§ 87. Mr. Haywardasked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what measures have been taken to make higher education more relevant to the needs of industry.
§ Mr. WaldenImproving the effectiveness of higher education's contribution to the national economy is central to the Government's educational policies. This aim, and the specific measures designed to encourage the growing partnership between higher education and industry, were spelt out in our recent Green Paper "The Development of Higher Education into the 1990s".
These measures include financial support through the Science and Engineering Research Council for the teaching company and other schemes which link higher education and industry in collaborative projects; responding to the requests of industry and others for additional higher education student places in science, engineering and technology—most recently in the engineering and technology programme, which will provide about 5,000 such additional places by the end of the decade; appointing more industrialists to national planning bodies for higher education and to the governing bodies and councils of individual institutions; and the establishment of schemes which encourage retraining and containing education for employees, such as the PICKUP programme.