Competition and collaboration have always co-existed in Academia, for both individuals and institutions. Certainly in research (and its exploitation) the race to be first to a discovery or hypothesis is often an essential part of the excitement and motivation. But increasingly success depends on collaborations and interactions, particularly where expensive facilities are required. Staff at the University of Dundee could provide numerous examples - and the better the calibre of our research and the reputation of the University, the easier and more fruitful such collaborations become.
Principal's Column At the institutional level, many of the systems and procedures put in place in recent years have tended - not always unintentionally - to promote competition and discourage collaboration. Obvious examples include the Research Assessment Exercise, Teaching Quality Assessment and the various league tables which have appeared. It has been in the interests of institutions, including clearly their financial interest, to achieve as good a relative result as possible. All institutions have responded in one way or another to these stimuli.
Such a climate is contrary to traditional academic culture and current circumstances call for a more constructive, longer term view. Global competition, e-education, financial pressures are powerful challenges and collaboration in the face of such factors is being strongly encouraged by the Funding Council. As part of our own policy following from our strategic review we have been pursuing collaboration in various ways. The successful joint Science Enterprise Challenge bid with Edinburgh, Heriot Watt, Glasgow and Strathclyde Universities, the distance learning course in Modern Scottish History provided together with the Open University and the various agreements with the University of Abertay Dundee in the fields of Management and Consumer Studies, Engineering and Biomathematics come readily to mind.
In the case of our other neighbours, St Andrews University, the complementarity and scope for collaboration are such that we have concluded the opportunities should be addressed in a thorough and systematic manner. The two Universities have agreed in principle to a partnership in which joint approaches will be explored and developed wherever mutual benefit is identified. Sections of the press have read more into this than intended and indulged in heady speculation. But this should not deflect us from the very constructive discussions taking place to establish where collaboration could improve effectiveness. Such discussions are by no means exclusive, but it is clearly appropriate to give particular attention at this stage to near neighbours with whom we already have many potential links.
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