Irish universities must be better at engaging with businesses, an event at University College Cork (UCC) has heard, with their reach falling short of what is necessary.
Speaking at the Business Engagement event in UCC’s Aula Maxima on Tuesday night, chair of the university’s governing authority, Sean O’Driscoll said that as it currently stands, businesses are the ones having to reach out to universities.
“From experience, unlike US universities, Irish universities do not reach out enough to business,” said Mr O’Driscoll, who is also chairman of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and former chief executive of Glen Dimplex.
“In Ireland, businesses have to reach into universities and when they do, they find it very difficult, time-consuming and frustrating to navigate their way through overly complex organisations.”
To combat this challenge, Mr O’Driscoll unveiled a new business engagement website which will act as a single point of contact for companies looking to engage with UCC.
“UCC is doubling down on its commitment to embedding and encouraging its engagement with business,” said Mr O’Driscoll. “It will make this engagement much easier to navigate through its new externally facing single point of contact for business partners.”
The event highlighted UCC’s aims to support industry, spanning research partnerships, talent and skills development, innovation and technology, with speakers including ESB, Carbery Group, J&J MedTech, KPMG, Qualcomm, and Pfizer, who shared insights into their prior collaborations with UCC. Mr O’Driscoll told the event’s more than 200 attendees that UCC leads Ireland in industry engagement, securing more than €120m in research funding in 2023, and has the highest graduate employability rate of Irish universities.
“UCC is an enterprise of significant scale, with an annual Budget of approximately €600 million, 25,000 students and 3,200 staff,” said Mr O’Driscoll. “If it were a town it would be the 6th largest in Ireland. As a large employer, UCC has a huge national and regional economic impact, proving conclusively that education, research and innovation is not a cost, it is an investment.”
The ESRI chairman added that universities have a responsibility to generate “maximum societal, cultural and economic impact through collaboration with their communities,” adding: “Universities should be engaged in all aspects of the development and delivery of Ireland’s industrial strategy.
President of UCC John O’Halloran said: “We have a strong focus on industry engagement and innovation at UCC that has created a culture where industry collaboration thrives. Industry engagement is about more than economic development, it is about building stronger, more resilient communities.”
UCC currently works with more than 7,000 industry clients annually and graduates more than 8,000 students every year. The college’s new Business Engagement Portal will provide companies with access to UCC’s talent, Skills for Work courses, research and expertise.