Anyone interested in the intersection of higher education and community and economic development should read the following article in Change: “Universities for Cities and Regions: Lessons from the OECD Reviews.”

The article summarizes the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD’s) study of higher education’s role in local and regional economies.  Although its focus is international, the study offers numerous insights of relevance to West Virginia’s community and economic development efforts:

• “In the knowledge economy, people no longer follow jobs – jobs follow people.”  The article explains why technology companies like Google, Yahoo and FAST have set up research and development bases in Trondheim, Norway, which is a mere 500 kilometers from the Arctic Circle.  It is home to the Norwegian University of Technology and has a high concentration of the knowledge, skills and infrastructure needed for innovation.  The temperature there may be cold (a high of 53º F today), but the talent pool is hot!

• “It is becoming clear that despite the ‘death of distance,’ innovation continues to cluster around specific regions and urban centers that have skilled people, vibrant communities, and the infrastructure for innovation.”  Communities without strong higher education institutions are very unlikely to be clusters of innovation.  This is the best argument that can be made for not reducing West Virginia’s number of colleges of universities; the communities of which they are a part will struggle without them.
• “There is considerable resistance among the academic community to local and regional engagement….  The regional agenda is a particularly tough challenge for research intensive universities.”  The same is true in West Virginia.  West Virginia’s community and technical colleges are far more engaged in local and regional development than are other higher education institutions.  Having said that, there are pockets of innovation at virtually all of West Virginia’s higher education institutions (e.g., Concord University’s Nick Joe Rahall, II Technology Center).  The state needs to support this type of activity.
• “A … profitable approach is to transform the economy by building on existing strengths – a strategy that allows for incremental change and growth.”  Their point is that the investment needed to create another “Silicon Valley” would be overwhelming and might not succeed, whereas focusing on a region’s strengths is less costly and more likely to produce a favorable return.  This is precisely what the West Virginia Community and Technical College System is doing with its sector-based approach to economic development.  Under the sector-based approach, you bring together people connected to a key regional industry with growth potential and figure out how higher education can provide it with a skilled workforce and help it innovate.  It is unfortunate that the state’s research universities are not playing a more significant role in these efforts.
• “At the end of the day,… a thriving regional economy benefits colleges and universities in innumerable ways.  Even so, it may require a journey of internal reform for a university to take some responsibility for generating that prosperity.”  If Marshall University wants to bring in top-notch researchers, Huntington must be the kind of community where a top-notch researcher would want to live.  This is why President Stephen Kopp, I suspect, has been an active participant in the Create Huntington initiative and has made “community and service” one of the four pillars of Marshall’s strategic plan.  What’s good for Huntington is good for Marshall University.