Rhoads, 2018). Such shifts may not be straightforward in government-controlled higher education systems that lack policies to enable higher education markets.

The less visible and measurable forms of regional impact may be more relevant to the regional engagement of new universities in non-core regions, compared with well-investigated commercialization and technology transfer from universities, where the formation of university–industry linkages rely on organizational proximities and histories of collaboration and not just on spatial proximity (Hughes & Kitson, 2012; Johnston & Huggins, 2016). Also, universities in non-core regions may play a more important role in human capital development and regional leadership, versus spinouts and other knowledge-focused outputs usually associated with universities in urban areas (Salomaa, 2019).

2.3. The evolutionary nature of new universities

The establishment of new universities is found to be a ‘long journey’ that is hard to explain through simplistic narratives (Hladchenko et al., 2016). New universities evolve from a period of change and building up momentum to a period of steady growth and sustaining change (Clark, 1998). We still lack deep understanding of the evolutionary nature of these processes. Most often the university–region relationship is treated as a static phenomenon, which may not be suited for the evolutionary nature of new universities.

New universities are vulnerable to suffer from the liabilities of newness and smallness, and could lack resources and capabilities to engage with and contribute to regions based on mutuality (Hite & Hesterly, 2001; Stensaker & Benner, 2013). These liabilities pertain to achieving economies of scale, expanding scope instead of developing specializations and limited scales of resources that restrict the potential for significant spinoff development (Charles, 2016). New universities also face ambiguities about their identities, norms and missions, leading to challenges to institutionalize regional engagement (Benneworth et al., 2009). Therefore, new universities need to be examined through a different lens than the established ones.

Our exclusive focus on universities is suited for the Global South contexts explained above. Current studies on regional engagement of universities assume mutuality or bi-directionality in the university–region relationship. However, in the context of developing countries, as discussed above, regional engagement and development may be initiated and anchored by universities, at least initially. Furthermore, current approaches to regional engagement consider engagement as a simultaneous pursuit – as universities engage with regions, regions reciprocate or the benefits to the regions accrue simultaneously. However, several key avenues of third mission, such as research commercialization and technology transfer, need time to translate research into consumable forms of knowledge to the region (Sengupta & Ray, 2017). Lastly, regional engagement initiatives in Asia and Africa (e.g., Osborne et al., 2017) have often been triggered through investment and reforms in higher education. Focusing on the university side of the university–region relationship provides the opportunity to develop a clearer and in-depth understanding of how new universities perceive regional relationships in their early years, go about gaining legitimacy amongst regional actors, and eventually institutionalize their regional relationships into a mutual bi-directional relationship.

3. THEORETICAL APPROACH

In higher education studies, researchers have used theories, such as institutionalization (Pinheiro et al., 2012), embeddedness (Brennan et al., 2004) and stakeholder management (Radinger-Peer, 2019), to analyse the regional engagement of universities. In regional studies, concepts such as triple helix, regional innovation systems and the learning region (Shaw & Allison, 1999) explain regional economic development within the knowledge economy. However, these concepts are oriented towards the outcome of regional engagement of universities, instead of how the relationships between universities and regions develop. We refer to these relationships as ‘regional ties’. Regional ties act as bridges and pathways through which universities can find and access external opportunities and resources, shaped by the goals, structures and policies of universities to engage with the region (Hite & Hesterly, 2001). The regional ties thus influence the emergence, growth and performance of new universities.

We focus on how university–region relationships develop or mature through responses to the realities of everyday organizational activities and individual actions. Once formed, it is thought that university–region relationships will coalesce to define underlying logics – routines, values and norms. These logics would shape the regional engagement of new universities and determine which regional ties strengthen or sustain over time, and which ones weaken and drop out (Salomaa & Charles, 2021). These are referred to as ‘institutional logics’ that explain why organizations perform certain actions (Van Zanten, 2009). Universities experience multiple institutional logics – academic and economic – that shape their evolution (Cai & Mehari, 2015; Cinar & Benneworth, 2021). The academic logic is based on scholarly reputation, norms of the academic profession and the production of scholarly work. The economic logic (also referred to as commercial or managerial logic) is management driven and based on markets, strategic orientation and performance. As universities evolve, they develop their organizational dimensions to enact these different norms, practices and values by forging and growing relations with external stakeholders (Fumasoli et al., 2020). They activate different relations with, and attract relevant resources from the region.

Barth et al. (2015) use institutional logics to understand the role of social enterprises in the development of regions. They argue that the region becomes a boundary for establishing a new logic because the different levels of individuals, organizations and local authorities interact locally – they share commitment to and have an impact on the regional system, and benefit from it. Salomaa and Charles (2021) analyse the interactions of different institutional logics to determine the appropriateness of the organizational practices for universities to deliver the third mission in peripheral regions. Similarly, Greenman (2013) suggests that local entrepreneurs, new organizations and regional contexts provide an appropriate setting for challenging the dominant logics of regional development through markets. Our analytical focus here is to use a similar approach to explore a set of logics which emerges from non-core regions and regional actors, and underscores the development of relationships of new universities with non-core regions.

4. CONTEXT, METHODOLOGY AND DATA

This research was carried out in the context of expansion of higher education in India to non-core regions. The case study we present is of the institutes of national importance (INIs): a cadre of national-level public universities in India specializing in a single discipline. INIs belonging to the same discipline, follow a common admission procedure and comply with the same standardized norms and policies. However, each INI is governed and managed independently and has its own position in the national higher education system. We present a case study of five new INIs established in rural and semi-rural regions.

Initially, seven INIs were established in the 1950s to provide high-quality education to a select few. They developed to be highly reputed institutions and were often the only universities from India to feature in global rankings. Although a few more INIs were added in later years, INIs remained highly selective institutes. By 1990, INIs enrolled only about 3000 students each year, accounting for less than 1% of India’s total enrolment in higher education.

Post-liberalization of the Indian economy in the 1990s, the government initiated reforms to expand quality higher education to cater to the increasing demands for professionals. The reforms aimed to reduce regional disparity in the distribution of national-level higher education institutions (HEIs) by establishing new INIs in regions with no or very few national-level research-focused universities (Planning Commission India, 2002). The number of INIs increased from 10 in 1995 to 101 in 2018, with several situated in rural or semi-urban regions. Figures 1 and 2 show the expansion of INIs in the four disciplines that were selected for inclusion in this study; the five cases (explained below) included in the study are numbered separately in Figure 2.

Figure 1. Distribution of institutes of national importance (INIs) before the expansion.

Figure 2. Distribution of institutes of national importance (INIs) in four disciplines after the expansion and the five INIs included in the study.

A multiple case study approach was selected to analyse the formation and development of regional ties (Yin, 2009). To fill the gaps in previous research highlighted earlier, a total of 63 new INIs were identified that met the sampling criteria of being less than 10 years old and situated in non-core regions (Figure 2). Based on ease of access and likelihood of engaging with the region, requests for participation were sent to 24 INIs in four disciplines – of which five agreed to participate (see Table 1 for descriptions of the regions and Table 2 for key information about the HEIs, such as campus size, number of students and funds). The names of the regions and institutes are anonymized as per the protocol followed during the data-collection phase. While each region had different social, economic and geographical characteristics, from the perspective of the universities, they were similar – non-core regions (as explained above). Our methodological focus is to analyse the commonalities in how university–region relationships were formed and developed, instead of exploring differences in regional engagement.

Table 1. Description of the regions in which the higher education institutions (HEIs) were situated.

Institute	Description of the regions^a
IIM-SN	Population: 1.00 million. GSDP: INR3.50 lakh crore. Universities: 1. GER: 18.4 The region’s economy was based on agricultural processing and saw milling. More than 75% of the employment of the region was dependent on agriculture. The region also had several public sector units in the mining sector. It had plans to develop a new city in the periphery where the permanent campus for IIM-SN was to come
IIT-SN	Population: 1.91 million. GSDP: INR9.09 lakh crore. Universities: 2. GER: 21.2 The region had a large automobile cluster that manufactured auto components. The main city in the region was part of the Smart City Mission of the government and, thus, had several ongoing urban development projects. It was also the most populous and the largest metropolitan region in central India
SPA-SN	Population: 1.79 million. GSDP: INR9.09 lakh crore. Universities: 2. GER: 21.2 The region lacked a specific industrial cluster but had several traditional industries such as pharmaceutical, automobile, textile and production of electrical goods. It also housed several government administrative units because of being district headquarters. It boasted of several geographical features including hillsides and lakes
IISER-SN	Population 0.99 million. GSDP: INR5.82 lakh crore. Universities: 1. GER: 56.4 The region was undergoing active development to emerge as a major information technology hub in Northern India. The government had created significant infrastructure and recreation projects in attempts to increase the standard of living. The region had also created a knowledge city to house various universities. Unlike other regions, it was well connected to other parts of the country by road, rail and air, and was three hours’ drive from the national capital
IIT-RN	Population 1.00 million. GSDP: INR1.56 lakh crore. Universities: 1. GER. 37.9 The region was located on the banks of a river and on the Midlands of the Himalayan range. Its economy was mainly agrarian with around 79% of the total population dependent on agriculture and related activities. Being in the mountains, the region was poorly connected to any urban areas nearby, with the nearest airport being about six hours away

Note: ^aThe population mentioned is that of the state.

GSDP, gross state domestic product; INR 1 lakh crore = approximately £10 billion.

Number of universities refers to national-level universities, excluding the new institutes of national importance (INIs).

GER, gross enrolment ratio in higher education in the state.

The data provided are at the level of ‘states’ in India, to which the regions belonged, since the data were available at that level.

Table 2. Selected indicators of the higher education institutions (HEIs) from the government rankings in 2018.

Institute	No. of faculties	No. of under- and postgraduate students	No. of full-time doctoral students	No. of part-time doctoral students	Campus size (acres)	Publications in the last three years	Executive education (INR millions)	Sponsored research (INR millions)	Consultancy projects (INR millions)
IIM-SN	46	345	33	29	200	20	2.8	2.7	0
IISER-SN	94	920	454	0	125	492	0	142.8	0
SPA-SN	11	495	19	0	75	0	0	5.5	2.3
IIT-RN	106	519	91	8	538	423	0	1.8	1.5
IIT-SN	116	789	370	14	501	550	0	105.7	0.16

Our study was based on specialized new universities that are common in developing countries. Our cases also represented management and planning and architecture disciplines, not only science and technology domains that are already well investigated in the literature. The regional scope of the process studied here (i.e., a national top-down initiative across several regions in India of establishing new specialized universities) allows us to add to the extant approaches that have hitherto been based on single (or a couple of) case studies of university–regional interaction (e.g., Cinar & Benneworth, 2021; Thomas & Pugh, 2020). Background information about the included regional cases can be found in Table 1.

The first author carried out semi-structured in-depth interviews with 55 faculty members in the five HEIs (as summarized in Table 2) between July 2017 and February 2018. Faculty members with associate professor or above rank and/or with an administrative role were selected due to their participation in institute development (Demb & Wade, 2012). Document analysis was conducted on obtained (publicly available or via research participants) mission documents, annual plans and reports of the HEIs. Further, government legislations, parliamentary discussions, and media articles and opinion pieces were also analysed. Descriptive coding techniques identified major decisions and occurrences. In the second cycle of coding, axial coding was carried out to identify the properties and dimensions of these decisions, such as the stakeholders involved, the motivations and dilemmas of the HEIs, and the evolution of the relationships. Regarding the analysis of regional ties’ establishment, within- and cross-case patterns were both recognized. The triangulation of document analysis and stakeholder interviews allowed us to comprehensively establish the situation across the five cases.

We have anonymised the participants and used pseudonyms for the universities. As we learnt through the data collection, faculty – who were involved in working with the regions – and those with managerial roles did not always consider the government, and in some cases even the university management, as their allies in engaging with the region. In many cases, the top-down regulatory policies, the hierarchical management of the HEIs and the aspirations young faculty meant that anonymity gave the participants (which also required using pseudonyms for the universities) the comfort to speak freely. All the participants and the researchers signed an informed consent form to keep the data anonymised (Table 3).

Table 3. Interview subjects by university, rank and job title.

Institute	Discipline	Participants rank			Participant job title				Total
		Assistant professor	Associate professor	Professor	Dean/chair	Director	Head	None
IIT-SN	Technology	1	10	1	6	0	5	1	12
IIT-RN	Technology	4	8	3	7	1	4	3	15
SPA-SN	Architecture and planning	0	5	4	5	0	2	2	9
IISER-SN	Sciences	0	3	8	3	1	3	4	11
IIM-SN	Management	4	3	1	4	0	0	4	8
Total		9	29	17	25	2	14	14	55

5. FINDINGS: HOW DO NEW UNIVERSITIES ESTABLISH REGIONAL TIES?

The first part of our analytical framework below discusses three routes – personal, organizational and brokered – through which new ties were formed between the regions and the HEIs, and factors that shaped the formation of ties for each route. The second part explains the subsequent evolution of the HEIs and the four underlying logics that shaped the development of the regional ties.

5.1. Routes for forming new regional ties

First, we discuss the conditions that led to forming new ties between the regions and the HEIs. Several participants indicated that the locations of the HEIs was a result of political negotiations rather than considerations for regional development – confirming the top-down nature of establishing the HEIs. Establishing an institution of the cadre of INI was an opportunity for the members of parliament (MPs) to showcase the HEIs as their contribution to the region. A participant stated: ‘In the beginning, there was a proposal to have four IISERs. Then the state government came in, and added one more [in this location]’ (P20, IISER-SN). The parliamentary debates indicated that the HEIs’ locations were subjected to political negotiations. One of MPs commented:

After bifurcation of Bihar [one of the states in India that was divided in to two states: Bihar and Jharkhand], almost all institutes of excellent education and research went into Jharkhand. Establishment of IISER [one of the new INIs] in Bihar will be a step towards minimisation of prevailing regional imbalance in the distribution of educational institutes across the country.

(Parliamentary Debate, MP, 27 November 2006)

A strategic agenda for regional engagement was largely missing in the documents collected from the HEIs. The HEIs’ initial focus was on launching programmes, gaining operational stability, and building reputation, as confirmed by the participants: ‘The new institute … we are struggling with everything right now. There were debates on land, now there is no water supply; there is no electricity, for everything there is negotiation with the government and localities’ (P7, IIM-SN). Thus, new regional ties were proactively initiated and formed through a ground-up approach rather than being an integral part of the considerations of establishing the HEIs and strategically driven.

5.1.1. Personal routes

In many cases the participants discussed that regional ties were formed directly by the individual faculty members through their relationships with regional stakeholders. The regional ties were often a personal matter, as the following participant quotations illustrate:

[Engaging with the region] is a personal pursuit also.

(P57, SPA-SN)

The drive of the faculty, and how forcefully she/he will implement [engaging with the region], will have to come from the individual.

(P59, IIT-RN)

The HEIs recruited faculty nationally, who did not usually have prior ties with the region. The HEIs were the first INI in the region and were clustered as a group with INIs in the same discipline. The faculty at the HEIs benefited by inheriting INI name and status, well known in India. Several regional ties were initiated by the regional stakeholders directly approaching the faculty for activities such as advising, conducting workshops and speaking sessions. The regional ties may not have formed if the HEIs were set up without the prestigious name to draw on.

The faculty admitted new ties through personal routes based on potential gains to their research and teaching, and alignment with their performance evaluation criteria. Instead of developing trust and long-term relationships with the regional stakeholders, which can be time-consuming, they considered convenience and return on investment (of effort) as important factors for forming new ties: ‘Institutional expectations are different and to meet that you would rather avoid going for a delayed process something which is faster … result oriented is generally more attractive’ (P1, IIM SN).

New regional ties provided access to resources and opportunities to start research that the HEIs could not provide the faculty in the initial years. The needs of the region were often cross-disciplinary and did not always map to the expertise of a single faculty. Therefore, this process of forming new ties relied on faculty knowing each other’s areas of expertise and having the collegiality to combine their expertise. The participants indicated that these were easier in new HEIs since they had not yet developed the rigidity of disciplinary boundaries, common within established universities.

There were also challenges for forming new regional ties through personal routes. Participants indicated that the faculty in the HEIs, most of whom were early in their career, often lacked expertise in engaging with regional stakeholders, which required skills beyond those for research and teaching. Also, in absence of any institutional norms around regional engagement in the initial years, many faculty were motivated by their disciplinary norms, preferring to collaborate with academics, and disinclined to form relationships with the region.

5.1.2. Organizational routes

At the level of the HEIs, new regional ties were formed through knowledge interactions and transfer mechanisms such as research collaborations, training and joint academic programmes. The HEIs acted in a proactive and entrepreneurial manner, which could be seen as opportunistic, demonstrating flexibility to take advantage of the regional opportunities or respond to the needs of the region. As an example, the dean of IIT-RN explained an initiative to form regional ties: ‘We are taking our engineering colleagues [to engage with the region] for any production or civil engineering issues. That is something we are working on’ (P68, IIT-RN).

Other examples of ties through organizational routes included IISER-SN and the Indian institutes of technology (IITs) forming ties with local governments and regional firms for consulting projects. We observed that regional ties formed through organizational routes involved forming relationships with a more diverse set of regional stakeholders than those formed through individual routes. As the HEIs grew, they developed the ability to proactively manage their relationships with the region.

The first factor in forming regional ties through organizational routes was the potential of mutual benefit. For the HEIs, the benefits included financial gains, development of a novel or pilot research projects or getting access to data for conducting research. Similarly, for the regions, the benefits ranged from building capabilities via training programmes, and strengthening programmes through access to expertise that was hitherto unavailable.

Engagement requires universities to align their strategies and priorities with that of the region and establish institutional processes, policies and norms (Pinheiro et al., 2012). These aspects were not fully developed in the HEIs as they focused on launching teaching and research programmes, which were nationally oriented and consistent with those of the established INIs. Thus, the HEIs’ willingness to alter or adapt their processes or structures was a key factor for initiating regional ties. We found that the HEIs preferred to admit those regional ties that required incremental changes to their structures or policies. For example, IIT-SN created a centre around regional needs that built on existing infrastructure and expertise: ‘So, when we got the infrastructure and the expertise, why not have the centre of excellence? It will provide the expertise to the automobile sector, and which demands a solution for this. … Then we pumped up and consolidated’ (P35, IIT-SN).

Other participants also described the needs of the HEIs to adapt existing processes and norms to form regional ties. Examples included: changes in the tendering process to engage with regional stakeholders and flexibility in the selection criteria for recruiting faculty.

Lastly, the HEIs formed regional ties to avail regional services and resources (e.g., land, water and food supply, and electricity) for their operations such as maintaining campus facilities, organizing events and developing infrastructure. These were proximity effects of the HEIs being placed in particular localities, as described by two participants:

IISER-SN plays central role in developing a bio cluster for the region. It is surrounded by [a business school] on one side and a government R&D laboratory. …  Proximity is critical.

(P24, IISER-SN)

Once we moved to campus, people started approaching us as an independent entity.

(P53, SPA-SN)

Proximity was also a key consideration for the local businesses or government organizations in the region to approach the HEIs. For example, the faculty members at the IIMs authored case studies and developed various training programmes for local businesses. Likewise, SPA-SN was approached by the local government to be the coordinator for an environmental programme in the region. These regional ties have an important impact on regional businesses, and hence the economic multiplier effect of placing new universities in regions, where previously there was none, should not be overlooked.

5.1.3. Brokered routes

New regional ties admitted via brokered routes were facilitated by an intermediary – often the government.² The HEIs were involved in implementing government schemes in the region, which required them to forge new ties with the regional stakeholders. A participant noted: ‘Whenever there is a push from the government [to engage with the region], then something will happen [with the region]’ (P42, IIM-SO).

Being government institutions, the HEIs functioned as a vehicle to take government services closer to the previously overlooked non-core regions. There were three considerations for the HEIs to form ties through brokered routes.

First, ties through brokered routes served as an information gathering device about regional priorities and plans for the HEIs leading to deeper engagement with the region later. The intermediary had the right network and resources to facilitate knowledge exchange between the region and new universities. The regional ties, formed through brokered routes, created opportunities for funding and dedicated pathways for the HEIs to engage with the region by facilitating new connections and initiating novel areas of research and teaching. A participant explained: ‘MHRD [Ministry of Human Resource Development] has now sanctioned 3.5 Crore Rupees. So, as part of that, we have discussed with Deputy Commissioner here who has given us a commitment that he will help us’ (P67, IIT-RN).

Next, in three regions – that of IISER-SN, SPA-SN and IIT-RN – the regional development plans and approaches coincided with the development of the HEIs. This enabled the HEIs to be involved in various strategic and novel regional initiatives of the local government. For instance, the local government had provided land to IISER-SN in a ‘Knowledge City’ that it also simultaneously developed to host several universities and research labs. The local government, in these cases, did not just facilitate one to one relationship with the region but also enabled the HEIs to be involved in several local-level cross-institutional and strategic initiatives.

Last, the formation of regional ties through brokered routes was further shaped by the fact that the HEIs were public funded organizations, which helped them establish trust with the local government in their early years. A participant explained this dynamic: ‘They don’t have many objections on us because they know that we would not be part of any kind of corruption; because they know we won’t give anything [as additional favours]. Because we are also government organisation’ (P54, SPN-SN).

In several cases, participants highlighted that government-brokered tie formations helped the HEIs establish legitimacy with the regional stakeholders and even negotiate higher autonomy.

5.2. Logics of university–region tie development

In this section, we develop the framework further from the routes (or, how) of forming new regional ties into the logics (why) that underlie their development. We noticed four logics across our cases, indicating the different ways, rules and norms about how the new regional ties became established and embedded into the HEIs’ activities and roles.

5.2.1. Incrementalism

Dependent on government funding and subject to bureaucratic procedures, the evolution of the HEIs was characterized by a flexible, uncertain and entrepreneurial environment. The HEIs encountered challenges such as delays in construction, disputes in claiming land and uncertainty in the receipt of funding. They continuously reprioritized and reconsidered their activities, which threw up management challenges. Being caught up in overcoming these challenges, the HEIs did not prioritize proactive regional engagement. The participants explained:

We have not made them [the regional stakeholders] understand what we do, why we are here.

(P1, IIM-SN)

The onus is not on SPA-SN to ensure that it is the part of regional development. [The region] should not expect us to approach them for projects. We will still do it, but they have to come here.

(P56, SPA-SN)

However, there were benefits of being a new university in a non-core region, as described by various participants who witnessed ‘less of politics’ (P61, IIT-RN), ‘no baggage’ (P16, IIT-UN) and ‘much more flexibility to introduce changes’ (P68, IIT-RN). These were instrumental in being agile and responding quickly to regional opportunities as and when they rose.

As the new ties formed, the HEIs, and the individuals therein, alongside the regional stakeholders, were exploring new possibilities, actions and relations. Being new, many of the policies and practices of the HEIs were formed reactively, or in an ad-hoc manner as specific needs or opportunities arose. For example, SPA-SN made a policy for faculty acting in consulting capacity once a particular faculty member joined with a consulting assignment. Similarly, IISER-SN made a policy for technology commercialization after a faculty member was approached by a business to commercialize his research.

It was somewhat surprising that core third-mission activities, such as consultancy and technology commercialization, developed in an ad-hoc manner, rather than being premediated and strategic. This was attributed to the evolutionary nature of new universities. The participants suggested that developing ties with the region required structural changes, new capabilities and the development of an internal culture in the HEIs, which were incremental, exploratory, and time-consuming (Clark, 1998). Regional engagement sometimes took a backseat versus sorting out the internal and organizational issues that came with newness. This incrementalism was particularly prominent for ties admitted through individual and organizational routes, wherein participants pointed towards lack of directed efforts to build relationship with the region: ‘But there is no strategy as such’ (P25, IIM-SN) and ‘We prided ourselves from being quite nimble on our feet and making changes’ (P16, IIT-UN).

5.2.2. Social responsibility

Being the first INI in the region, the HEIs enjoyed a high status in the region. Participants described the supportive nature of local communities, who helped grow the HEIs as a leading national level institute in the regions:

I think the state government is very supportive at every level, … whenever individual faculties to a senior officer, high up in the government, I personally feel they are two step further to help us. I personally don’t feel any such problem here. Always IIM faculty is being respected and heard.

(P3, IIM-SN)

The HEIs perceived the region as their ‘host’ which provided the land, a supportive community and the required infrastructural support. Many participants felt privileged to be working in a national-level institute and felt obligated to give back to the region. They indicated that the faculty initiated new regional ties with a sense of social responsibility:

Motivation [to engage with the region] came from inside, without the need for any incentive.

(P57, SPA-SN)

Everything cannot be measured in terms of money. You are expert, so they [the regional stakeholders] are recognizing your expertise.

(P37, IIT-SN)

This is key when the participants talked about their desire to give back to the region. The inheritance of INI name conferred prestige and status to the HEIs (and even to the regions), and the staff perceived working with the region as the right thing to do.

We call this the logic of ‘social responsibility’ as per which the HEIs’ regional engagement – given that they were institutes of national stature and started in non-core regions – was shaped by notions of giving back to the regions in addition to commercial or strategic intent. Being in non-core regions also helped the HEIs solicit grants and public funding to engage with local communities. For instance, IISER-SN started a science outreach programme through government support to broaden science awareness in the locality: it organized activities, such as child scientist camps, teacher training programmes and open days, and engaged with communities, including schools, teachers and students. Many participants described the HEI–region relationship as similar to that of a host and a guest. The non-core regions, as a host, prided themselves of having a national-level university and were supportive of the growth of the HEIs whereas the HEIs, as a guest, felt a sense of responsibility to give back in return.

5.2.3. Legitimization

The HEIs strengthened regional ties to gain public and regulatory legitimacy. The regions provided the land to the HEIs, which in several cases actually disturbed the established local communities. Hosting an institute of INI stature, the local communities had expectations of the HEIs to support the region:

Whenever the land is taken away from local population to fund something which is from the centre, they don’t see a direct benefit in that. … The kind of compensation they would have expected, they would not have got; they might have been given false promises that jobs would come up.

(P32, IIT-SN)

Hence, developing regional ties provided HEIs much-needed local legitimacy. Likewise, developing ties with a national-level high-status institute helped the regional stakeholders gain legitimacy for regional initiatives:

IITs have a brand and we always have respect from the people.

(P32, IIT-SN)

[The regional stakeholders] actually have a lot of value for the people from IIM … just having an IIM on board will not only bring intellectually credibility but it will also build their name.

(P8, IIM-SN)

Government rolled out interventions, with possibility of grants, to nudge the HEIs to engage with regions. Participants indicated that participating in such interventions helped the HEIs gain regulatory legitimacy. For example, IIT-RN had established a regional entrepreneurship centre with government support. Likewise, the government started various rankings that created competition between the new and established INIs. In several case, the HEIs started region-oriented initiatives, instead of just copying the established INIs, to create a niche and compete in the rankings.

The logic of legitimization emerged from our lens of governments expanding higher education systems in a top-down approach to hitherto underserved regions. In many cases, leaders in the HEIs indicated that there was an added pressure on the HEIs to prove themselves since public funding for establishing new universities came at the cost of allocating the same funds to expand well-established universities. They described that programmes with and for the region helped the HEIs demonstrate their impact sooner, justifying their rationale for being established and helping gain legitimacy.

5.2.4. Rationalization

The rationalization logic indicated that the HEIs and the regional stakeholders looked for benefits from developing ties. Both academic and economic rationalizations underscored the development of regional ties.

Economic rationalization refers to the HEIs and regions deriving economic benefits from the ties. For the regions, economic benefits such as job creation, developing human capital or regional innovation, were key considerations for developing ties with the HEIs. For the HEIs, the region unlocked opportunities for funding through co-creating programmes with and for the region. In case of SPA-SN and IIT-RN, the geographical characteristics (mountain region) provided a strategic advantage, enabling the HEIs to develop disciplinary niches and gain an advantage over their established counterparts. The director at IIT-RN explained this as follows:

Now Indian universities and IIT’s, for many decades have largely been working on problems of the West. So, we figured that if we work on our own problems then we have the chance of being the best. If we work on the problems of the West, we will always be second best or third best.

(P67, IIT-RN)

The HEIs adhered to the same academic logic as, and largely mimicked, the established INIs: they emphasized merit-based selectivity, publications in academic journals and recognition within the academic community. Thus, developing ties required the regional stakeholders to factor in the academic norms and values of the HEIs. The HEIs developed those ties that aligned their disciplinary expertise with the regional needs. Several participants mentioned that such alignment enabled access to new research ideas, development of pilot projects that could be scaled up later or application of existing research to novel areas, as described below:

There is some kind of energy harnessing device we are developing, which can be implanted [in the region]. Main focus of that: we will get a model.

(P59, IIT-RN)

There was a green waste cleaning robot [project] which was given by some local business. Then our students developed their design and then we [the HEI] started collaborating with the business for research.

(P21, IIT-SN)

The HEIs implemented collegial decision-making for launching new programmes and followed similar academic norms as other INIs in their teaching and learning practices. They also combined this with opportunities afforded by the regional ties as partnerships with the region provided unique resources for the programmes. For instance, the region provided the resources and expertise to develop or strengthen the academic programmes at SPA-SN, as described by participants: ‘Specially, in architecture, students get to see and be part of the city’ (P52, SPA-SN) and ‘[Our] region, which is incredibly rich, it’s rich in natural resources, it’s rich in culture’ (P57, SPA-SN). Likewise, IIT-SN and IIT-RN had started part-time programmes for professionals in specific disciplinary areas they had expertise in.

By aligning new regional ties with their activities and academic communities, the HEIs were able to start research and teaching in novel areas that helped them find a niche and gain acceptance and recognition within their academic community. The rationalization logic was linked to the expanding higher education system in developing countries. Many participants described that as INIs, the HEIs chased the same success indicators as their established counterparts, although they took different paths towards achieving these. The government rankings that used the same parameters to rank the established and new INIs further encouraged the same. Developing regional ties were embedded within the overall goals of being national-level high status institutions, and achieving the same goals as the established INIs.

6. DISCUSSION

Our findings contribute to research on developing non-core regions through universities. This study is based on the perspectives of universities and those who work therein. We have provided a methodological framework that combines routes and logics to explain the development of university–region relationships in non-core regions by new universities. By focusing our data collection and analysis on the development of regions, albeit from the perspectives of the universities and their actors, we have uncovered the dynamics and evolutionary nature of university–region relationships, instead of the outcomes and impact of regional engagement of universities which is common in the literature. Our findings indicate an initiation phase where regional ties get formed, followed by a phase where regional ties get strengthened or weakened, through the development of underlying logics.

We enrich research on the process of forming and institutionalizing regional spaces (Harrison et al., 2017). Our findings suggest that new universities do not just form relationships with regions, but in the process frame what regions mean for them. Where new universities are established through policy mandates, the region is a pregiven territorial container across which relations begin to form through the three routes. As new universities develop, they construct relational regions by strengthening existing ties or forming new ones through the four logics we found. In this process, they instrumentally aggregate ties, giving them a regional label. However, differences can appear in the way they institutionalize regional ties, depending on the mix of the four different logics at play.

Our findings indicate that one of the considerations by new universities for developing regional relationships is potential benefit to the universities, in addition to the development of the regions. New universities focus on operational stability and legitimacy, working within the constraints of traditional legacy systems, and thus their strategy, structure and culture are often not developed fully to engage with regions. These, combined with their emphasis on building specializations, create constraints for them to go beyond traditional norms, engage with multidisciplinary practical issues, and take risks which may be necessary for engaging with non-core regions. In such cases, in addition to the regional resources, the engagement of new universities with non-core regions depends on the nature of relationships. The three routes signify the importance of personal, organizational and intermediary resources to how new universities form regional relationships, while the four logics can determine the nature of relationships between new universities and regions.

The four logics we have described provide an analytical framework to examine how universities might later balance the regional and broader national-level public outcomes (Glass, 2018). In the context of countries in the Global South, new universities are expected to produce outcomes that are aligned with policy goals. Hence, in the early years, new universities can integrate regional engagement into their organizational design to deliver on policy mandates and gain legitimacy, while in later years making the region a relational domain that is integrated with their various missions, as is the case for engaged universities.

Fruitful future steps for our research will to be to examine the situation from the perspective of regional actors and, in particular, those from government and businesses. Further analysis is also needed on how the logics mature and what happens as new universities become stable and achieve momentum. Future studies can examine the ‘impact’ of specialized universities on the non-core regions and extend the findings to multidisciplinary universities. If new universities established are high-status universities, as in our cases, they will be in an influential position to pick and choose regional ties and shape the non-core regions through their own knowledge infrastructure. They can inform and influence the networks and projects brought into the region, and thus alter the social, economic and cultural profile of the region. A key consideration in this analysis would be that non-core regions themselves can be transient and developing, alongside the evolution of the universities.

7. CONCLUSIONS AND LESSONS

We have examined how new universities in non-core regions form and develop regional ties. We contribute to two areas in the literature on universities and regions: the exploration of non-core regions, especially those of countries in the Global South (cf. Thomas & Pugh, 2020), and the focus on new universities. We have provided case studies of five new universities in India, which were established in non-core regions as part of a policy for massification of higher education, along with a regional development agenda. By undertaking large-scale qualitative analysis, we have derived widely applicable insights about the process of forming and developing regional ties between regions and new universities, beyond what a single case study can give.

We find three predominant routes – personal, organizational and brokered – through which new universities form regional ties. We find that individual academics are key to forming regional ties, via the personal route, in the early years of new universities. Directed policy or managerial steer that would be seen through the organizational route is found during later stages of new universities’ consolidation. The brokered route is also important, with the government steering new universities to engage with regions, with goals to leverage new universities for the development of non-core regions.

Across the routes, we unpacked different rationales, logics and motivations within the regional tie formation processes. We find that complex and interwoven logics of social responsibility and incrementalism are involved to embed new ties, accompanied by economic rationalizations, and the construction of public and regulatory legitimacy. The four logics for developing university–region ties can also be explained by the simultaneous development of new universities with that of non-core regions in developing countries in Global South, which are perhaps not prepared to host and support a new university. To summarize, we have tried to unpack some of the complexities of university–region ties of new universities in non-core regions and open up the black box to understand exactly what is going on and why.

For new universities in developing countries, aligning the different logics underlying the development of regional ties with policy goals and global aspirations can lead to ambiguities. There can be ambiguities as to whose responsibility it is to develop university–region ties, especially in cases where it is neither well accounted for in the university missions and structures, nor well remunerated. There can be confusion about the eventual outcomes and goals of developing regional ties, particularly when new universities in developing countries already face conflicting goals of expanding access and achieving research excellence. Lastly, new universities need to develop a niche and position themselves in national and international higher education systems. However, as regional ties get integrated across multiple levels of their activities, new universities may need to rethink their identities and positioning.

Forming and developing ties between non-core regions and new universities can be challenging and complex. Establishing new universities in regions that did not previously hold research universities and attempting to build regional engagement into universities that predominantly values international research and teaching agendas can be conflicting (Goddard et al., 2014). Furthermore, unlike in core regions, university–region ties in non-core regions may not develop organically via proximity effects. There are also plus sides to being a new university in non-core regions that can include having less politics and a clean state to begin from, in addition to the absence of competition and hierarchy effects from well-established universities (Boucher et al., 2003).

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

We thank the editors and reviewers for assisting us in developing this paper for publication.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We use the term ‘non-core regions’ to refer to rural or semi-urban regions that have far less knowledge infrastructure, including universities. Scholars have used ‘peripheral’ or ‘rural’ regions to describe regions in similar situations.

2. While in many cases the government was the key intermediary, there were also instances where international development or funding organizations (e.g., World Bank and United Nations Development Programme – UNDP), and even private organizations, through corporate social responsibility efforts, acted as intermediary and facilitated relationships between the regions and the HEIs.