ABSTRACT
Despite the fact that scientists, administrators, politicians, and virtually everybody else is convinced of the untold importance of a university for the well-being of local and regional communities, there is a feeling that we do not understand the machinery of this spillover process and that we are not able to control it. University environment research faces two major conceptual problems. First, notwithstanding the attempts made to master the subject, too many pieces of the puzzle are still missing. It could even be stated that the heart of the matter has been passed over. Second, university environment research lacks a comprehensive conceptual framework in which different research attempts can be linked to each other. Hence, the research field is characterised by a morbid growth of fragmented, idiosyncratic approaches and research issues, which does not allow any overview to be obtained. This is understandable, however, because of the complexity of the subject. After a brief historic sketch of several ideas in university impact research and recent developments in this field, we try here to present a more encompassing conceptual model in order to link different research lines. The empirical part of our contribution focuses on the most recent ideas, conceptualising the university as the pivot of a learning region. The case study of the University of Nijmegen (the Netherlands) is used to analyse different kinds of direct connections between the university staff and the local and regional environment.
