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Science-Based Economic Development edited by Susan Raymond
Young Gul Kim
Pohang University of Science & Technology
After a spectacular economic growth during the quarter century from 1962 to 1987, the Korean economy came to a crossroad. On the one hand, her increasing labor costs and competition from the emerging economies in Asia (for example, Malaysia, Thailand, and China) forced Korea out of the low-end product markets. And on the other hand, the barriers erected by advanced countries began restricting Korea's access to the technologies needed for her entry into high value-added market. Industrial R&D needed to be greatly enhanced if Korea was to move on to the next stage in her economic development.
An aggressive manpower development program instituted in the early 1970s began generating a substantial pool of research manpower by the end of the 1980s. This was augmented by successful repatriation of Korean scientists and engineers from the U.S. and other industrialized countries. Because of a peculiar cultural bias, the first career choice of these highly trained personnel has always tended toward academia. Even those recruited by government-funded research institutes and industrial research laboratories gravitate toward universities. As a result, universities in Korea represent by far the largest potential of research capabilities. Any national attempt at developing indigenous technologies must search for means to involve academics in collaborative work with industries.
University and Economic Development
Until quite recently, industry's major interest was to cultivate the good will of a number of quality universities through research grants and fellowships in order to recruit their graduates. This was partly due to industry's over-reliance on imported technologies, and partly due to the inadequate research capabilities of universities. Only a few universities in Korea can be called research universities—a vast majority are teaching universities, a small number of which are undergoing rapid transformation to become research universities. Academics have primarily been interested in basic research that could result in publications in learned journals.
The events following the collapse of the communist states and the new economic era being ushered in by the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have coincided with Korea's perceived need to radically alter her industrial policy, while the research universities have come to the realization that they too have to address industrial needs as a part of their major concerns.
Korea has been increasing R&D investment rapidly in recent years, more than doubling its commitment from 1.11 percent of GNP in 1983 to 2.33 percent in 1993. The government is calling for increasing it to 4 percent by the year 2000. In view of the fact that more than 80 percent of the nation's R&D investment comes from the private sector, industry's R&D investment must grow very rapidly to meet the goal. Government investment in higher education was quite inadequate during the period of rapid economic growth and the burden of educating scientists and engineers was borne by private universities, the majority of which had chronic financial problems. As a result, most universities, public and private, lack a minimum research infrastructure. The infusion of large R&D investment from industries is regarded as the most likely means of radically improving the research environment in universities, and both the administrators and professors of major universities are aggressively campaigning to entice industrial R&D investment to their campus. This is in accord with the realization by government and industry alike that human R&D capital at universities is a major under-utilized resource that needs to be tapped in the new national drive toward technology development.
Government Initiatives
In the late 1980s the government passed a law to encourage collaborative efforts among major R&D performers: industries, universities and government-funded research institutes. This law encouraged the organization of industrial technology research associations by providing matching funds from the public treasury.
Beginning in 1990, the government created 38 centers of excellence in a number of universities. The Science Research Centers (SRCs) were given a mandate to raise the level of research activities to that of industrialized countries. The Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) were given an added mandate to contribute to the development of industrial technologies. Most of the twenty-one ERCs established to date are engaged in basic and applied research funded by the government as well as industry-funded research that is aimed at eventual development of proprietary technologies.
The University-Industry Initiatives
Since 1990, Korea's major industrial firms have been investing in building research enclaves in a number of quality universities to turn them into research universities. In most cases, these efforts have been initiated by engineering faculty with interests matching those of the industries, e.g., semiconductors, automation, biotechnology. Industries funded the construction of well-equipped laboratories with the aim of conducting collaborative research with a group of professors and graduate students. In many cases, the industries station their own R&D personnel on the campus to conduct joint projects.
University administrators strapped for financial resources, ambitious professors in need of equipment and money for more research, and corporate managers in search of research competence for development of proprietary technologies all have found incentives for collaboration. Universities have gradually expanded their horizon and begun to think in terms of establishing research parks on the campus in order to attract small and medium firms to serve as their business incubators.
Entrepreneurship and Traditional University Values
The culture of industries and that of universities are quite different, and although more practically-minded engineers and applied scientists are sensitive to industries' needs, the "basic science" types tend to look down on practical applications, and when some academics get involved in setting up a business based on their research efforts, the divergent values of the two camps becomes even more pronounced. How to bridge the gap between these interests remains a major problem.
Within any given university, even within departments, the "haves" and "havenots" view the increasing industrial linkage differently, and those who espouse basic research as the primary goal of the university regard increasing "encroachment" of industries with suspicion, jealousy, and even hostility.
Adequate recognition of those who engage in industrial research poses some problems. For instance, reducing the teaching load for them will put more burden on those less favored by industries. How to give adequate credit for industrial research that does not result in publication becomes a thorny problem when issues of promotion and tenure come up for discussion in a committee often dominated by basic research proponents. Universities levying "taxes" on outside monies to subsidize "basic" research generates discontent from those who work extra hard to bring outside funding.
The protection of intellectual property rights (IPR) is another emerging problem. To whom should the intellectual property rights accrue for the products of industrially-sponsored research? Comparatively speaking, this remains a minor matter in developing countries. In Korea, the IPR issues have yet to penetrate the mindset of academics. Generally speaking, the industries sponsoring university research insist on retaining full property rights and academics do not object to this demand. This is quite the opposite of that obtaining in the U.S. On the other hand, the IPRs resulting from government-funded university research are fully given to the professors. These practices may be due to the fact that few economic fruits have been harvested from the results of these government-sponsored research activities. But this will change as industrial research conducted on campus begin to bear fruit. Collaborative work among faculty as well as with industries will suffer greatly unless an adequate IPR protection regime is installed, and this remains a major problem to be solved.
Costs and Benefits of University Entrepreneurship
The benefits of university entrepreneurship are quite obvious. Universities acquire financial resources to develop research capabilities, contribute toward the nation's socio-economic development, and sensitize students to the societal needs. The following costs need to be carefully weighed against the benefits:
Effect on teaching
Simply stated, the time spent in being, or becoming, a dedicated teacher could be viewed as time taken away from doing research. As such, research and teaching, in spite of the truism that research contributes to the development of a good teacher, competes for the scarce resources at the disposal of professors: namely, time and energy. Thus, the pressure on faculty to do research and publish tends to divert attention away from good teaching. This is exacerbated in the case of professors in developing countries where the research environment is not as favorable as that in industrialized countries. The academics in the LCDs often have to struggle against greater odds to establish a research career In Korea, in spite of the tremendous quantitative growth in the institutions of higher learning during the past quarter century, there are only one or two universities where the research environment comes close to that of the major research universities in the U.S. By satisfactory research environment we mean one in which the teaching load is one or two courses a semester, financial support is available to graduate students, and a minimum research facilities and funds are available on a reasonable scale.
Inter-Departmental Discord
In the days when teaching was the main business of universities, there was little disparity in the financial status among departments. With the influx of industrial funding to selected departments, there has developed a hierarchy of "affluence" among various departments which tends to lead to discord among faculty. There is already such an undercurrent between some basic science departments and engineering departments. With the passage of time, these differences may be accepted as a "fact of life," but in a culture where industrially-sponsored research is a relative phenomenon, an emerging discord is a disturbing fact.
Diversion of Young Scholars to "Managerial" Role
In developing countries, science and engineering scholars are often those who have yet to reach the prime of their research career. Industry's immediate needs often turn them into "research managers," who forgo hands-on research at an early stage of their professional life. Encouraging them to become R&D "entrepreneurs," though desirable from the short-range needs of the industries, may not serve the professors' long-range career development goal.
Concluding Remarks
Unlike the industrialized western countries, the idea of universities serving as a locus of industrial research has had a relatively short history in Korea. However, most of those actively engaged in research obtained their advanced degrees in industrialized countries, predominantly in the U.S., during the golden age of academic research. As a result, there is a strong basic research constituency in Korea. The emerging entrepreneurial universities must learn to balance the traditional academic values with the needs of the nation's economic development goals.
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