Boost for university-business links

Keywords Universities, Companies, Community relations, Partnering

Some 50 universities and colleges are to share almost £22 million of new funds from the Higher Education Reach Out to Business and the Community fund, designed to bring higher education, business and the community closer together.

Among the institutions successful in their bids are:

Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication (Chislehurst) which, in collaboration with the University of Sussex, is establishing an employability-skills unit for students, graduates and employees in the creative industries by developing accredited learning packages and strengthening students' understanding of business.

The University of Northumbria at Newcastle, which is creating an e-commerce centre as a resource to underpin services to business, expanding and integrating teaching-company-scheme activity, customized short courses and work-related learning for employers.

The University of Liverpool, which will develop its industry-linked activities, targeting manufacturing and engineering, information and communication technologies and business and professional services. The work will involve provision of specialist expertise in marketing, continuing professional development and information technology, working with sectoral business managers to deliver demand-led services and enterprise.

The University of Wolverhampton, in a consortium with all higher-education members of the West Midlands Higher Education Association, which will establish a knowledge network as a collective brand and single gateway for marketing the products and services of higher-education institutions in the West Midlands to business and industry.

Baroness Blackstone, Education and Employment Minister, said:

The role of higher education is critical in developing the enterprising and highly-skilled workforce that UK business needs to compete in world markets today. This fund rewards and encourages universities and colleges to enhance their interaction with business.

Lord Sainsbury, Minister for Science and Innovation, commented:

The new knowledge economy depends on maintaining and exploiting our excellent knowledge base and encouraging innovation to create world-class ideas,breakthrough technologies and high-value businesses … The higher-education sector is responding in the spirit of enterprise to its new role as both facilitator and stimulator of knowledge transfer, and to the challenges that this presents.