Join us in welcoming our newest Initiator member to the UIIN community, Avans University of Applied Sciences. Avans strives to maintain and expand its impact to the local ecosystem of North Brabant in which it is situated. In this conversation with Jaap Smolders, Vice Dean, Academy for Business and Entrepreneurship and Ayfer Sari Dean, Academy for Business and Entrepreneurship, we discuss the universities Ambition 2025, which aims at embedding innovation, co-creation and flexibility into all their educational programmes, as well as how they are addressing the challenges in realising these ambitions.

How did you find UIIN and what were your main reasons for joining?

Within our University of Applied Sciences, we have our ambition – Ambition 2025. From September of this year, we are going to further embed innovation, co-creation and flexibility into 56 of our bachelor degrees. Students that start their bachelor programme in September 2024 can choose 25% of their bachelor programme for themselves, across disciplines. With this mission in mind, we searched for conferences where we could get to know more about this topic, as well as get inspired and learn from other Universities of Applied Sciences – and this is how we came across UIIN.

It is inspiring to see what other institutions, in different settings around the world, with different backgrounds, are doing. We noticed that, despite the contextual differences, we share a lot of similar challenges and opportunities. There were some topics at the conference that were new to us, which we found really inspiring, and there were others which we noticed we had already made good headway on; this gave us confidence that we are on track with our Ambition 2025.

What challenges have you faced when building university-industry partnerships?

We have found it challenging for our staff to speak the same language as our external partners; these are different people who have different priorities. We recognise that through business development, you can facilitate a lot of innovations. However, business is not a top priority of our colleagues in the technology department, they would rather focus on the design process.

When designing solutions for societal challenges it is important to get all the types of expertise, the technical, the development, the business involved equally in the project at the same time.

A problem that we are currently facing is how can we get different people, with different priorities, together at the same time to work on a specific societal challenge.

We are aware that there is also a mindset shift that needs to take place within the university. Within this new modular form of education, we also need to coach our students differently. And we understand that it is a challenge for our colleagues to balance the demands of quality education for students, making impact through their teaching and research, and interfacing with industry in their work. Furthermore, the pace of business is usually faster than education; in education you cannot change everything in a week, a month or even a year, but many businesses are, changing very rapidly. We have to work out how to find a good balance between the demands and pace of business and the adaptability of education.

Lastly, we are confident in our ability to prepare our students well for their respective industries, but we want to look into how we can make a deeper impact both during and after studies. We are striving to make a transition to focus more on applied sciences. This is a long and complex process and there’s a lot of change management that has to happen within our institution.

How are you working to address these challenges?

We evaluated our current partners to identify those with potential for long-term strategic collaborations. In our education, we consistently use real-life cases. The initial steps involve onboarding partners, introducing them to our educational approach, and clarifying their roles and our objectives. The next phase focuses on deepening our mutual understanding to determine which partners are suited for long-term collaboration.

We also have advisory boards to help us stay connected to industry. These boards allow us to test new educational initiatives before launch, gauge their reception, and assess their long-term benefits for the industry. Building trusting relationships with these boards is crucial, enabling us to challenge each other’s thinking. Over this long-term relationship, you come to understand each other, and it becomes a bit of give and take, which is very important in the co-creation process.

Another part of the solution is staying clear in our vision: the Avans educational model is non-negotiable across all our programs.

We make it clear to all our colleagues, researchers, policy makers and industry partners that our bachelor’s programs will adopt a 25% flexible choice for students. This crucial first step took years to achieve, but we have since redesigned our organization to align with these goals, bringing clarity both internally and externally. While we are not fully there yet, we have made significant progress.

What is your vision in terms of university-industry engagement, in the context of your Ambition 2025?

We are working towards a modular education approach. Through our Ambition 2025 initiative, we will embed at least 25% freedom of choice into all our bachelor programmes. This means, for example, that a student studying entrepreneurship could choose to spend a semester in the health department or the arts department to prepare for a future career in health or design.

We are also developing more holistic programmes. For instance, rather than offering isolated courses in finance and marketing, we are integrating these disciplines into cohesive projects that teaches students competencies around both. These projects also emphasize co-creation, mirroring real-world business environments.

Furthermore, we will reduce the number of exams that we use to assess students and move towards more group work assignments. While this approach fosters teamwork and practical skills, it poses challenges in ensuring each student’s individual competence and understanding. Moreover, with fewer exams, we must be mindful of the increasing use of AI in assignments.

We are making significant investments in enhancing our institutional research capabilities to bolster our societal impact.

Additionally, we are dedicated to cultivating students as critical thinkers who can innovate and challenge conventional norms. With our programmes we want to make impact not only by educating our students, but also by uplifting the knowledge base of the working field in our surroundings.

What areas and different topics do you wish to learn more about?

An important area of growth for us is the professionalisation our workforce so they are equipped to deliver more blended, interdisciplinary and impact focussed education and research. These changes will be fast and extensive, and not all members of our academy will cope well with the pace of the transition. We would like to know how we can support our human capital through this process.

We would also like to explore how to find balance between keeping up with business developments and involving industry in our education, while also allowing students the necessary time to develop themselves into resilient and flexible professionals.

We have noticed a conflict where students in their second or third years leave the university for employment offers from the same organisations that we are collaborating with.

These organisations argue that students can always complete their diplomas later on, citing the benefits of life-wide learning. In the Netherlands, and other areas of Europe, there is a shortage of employees, and this is preassuring companies into hiring younger talent. However, at the university, we believe it is important for students to complete their programmes before they enter the workforce.

Finally, we are keen to learn more about how to finance a robust ecosystem that supports our initiatives. We seek to understand companies’ perspectives on their roles in these collaborations and how they can contribute to funding them effectively. Exploring these aspects will help us build sustainable partnerships and ensure the success of our projects.

Ayfer Sari and Jaap Smolders

If you would like to learn more about Avans and their initiatives, you can contact Jaap Smolders or Ayfer Sari.
You can also visit their Ambition 2025 webpage.

Ready for more?

If you enjoyed this article, check out our podcast Discovering Ireland’s innovation ecosystem for university-industry cooperation or read our article What does it mean for a university to be “ready to engage”?.

Tasha Day (author) is a Project officer at UIIN, where she undertakes research activities and creates content on a wide variety of topics including entrepreneurship education, sustainability and research valorisation.