Higher education and socio-economic development in Cuba: high rewards of a risky high-tech strategy

Abstract

This paper presents case studies on how Cuban universities have increasingly become directly involved with the economic and social development of the country. The paper shows how Cuban universities, from the late 1980s and early 1990s, started reorientation and organization of their scientific research, becoming more directly and intensely involved in the economic and social development of the country. In this connection, special reference is made to the case of a research group at the University of Havana: the Laboratory of Synthetic Antigens. This group developed the first synthetic vaccine for human use approved in the world. In the article, public policies involved in this success as well as different obstacles are discussed. These obstacles demonstrate the difficulties and challenges that universities face when carrying out research and innovation activities related to economic and social development.

Scientific collaboration of Cuban researchers working in Europe: understanding relations between origin and destination countries

“…In 2010 there were 900,000 university graduates (Clark Arxer 2010) and between 2011 and to 2015 another 333,424 graduated from Cuban institutions of HE (see the website of the Ibero-American network on science and technology indicators, RICYT, http://www.ricyt.org/indicadores1). Since 1960 Cuban universities became key players in building the emerging national science sector, which turned decisive in the country’s economic, commercial and financial crisis after the collapse of socialist countries in Europe (Pérez-Ones and Núñez Jover 2009), worsened by the United States blockade on Cuba. The government effort on boosting science for the development of the country focused on re-organizing the national system with the creation in 1994 of the new Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (Clark Arxer 2010).…”

Scientific output of the emerging Cuban biopharmaceutical industry: a scientometric approach

“…Although, comparative studies of Scopus and Web of Science to evaluate Pharmacy Journals have been developed (Gorraiz and Schloegl 2008). However, internationalization processes and cooperation patterns have receiving wide attention during the last 10 years from a scientometric perspective (Calero et al 2007;Cantner and Rake 2014;Natsukawa et al 2013;Olmeda-Gomez et al 2008;Perianes-Rodriguez et al 2011;Tijssen 2009;Zhao and Guan 2011).…”

“…The important role of private enterprises in scientific development and innovation (Perianes-Rodriguez et al 2011), the central position of US companies in pharmacological research (Calero et al 2007;Tijssen 2009), the intra-and inter-organizational patterns of research cooperation linkages (Calero et al 2007;Natsukawa et al 2013), and the university-enterprise-government inter-relationships (Olmeda- Gomez et al 2008), were topics analyzed in these studies, where largest multinational pharmaceutical companies have been protagonists.…”

Influence of socioeconomic status and university’s internal environment factors on university-choice decisions of postgraduate students in Vietnam

“…Higher education plays an important role in socioeconomic development and is critical to the growth of every nation (Jover & Ones, 2009;MOET Ministry of Education and Training in Vietnam, 2009). Vietnamese higher education has gradually been reformed in terms of scale, type of institution and form of training, to meet the demands of socioeconomic progression.…”