The Business Growth Benefits of Higher Education tackles the role of universities in driving economic growth. Their role as providers of talent, technology and new ideas is considered in the light of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. A series of expert authors consider success, opportunity and how national frameworks can be fine-tuned to deliver business success.

Lord Dearing left the education sector in the UK with many gifts, tangible and intangible. One of the constructs underpinning his thinking was the need to look forwards whilst looking backwards – helping the sector to evolve whilst curating the essential elements that maintains UK education providers and particularly its universities as a byword for excellence in the global market. As the external environment heaps change upon change in and around the higher education sector, Dearing's 'Castles of the Third Age' has become an increasingly relevant metaphor. The 2012 Dearing Conference, from which this collection of chapters is drawn, tackles one aspect of such change: a refocusing of attention on the interface between higher education, industry and commerce, and the extent to which reciprocal benefits can drive business success. 'Success' involves certain subjectivity and a 360-degree vision that includes perspectives from business, government and international providers which introduce the challenge necessary to provoke creativity and transformational thinking.