1.3.4.1. The Entrepreneurial University Discourse
Universities are a very special type of organization, because they are neither part of the state, nor are they part of the economy, while they serve both as a provider of knowledge and human capital.

Even though discussion about adopting the university to modern capitalism and management has started as early as 1966 (Rourke & Brooks, 1966), it was Burton Clark, who, with the intention to show a way for institutional autonomy, presented and coined the concept of the entrepreneurial university in the late 1990’s. Since then, it has been rightly assessed that Clark’s picture of the entrepreneurial university to have ‘achieved iconic status among university models for the twenty-first century’ (Shattock, 2003, p. 146). Also Hindle (2001, p. 5) calls Clark’s book ‘the bible of the [entrepreneurial university] movement’.

Clark conducted a series of case studies (Clark, 1998), which led him to propose a set of conditions which in his view allowed for institutional autonomy and well-being. The theme of the entrepreneurial university was received very controversially. Some scholars and many university management practitioners welcomed his propositions and stressed that they lead to higher efficiency, higher competitiveness both assessed essential in the surges of the globalized education market. Other scholars, mainly with a European, and/or humanities background, portray the development towards an entrepreneurial university as a sell-out of academic and scientific values, practices, and services to the capitalist economy (Bok, 2003).

The missions
With the intention of doing justice to the good intentions to both parties in this sometimes fierce discourse, allow me to recount the historical development of the university as institution. Thereby I shall carve out the appropriateness of some aspects of entrepreneurial practices (namely knowledge entrepreneurship), while rejecting others, based on the relevance to fulfill the universities mission.

Most historians take the medieval universities of Bologna, Paris as archetypes and the starting points for their account (Delanty, 2001; Kodera, 2004; Widholm, 2002). These were institutions of scholastic work and teaching. There was no, or relatively little, practical knowledge taught but rather the education obtained was meant to train general intellectual abilities as well as knowledge about the great Greek philosophers and the bible. Concurrent with the medieval understanding of a static (non-progressive) world, no new knowledge was sought but rather was the knowledge of the idealized Greek scholars transmitted, interpreted and commented upon. From these roots comes the original mission of the university to empower and train its students to intellectually participate in society.

Over time more and more practical knowledge, such as law and medicine, was codified and offered at universities. Coinciding with the dawn of modernity more universities taught more and more students and the university became an institution to obtain vocational education. It was in this period that the state recognized the universities relevance as breeding ground for its bureaucrats, doctors and lawyers. Certification and the codification of ‘nationality’ (history, geography, etc.) became an important role of the university and a close bond between the state and the university was build (i).

The universities first mission has been captured very precisely by Delanty (2001) who describes it as education for cultural and technological citizenship. Whereby cultural citizenship includes all knowledge needed to actively participate in political, as well as social affairs (as well as to appreciate art), while technological citizenship comprises the abilities to create economic value. In short cultural citizenship is what makes the individual a valuable participant of society while technological citizenship is the specialized knowledge one exploits to make a living (Delanty, 2001; Senges, 2006)

The second mission most universities have embraced today is to do research. It has been introduced for the first time by von Humbold at the occasion of the founding of the new university of Berlin. He saw the necessity to have all the Prussian bureaucrats educated at the university, but he was also highly troubled by how the Prussians military had fallen technologically behind the French and thus proclaimed that the Berlin University was to be a place of education while at the same time pushing Prussian military development through research.

Spurred by the successes of the von Humboldian model research was added gradually to most universities. Today pure teaching universities are the exception and almost all universities have some sort of research activities.

The newest third mission is the most complex and least defined and agreed upon mission. There are several understandings of what it does or does not include, but in general it refers to the university as institution taking over a role as actor in (1) economic development, (2) politics as well as (3) knowledge deliberation with society as a whole.

One of the most influential themes that have evolved around this mission is the triple-helix concept (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 1997). This school proposes that interplay between governments; industry and universities should be institutionalized and fostered. This rather econo-centric school sees mainly the role of the university to stimulate the economy. Its goal is to optimize the transfer of research results to the industry so they can transform them into innovative products and services, leading to economic growth and wealth creation. The government assists this transference thought funding and facilitating political and legal conditions.

Entzkowitz (2002) himself has portrayed this approach as a development from the linear knowledge flow model, where knowledge and human capital is transmitted through publications and certified workers, to a spiral model where industry gives feedback and interacts in the knowledge production and refinement.

A similar view had also evolved around the research of Gibbons and Nowotny (Gibbons, 1994) entitled The new production of knowledge : the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. In their view

The difference between the triple helix and the Mode 2 approach is that the latter are plainly assessing and promoting the production of useful knowledge, the former field is lobbying for the ‘capitalization of knowledge (ii)’ (Etzkowitz, 2002, p. 11) For him universities are undergoing the second revolution (the first was when they took on research). Etzkowitz sees a ‘new academic institution’ “one that is oriented much more directly to playing a role in behalf of the state as an agency of economic development (iii).” (p.21)

Etzkowitz has taken over as the main proponent of the entrepreneurial university. In his book “MIT the raise of the entrepreneurial university” (2002) he describes how MIT is strongly interwoven with the industry and the state and claims that MIT has became the ‘role model’ university for the 21st century (iv).

The views of the promoters of a pro-entrepreneurial, meaning pro-business & neo-liberal market approach to higher education find a very explicit and unalloyed voice in the vice-chancellor and chief executive of the University of Surrey of the who explained: “Modern universities are businesses and, like any business, to achieve sound finances they must develop appropriate services and products for which their customers – the government, business, charities, students and the public – should be prepared to pay a fair price” (Dowling, 2004, January 12).

The suggestions of Clark and Etzkowitz have caused an imitate reaction amongst many academics who feel the need to defend the original character of the university against what they see as a business take over.

Two main arguments are brought forward against the economic entrepreneurial approach (v). For example Mautner (2005) assesses that it is a characteristic of the pro-entrepreneurial argumentation that independence from government funding is hailed as ‘self-sufficiency’ while it is in fact simply the dependence on another source.

And Ronald Barnett’s brings forward that ‘through the ideology of entrepreneurialism the university’s particular place as a critical forum is undermined’ (Barnett, 2003, p. 73). Banja makes the same argument in a more poignant way when he asserts, if the university becomes business, then it’s no longer a university (Banja, 2000).
But in general, while there is ideological, moral, and human resistance to the ‘entrepreneurial programme’ proposed, most academics accept the new reality of higher competition, global markets etc. and even though they might not approve of the ‘sell out’ of academic tradition and scientific knowledge as a public good, there seems to be no alternative programme. Some authors however have worked on proposals on how to frame ‘entrepreneurial’ in the academic context and this work is meant to build upon and complement their work.

Some examples of scholars who intend to produce a synthesis of the opposing sides by transposing the entrepreneurial paradigm to higher education (vi) are Shattock (OECD, 2006; Shattock, 2003) and Fuller ((2006) – who’s view will be depicted in the next section).

They deploy the term ‘entrepreneurialism’ to differentiate non economic application of the entrepreneurship paradigm of creative destruction. For Shattock (2003) the essence of entrepreneurialism is self directed autonomy. He defines entrepreneurialism “a drive to identify and sustain a distinctive institutional agenda which is institutionally determined not one [which is] effectively a product of a state funding formula”.

Now after elaborating on the three key missions of the university and the discourse around the entrepreneurial university, I believe it has become clear that the concept of traditional ‘economic entrepreneurship’ is quite controversial to describe the activities of the university. Nevertheless my personal stand in this regard is laid out in the following section.

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(i) This state-university connection never developed on the same scale in the united states, which explains or better is the root of the quite obvious distinction between the European and American university systems.

(ii) According to Entzkowitz (2002), the ‘capitalization of knowledge in universities has occurred in three stages: securing of intellectual property; restructuring of research groups to generate a large intellectual property base; establishing of corporate vehicles – spin-off firms – within universities to maximize the return on intellectual property’ (p. 11). He continues, ‘the entrepreneurial university, with faculty and administration directly involved in translating knowledge into intellectual property and economic development, attempts to create an industrial penumbra around the university with varying degrees of success’(p.17). In other words he describes a knowledge industry practicing on a capitalistic knowledge market.

(iii) He paraphrases the President of the National Academy of Science “For better or worse the terms of a new social contract between the scientific community and the larger society are now being forged” and another author who suggested we are seeing “the forging of a ‘new social contract’ or a ‘new negotiated treaty’ between science and society” (p.55). At another occasion he writes: “Traditionally, the most deeply held value of scientists is the extension of knowledge. To contribute to this is the highest striving of a scientist. The incorporation of ‘extension of knowledge’ into a compatible relationship with ‘capitalisation of knowledge’ is a profound normative change in science” (Etzkowitz, 1998).

(iv) His assessment seems to be correct at least for some circles. The European President Barosso has initiated a political initiative to found the European Institute of Technology as a European counterpart and competition to MIT (Pincock, 2006).

(v) More critics are listed in the OECD (OECD, 2006) special issue on entrepreneurship in higher education: ‘Slaughter and Leslie’s Academic Capitalism (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997) and from Marginson and Considine’s The Enterprise University (Marginson & Considine, 2000) universities will lose their freedom to act in their traditional role as critics of society. Williams in The Enterprising University (2003) confirms the view “that the emergence of enterprise as a powerful and possibly dominant force in universities inevitably raise fundamental questions about their nature and purpose”.

(vi) Also Clark (2004) is rethinking and reacting to some of his critiques in his book Sustaining Change in Universities, which enlarges his concept by referring to “the adaptive university”, the “proactive university” and the “innovative university”.

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