Mark Leftly: If UK universities want collaborations with business, they should ask for less

Westminster Outlook As the sheep graze quietly on the north bank of the River Elbe, the bars of the baroque old town on the other side of the river will be buzzing this weekend with professors enjoying a few steins of the local Waldschlösschen brew.

The boffins at the Dresden University of Technology will have earned a few large jars, having struck an impressive-sounding deal with Vodafone yesterday. The mobile phone giant will work with the academics, as well as developers and technology companies, to “explore the capabilities of 5G” with a dedicated lab at the university.

Professor Gerhard Fettweis, the Vodafone chair of mobile communications systems at the university, declared: “Today, mobile communications is all about moving content from one place to another. Tomorrow it will be about being able to control a vast array of objects in real time with little human intervention. To get there we need to rethink wireless communications, particularly with regard to data rates, latency and IP services.”

Having struggled for an hour to change the password on my system yesterday, I have little idea what all that means, but what this partnership also shows is that in our shrinking world, businesses have their pick of universities with which to work. In June, this column pointed out that GlaxoSmithKline had warned the Business Select Committee that working with British universities is becoming increasingly costly. The UK uses what is known as full economic costing, which factors in unquantifiable, non-financial elements, such as charging businesses for use of faculty equipment.

GSK argued that a quarter of UK business-funded doctoral research is now going to institutions off these shores, which “may inevitably undermine the competitiveness of the UK academic base”.

Now, Vodafone has been good to the brains of Britain; it is also working with the University of Surrey and King’s College London on pushing the limits of 5G technology. But the Dresden deal – and a similar tie-up with Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania – is a reminder to our chancellors, rectors and principals that they must lower their financial demands if they want big business investment.

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