Universities developmental role in the EU second-tier periphery: identifying structural constraints to inform agency debates

Recent agency/leadership approaches regarding the university’s developmental role in the periphery make apparent the underestimation of structural constraints characterizing the literature on regional development over the last three decades. Most literature on the EU periphery focuses on regions that score higher on GDP per capita and quality-of-governance indicators than the bulk of Less Developed Regions (LDRs). Moreover, within the LDRs, there is a second-tier periphery with much lower performance indicators in most economic and institutional metrics, which has not been adequately addressed in regional development debates. Given the second-tier periphery’s structural weaknesses, which make technology transfer very difficult, universities in these regions are left with the daunting task of mitigating the severe brain drain of their graduates. Considering the low demand for well-educated personnel by local firms, an alternative scope for them would be to boost graduate entrepreneurship horizontally. This cannot be achieved without the state’s activism in the form of public investments to improve the quality of life and business environment in second-tier peripheries.