External Engagement of Academics in the Baltic Sea Region: Partners Involved and Importance for Teaching

Pekşen, Sude

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are expected to combine their core missions – teaching and research - with external engagement to foster social innovation (Bellandi, Donati & Cataneo, 2021). Yet, studies on external engagement have mostly focused on research commercialization and have largely ignored teaching-related engagement. Further, cross-national comparisons of academic engagement are rare. Thus, to understand the link between external engagement and teaching, we ask the following:

Which collaboration partners are involved in the external activities of academics?
How important are these external activities for teaching?

We focus on five countries bordering the Baltic Sea, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Lithuania, and Sweden, which constitute diverse cases (Seawright & Gerring, 2008). We draw on data from the representative survey of the Academic Profession in Knowledge-Based Society (APIKS) project (N=12.318) from 2017.

The findings show that while external activities are widespread across HEIs in the Baltic Sea region, their importance for teaching varies significantly by country. Finland demonstrates the highest levels of collaboration with partners outside the labor market, but academics place less emphasis on external activities in teaching. Contrary to this, academics in Estonia and Lithuania indicate that external activities are not only widespread but also important for teaching. Academics in Germany report overall moderate levels.

The study concludes by showing that external engagement in teaching varies across the Baltic Sea Region. Thus, national contexts shape how academics integrate external activities into their teaching, with implications for the role of HEIs in fostering social innovation.

References

Bellandi, M., Donati, L., & Cataneo, A. (2021). Social innovation governance and the role of universities: Cases of quadruple helix partnerships in Italy. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 164, 120518.

Seawright, J. & Gerring, J. (2008). Case selection techniques in case study research: a menu of qualitative and quantitative options. Political Research Quarterly 61(2), 294–308.