Across Europe there is a fundamental failure to agree on the value of research. Classifying academic and government perspectives on impact is a step towards settling the debate

The questions of defining ‘impact’ and confirming the value of academic research are hot topics for the higher education community not only in the UK, but around the world. Paul Benneworth, project leader at HERAVALUE, here discusses three communities with interests in impact – governments looking for impact, researchers investigating impact, and academics who deliver the impact – and argues for a better understanding of the interaction between them

Book review: Music festivals and regional development inAustralia

Throughout the world, the number of festivals has grown exponentially in the last two decades as people celebrate local and regional cultures, but perhaps more importantly as local councils and other groups seek to use festivals to promote tourism and to stimulate rural development. This book discusses broad issues affecting music festivals globally, especially in the context of rural revitalisation, drawing on research which traces the overall growth of festivals of various kinds. Paul Benneworth commends the authors for making their landmark contribution in an open, accessible, and ultimately intellectually satisfying way

"No longer the sparkling new idea" : anchoring university entrepreneurship programmes in academic, entrepreneurial and regional policy networks

This paper is concerned with what makes a good university entrepreneurship programme (UEP), in particular with which features are necessary to allow UEPs to thrive within university settings. The paper begins from the paradox that UEPs are part of university’s extended development periphery, and always risk being eliminated because they do not deliver core university outputs, teaching and research. The paper seeks to understand under what conditions UEPs can thrive, using a case study of one UEP, the Temporary Entrepreneurs Scheme (the TOP programme) of the University of Twente in the Netherlands, which has recently celebrated its silver jubilee, and offers a good example of a UEP which has evolved to continue to meet stakeholder needs. The paper identifies three main stakeholder groups whose needs UEPs must meet, university management, regional economic policy makes, and enterprising entrepreneurs. The paper identifies how UEPs can respond to those three groups needs, and concludes by setting out the ways in which UEPs can meet those needs, providing the basis for a more nuanced understanding of what constitutes a good UEP

The modern university and urban transformation

The recent rise of the discourse of entrepreneurial science as a wider policy justification for higher education funding has overshadowed of universities’ wider societal missions. University modernisation process replaced freedom from outside interference by freedom of university senior managers to manage their institutions autonomously to deliver pre-determined policy goals. This quasi-marketisation and individualisation of the academy emphasise measurable activities that generate university surpluses. Entrepreneurial science has always been a problematic notion for those disciplines and activities not closely linked to the market, and especially for those engaged in creating policy- or even community-based knowledge. This paper reflects on how the modern strategic university can contribute to urban social transformation by internally valorising externally useful knowledges that contribute to social justice

Between certainty and comprehensiveness in evaluating the societal impact of humanities research

Research evaluation is a tool that can be used for many different purposes, with every different kind trading off comparing and understanding activities and seeking to treat evaluation subjects fairly. Evaluation problems can emerge when an approach that seeks to give one kind of fairness is used for a set of purposes demanding an alternative perspective on fairness. These problems of course afflict all kinds of evaluation, not just in research, but there has been in the last decade an increasing awareness that they are prevalent in research evaluation systems that seek to make judgements within national research systems. Clearly there are the risks that problems may emerge when attempting to use these very limited indicators to measure and reward university research impact in a systemic way. This paper therefore asks how can evaluation of research impact at the systems level –deal with the problem of the very different mechanisms by which different kinds of research produce their impact? We explore this question via a case study of the Netherlands, where policy-maker driven attempts to capture impact within the research evaluation system awoke fears amongst the humanities research community that they would not be treated fairly. On this basis, the paper argues that more reflection is demanded of scholars on what kinds of research impact matters in their field, and how that messiness of impact generation legitimates a multi-disciplinary, judgement- and discretion-based system that ultimately values activities and outcomes which lie beyond the pale of their own scholarly norm

Book review: The great university gamble: money, markets and the future of higher education

"The Great University Gamble: Money, Markets and the Future of Higher Education." Andrew McGettigan. Pluto Press. April 2013. --- In The Great University Gamble, Andrew McGettigan surveys the emerging brave new world of higher education, asking what the role of universities within society might become, how they might be funded, and what kind of experiences will be on offer for students. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book outlines the architecture of the new policy regime and tracks the developments on the ground. Even the most sceptical reader must see in this dossier that the government has a case to answer that these reforms are not in the public interest, writes Paul Benneworth