Innovation or the nation?

Friday, March 20, 2009

Dr David Johnson, from the University of Oxford, examines the balance of graduates between arts and science-based disciplines

Globalisation and international trade have stimulated economic growth in many developing countries, and are significantly altering the contours of where and how goods and services are produced. Skills development is thus high on the agenda of most, if not all, developing countries, but a number of tensions have become apparent.

First, there is a need to strike a balance between the forces that shape a country's future skills profile. Here there is a tension between a market-led approach, which sees students as rationale agents, who choose either arts-based or science-based subjects in line with their perceptions of market needs, and the role of the state as planner. In the United Kingdom, increasing choice and the perceived demand in certain sectors of the economy have seen the dramatic increase in university posts in media studies, dance and drama, sports studies and business to meet student demand.

While there is a 239% increase in the appointment of academics teaching media studies, staffing in chemistry, biology and physics increased by 3%, 9% and 12% respectively. In languages, there are declines of 13% in French, 12% in German and 7% in Italian. Research funding for French will drop by £3m and German by £1.6m. Similar trends are seen in many developing countries, despite an acute awareness that there are different educational and skills needs in different types of economies at different stages of growth. Some developing countries would be better served, at this stage of their economic growth, by the production of skills for 'imitation', or technological catch-up, suggesting the need to raise the general quality of technical, basic and secondary education, and others will demand more resources for the development of skills for 'innovation', normally produced in universities and research institutions.

In Kenya, the increasing demand for university education has prompted the government there to convert polytechnic institutions into constituent universities. But at the same time, the most significant expansion in the job market has been in the informal sector where, of 550,000 jobs created last year, 500,000 were in the informal sector. By contrast, South Africa, which has a strong industrial base, argues for – and is taking steps to produce – more engineering graduates. Currently, it has only 0.33 graduate engineers per million people compared to Canada (4.79), Ireland (3.70), Britain (3.10), Australia (2.33), New Zealand (1.65) and Hong Kong (1.28).

Second, there is an ongoing debate about the nature of knowledge and how it is produced. For some, universities and research institutions should work more closely with industry and the state to develop knowledge that can be applied to innovation and development; for others, disciplinary knowledge, and especially traditional arts-based subjects, remain the primary mission of the university in its search for truth. In South Africa, the restructuring of the higher education sector in 1994 reduced the number of universities from 36 to 22, and rationalised these into traditional universities, universities of technology and comprehensive universities. A recent study shows that there is no overall increase in degrees awarded to science, engineering and technology graduates between 2000 and 2006, and argues that the funding model adopted by the South African government does not do enough to stimulate the growth of scientific and technological skills.

The higher education funding mechanism introduced in 2003 made provision for 'block' funding awarded to higher education institutions to take account of the differential costs involved in teaching science and arts subject graduates. But it seems that the funding mechanism provides few incentives to universities to produce 'scientific knowledge'. The report suggests that a research output subsidy for an article in theology is identical to one in nuclear physics. But the tension caused by the need to invest in arts-based subjects to ensure the high levels of skills necessary for the efficient delivery of public sector services is also high on the agenda of the South African government and that of many other governments in the developing world. Many universities continue to see it as their mission to provide the skills necessary for national development.

Perhaps a way to ease the contest for resources between (science and technology-based) skills for innovation and (arts-based) skills for national development is through university-state-industrial partnerships. The recent five-year initiative, which involves General Motors SA and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in establishing a chair in 'mechatronics' in the university's school of engineering, is a good example of one way to encourage a growth in scientific knowledge. Similar partnerships between universities and public sector institutions are necessary for a more focused concentration on arts-based skills. What is harder to resolve, however, is the tension between centralist planning and market-led demand.