The Hindu Business Line : The gains from industry-academia interaction

Dr R. A. Mashelkar, Director-General, CSIR, visits an industrial unit in Andhra Pradesh ... CSIR labs and IITs should provide the major thrust to industrial consultancy by co-opting university departments as partners in major research projects.

TEACHING, research and extension are known as the trinity of higher education. Teaching is the basic activity of communicating knowledge to students and stimulating their interest in it. Research not only extends the frontiers of knowledge but lends depth, breadth and a certain authority and authenticity to teaching.

Extension exploits existing knowledge for economically and socially beneficial purposes and puts the validity of this knowledge to test in real world conditions, raising new questions for research which again feeds back into teaching and extension, and so the cycle continues.

Attempts have always been made to achieve productive interaction between academia and industry. Sandwich courses were introduced in the second year of polytechnic courses whereby students spend a semester with a local industry and get hands-on experience of real-life situations and industry also gets an idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the kind of students academic institutions produce.

Engineering college students also have an industry visit in their final year. But no continuing, substantive collaborative relationship between academic expertise and industry needs was built up. In 1982, a concept called `science and technology park' was sought to be promoted by the government.

The idea, borrowed from the West, envisaged universities encouraging technocrat-entrepreneurs to establish pilot plants (instead of straightaway starting a full-fledged commercial venture and taking a big risk) within the university campus to try out any new, promising technological ideas with the academicians providing research and consultancy support to solve any problems the units may encounter.

When many of our universities lacked even basic teaching and research facilities and were financially dependent on the government for even their day-to-day running, it was naive to expect such a sophisticated scheme to succeed, and it did fizzle out.

Universities are, or at least ought to be, the prime repositories of up-to-date and advanced levels of knowledge in different fields. Especially in a knowledge society, industry and business are the main users and beneficiaries of such knowledge. One would, therefore, think it natural, almost inevitable, for universities and industry to come together in a close, constructive collaboration to use such knowledge for mutual benefit and that of society.

This, in fact, is what has happened in developing countries. But in India, unfortunately, notwithstanding the recommendations of the various education commissions set up after Independence and the emphasis in the National Education Policy, industry-academia interaction still remains marginal and largely confined to a few top institutions such as the IITs, the IIMs and a few CSIR laboratories.

The exception, of course, is agriculture, where there is a long and continuing tradition, started during the British times, of agro-based industries depending on the outcome of the research of agricultural universities, but this broad sectoral involvement is qualitatively somewhat different from the individualised and customised partnership that industry-academia interaction is, though customisation is also entering agriculture through biotechnology.

This article examines:

the likely benefits from industry-academia interaction,

the factors inhibiting such interaction, and

the policy and structural measures likely to encourage such interaction.

Benefits

For industry: Using the academic knowledge base to improve industrial cost, quality and competitive dimensions, reducing dependence on foreign know-how and expenditure on internal R&D, updating and upgrading the knowledge base of the industry's professionals through management development programmes designed by the academia, the faculty's exposure to industry leading to improved curricula and widened and deepened teaching perspectives resulting in professional graduates of a high calibre to man industry.

For academia: The satisfaction of seeing knowledge and expertise being used for socially useful and productive purposes, widening and deepening of the curricula and the perspectives of teachers and researchers; earning additional resources for a system severely constrained in this regard; securing training and final placements more easily for students based on the respect earned from and the relationship established with industry.

Inhibiting factors

From the industry's side: Insensitivity to, and/or lack of awareness of, the resource potential of the academia, a blind, herd-like obsession with expensive, high-profile professional consultants, easy availability of foreign know-how, compulsions of existing technical collaboration agreements, bad experience of earlier interactions with academia, anxiety to keep problems and breakthroughs confidential for fear of losing the competitive edge.

From academia's side: Apathy towards applied research and extension and reluctance to leave the comfort zone of pure teaching; inadequate marketing of its strengths to industry; lack of a critical mass of experts and specialised technical infrastructure; overspecialised loyalties and reluctance to collaborate in inter-disciplinary problem-solving; unhelpful, restrictive internal policies and procedures discouraging or frustrating academicians' attempts to collaborate with industry.

Suggested measures

Of the three major systems in academia — CSIR laboratories, IITs/IIMs and universities — the first two are distinctly stronger in terms of management, resources, expertise and reputation. They should, therefore, provide the major thrust by co-opting reputed university departments as partners in all major research and consultancy projects.

As teaching is a major responsibility of universities, research and consultancy should not be at the expense of teaching but only as a value-adding activity. Teachers, junior or senior, should be encouraged to engage in both teaching and research/consultancy as synergising modules.

The accreditation process now introduced for technical institutions (offering engineering, management and computer courses) should specifically highlight the potential and capabilities of departments for training, problem-oriented research and consultancy and give a separate star rating for this aspect in addition to the overall institutional rating now being given. This should also be given for social sciences disciplines such as economics, commerce, psychology and sociology.

Before drafting a new Five-Year Plan, the Planning Commission used to farm out research projects on specialised sectoral studies to university departments. This practice deserves to be continued and expanded further. Apart from motivating the academics, this would enable industry to readily identify competent departments for giving assignments with confidence.

Though the public sector is shrinking, major PSUs should, as a matter of policy, utilise available expertise from academia, wherever feasible.

In addition to the accreditation rating mentioned above, the UGC, the AICTE and the CSIR could prepare a list of departments and their area of specialisation and consultancy competence and operate an industry-academia interaction exchange in every State (on the lines of an employment exchange) which any academic institution or industry can access.

While sanctioning departments of excellence in universities, the University Grants Commission should keep in view the relevance of these to the needs and problems of industry.

Every major academic institution should have a suitably structured academia-industry interaction council headed by the director of the institution which will take steps to promote and de-bottleneck such interaction.

At the annual conferences of trade and industry, associations such as Ficci and CII, as well as academics should make presentations on academia's problem-solving, research and consultancy capabilities.

Since the industry does not generally have a high opinion of academia's capability, it is for the latter to take the initiative to break the ice. Some ice-breaking initiatives would be:

including pro-active and positive-minded professionals from industry and business in syndicates and boards of study,

using practising professionals from industry as part-time guest faculty,

securing training/project attachments for senior students and research scholars in industry,

exploiting contacts with alumni who are successful in industry and business,

offering management development courses for professionals in industry, as this is a safe, inexpensive trial interaction for the latter,

offering inexpensive, if necessary free, consultancy to small and medium industries which cannot afford expensive consultants.

The recent successes of Indian entrepreneurs in IT and process and product outsourcing have generated a new self-confidence in Indian industry to take on global competition, unlike in the past when there was near-total dependence on foreign collaboration for achieving any breakthrough.

Groups such as the TVS, Bajaj and Tata have successfully developed models in-house, without any foreign collaboration. The garments and made-ups industry, even in small towns like Karur and Tirupur, is looking forward confidently to facing global competition after the removal of quotas from January 2005.

Indian companies have won prestigious international awards such as the Deming prize. Wipro and Infosys recently signed MoUs with some universities for collaboration. The atmosphere, therefore, is ripe for academia to exploit to its advantage this new ambience of confidence and self-reliance in industry.

(The author is a former Special Chief Secretary, Government of Andhra Pradesh, and Chairman, AP State Council of Higher Education.)

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