[Bobby] Hitt also is a true believer in the state’s effort to build a “knowledge-based” economy, funding high-tech researchers at Clemson, USC and MUSC in positions called endowed chairs and matching their discoveries to companies that can market them through research campuses like ICAR and Innovista. In fact, he is one of that plan’s architects. “I was on the (endowed-chairs) board so you would expect me to be a little bit biased toward it,” he said. “And I am biased toward it.” Read more: http://www.thestate.com/2011/03/07/1726059/for-new-commerce-chief-its-about.html
Philip Altbach, director of the Centre for International Higher Education, based in Boston College in the United States, says governments want to use universities to upgrade their workforce and develop hi-tech industries. “Universities are being seen as a key to the new economies, they’re trying to grow the knowledge economy by building a base in universities,” says Professor Altbach. Families, from rural China to eastern Europe, are also seeing university as a way of helping their children to get higher-paid jobs. A growing middle-class in India is pushing an expansion in places. Excerpt from BBC News article: Graduates – the new measure of power.