Two students cleaning a tank before attaching line to pump the must. Photo credit: KL Block UC Davis.

It’s a process

“People in the wine industry face challenges and need solutions now,” Professor Montpetit says.

“We work with many people with many different priorities. Everyone has a different focus area, which can be a little bit challenging.”

The department can also feel the effects when businesses experience downturns. Maintaining productive relationships therefore requires more than asking companies to provide money or resources.

“The key is really understanding stakeholder needs, listening and talking to them — the education goes both ways,” Professor Montpetit explains.

“You can’t just go out there and tell people what you want to do and expect to receive money.”

The value of an industry partnership is not measured solely by the size of the cheque. It lies in whether universities and businesses can bring different forms of knowledge to the same concerns.

Bringing the humanities into practice

While industry partnerships come naturally to disciplines with an obvious professional application, in the humanities, this approach becomes more complicated — but not impossible.

QS Insights spoke with Steve Choe, Associate Professor and Programme Director of the Arts Industries Programme at the University of Hong Kong.

The programme was launched as part of a larger effort to revamp the humanities and currently has about 300 students enrolled, of which 38% are international and from the Mainland and 62% are local.

It offers an interdisciplinary education that connects art with business, culture and technology through areas like Digital Humanities and Film and Media Communications.

A cornerstone of the programme is experiential learning, which includes field trips and internships in Hong Kong, China, Singapore and sometimes Japan.

Professor Choe says that this month, the CEO of Tuyoo Games, a leading gaming and entertainment provider in China, will be kicking off a semester-long hands-on class for students. Some of these students will also be given internships at Tuyoo headquarters.

“And this is just one example of a partnership. Last semester, we wrapped up a project where students worked with Lan Kwai Fong Group Properties, a company with a vast portfolio in commercial, residential and entertainment development.

“The class worked on a speculative student housing project. They conducted surveys and formally presented their findings. It was pretty comprehensive,” he recalls.

Asking the harder questions

For Professor Choe, that practical turn is part of a wider shift in what universities owe their students.

There’s a need for change in the humanities, he says. While a focus on the academic and critical aspects remains important, more attention needs to be placed on how to best prepare students for employment.

He reflects on how things have changed since he was a university student. He sees his responsibility in preparing incoming cohorts for the working world, describing how rewarding it is to witness students who have basically just emerged from “childhood” engage in professional behaviour while also being sincere.

“When I was an undergrad, my advisors weren’t involved in helping me find a job after graduation. For me, it’s a mind shift. I just joined this position in January this year. The intent is to face the challenges head-on while asking faculty to offer courses that provide some clear pathways towards industry.

“Maybe elite universities can be slow to pivot to the needs of the job market. The demand of students coming to, say, HKU or LSE (London School of Economics), can be so high that we think we can continue doing what we do and remain sealed off. But we have to pivot. I’m meeting a lot of people, shaking hands and forging these relationships so we can have a clear pipeline,” he emphasises.

The question is not whether universities should become more vocational, but whether they can make room for practical relevance without sacrificing the intellectual and human qualities that make education valuable in the first place.

For universities under growing pressure to demonstrate the value of what they teach, the challenge may be to ensure that education does not become a choice between passion and practical relevance. The most compelling learning experiences can be those that bring the two together, with help from industry.