Do systems pass university entrance exams?

Reading Comprehension tests are commonly used to assess the degree to which people comprehend what they read. This is why we work with the hypothesis that it is reasonable to use these tests to assess the degree to which a machine “comprehends” what it is reading. In this work, we evaluate Question Answering systems using Reading Comprehension tests from exams to enter University. This article analyses the datasets generated, the kind of inferences required, the methodology followed in three evaluation campaigns, the approaches presented by participants and current results. Besides, we study the evolution of systems and the main lessons learned in this evaluation process. We also show how current technologies are unable to pass university-entrance exams. This is because these tests require a deep understanding of texts, as well as detecting the similar meaning of phrases with different words. Future directions focused on these ideas seem more promising than including a massive amount of data for training systems, what has allowed systems to obtain outstanding results in Reading Comprehension tests with more straightforward questions. We think this study helps to increase the knowledge about how to develop better Question Answering systems.     

Research subsidies,industry–university cooperation and innovation

We evaluate the impact of the EC's Seventh Framework Programme, a large-scale research subsidy programme, on the innovation activities of subsidized firms, with a particular regard to industry–university partnerships. Using matching and difference-in-difference estimation, we find a positive effect on a range of innovation indicators. The number of project participants in general and university participants in particular positively affect performance, suggesting knowledge spillovers between project members. Research centres, on the other hand, do not exert positive externalities. We also find that the benefits of collaborating with universities are amplified by their academic quality.     

Engaging excellence? Effects of faculty quality on university engagement with industry

We investigate how universities’ research quality shapes their engagement with industry. Previous research has predominantly found a positive relationship between academics’ research quality and their commercialization activities. Here we use industry involvement measures that are broader than commercialization and indicate actual collaboration, i.e. collaborative research, contract research and consulting. We hypothesise that the relationship between faculty quality and industry engagement differs across disciplines, depending on complementarities between industrial and academic work, and resource requirements. Using a dataset covering all UK universities, we find that in technology-oriented disciplines, departmental faculty quality is positively related to industry involvement. In the medical and biological sciences we find a positive effect of departmental faculty quality but establish that this does not apply to star scientists. In the social sciences, we find some support for a negative relationship between faculty quality and particularly the more applied forms of industry involvement. The implication for science policy makers and university managers is that differentiated approaches to promoting university-industry relationships are required.     

Contingent knowledge transfers in university–industry R&D projects

This paper explores knowledge transfers inside University–Industry collaborative research as the objective and scope of R&D activities vary. First, we contribute to a dynamic perspective on inter-organizational knowledge transfers by providing a new typology of University–Industry collaborative research. Second, we provide propositions related to contingent knowledge transfers, i.e. alignment between the nature of a project and the expected transfers. If such an alignment should ideally be built starting in the design phase, we demonstrate that a lack of alignment can be corrected as the collaborative research is iterated. Those iterations are experienced by partners as highly emotional events, influencing the rest of the collaborative work through what we call the pivot complex.     

Spatial differences in the quality of university patenting: Do regions matter?

This paper uses patent citation data to analyze the quality of university technology across European regions. The empirical analysis draws on a panel dataset of 4580 European university-owned patents classified by 202 European regions over the period 1998-2004. The methodology involves a multilevel framework to identify the effects of factors at three hierarchical levels (individual, university, and regional) on the quality of university patenting. The results suggest that regional factors, such as the level of development, industrial potential, and regional higher education R&D expenditure, do not play any significant role in determining the quality of European university patents. We instead find that the factors affecting patent quality stem from their specific characteristics. We also find that university size does not explain the quality of patents. However, there is significant unobserved heterogeneity at the university level in all models, suggesting that differences in other university characteristics explain a substantial part of the variance in patent quality.     

Do university mergers create academic synergy? Evidence from China and the Nordic Countries

Since the late 1990s, mergers have been pursued by a large number of national university systems. The mergers have been justified as a way of increasing research performance. This paper examines the impact of mergers on one vital measure of university research performance, the production of publications, for 29 Chinese university mergers and 8 Nordic university mergers. Using Web of Science counts of research articles before and after a merger while controlling for the university inputs of R&D funding and research personnel, it was found that Chinese universities exhibited a small but significant increase in the rate of growth of articles following a merger. The Nordic performance was less clear cut. Our findings support the belief that mergers of similarly sized institutions usually have little impact on research performance. In contrast, mergers between a large comprehensive university and much smaller universities have a positive impact on overall publications. We also show that cases in which the merger was between a comprehensive university and a medical school resulted in significantly improved performance in terms of scholarly publications. We attribute the improvement to synergies between the basic biological research in the comprehensive university and the more practical research undertaken in medical schools. We conclude with suggestions for policy-makers aiming to create synergies through mergers.     

Commercializing university research in transition economies: Technology transfer offices or direct industrial funding?

There is a paucity of knowledge on research commercialization by university scientists worldwide. The objective of this paper is to identify the role that Technology Transfer Offices (TTOs) and direct Industrial Funding play in university research commercialization in transition economies of Azerbaijan, Belarus and Kazakhstan during 2015–2017. We do this by developing a novel database and a multi-level model which explains how individual attributes, organizational and ecosystem characteristics explain the extent of knowledge commercialization.We apply the generalized Heckman approach to account for two selection biases, reducing the sample from 2602 to 272 scientists, and further use a mixed-method approach to analyse 27 face-to-face interviews with researchers and TTO managers. The results demonstrate that research commercialization is not associated with the existence and awareness of TTO or the establishment of commercialization contracts via TTO, but the direct industrial funding of university research. Taken together the findings have clear implications for scholars, scientific entrepreneurs, TTOs and investors who aim to exploit university knowledge in transition economies.     

Academics or entrepreneurs? Investigating role identity modification of university scientists involved in commercialization activity

Establishing the microfoundations of academic entrepreneurship requires closer scrutiny of a key actor contributing to this phenomenon—the university scientist. We investigate the sense-making that scientists engage in as part of their participation in technology transfer and postulate that this process involves a potential modification in their role identity. We analyzed more than 70 h of interview data at a premier U.S. public research university. We observe that scientists invoke rationales for involvement that are congruent with their academic role identity. They typically adopt a hybrid role identity that comprises a focal academic self and a secondary commercial persona. We delineate two mechanisms – delegating and buffering – that these individuals deploy to facilitate such salience in their hybrid role identity. Overall, these patterns suggest that university scientists take active steps to preserve their academic role identity even as they participate in technology transfer. Our findings clarify the social psychological processes underlying scientist involvement in commercialization activity, and offer fresh insights to the academic entrepreneurship, science policy and role identity literatures.     

Early-career academic engagement in university–industry collaborative PhDs: Research orientation and project performance

Academic engagement with industry is a well-researched topic. However, research has focused on scholars in traditional university departments, overlooking more hybrid research contexts such as the growing trend of PhD students and their supervisors engaging in collaborative research projects with industry during their training. To address this gap, this study explores the early-career academic engagement of PhD students in university-industry collaborative research projects. It particularly focuses on research orientation and its association with scientific and inventive yield. Drawing on Stokes' (1997) framework, the study investigates the extent to which the research orientation (basic research, applied research, and user-inspired fundamental research) is associated with scientific and inventive yield. The study is based on a review of 631 collaborative PhD projects with industry completed in France in 2018 through a national programme (CIFRE). It finds that the three research orientations are associated with different levels of scientific and inventive yields. While basic research is the most common orientation across the sample, the rarest, user-inspired fundamental research, is associated with the highest scientific and inventive yield. Moreover, the study highlights the critical role of PhD students' taste for science or industry (and the potential change in this taste during the project) in the association between research orientation and projects' yields. Overall, this study sheds light on an understudied area of academic engagement and highlights the significance of considering research orientation and students' taste for science or industry when developing university-industry collaborations. This has implications for PhD supervisors, PhD students, their industrial partners, and policymakers.     

Spin doctors vs the spawn of capitalism: Who founds university and corporate startups?

We compare individuals presently employed either at a university, or at a firm from an R&D-intensive sector, and analyze which of their personal-specific and employer-specific characteristics are related to their choice to leave their present employer for an own startup. Our data set combines the population of Danish employees with their present employers. We focus on persons who at least hold a Bachelor's degree in engineering, sciences and health and track them over 2001-2012. We show that (i) there are overall few differences between the characteristics of university and corporate startup entrepreneurs, (ii) common factors associated with startup activity of both university and corporate employees are education, top management team membership, previous job mobility and being male, (iii) it is primarily human capital-related characteristics that are related to startup choice of university employees while (iv) the characteristics of the present workplace are the foremost factors of entrepreneurial activity by corporate employees.     

Government centrality to university–industry interactions: University research centers and the industry involvement of academic researchers

This paper uses data from a national survey of academic researchers in the US to detect how different types of university research centers affect individual-level university–industry interactions. The results suggest that while affiliation with an industry-related center correlates positively with the likelihood of an academic researcher having had any research-related interactions with private companies, affiliation with centers sponsored by government centers programs correlates positively with the level of industry involvement, no matter whether these centers additionally have ties to private companies. The analysis takes the “scientific and technical human capital” approach, which draws from theories of social capital and human capital and proves useful for framing the institutional and resource-based perspectives that characterize much of the literature on university–industry interactions. The scientific and technical human capital approach is taken because its emphasis on the research capacities of individual academic researchers provides a more direct explanation of government centrality to academic researchers’ industry involvement than provide either the resource-based or institutional views. Implications for policy and management as well as for future applications of the scientific and technical human capital approach are discussed.     

Are public subsidies effective for university spinoffs? Evidence from SBIR awards in the University of California system

This study examines the impact of public subsidies, and specifically, Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) awards on university spinoff companies. Using unique data for a population of University of California spinoffs, we find pronounced differences between companies commercializing digital technologies (software and hardware), and those that focus on other product spaces. For digital spinoffs, receiving an SBIR award has a negative impact on raising venture capital and no impact on IPOs, exits or first sales. Conversely, for non-digital firms (e.g., biotechnology, energy), receiving an SBIR award has a positive effect on raising venture capital and performance outcomes. We reason that digital technologies are subject to faster cycle times and higher market uncertainty, relative to technological uncertainty. Digital firms may therefore benefit less from subsidies designed to support technology development, and private investors may view the need of digital companies to obtain such subsidies as a negative certification. Our findings inform policy by suggesting that the industrial domain may be an important boundary condition for the effectiveness of SBIR-type subsidies for university spinoffs.     

Have university knowledge flows narrowed?: Evidence from patent data

The rate of university patenting increased dramatically during the 1980s. Did the manner in which knowledge embedded in university patents was managed change during this period of rapid patenting growth? Using a Herfindahl-type measure of knowledge flow concentration and employing a difference-in-differences estimation to compare university-to-firm patent citations across two time periods, we find that the university diffusion premium (the degree to which university knowledge outflows are more widely distributed than those of firms) declined by more than half during the 1980s. In addition, we find that the university diversity premium (the degree to which knowledge inflows used by universities are drawn from a more widely distributed set of prior art holders than those used by firms) also declined by more than half. However, these changes are mostly limited to a narrow set of technology fields (i.e., biotechnology and pharmaceuticals in the outflows case and sub-fields of electronics in the inflows case). The social welfare implications are ambiguous.