The UK is launching an ambitious project aimed at marking a distance from the past, comparing it to the bright post-Brexit future that is yet to come. The starting point is the recognition of the overwhelming, and unwanted concentration of wealth, and high-paying jobs in London and the south-east of the country, where the universities of Oxford and Cambridge are located.

The project—called Leveling Up (Leveling)—has the goal of territorial distribution of growth and has been interpreted by some non-believers as the only way for the Conservatives to gain votes in traditional Labor territory. It proposes to focus the new strategy on the “six capitals”: ​​physical, human, intangible, financial, social and institutional capital, which must be combined in a balanced way if results are to be optimized. From a Spanish perspective, Leveling Up is interesting because it reminds us of our problems of territorial integration, and also because of its connection to the “six capitals” after the infrastructure-focused Structural Funds phase has been addressed. For the first three information—physical, human and intangible—is available to Spain at the territorial level (BBVA Foundation and Cotec). From the perspective of the costs generated by the concentration of institutions in the capital, comparable information is not available, but there are sufficient indicators (Ivie) to conclude that the situation in London and Madrid is not much different.

This information allows us to confirm that the smallest difference between the Autonomous Communities is seen in human resources, and the largest —by far—, in intangible assets. Furthermore, while differences in tangible capital have decreased over time, in terms of intangibles they have increased. This presupposes inefficiency, as the widely accepted result in the literature is that tangible and intangible capital complement each other, indicating that they must progress in parallel to extract their full potential. The clearest example is the complementarity that exists between investments in information technology (ICT) and intangible assets, particularly in organizational improvement and worker training by enterprises. It is difficult to get to the full potential of ICTs if you do not know how to use them. Fortunately, the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan addresses this issue by focusing on the lack of digital training that is also the responsibility of companies, especially SMEs. The Digital Kit project is an example in the right direction.

On the other hand, the University generates two intangible assets that are essential for economic growth: knowledge and training. Document Skills for Work: Lifelong Learning for Opportunity and Growth (2021) recognize that the UK has world-class universities that need to be pampered. At the same time, he criticizes that efforts to achieve excellence have gone beyond the needs of the majority of citizens and his companies. Spain has less of the former and also shares — aggravating — much of the criticism stemming from the clearly irreparable relationship between the University and the company. His proposals talk about increasing productivity, supporting the creation of quality, high-paying jobs, supporting industries with growth capacity and giving more citizens the opportunity to advance in their careers. According to him, this must be achieved by encouraging higher education institutions to focus more on professional practice and have close relationships with the business world.

We agree with your goals, but not with your simple proposal. The UK proposal appears to be entrusting everything to entrepreneurs who lay out the direction of study plans and organize teaching, as well as reform financing to give more autonomy to centers and regions. In return, accountability will fall almost exclusively on quality of work, measured by graduate salaries. From a Spanish perspective, what’s interesting is that it elevates the bad relationship between the University and the company into the category of big problems. However, it seems as if they ignore that the development of a region is highly dependent on the quality of its entrepreneurs. Before placing educational institutions in their hands, it will be easier to pay attention to how much effort they dedicate to improving their organization, training their workers, how productive they are and the quality of the work they produce.

Matilda Read moreUniversity of Valencia and Ivie.