Little to lose and much to gain
by Sam Laidlaw, Chief Executive, Centrica
The UK’s higher education sector is world class. Four of the UK’s universities rank in the top ten worldwide and fourteen rank in the top one hundred. Equally significantly, the depth of universities across Britain provides broad regional economic benefits and breadth of teaching and research capabilities that are essential to our economic competitiveness.
This capacity provides two important advantages: firstly, the creation of a highly skilled workforce and secondly, the development of new ideas, products and services from research. To ensure that these economic benefits are realised, it is essential that higher education and research are attuned to societal and business needs. Finding a way of improving collaboration between higher education and business will be fundamental for our collective success. Such collaboration will not only be a key factor in creating a sustainable higher education system but it will also be critical in securing the UK’s economic recovery.
Turning first to the role of education and training, our success in the global economy will increasingly depend on our ability to further develop high value-add sectors such as professional services, engineering and manufacturing. These sectors are reliant on a highly skilled workforce with advanced graduate level skills.
Business, therefore, has three key priorities for higher education:
• Raising the number and quality of students with skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), which are increasingly important to UK businesses
• Raising employability skills of graduates, enabling students to deliver the full potential of their academic learning on entering the business environment
• Engaging more actively with universities by offering work experience and internship opportunities and committing time to participate in degree programme advisory boards.
At Centrica, we have invested significantly in raising the number and competencies of the young people we bring into our business from universities. Our graduate programme has doubled in size to 75 students and to assist graduates in developing the employability skills they need for successful careers, we now run a summer internship programme for up to 75 undergraduates each year.We are also trialing a similar initiative to provide business students with work experience opportunities and sponsoring engineering students as they complete their undergraduate degrees.
The world is changing, becoming more complex and interconnected and the frontiers of knowledge are moving ever further from obvious practical application.
Turning to technology and innovation, university research has long been a source of new ideas, products and services that have been commercialised by business. But the world is changing, becoming more complex and interconnected and the frontiers of knowledge are moving ever further from obvious practical application. In this environment, there is an increasing need for academia and business to work closely together to ensure that the benefits of the investment in research are optimised. There will, of course, always be a place for pure research, but effective partnership between universities and business will ensure that the UK economy gets the best possible return on the investment in university research.
While big business may in some cases be well positioned to commercialise ideas generated from research, as is the case for example in the pharmaceutical industry, it is often small and medium enterprises (SMEs) who provide the bridge between the prototype and mass market. SMEs also form an important part of regional employment. It is therefore essential to create an environment that makes engagement with academic institutions simpler, particularly for organisations such as SMEs who often find it difficult to tap into the resources universities have to offer; whether this is accessing research and innovation, delivery of workforce training or accessing students themselves. At Centrica, we continue to seek opportunities to work collaboratively with university research groups.We are currently working with a number of universities on energy research projects ranging from conventional power generation through to smart grid technologies giving Centrica access to the latest thinking and innovations as well as providing post graduate students with real life research challenges.
Effective partnership between universities and business will ensure that the UK economy gets the best possible return on the investment in university research.
There is still much more we could collectively be doing. Business can do more to develop the skills they value by providing opportunities for work experience to students. University services and research can become more accessible to local companies, creating the essential link between SMEs and research labs as well as with big business.
Most crucially, we must recognise that there is little to lose and much to gain from closer ties between business and academia. This will enable both to thrive and for the higher education sector to remain as pivotal to the UK’s prosperity in this century as it was in the last.
Sam Laidlaw is CEO of Centrica, the British natural gas and electricity company. He also chaired the CBI Higher Education Taskforce which published its report in 2009 on business¬university collaboration.
