Student-mediated knowledge exchange in Switzerland

Abstract

The majority of the academic work on knowledge and technology transfer has been on two types, knowledge commercialization and academic engagement. Mechanisms which involve students have been neglected though they are as common and potentially as beneficial. This neglect harbours several risks with regard to the economic and social valorisation of research results. We define and typify the construct of student-mediated knowledge exchange and review the literature which has reported multiple benefits for the involved parties, students, universities and companies, but also some costs. We then use survey data on three selected measures generated in a survey of the institutes of 18 Swiss higher education institutions (HEIs) for multivariate regression analyses at institute level to explain the differences for the student-mediated knowledge exchange metrics with structural characteristics of the institutes (university type, size, academic discipline) and variables on their activities (teaching focus, cooperation and commercialisation orientation). The results show that student-mediated transfers capture knowledge exchange with companies that is not covered by the common metrics for knowledge commercialization and academic engagement. In sum, we argue that the scope of knowledge and technology transfer metrics should be expanded to include measures that capture student-mediated forms.