Higher Education Excellence and Local Economic Development: The Case of the Entrepreneurial University of Twente

Abstract

By tradition or intellectual necessity, universities pursue a main objective: increasing and transferring knowledge that is internationally relevant for the whole of mankind. But new powerful socio-economic forces are demanding universities to be engaged in regional economic development and their knowledge to be relevant in terms of local employment, university spin-offs and growth. These two objectives are traditionally considered as not complementary or even mutually exclusive. Through a case study regarding the Dutch University of Twente, this article shows that local economic relevance and international excellence are not incompatible objectives: they were not at the University of Twente; they can be reached even in a new born and poor endowed university, located in a peripheral, depressed and not industrialized countryside. This article argues that a strong entrepreneurial vision and the adoption of a different concept of knowledge may be the key for other small and peripheral European universities, in order to reach both local economic relevance and international excellence. The article will contribute and enrich the regional studies debate, introducing to it some higher education policy issues and ideas.

Acknowledgements

This work would have been impossible without Professor Dr Arie Rip, director of the Centre for Studies of Science, Technology and Society at the University of Twente. He welcomed one of the authors in to his Centre and provided invaluable assistance and advise for the work. The authors would also like to thank all the people from the Centre for Higher Education Policy Studies (CHEPS) at the University of Twente, who were very welcoming, joined in very productive discussions and allowed the use of their excellent library, from which this work draws heavily. The authors are grateful to all of those who have discussed this paper with them, and from whom they have learnt much. In that sense a very special thank you to the colleague and friend Robbin A. te Velde. Finally, thanks also to the two anonymous referees (whoever and wherever you are) for their comments.

Notes

1. An early version of the paper was presented at the 6th ‘Toulon Verona’ Conference on Quality in Higher Education, Health Care, Local Government, Oviedo, Principado de Asturias, Spain, 10–12 September 2003.

2. Up till recently (2000) the region of Twente was an Objective 2 region and at this moment Twente is in the phasing-out programme.

3. The study is edited by the University of Twente itself and is in Dutch: University of Twente (1997), The University of Twente as the motor of the economy of Twente; a study of the economic effects of the University of Twente in the region of Twente, Internal report from the University of Twente: cited in Van Alsté and Van der Sijde (1998).