Measuring engagement between industry and higher education in the built environment sector

Recent education policy in the UK has encouraged universities and industry to work in partnership as a means of improving the quality of student learning and preparing graduates to enter the workplace. Indeed, both the Lambert Review of Business-University Collaboration (Lambert, 2003) and the White Paper on The Future of Higher Education (DfES, 2003) highlight the need for collaboration and closer working relationships. This paper reports on the results of a research effort to assess the extent of university-industry collaboration in the UK's built environment sector and to measure the impact of such activity. The 'Accelerating Change in Built Environment Education' (ACBEE) initiative sought to identify the nature of engagement activities in the built environment and to formulate, evaluate and develop guidelines for best practice. Forty case studies of engagement were collected from the built environment sector using a standard template, and many sustained engagement activities and established collaborations were identified. The paper explains how these case studies were categorized and evaluated to develop an understanding of the nature of the different types of engagement. A framework was subsequently developed for the classification of the case studies. Finally, the paper considers how the quality of such engagement can be measured and proposes appropriate key performance indicators.