Industry and Higher Education

The adoption by universities in many countries of a mission of contributing to wealth creation and social benefit has raised questions, and also concerns, about its effects on academic research and academic researchers. This study used in-depth interviews to examine how a sample of academics in UK biological sciences departments were responding to this change. Although most were engaged in user-oriented research, much of it was undertaken to generate income and was on the periphery of their mainstream research. Their criteria for success continue to uphold traditional academic values. It is argued that the dominance of these values may disadvantage assistant staff working on industry-related projects and encourages a narrow view of postgraduate and postdoctoral research training as preparation solely for an academic career. Thus, for all the apparent readiness of research departments to engage with industry, their engagement appears strictly limited, and this may have implications for universities' performance of their mission in both research and training.

Proper naming of inventors on patent applications is of paramount importance under US law. For example, failure to name an inventor (even unintentionally) can have far-reaching consequences, including calling into question the patent owner's ability to enforce the patent or transfer rights in the patent to others. Particular complications arise in the university context, because the legal standards for inventorship often diverge from researchers' expectations based on authorship of papers, participation in a research team, or service in a supervisory capacity An approach that aims to educate those involved about the legal standards set out by the Patent Statute and the US courts can alleviate many potential stumbling blocks. The first step in that regard is to implement a carefully-crafted invention disclosure form for use at the outset of the patent application process. One such form is attached as an Appendix to this article.

Several Canadian universities use their internal policies to claim some form of ownership or licence right with respect to student-created intellectual property. These policies are examined from a contract and employment law viewpoint to determine their efficacy It is concluded that a university would have significant legal issues to overcome before successfully claiming ownership of intellectual property created by its students. Specific recommendations are presented that attempt to resolve these apparent difficulties.

The vocational education system in Germany is challenged by the wide range of societal demands made on it. The current organizational structure of the ‘Dual System’ of vocational education is too rigid. Teaching in vocational schools and the parallel company apprenticeships are too isolated from each other. Educational provision thus follows the systemic logic of this separation: there is inadequate and only superficial cooperation between school and firm. This paper recommends a change in approach from cooperation to networking. Based on the theoretical instrument of a ‘reflection step model’, an approach for bringing the two sectors together is developed. Examples are given of two research projects that indicate the potential of this approach.

This paper presents a summary of the findings of a recent survey of the way in which UK higher education institutions (HEIs) are offering distance education (DE) courses, the types of courses being offered, and their modes of delivery From analysis of the findings of this survey, it is apparent that the emphasis of HEIs is very much on the exploitation of available teaching technology in the delivery of DE courses. However, teaching at a distance is quite different from face-to-face teaching, and the evidence suggests that many HEIs fail to implement any meaningful academic staff training for the new role of DE tutor. The authors consider the difficulties this presents to academic staff who are required to move from face-to-face teaching to online facilitating. The paper concludes with an examination of the current provision of staff development and training within UK HEIs and suggests the type of academic staff training required if DE courses are to become truly core activities.

Successful technology transfer of innovations arising from university research is often hindered by the lack of development funds to add value to these nascent discoveries. Within a university context, ‘gap funding’ is, for example, grant research funding that supports the demonstration of technical feasibility, prototype development, and/or assists with broadening patent claims and strengthening licensing opportunities. It is this early development stage that constitutes the bottleneck in which the transfer of promising technologies in academia can often languish or come to a halt from the lack of even a modest amount of such funding. This paper reports on measured outcomes of two such gap funding programmes at the authors' institution, presented as case studies that demonstrate the importance of this type of funding, and provides several recommendations for grants administration. In addition, results of a survey conducted on the status of gap funding programmes at other academic institutions in North America are presented. Surprisingly few such programmes exist in North America and very few have reported outcomes. The case study results support the conclusion that gap funding programmes are critical to technology development and transfer within a university setting and can provide valuable returns on the investment. These returns include enhancing patenting and licensing efforts as well as various collateral benefits such as the number of publications created; students trained; spin-offs formed; and the leveraging induced as measured by the amount of follow-on federal and industrial sponsored research dollars.

The purpose of the research discussed here is to explore relationships between a university and its local tourism industry. Although there has been much research on the interface between education and industry few empirical studies exist that test the extent and nature of these relationships. The paper reviews the industry-education interface both in broad terms and specifically in relation to tourism education. Key areas of interaction are identified, and, using an empirical case study, various types of industry-education links are investigated, including: recruitment, employers' preferences in graduate skills, work experience and placements, industry involvement in course design, training for the tourism industry, the use by industry of university products and services, and industry's views on forging links with education. A number of recommendations are made for the improvement of industry-education links.

The key issues underpinning this article are increasing globalization, development and expansion of the European Union, and the ease of and demand for international travel. These factors collectively are generating greater numbers of international travellers and thus an increasing recognition of the need for multilingual staff. This is perhaps most manifest in the service industries and, it is argued, particularly in tourism. The availability of multilingual staff is, partly at least, a function of education. This article examines the role and position of foreign languages skills in undergraduate tourism management degree courses. The findings of an investigation into the attitudes and perceptions of students of such courses in relation to the study of foreign languages are presented, complemented by the outcomes of a survey of tourism employers. While it is established that the development of foreign languages skills is recognized as an invaluable outcome of these courses, it is surprising that their acquisition is not always compulsory. Limitations in the study of languages are identified as well as key differences between the perceptions of students and those of employers, which highlight critical issues and the need for further research.