Knowledge-based Development: the Contribution of University-firm Interaction in South Africa

Over the past two decades, there have been substantive shifts in the social compact between higher education and society. Unlike the centuries old tradition of the autonomous pursuit of knowledge and science, universities are now expected to be more accountable to society, the state and the market in particular, more responsive to the demands of a global knowledge-based economy (Salmi 2007, Maassen 2006, Newman et al 2004, Audretsch and Phillips 2006, Jacob and Hellstrom 2000, Delanty 2000, Van Vught 2000, SAUVCA 2004). A decade ago, a world higher education declaration (1998) set out a key premise that has been influencing policy, research and university practice: Without adequate higher education and research institutions providing a critical mass of skilled and educated people, no country can ensure genuine endogenous and sustainable development and, in particular, developing countries and least developed countries cannot reduce the gap separating them from the industrially developed ones. The broad concern is with this changing role of higher education in relation to knowledge-based economic growth, innovation and development, for the countries of the South, which experience these new global imperatives under very different, often disadvantageous, conditions (Sagasti 2004).