Salvatore Gabriele Colletti - Policy Analyst
Cooperation between institutions, universities and companies: improving collaboration for creating new opportunities for younger generations and social prosperity
Cooperation between universities, institutions and companies represents an area of crucial importance but at the same time it is a very complicated goal to be reached, especially in our country.
This cooperation is essential for generating a competitive country system and should be a constructive cooperation aimed at creating an integrated system to improve the training system and consequently the labor market in favor of all the younger generations who have recently completed their university courses.
The purpose of this paper is to present alternative proposals to current practice, to be addressed to all parties involved - the State, the EU, universities and companies - to provide a new vision of the issue that is more devoted to concrete and fruitful collaboration.
Introduction
Cooperation between universities, institutions and companies represents an area of crucial importance as a large part of a country's socio-economic development depends on this synergy. What makes this issue so important is the fact that an integrated system can guarantee growth in both economic and human terms by creating a virtuous circle in constant growth.
This policy paper analyzes the cooperation between institutions, universities and companies in Italy, with a brief look at Europe as well. It tries to identify the flaws in this system which currently seems to grow too slowly and finally it presents proposals for improvement.
Interaction between companies, universities and institutions
The cooperation between universities, companies and institutions is essential to create a competitive system that can provide the right opportunities both to those who have completed their studies and are looking for enter the job market and to recruiters. Institutions play a fundamental role in ensuring that these synergies lead to fruitful results. At all levels (nationally, regionally and locally) they have the power to exercise a coordination and balancing function between public functions and public and private interests. By ‘Institutions’ we mean all those public bodies, at various levels, which have the power to change the rules of the game such as the ministry of education, the ministry of the economy, the ministry for social and labor policies, the ministry for youth policies, but also local authorities which represent the first contact point between private business needs and the collective interest.
If this coordination takes place in a constructive manner, it is thus possible to create an integrated system that leads to an improvement of learning structures, the enhancement of the training offer and a consequent improvement of the country's industrial fabric.
To date, in Italy there is a certain gap between the world of university education and the job market. Universities provide more and more training which however remains mostly disconnected from the real needs of a new job market which is constantly evolving and in constant demand for specific profiles. Compared to the European average, in Italy fewer and fewer people complete university courses, and only a small percentage of those who succeed turn out to have specific “interesting” skills for today's labor market.
It was found at the European level that students' mobility through internships or apprenticeships stands in first place in the collaboration between universities and companies. In addition to this widely more widespread system, there is also the organization of short courses for adults and research and development activities (the latter particularly present in Scandinavian countries).[1]
This collaboration between universities and companies can sometimes be hindered by barriers that make it increasingly complicated and above all fruitless. One of the main obstacles across Europe is university bureaucracy which makes the collaboration process slow and cumbersome, causing delays and discontent among participants. A second problem that makes cooperation more complicated is to be found in the different time horizons that characterize university and business world. On the one hand, companies address universities asking for a concrete problem to be solved as quickly as possible. On the other hand, universities need a much longer period of time to understand the problem and be able to identify a possible solution. Different communication methods and languages used are a further obstacle. They lead to a mutual misunderstanding that underlies the failure of collaboration. Finally, a very significant barrier, but with different applicability according to European countries, is the current financial crisis that has made it increasingly difficult to invest on a large scale.[2]
In this context, a decisive role could be played by state institutions that could accelerate this potentially virtuous relationship between universities and companies. The State, and institutions at all levels, can act as a "trigger" of cooperation through greater incentives for innovation and collaboration. Institutions must stimulate dialogue between actors involved, in order to allow an exchange of information necessary to meet the needs of both. Universities must create flexible training paths in which theory and practice intersect to create a training method that can not only pave the way of students for work but also and above all provide a greater understanding of their personal inclinations and aspirations. Companies must be able to make the most of the tools and resources provided by national and European institutions.
An example of fruitful collaboration is Tuscany where, a cooperation between public and private sectors based on a long-term strategy has resulted a shared project that has allowed the creation of a single structure bringing together schools and universities, high-level training and the private entrepreneurship. In the metropolitan area of Florence, more precisely in the municipalities of Sesto Fiorentino and Campi Bisenzio, thanks to the important role of coordination and reconciliation of public interests played by the institutions, in collaboration with the company Ely Lilly Italia, an agreement was reached which balanced the interests of all the actors by finding adequate solutions to every problem. This type of collaboration between universities, companies and institutions can really favor the development of the country on a more solid basis and can equally guarantee the development of the entrepreneurial fabric based on innovation and research.[3]
System inefficiencies
The collaboration between companies, universities and institutions in Italy is characterized by some gaps that make this interrelation complicated and fruitless. These difficulties can be found especially in the field of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) which increasingly requires new resources capable of bringing innovation and development in this sector, but also in other more humanistic or economic sectors.[1] First of all, it should be remembered that, compared to the European average, in Italy there is a strong gap between what is provided by the world of education and what companies are looking for.
The gap between supply and demand has more or less structured reasons. There is undoubtedly an absence of adequate knowledge of today's job market as the well-established education system is based on an increasing presence of theoretical teaching at the expense of practical teaching. This gap slows down the future inclusion in the job market for new graduates who find themselves facing many obstacles in an ever-changing environment that requires a great capacity for resilience.
The problem does not arise only from teaching side but also from the private sector of companies which in Italy is made up of SMEs that very often have limited budgets. Companies thus declare themselves in favor of an unspecified innovation but do not find the resources to invest in it. In addition, nowadays innovation moves quickly, requiring ever greater complexity. It is therefore not clear to companies what they need in terms of "skills" and in the same way it is difficult for universities to understand what to provide to the job market.
An increasingly marked lack of mix between technical skills and humanistic skills in Italy adds to the previous problems. To date, teaching, especially the scientific one is based on a closed-door division between technical and humanistic skills that make users relegated to a single learning sector. This lack of adaptability of personnel makes it increasingly difficult for companies to find what they need, pushing them to invest in internal training rather than external research.
Innovation proposals for an integrated system
To make the interrelation between universities and businesses more useful and the system more efficient and performing, various initiatives and activities could be introduced.
A first step can be taken by institutions that play a fundamental role of coordination and incentive for collaboration. Institutions at all levels should try to expand local investment to create a fertile ground for university-business collaboration. At this point, the virtuous circle of investments and innovation that would open, would lead to a degree of maximum collaboration between the different sectors. This strategy has brought useful results in Tuscany, as previously mentioned, and this model could be expanded nationally.
This action should be followed by greater investments in research and development by central institutions which, as repeatedly stated, are the tip of the balance. In today's competitive job market, innovation is a fundamental but excessively neglected aspect in Italy. If a state invests in research and development, it can create fertile ground for the birth of new skills and new job prospects. By channeling more economic resources within universities, it would be possible to create a system based on innovation as a means of growth, thus making companies increasingly interested in seeking new resources among recent graduates with specific skills. As shown by an ISTAT research, in 2020 in Italy there was an increase in investments in research and development by private companies, the third-sector and also by the State. They drive these investments, accounting for around 63% of total spending. Universities, on the other hand, are in last place in this race for innovation.[1]
Companies and universities could act on various fronts linked to training of future staff. Companies could collaborate with universities to create an efficient system of professionalizing internships and not merely related to training as an end in itself. This, in fact, turns out to be one of the biggest obstacles to overcome. Internships (curricular or extra-curricular) are a great opportunity for growth but under today's conditions they hardly do their task. Universities should try to create a company training system based on the specific skills increasingly required by job market. For their part, companies should try to go beyond the vision of trainee as "zero cost worker" because the internship period is precisely the most suitable time to train a future worker suitable for that particular work context. Going beyond the vision of internship as an end-in-itself training or as a mere applied theory would be fundamental in a perspective of fruitful cooperation between companies and universities. In this regard, an important role would be played by the third-sector which, by proposing various projects to companies, could provide students with interesting ideas to be applied in practice together with the years of university theoretical studies. In this case, all non-profit cooperatives and associative networks that increasingly require specific skills scarcely provided to date by university courses, could be involved.
Universities should then pay more attention to the creation of what are defined as "soft skills" or the skills capable of providing a student with transversal and not just purely technical skills. Technical knowledge is fundamental, especially in scientific fields, but must be accompanied by a series of skills that could erroneously be considered as an outline but which actually play a decisive role. These skills can include strong problem solving skills, adaptation to different contexts that are extremely heterogeneous today, interpersonal communication skills and teamwork, and so on.
Finally, it would be useful and extremely productive to create associations of young professionals capable of acting as intermediaries between companies and universities. These associations could act as representative bodies of the needs of both parties to match the demand for qualified personnel from companies and the supply provided by universities. The role of young people would be decisive as they represent the only social group capable of understanding the needs of both parties while taking into account the fundamental need of young graduates who are entering job market for the first time.
Conclusion
In Italy, cooperation between companies, universities and institutions is proceeding at a fairly slow pace despite the long-standing efforts to improve the system by making changes along the way. Certainly, Italy has made progress in recent years, but despite this the results are not sufficiently satisfactory.
All actors involved in this cooperation (universities, companies and institutions) could play a fundamental role in making the system even more efficient. On the one hand companies constantly look for new young professionals capable of fulfilling the required tasks. In today's world these are increasingly technical, creating a strong demand for highly qualified young people in specific sectors. In this context, cooperation between companies and universities is essential to adequately provide required skills. Therefore, the improvement of the system should necessarily be based on the synergy between these two subjects. Universities, for their part, are sometimes inadequate to provide what required by companies and job market. This problem derives from the fact that universities tend to train young people while maintaining a certain detachment from the real needs of the system. In this context, institutions with the task of coordinating and identifying general interests should be inserted.
As previously stated, this system has some flaws such as the strong difference between supply and demand, a lack of specific teaching courses at university, a lack of adequate resources to invest in the innovation sector and finally, a university education system based on a closed-door division between scientific and humanistic skills that make the user relegated to a single learning sector.
Institutions, as links in this relationship, should take the first step to improve the system. Furthermore, local investments should be expanded in order to create a fertile ground for university-business collaboration. This is what has already happened in Tuscany (as previously mentioned). In addition, institutions should aim for more investment in research and development sector, as a country's innovation depends on this sector. On the other hand, companies and universities should focus more on professional training internships. This would lead to the development of a fruitful collaboration between companies and universities based on the search for future highly specialized laboratories. Furthermore, universities should improve their teaching system by focusing on what are defined as "soft skills", ie those skills necessary to obtain transversal competences. Finally, a fundamental role could be played by associations of young professionals that act as a link between the needs of companies and universities. Young people would play a fundamental role as they represent the needs of both realities, thus managing to balance the interests at stake.
Translated by Simona Taravella