Industry—education partnerships

Abstract

Quality management ideas are changing industry's production systems and, through industry-education (I-E) partnerships, are also influencing the production systems of education. These mutual changes, though not merging the two systems, allow industry and education to interact more easily and leverage the other's resources to act as agency for each other. The growing number of I-E partnerships has already begun and should continue to ease the traditionally oppositional relation between industry and education. Finally, recommendations for furthering I-E relationships and suggestions for future investigations are given. Proceeding from the premise that both planning and development of I-E partnerships require a discipline crossing, that is, an interdisciplinary approach, it is argued not that interdisciplinarity is the only useful method of viewing I-E developments, only that access should be retained to any and all useful perspectives.