Support of Higher Education to Regional Development:

Building Bridges between Portuguese and Brazilian Universities

Cássio Rolim – UFPR Mauricio Serra – UNICAMP

This paper aims at building a methodology on how the best practices of

Portuguese universities regarding regional development can be a useful tool for small
Brazilian universities located in the hinterland. It is important to highlight here that its
focus is on the support of universities to regional development from a regional policy
viewpoint.
The idea of universities working in close connection with the needs of their
surrounding communities is not new. In fact, it came about the same time when
universities began to spread around the world. At that time, universities were mainly
education institutions and it was only in the last century that they increased their
research activities. Over the last decades, universities have come under pressure to give
a deeper contribution to the development of their communities through the so-called
Third Mission, whose activities are, in general, related to technology transfer and
innovation, continuing education and social engagement.
Since 2000, with the disclosure of the Lisbon Agenda by the European Council,
the support of Higher Educations Institutions to regional development has been an
important challenge to European universities. The Portuguese universities, like other
European universities, have worked on these goals with different outcomes, being some
of them, such as the universities of Aveiro, Evora and Minho, highly succeeded in the
engagement with their communities.
With regard to Brazilian universities, they are not still engaged in a process of
supporting the development of their regions. The Brazilian higher education system is
very unbalanced. Some world-class universities coexist with small colleges where any
type of research is hardly done. This imbalance is spread all over the country,
principally in lagging regions. The more a region needs, the more disconnected it is
from the knowledge infrastructure for development.
This project can be perceived as a bridge between two different contexts that
might improve both of them. On the Portuguese side, the review of best practises will
filter the experiences and, at the same time, show what is really working. On the
Brazilian side, the understanding of the best practices will facilitate the universities’
process of supporting regional development. In addition, it will help the responsible for
regional policy to improve their instruments of intervention.
The proposed methodology reviews three dimensions regarding implementation
policies of the typical third-mission activities developed by those three chosen
Portuguese universities. The first dimension is design, which is related to the policy
making process and the human and financial resources needed for its implementation.
The second one is implementation, which means the process by which the policy is
carried out. The third dimension is efficacy, which focuses on how the policy, through a
number of indicators, is achieving the intended result. However, the support of higher
education to regional development goes beyond third mission and is necessary a fourth
dimension, which is named graduate skills. This new dimension is connected with the
educational outcomes of the graduates regarding the needs of the regional economy. It is
more than academic performance and includes several skills, such as creativity,
entrepreneurship, leadership, sociability and so on. All these dimensions must be
considered and confirmed by universities and stakeholders, being the next step their
systematization and consolidation.