Austria is full of ingenuity. Above all at the domestic universities, innumerable ideas are gathering that must not perish in the theoretical stage. Companies should therefore use universities as incubators, especially when it comes to software solutions – a branch of digitization that is a little ridiculed in this country. Software products in particular are enormously scalable, which could boost our economic performance.
However, there must be no rush, because good ideas need time to mature. The best example: Fast Research & Transfer only started as a spin-off from the Technical and Natural Sciences University of Trondheim after twelve years and grew to become Europe’s most successful commercial specialist for information management and search technology. The fact that Microsoft bought the company for USD 1.2 billion in 2008 is the bitter continuation of the success story for our continent.
If Europe wants to catch up with the digital market successes of the USA and Asia, it needs more software-dominated companies, and that also means supporting and implementing innovations emerging at universities. The planned TU Linz wants to go exactly this way: A technical university with a focus on digitization and digital transformation is to be created. A prerequisite is a close connection to leading economic companies with a research focus on robotics, artificial intelligence and process digitization. Until a founding convention is active in the winter semester 2021/22, experts from politics, science and business will clarify the implementation criteria of this educational project. This includes location, capacity, financing, study planning, legal framework and the final name of the university.
Decisive: practical orientation and internationality
The aim is to establish the digital university as a brand across borders. What makes a university an educational magnet? According to studies, different criteria are taken into account when choosing the ideal university: Do professors teach there who are luminaries in their field? Which companies are there in the region, which industries shape the city, where can you apply? How does the global network of the university look like, which partner universities does it have? And how innovative is the university, how actively and successfully does it support spin-offs?
The quality of teaching and research as well as the attractiveness of the university city weigh particularly heavily in the selection process. According to a study by the Leipzig University of Applied Sciences, the importance of these factors can still turn during the decision-making process: While the emotional connection to the university town hardly loses its importance in the consideration phase, the academic qualities of the university are sometimes less relevant. Instead, first-year students are more concerned about the supervision key, or that the degree is geared towards the requirements of the modern world of work, i.e. is practice-oriented and international.
Despite growing competition, the European Union remains one of the largest reception areas for international students. The renowned QS International Student Survey 2020 evaluated 29,500 responses from those interested in studying in the EU. And here, too, the same picture emerges: Potential students prefer above all universities with high quality teaching and excellent career service, i.e. a good connection to the economy.
TU Linz has to develop a European presence
As far as the cooperation between business and universities is concerned, the Austrian university landscape is developing better and better. According to the 2020 University Report, academic spin-offs, i.e. the transition from a technological idea to an innovation, increased from twelve spin-offs in 2017 to 19 in 2019 – always against the backdrop of digitization, because universities are “not only fields of application for digital solutions, they themselves are drivers of digitization by actively helping to shape and further develop the conversion from analog to digital processes ”. The aim is to utilize academic knowledge for society and the economy in various fields of action that fall under the so-called “third mission” of the universities (the first two missions include teaching and research). The goal: “Successful science-business cooperation enables access to the know-how of cutting-edge research, promotes synergies and plays an essential role in location decisions and in regional politics.”
It is precisely this economic approach, this entrepreneurship, that should also form a supporting pillar of the Digital University Linz. The new TU with a digital focus must develop European appeal, i.e. become a top university that attracts students, researchers as well as national and international investors. This includes recruiting internationally renowned professors, and English as the working language should also be a matter of course. The new TU Linz will work together with other Austrian and international universities so that the range of courses remains as heterogeneous as possible. The FH Upper Austria and the three existing technical universities in the state are the first point of contact.
One thing is clear: if a city wants to attract the brightest minds through its universities, the overall package on offer has to be right. As mentioned earlier, the urban quality of life is a serious factor, and a city’s transport policy pulls this quality characteristic up or down. The fact that the University of Graz is planning a subway should be noted as a positive example. In Linz, however, the current trend is towards individual transport and is thus completely in contradiction to the transport and traffic strategies of the future. I strongly hope that we will finally be able to usher in the 21st century in this regard in the foreseeable future. By then at the latest, nothing will stand in the way of the TU Linz as a European focal point for digital entrepreneurship.
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