A problem that has been persisting for more than 50 years and perhaps getting worse is impossible to address. Industry-academia gap is such a problem, primarily in less developed countries. More or less every nation has been increasing its education budget and enrolment. Despite it, there has been an increasing dissatisfaction in finding employable graduates, and growing unemployment of degree-holding job seekers. For example, Bangladesh's education budget reached 11.91 per cent of the total outlay in the fiscal year 2020-21, equivalent to 2.08 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the previous year. On the other hand, despite huge success in IT service export, as high as 85 per cent of engineering graduates in India are failing to get engineering jobs. Furthermore, a growing number of studies are indicating widening skill gaps. Hence, the industry has been raising a question about the role of academia. On the other hand, without the role of academia, how can the high-tech industry grow? Therefore, the issue of the industry-academia gap in high-tech has become contentious.
Growing investment in education has not been meeting the industry's need for skills. Ironically, a few freelancers without formal science and engineering degrees have been doing very well in exporting their technology services to the international market. Despite it, there has been a growing focus on increasing the budget for enrolment and quality advancement. For example, Bangladesh is after almost doubling technical education enrolment by 2030, and the university grants commission is after huge loans for quality advancement.
If investment in education does not supply the skills that the industry needs, what is its purpose? Does it mean that advanced countries have been suffering from a similar problem? If that is true, what has been the reason for education? To shed light, let's take a lesson from history and a few countries.
SLOW ECONOMIC GROWTH AND NO FORMAL EDUCATION IN THE PREINDUSTRIAL AGE: In the preindustrial age, the capacity of producing economic value from natural resources was quite low. Hence, despite having far less population and greater natural resource stock, the quality of living standard was far poorer than we have today. But the situation started changing from 1000 AD-both the population and per capita GDP started growing-reaching 30 times by 1900. Particularly, the growth trend took exponential turn in the 18th century. Interestingly, there was no presence of formal education in the preindustrial edge. For example, the University of Bologna, established in 1088 in Italy, is the world's oldest university. Other universities such as the University of Oxford, the University of Paris, the University of Cambridge, the University of Padua, and the University of Naples Federico II were established in 1096, 1160, 1209, 1222, and 1224 respectively. Did these universities play a role in supplying skills for driving economic growth? Since 1000 AD, has there been a correlation between the growth of academia and economic prosperity? To conclude, let us look into the underlying cause of the unfolding of industrial revolutions driving economic growth and the role of academia.
INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTIONS ARE DRIVEN BY ACADEMIA: During the preindustrial age, human beings used to rely on intuition to gather knowledge for fuelling creativity to generate ideas of tools in getting jobs done better. They used to rely on craftsmanship to implement those ideas. Hence, their means of extracting economic value from natural resources was quite low and also not scalable. But the invention of scientific methods led to scaling up knowledge production. Hence, instead of the intuition of individuals, academia started playing an increasing role in supplying knowledge, resulting in a systematic flow of ideas and turning craftsmanship into engineering. As a result, the steam engine started to scale up and mechanisation began to turn craftsmanship into a production line, resulting in the first industrial revolution. Hence, it could be argued that rapid economic growth in the 17th century emerged due to the role of academia in supplying knowledge for creating a flow of ideas and engineering. It was followed up by the formation of electrical science during 1800-1850 and electrical engineering during 1850-1870 giving birth to the 2nd industrial revolution. The formation of quantum science and mechanics during 1900-1950 led to the 3rd industrial revolution. The underlying science and engineering base in fueling these industrial revolutions, driving successive waves of economic growth, emerged from academia, making the UK, Europe, the USA, and Japan high-income countries. But why cannot less developed countries reach the high-income status by increasing investment in education-setting up a growing number of high-calibre universities?
ACADEMIA-LED FORMATION OF SILICON VALLEY: As far as high-tech is concerned, Silicon Valley is a role model. Universities of Stanford and California Berkeley are the driving force in generating knowledge, creating ideas, forming start-ups, and scaling them up creating this remarkable high-tech success story. Does it mean that high-tech economic successes in other countries like Japan, Malaysia, India, or Taiwan are also the outcome of academia of those countries?
JAPAN'S SUCCESS THROUGH INDUSTRY RESEARCH: Starting from the silicon wafer, fine chemicals, semiconductor equipment and robotics, to lithium-ion batteries, Japan has a strong footprint in the global high-tech economy. But unlike the USA, the industry has been at its core. Of course, over the decades, the industry has formed a partnership for undertaking R&D and offering a skilled workforce. For example, unlike the USA, Japan's semiconductor industry did not start due to the role of universities. It began with the journey of Sony and other Japanese firms to leverage transistor, invented by the USA's Bell labs. As opposed to making licensed transistors, Sony focused on refining it, creating the demand for R&D for generating knowledge and ideas. As a result, Japanese firms started creating demand for high-calibre university graduates for corporate R&D centres and engaging universities to undertake joint R&D assignments. Hence, it could be reasoned that industry-led initiative for driving technology advancement and innovation has created a linkage with universities in Japan. This is one of the underlying reasons for the winning as high as 19 Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry by the Japanese in the first 20 years of the 21st century.
INDUSTRY-ACADEMIA PARTNERSHIP FOR TAIWAN'S SUCCESS AS SILICON ISLAND: Like Japan, Taiwan has also created high-tech success by linking universities to fuel the mission of exploiting commercial opportunities of high-tech by creating a flow of knowledge and ideas. For example, to fuel TSMC's mission of perfecting successive generation semiconductor nodes, there has been a growing need for knowledge and ideas. Hence, TSMC has formed a strong partnership with local universities.
MALAYSIA'S SEMICONDUCTOR INDUSTRY FOR TRADING LABOUR: Unlike Japan and Taiwan, Malaysia's semiconductor industry started in the early 1970s with Intel's facility in a paddy field for testing and bonding. As opposed to knowledge and ideas from Malaysian universities, Intel needed labour-based skills for operating imported equipment according to Intel's process. Hence, Malaysia's high-tech journey focused on giving training to high-school graduates, as opposed to giving R&D assignments to universities and recruiting high-skilled university graduates. As over the decades this model has been scaled up, there has been very little or no linkage of Malaysia's high-tech industry with a increasing number of universities in producing growing number of science and engineering graduates.
INDIA'S IT SERVICE EXPORT SUCCESS FROM WEAK LINKAGE WITH ACADEMIA: India's large-scale success in IT service export has been due to the offering of services out of technologies developed in advanced countries. Hence, there has been a little linkage between India's IT industry with its renowned engineering institutions for creating knowledge and ideas. Instead, India's IT industry has focused on setting up training institutions for grasping foreign technologies to offer services.
Like India and Malaysia, Bangladesh's high-tech journey is also like trading labour and knowledge of foreign technologies. Hence, there has been a decreasing role of universities to meet the skills local high-tech industry needs. As explained, the role of academia in supporting the local industry depends on the nature of value addition. As industry in less developed countries is mostly busy trading labour and existing knowledge, instead of creating and trading new knowledge and ideas, there has been a weak link between the industry and academia. As a result, growing investment in higher education is failing to drive the growth of the industry-creating the industry-academia gap a contentious issue.
M Rokonuzzaman, Ph.D is academic, and researcher on technology, innovation, and policy.
[email protected]
