Academic Capitalism : Politics, Policies, and the Entrepreneurial University

Introduction

The global economy faces significant challenges - the increasing unemployment with low or no economic growth (GFmag.com, 2014). In this economic environment, the demand of employment of highly specialized knowledge is limited. Particularly to those hold a doctoral degree, the employment situation is even less optimistic, although to achieve such a degree usually takes a great amount of time and efforts. One of the factors is that the skills of “PhDs” are so specialized that they have difficulty to compete for jobs outside academia. Actually even inside of the academic field, there are still far insufficient faculty jobs for them. It is now more than ever that the PhD candidates shall understand the situation as well as expand the horizons from lab bench to the market.

A concept of “knowledge-based economy”, proposed by (Foray & Lundvall, 1998), was described as “An economy that derives its primary value from knowledge and the management of knowledge - a key goal of the European Union's strategy for sustainable growth and full employment.” (European_Commission, 2013). As a matter of fact, before the proposal of this concept, universities have been no longer just the center of knowledge production and communities of academies. The interaction between university and industry has been established since 1990s (Henry Etzkowitz, 1997; B. Martin & Etzkowitz, 2000; B. R. Martin, 2012).

Universities are playing an increasingly important role towards innovation development. And the understanding of innovation process, along with social progress, is now beyond the traditional linear models (Deakins & Freel, 2003). Innovation is described as a systemic interacted phenomenon, upon which cooperation of three institutional sphere...

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