Cross-national perspectives on policies and new university approaches to societal collaboration

Universities are currently facing mounting policy expectations to assume a broader societal responsi-bility in creating sustainable growth and wellbeing. In response to these demands, universities are developing new approaches to proactively take on their role with societal collaboration, including project-based education, student innovation programmes, open testbed and demonstration facilities and collaborative learning spaces. In addition, we witness the rise of various types of bridging and integrating structures at universities. Despite the increasing body of case descriptions highlighting new university approaches to societal collaboration, relatively little is known about their relative embeddedness in universities’ activities over the longer-term and how these approaches address the new policy expectations that exist. The aim of this practitioner paper is to address this gap in knowledge and shed light on the evolving forms of universities’ societal collaboration and how these address new policy expectations.
Through a comparative case study of national policy frames and different university approaches to societal collaboration in Finland and Sweden, we are able to highlight new forms and activities that are emerging, and describe their relative embeddedness in university structures and processes of stra-tegic adaptation. The conclusions point to a need for policies that provide incentives to (rather than steer) universities to develop sustainable approaches to societal interaction that fit their own culture and structures.