4. Moving beyond STEM
While most of these partnerships fall within STEM areas, that doesn’t mean they can’t include other disciplines not related to science, engineering or business.
For example, at Clemson, within the Pearce Center for Professional Communication, students are matched with local business that need like white papers and research reports. “Closing the skills gap must occur across disciplines and not just engineering or business,” Ballato says.
“We’re experimenting with ways to get everybody, from English majors to Chemistry majors, engaged with solving real problems with industry and nonprofit partners. This not only should help address the skills gap but also foster creative and interdisciplinary thinking and entrepreneurship.”
5. Promoting entrepreneurship
As the notion of working for one company for one’s entire career is increasingly foreign to today’’s students, Ridout says they are demanding schooling in how to thrive while self-employed.
In addition to exposing entrepreneurship classes to students outside of the business school, she recommends universities continue training after graduation with summer programs or competitions for the best startup business plan.
She describes an “end of the pipeline problem” that hoists students out into the work world less than fully prepared. “That is where these partnerships with economic development initiatives in university towns can make a difference,” Rideout says.
6. Measuring what you manage
Today’s university-business partnerships emphasis measuring and evaluating outcomes, though determining concrete benchmarks is a work in progress.
It goes beyond just counting degrees, explains Tyszko of the Chamber of Commerce. How did that student perform in the workplace? Did the university help the employer reduce its time to fill positions? Did the recent grads function adequately from the first day of employment, or did they require extra training?
Anthony Buccanfuso, executive director of The National Academies’ University Industry Demonstration Partnership (UIDP), says there are no clear-cut metrics to evaluate these collaborations and that any results are “typically not instantaneous.”
Further complicating the matter are the differing perspectives of the two parties involved. “Universities like data that says, hey, we got X millions of dollars a year from companies to perform research or to partner with them,” Buccanfuso says. “But companies are looking at different issues, like students hired. It’s very difficult and it’s also a longer time range, so there isn’t one set of established metrics to evaluate these collaborations.”
7. Shortcut through the maze
Rideout says most universities could do better to live up to the intent of the 1980 Bayh-Dole law compelled them to transfer technological innovation to practical use in the real world.
One way to do this is by shrinking the bureaucracy that can sometimes hinder technology transfer. The University of Minnesota’s Office for Technology Commercialization (OTC) is making strides in that regard. They aid students and researchers in their start-up companies, navigation through the licensing maze, sourcing funds and finding potential partners in the business world. In 2013, Minnesota’s OTC reported 14 companies, 331 invention disclosures and 65 U.S.-issued patents.
Meanwhile, the university’s “Try and Buy” program permits companies to access the university’s licensed technology for a trial period to assess whether any product produced is commercially viable. There’s typically a fee, but Minnesota firms are given free rights for the trial period, according to Rich Huebsch, associate director at Minnesota’s OTC. In addition, the first $1 million of product revenue is royalty-free for the licensing company.
Should universities and industry partner at all?
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