Changing Struggles for Relevance in Eight Fields of Natural Science

This chapter presents an overview of research partnership activity across the South African higher education system in three cutting-edge high-technology fields. An analytical matrix of partnership forms is developed, shaped by distinct responses to the tension between the new financial imperatives and the traditional intellectual project of higher education. The chapter argues that more institutions need to develop the capacity to harness the potential for innovation rather than allow the unregulated proliferation of contract and consultancy forms of partnership with industry that can undermine their core long-term knowledge-generation function. It talks about the research, which based on attempts to place conceptual order on the forms of partnerships with industry evident across an entire national higher education system, at a particular point in time, in cutting-edge high-technology fields only. Laissez-faire management approaches to partnership, in practice the financial imperatives driving partnerships tend to prevail in shaping the predominant forms of contract and consultancy.