During our meetings with staff from FUAS universities, we felt that they had clear views on the importance of RDI and their role within the universities. They were able to differentiate clearly between Research, Development and Innovation and, for researchers, to place their own work within these cate- gories. Yet, we found that academic staff differed in their views on the role of research within academic practice and in their own work. Some saw re- search activities as a tool to support the core function of the universities: their teaching. This is in line with the current strategy in the three universi- ties that form FUAS: their main function is seen as providing advanced pro- fessional education linked to the local and regional needs; research activi- ties are subordinate to this role. RDI projects are applied, and often focus on innovative or entrepreneurial practices rather than involving R&D elements. The main role of research is to support teaching. Yet, when trying to move to more traditional research funding sources, this approach faces difficulties. The degree to which undergraduate or even Master’s students could contrib- ute meaningfully to complex R&D projects was also questioned by some in- terviewees and will depend on the context of each research assignment. In some cases, the involvement of students can fit the purposes of the research assignment, and the skills they contribute to the project may be adequate, but this will not always be the case. We encountered, for instance, tales of fund- ing organisations being less than satisfied with the research reports submit- ted by FUAS universities, seeming to revolve around sets of student reports, and we learnt that there was a widespread perception that FUAS universities were struggling with reputational difficulties when trying to penetrate tradi- tional research “markets”.
Other academics we interviewed had a different perspective: they were either contract researchers or lecturers with a track record in academic research, and saw research as an activity valuable and interesting beyond their relationship with teaching. The research was in all cases applied or strategic, and oriented to the solution of technical challenges and societal problems. It was carried out in collaboration with researchers from other universities and, although there were links with their current university teaching activities, such links were not seen as the main objective and justification for the research. In one of the cases we reviewed, the links with teaching had remained, at best, ten- uous throughout the research project.
These cases suggest two main models on which to base FUAS RDI strategy: 1. RDI as an activity supporting teaching. This is the continuation of the
strategy that currently dominates RDI practice among FUAS universi- ties. The main function of the Universities of Applied Science is seen as the training of new generations of practitioners and RDI activities are seen mainly as a teaching tool to help towards this goal. RDI activ- ities are incorporated in the teaching curricula providing students with direct experience of the challenges that they are likely to face in their professional lives when trying to develop new solutions to relevant practical problems. The involvement of students in RDI project also helps to cover the full costs of such activities in those situations when, as in the case of many European Commission research programmes, funding sources do not fully support the costs of the research activity. Projects that are best suited to this practice will be those related to in- novation and entrepreneurship, and requiring moderate technical/re- search skills. Projects calling for the application of sophisticated meth- odologies and developing state-of-the-art knowledge will be less suit- ed to this kind of use. The challenge here is to provide a constant flow of RDI assignments with a profile that can enable the contribution of students (at either undergraduate or Master’s level).
2. Developing RDI as a self-determined function. What we mean by this is that, although RDI activities continue to play a role in the teach- ing endeavours of the FUAS universities, RDI is also seen as a set of ac- tivities that need to be pursued as an additional function of the uni- versities. In addition to teaching, RDI is seen to support the Universi- ties of Applied Sciences by providing relevant services to society, re- sources for the universities and enhancing the skills and knowledge of their academic staff. Not all RDI activities need to be directly related to teaching, but staff working in projects that develop or apply fron- tier knowledge and technologies are also likely to provide more up-to- date and relevant teaching. The research function can, from this per- spective, reinforce teaching activities even when they are not direct- ly related through every research project. This strategy would require some substantial changes in the current activities and practices of the universities comprising FUAS.
These strategies lead to different challenges for university policy and suggest different goals for the management of RDI at the FUAS level. These are ad- dressed in the following sections.