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Government aims for world class business-university collaboration

The Minister for Universities and Sciences is to set out plans to meet the challenge of making England and international hotspot for business-university collaboration.

David Willetts is set to outline plans to strengthen business and university engagement, including improvements to sandwich courses, promotion of a new collaborative framework for businesses and universities, whilst also ensuring a better fit between graduates and jobs.

He said: “Higher education is about much more than economic success, but universities and graduates are vital to economic growth.

“We must ensure that graduates enter the labour market equipped to succeed, that employers know how to engage with universities and that we make good use of new research discoveries.”

The Government commissioned a Higher Education White Paper and asked Professor Sir Tim Wilson to carry out a review into how university-industry collaboration can be improved.

Following his review, the Government have outlined plans to create a National Centre for Universities and Business to strengthen strategic partnerships, stimulating student demand for sandwich courses, whilst also extending the Graduate Talent Pool service for a further three years.

They also plan to work more with graduate employers to promote fair recruitment and the use of new, and more detailed records of student achievement.

Willetts added: “Sir Tim’s excellent review found lots of good individual initiatives but we need to learn from what works and spread that across the country. The Government will play its part in helping those on campus work with those off campus.

“We are very grateful to Sir Tim for his hard work, and we accept his recommendations. We will now improve the regime for sandwich courses, promote a new framework for business and universities to work together and ensure a better fit between graduates and jobs.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .