Place high premium on technology transfer, Universities urged

Legon (Greater Accra), 16 March '99 -

Universities that are interested in generating income from their research activities need to place a high premium on technology transfer. "They need to form appropriate partnerships with business and government and ... invest in their own resources in the process. In brief, they need to become actively involved in a process which is less technology transfer and more technology interchange," Prof. Michael Gordon Gibbons, secretary-general of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, said on Monday at the University of Ghana, Legon.

Prof. Gibbons was delivering the first of three dissertations of the 23rd Aggrey-Fraser-Guggisberg Memorial lectures at the University of Ghana. The lectures, under the theme, "Science goes beyond the market: the new contest of research", forms part of activities marking the University's Golden Jubilee. He said universities that have added research to their normal teaching services have taken on a function bound to change their original objectives. "This is because production of knowledge is guided by a set of research practices which determine what shall count as new knowledge".

Prof. Gibbons said research in universities today has become a core value, which govern their organisation and management. He noted that research has a disciplinary structure that directs where research output should go, and provides a framework for the university's curriculum whether in science, social science or the humanities. "Through research the stock of specialist knowledge grows and transforms the content of disciplines and in time, this changes the curriculum, alters what is regarded as essential to be taught. "Research also contributes to the differentiation of the disciplinary structure, introducing more and more specialisms". Prof. Gibbons said with new research practices being introduced, the number of research centres, institutes and think tanks are multiplying, making faculties and departments the preferred form for carrying out teaching. Faced with this challenge of accommodating these new practices, universities must become "more open, porous institutions vis-a-vis the wider community". The function was presided over by Prof. Conor Cruise O'Brien, vice-chancellor of the University from 1962 to 1965. GRi