Agenda for educational, training, and research institutions

1. Participate in national efforts to identify national S&T goals and priorities

Educational, training, and research institutions in developing nations should be active participants in efforts of national and local governments to plan the development of national capabilities in science and technology.

2. Assess strengths and weaknesses of universities and research institutions for achieving national S&T goals

Educational, training, and research institutions should undergo external reviews of their personnel, curricular, and research programs. Given the relatively modest scientific capacity of most developing nations, their merit reviews should ideally include appropriate experts from other nations. Such involvement of the global research community, possibly through a program of international cooperation among academies of science, engineering, and medicine, can make the merit review processes in developing nations more effective, not just for particular programs, but in general.

3. Establish a partnership with government and industry forstrengthening S&T capacity

Governments, industries, universities, and research institutes should experiment with partnerships and consortia for addressing research areas of potential local benefit.
Public-private partnerships should be created with industry. Increasingly, universities are establishing spin-off companies that have the right to patent and license the results of their advanced research, even though much of it originated in academic settings. This phenomenon potentially distorts the traditional function of the university, but if properly managed through partnerships that tap the strengths of each participant while safeguarding their basic interests, the risk can be minimized. Meanwhile, such partnerships offer important advantages for promoting cutting-edge research and directing its outcomes to the public good.

4. Create centers of excellence that address issues of national need

Centers of excellence - whether of local, national, regional, or international status - should be created, or seriously planned for the near future, in practically every university in order for S&T capacity to grow. Such centers can serve as the main nodes for individuals or groups charged with enhancing S&T knowledge of national and even regional importance.
The centers should have institutional autonomy, sustainable financial support, knowledgeable and capable leadership, international input, focused research agendas that include interdisciplinary themes, applied research as well as basic research, technology transfer, peer review as a systemic element, merit-based hiring and promotion policies, and mechanisms for nurturing new generations of S&T talent.
Universities and research institutes should affiliate with those centers of excellence - whether of local, national, regional, or international status - that address the issues of critical importance to that nation. These should include virtual networks of excellence (VNE)-innovative groups that are located far apart but closely linked via the Internet and anchored in recognized research centers, created nationally, regionally, and globally. Such networks can serve as the main nodes for those individuals or groups in the nation charged with enhancing S&T knowledge of national and regional importance.

5. Upgrade ongoing research programs that address issues of national need

All existing research programs and centers of excellence can benefit from periodic expert review and evaluation. Techniques for such procedures should include, as appropriate, peer review teams, relevance -review panels, or benchmarking studies.
Where such institutions already exist, they should be reinforced or, if necessary, reformed. When reform is indicated, changes should be systemwide and carried out in ways that make the best use of scarce resources (including the local talent). Where there is much talent but the system is bureaucratized, it is crucial that reform includes the following:

Focus on themes, not institutions (i.e., abolish institutional entitlement);
Build up a small but select number of centers of excellence;
Build up a few nodes (around groups) of top expertise with institutional support;
Open up the research system to competitive grants;
Protect public-goods research;
Address essential long-term national or strategic issues.

New scientific and technological research projects should be decided on the basis of input from expert review, with each project and program evaluated for both technical merit and its potential benefits to society.

6. Upgrade educational programs and institutions

Higher education in developing nations should be strengthened with public funds (supplemented with private funds if available) to offer greater opportunities for tertiary education and S&T-training to young people, ranging from 'community colleges' (as they are called in the U.S.) to top-class research-based universities.
Universities should have increased autonomy while systematically seeking to strengthen their ties with regional and international institutions and networks; such links can significantly increase the effectiveness of the universities' S&T efforts.
Research universities should make strong commitments to excellence and the promotion of the values of science in their activities, incorporating unbiased merit review into all of their decisions on people, programs, and resources; and they should also increase their interaction with society at large.
Systems of higher education in developing nations should be reformed, giving special attention to university governance, balancing autonomy with national purpose, and moving toward institutional pluralism in the education and training system.
All universities in developing nations should strengthen their undergraduate and graduate-degree programs in science and technology and offer fellowships to the best students.
Universities in the industrialized nations should support S&T professionals and doctoral programs in the developing nations' best universities by offering long-term fellowships with adequate stipends to deserving young people who wish to do their training in centers of excellence there. Visiting professors from foreign countries should help raise the quality level of courses and research, and participate in exams and thesis defenses.
All educational, training, and research institutions should focus resources on providing high-quality training for science and technology teachers.

7. Sponsor and participate in regional and international S&T training programs

Universities in developing nations should explore regional cooperation in S&T training that leads to doctoral degrees, together with postdoctoral programs, should be promoted in national or regional centers of excellence, especially those that are in S&T-proficient countries among the developing ones. In particular, such centers of excellence should provide scholarships and research facilities, including the use of their own laboratories, to help achieve international cooperation with and among developing nations. These programs should take into account the often-critical need for travel money.
S&T-advanced nations should create programs that establish short-term adjunct-faculty/research positions at some of their universities and laboratories for scientists and engineers from developing nations.

8. Provide information on S&T resources and issues to the public

Educational, training, and research institutions should encourage innovation in disseminating the results of research and in turning them into new products and services that address national or local needs. Such efforts should include consultative services, provided by national, state or city research institutions, in areas such as agriculture, water and land management, housing, and health.
Universities in developing nations should develop and maintain libraries with wide-bandwidth, electronic gateways for accessing and sharing electronic S&T information resources among researchers, teachers, students, and the general public.