HIGHER EDUCATION AS A DRIVER OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, COMPETITIVENESS AND GROWTH

Higher education is now a major economic driver, and colleagues and universities are critical components of national and regional work, force-development strategies and innovation systems. Higher education plays, an increasingly critical role in the economic competitiveness of local, state, and national economies. This paper lays out the growing global interest and import of economic competitiveness and the ways in which governments are seeking to harness the power of higher education to support their own competitiveness. It concludes with a discussion of how governments, businesses, and higher education institutions could collaborate to develop public agendas to guide, among other things, the economic contributions of colleagues and universities. Furthermore, to scan higher education economic development activities as well as state-level study of the economic roles of campuses in a large public university system, this paper describes the many ways in which colleagues and universities promote and foster economic development. Higher education economic development activities are diverse, involving many different economic processes. This paper describe how; 1) these activities are often combined in complex combinations; 2) the activities interact with and are contingent on each campus’ environment ; and 3) the activities and their probable impacts may changes over time.  Also, the purpose of this paper is to bring greater attention to the critical role that higher education plays in economic development. The attention here is not to put these economic development functions of colleagues and universities on a pedestal above teaching, research, and community, and meant to bring greater clarity to their communities. The paper conclude that the governments should  improve and expand higher education institutions for the sake of increasing development and recommended that collaboration between government and institutions can helpful in identifying and capitalizing of the core strengthen of an economy.