Bargerstock, Burton A.

Fitzgerald, Hiram E.

English

North Georgia College & State University: Digital Commons

Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship
Volume 6 | Issue 1 Article 17
September 2013
Book Review: Cooper Offers Higher Education
Prescription for a Knowledge Economy and a
Knowledge Society
Hiram E. Fitzgerald
Michigan State University
Burton A. Bargerstock
Michigan State University
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Recommended Citation
Fitzgerald, Hiram E. and Bargerstock, Burton A. (2013) "Book Review: Cooper Offers Higher Education Prescription for a
Knowledge Economy and a Knowledge Society," Journal of Community Engagement and Scholarship: Vol. 6 : Iss. 1 , Article 17.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.northgeorgia.edu/jces/vol6/iss1/17
During the last half of the 20th century substantive changes in higher education provide strong support for Etkowitz’s 
(2008) contention that we are in the midst of a 
second academic revolution. While Etkowitz 
concentrates on the slow but directional 
interconnection of university-industry-
government, which he models as a Triple Helix, 
a more public and contentious transformation 
involving civil society is evolving, a movement 
with various descriptive titles, most generically 
known as community engagement scholarship 
(CES) (Fitzgerald & Simon, 2012). Jointly, the 
Triple Helix and CES transformations have 
propelled research universities to the fore with 
respect to their collective responsibility for 
sparking regional and national innovation. An 
explicit assumption is that innovation will foster 
economic and social development to support a 
thriving knowledge-society constructed on the 
backbone of a knowledge-based economy with 
renewed attention to remediating poverty and 
advancing social justice. While universities in 
North America and the European Union are at 
various stages of organizational transformation 
(Cox, 2010; Powell, 2010), the extraordinary 
growth of university-community partnerships 
now cuts across nearly every discipline and 
every societal domain (Fitzgerald, in press). As 
Nyden and Percy (2010) note, “The engagement 
interface is a dynamic, evolving and co-
constructed space—a cooperative community 
of inquiry—where partners work together with 
activist orientation to seek transformative ends 
for both the community and the academic 
setting” (p. 312). The Triple Helix-CES duo 
moves university-community partnerships 
beyond simple technology and knowledge 
transfer, and enters a realm of innovation, 
risk taking, and evidence-based practices that 
advances knowledge and simultaneously 
produces solution-focused applications. It 
moves beyond the tired contrast of basic and 
applied research by accelerating use-inspired 
basic research (Stokes, 1997) as the dominant 
methodology for all natural and social sciences 
engaged in university-community partnerships.
It is within this collage of transformational 
change that David Cooper carefully and 
thoroughly crafts a prescription for transforming 
South Africa’s system of higher education, 
positioning it to provide leadership for the 
emergence of a knowledge economy and a 
knowledge society. University in Development is not 
for the faint-hearted or for the quick read-on-the-
beach crowd. It is a provocative, deeply intertwined 
pathway, guided by historical sociology, 
through 20th century transformations in higher 
education, international models of institutional 
research organization, and the development of 
hypotheses to guide Cooper’s case study of five 
universities in the Western Cape of South Africa. 
Cooper draws heavily on Etzkowitz’s 
(2008) contention that during the 1970s a third 
transformation in higher education began taking 
shape through a Triple Helix of higher education, 
industry, and government. In contrast to U.S. 
President Dwight David Eisenhower’s 1960s 
caution to be wary of the growth of the military-
industrial complex, society and international 
events instead co-opted higher education and laid 
the groundwork for the emergence of the Triple 
Helix. Cooper provides the context for what 
he describes as the creation of a third mission 
for higher education: namely, to foster a social-
economic-cultural transformation of society 
through a “third capitalist industrial revolution.” 
Cooper builds his case through the first several 
chapters, weaving in and out of Etzkowitz’s 
theories and hypotheses, offering examples 
of knowledge economy practices in higher 
education in the United States and the European 
Union, and to a lesser extent in Japan, China, 
and Australia. Clearly, in Etzkowitz’s view, higher 
education’s role in the Triple Helix is to provide 
the science and technological research necessary 
to fuel innovation in industry via funding 
from both government and industry grants and 
Cooper Offers Higher Education Prescription for a Knowledge 
Economy and a Knowledge Society
Reviewed by Hiram E. Fitzgerald and Burton A. Bargerstock
David Cooper, The University in Development: Case Studies of Use-Oriented Research. Cape Town: HSRC 
Press, 2011, 390 pages. ISBN: 978-0-7969-2347-9
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Fitzgerald and Bargerstock: Book Review: Cooper Offers Higher Education Prescription for a Kn
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contracts. Moreover, universities are to move the 
needle on science by shifting greater resources 
to use-inspired basic research (Stokes, 1997). 
Cooper notes that the rapid and continuing rise 
of university-based research institutes and centers 
in the U.S. and EU occurred synergistically 
with the influence of the Triple Helix on higher 
education. The open question is to what extent 
have South Africa’s investments provided the 
strategic grist to refine its higher education system 
to position it for leadership in the development 
of a knowledge society and economy. Specifically, 
Cooper queries, “What are the major enhancing 
and inhibiting factors affecting university research 
centres and units of the Western Cape, in relation 
to their fulfillment of use-oriented research for 
wider societal constituencies?”(p. 25). He argues 
that South Africa’s system of higher education 
seems to have embraced well the U-I dyad 
within the Triple Helix, but that industry was 
clearly dominant over government. Cooper calls 
for a much more equitable role for government 
investment in higher education’s research and 
development in order to balance the Triple Helix. 
However, not content with polemical pot-
shooting, Cooper designed a rigorous longitudinal 
case study to gather direct information on 
the status of five Western Cape universities 
apropos of their organizational structures in 
support of research. Three universities are 
traditional liberal arts research universities and 
two are technology universities. Interviews were 
conducted in 2000, 2005, and 2007 in order 
to capture evidence of change in institutional 
research infrastructure that may reflect alignment 
signaling emergence of Triple Helix models. 
Cooper develops and describes in considerable 
detail, four model approaches to organizing 
research in higher education. He describes then 
rejects the “curiosity” focused traditional model 
(T) comprised of an individual teacher-researcher 
and her/his graduate students working on issues 
related to disciplinary driven questions. While 
such research clearly contributes to knowledge 
generation, and represents a tenaciously durable 
approach to research, its translation to practical 
solutions for societal problems ordinarily follows 
a linear pathway from basic research to applied 
research to production, if it ever is actually 
launched onto that pathway. Three alternate 
models, A, B, and C, are advocated as structures 
that will accelerate innovation and, guided by 
use-inspired basic research, will simultaneously 
contribute to knowledge production as well 
as evidence-based application. Model A (Real 
Research Center) is seen as fully aligned with 
the Triple Helix, hierarchically organized with a 
director, functionally a CEO, with a critical mass 
of senior researchers, post-doctoral fellows, and 
graduate students with infrastructure staff and 
resource support. Cooper’s analysis of case study 
data concluded that such centers in the Western 
Cape sample were difficult to sustain, despite 
evidence that Model A organizations in North 
America and the European Union are highly 
successful. Model B (New Real Unit) research 
units are led by a professor with post-doctoral 
and graduate students who are in partnership 
with external stakeholders in order to achieve a 
shared set of outcomes. Case study data provided 
support for the effectiveness of this approach 
for university-community partnership growth. 
Model C (Virtual Centers) centers are networks of 
researchers and various subgroups who are drawn 
together by shared interests and experience few 
barriers to their spontaneous interdisciplinary 
efforts to jointly examine multi-faceted problems. 
These centers fared better with respect to 
productivity, but still seem to have suffered from 
the heavy reliance on U-I relations, without 
counterbalancing investments by government to 
shore up the U-I linkage within the Triple Helix.
Cooper’s case study approach found little 
evidence for what he refers to as “innovation 
anxiety” among interviewees. Innovation anxiety 
seems to refer to a deep cultural and individual 
sense that innovation is the key to creating a 
knowledge society and that it is the essential glue 
that binds the university-industry-government 
triad. Although Cooper found that researchers 
understood the value of university-industry 
partnerships, the value was not accompanied by 
a sense that the university was an essential partner 
for developing industry and accelerating it toward 
a knowledge society. Moreover, they apparently 
engaged in little deep conversation about the role 
of South Africa’s higher education system with 
respect to creating regional innovation systems 
motivated by Triple Helix models. In short, 
he found little evidence that universities were 
driven by innovation anxiety and therefore did 
not particularly see themselves as critical players 
in the Triple Helix with respect to economic 
innovation and development in the Western Cape. 
Etzkowitz (2008) embeds the Triple Helix in a 
“flourishing civil society” that fuels the “emergence 
of diverse sources of innovation,” and provides the 
dynamic force for sparking innovation for forming 
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a “meta-innovation system.” But for Etzkowitz, 
civil society is akin to an external perturbation that 
simulates initiative and change within the Triple 
Helix but is not part of the system dynamics of 
the Triple-Helix itself. In contrast, influenced by 
the CES movement in higher education, Cooper 
argues that extending the new entrepreneurial 
university from its anchor in technology and 
industry to the activities and objectives of civil 
society requires a fully integrated Quad Helix of 
university-industry-government-civil society so 
that innovation, economic growth, and societal 
change are part of a common discourse in which all 
elements of complex systems are working toward 
alignment and thereby optimizing sustainability. 
Cooper brings into focus the critical importance 
of including the knowledge and voices of people 
from outside universities, government, and 
industry if a knowledge society is to take root, and 
points to the scale of this challenge, particularly 
in countries where large numbers of people are 
poor and work outside the economy of large and 
medium enterprises (pp. 111–115). Indeed as Silka 
(1999) points out about the dynamic relationships 
in networks and partnerships, the dynamic 
process “involves learning to see things in terms of 
something else in order to overcome differences 
and arrive at a shared plan of action.”(p. 353).
In The University in Development, David 
Cooper challenges the higher education system 
of the Western Cape and South Africa to see 
things differently and develop a shared plan 
of action by building a Quad Helix network 
designed to expand use-inspired basic research 
and construct a knowledge economy that fully 
embraces the cultural and historical character 
of South Africa and creates a knowledge society 
for all of its citizens. Moreover, he challenges 
higher education to step forward and create the 
21st century infrastructure and reward system that 
will unleash faculty and student innovations for 
positive change. His message is one that resonates 
far beyond the borders of South Africa. 
References 
Cox, D. (2010). History of the scholarship 
of engagement movement. In H.E. Fitzgerald, 
C. Burack, & S. Seifer (eds). Handbook of engaged 
scholarship: Contemporary landscapes, future directions. 
Vol 1. Institutional change (pp., 25–38). East Lansing, 
MI: Michigan State University Press. 
Etzkowitz, H. (2008). Triple Helix: University-
industry-government innovation in action. New York: 
Routledge.
Fitzgerald, H.E. (in press). Knowledge, 
engagement, and higher education in Canada and 
the United States of America. In Higher education 
in the World 5: Knowledge, engagement, and higher 
education: Rethinking social responsibility. Barcelona, 
Spain: Global University Network for Innovation
Fitzgerald, H.E., & Simon, L.A.K. (2012). The 
world grant ideal and engagement scholarship. 
Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement. 
16, 33–55.
Fitzgerald, H.E., Bruns, K., Sonka, S.T., 
Furco, A., & Swanson, L. (2010). Centrality of 
engagement in higher education. Journal of Higher 
Education, Outreach and Engagement, 16, 7–27. 
Nyden, P., & Percy, S. (2010). Documenting 
impacts: Engaged research centers and community 
change. In H.E. Fitzgerald, C. Burack, & S. Seifer 
(eds). Handbook of engaged scholarship: Contemporary 
landscapes, future directions. Vol. 2: Community-
campus partnerships (pp. 311–332). East Lansing, 
MI: Michigan State University Press.
Powell, J.A. (2010). UPBEAT: University 
engagement through virtuous knowledge sharing 
and academic staff development. In H.E. 
Fitzgerald, C. Burack, & S. Seifer (eds). Handbook 
of engaged scholarship: Contemporary landscapes, future 
directions. Vol. 2: Community-campus partnerships 
(pp. 459–478). East Lansing, MI: Michigan State 
University Press.
Silka, L. (1999). Paradoxes of partnerships: 
Reflections on university-community collabora-
tions. Research in Politics and Society, 7, 335–359.
Stokes, D.E. (1997). Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic 
science and technological innovation. Washington, 
DC: Brookings Institution Press.
About the Reviewers
Hiram E. Fitzgerald is associate provost 
for University Outreach and Engagement and 
University Distinguished Professor of Psychology 
at Michigan State University. He is president of 
the Engagement Scholarship Consortium, chair 
of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation’s 
Committee on Engagement, and a member of the 
Board of Directors of the Academy of Community 
Engagement Scholarship. He is a fellow of both 
the American Psychological Association and the 
Association of Psychological Science. 
Burton A. Bargerstock is director of the 
National Collaborative for the Study of University 
Engagement and director of Communication 
and Information Technology within University 
Outreach and Engagement at Michigan State 
University. 
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Book Review: Cooper Offers Higher Education Prescription for a Knowledge Economy and a Knowledge Society

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