New Features of Higher Education Competitiveness in Terms of University-Industry Collaboration

Abstract

Nowadays, the competition in higher education is now changing shape. The collaboration between higher education institutions and the industry is increasingly perceived as the primary vehicle to enhance innovation through knowledge exchange. Accordingly, this study presents that university-industry collaboration positively affects countries' competitiveness through their higher education competitiveness. For this purpose, this study used the values of university-industry collaboration in R&D of the top 20 economies from the Global Competitiveness Index 4.0 report and the world university rankings as proxies for the university-industry collaboration and higher education competitiveness, respectively. This study's findings support the view that university-industry collaboration has a positive impact on higher education competitiveness and countries' competitiveness at the end.