Closing the gap between town and gown: Ian Harper spoke to Marion Fahrer FAIBF, B+FS editor, about the importance of an effective working relationship between the business community ('the town') and academia ('the gown') with the growing knowledge-based economy and the need for greater innovation.(CORPORATE EDUCATION)(Interview)

Q What is the history of the relationship between "the town and the gown' and by what mode would you characterise this relationship today?

A. There has traditionally been an uneasy relationship between the town and the gown A profitable example of this is that the mace, which always move forwards the academic procession at a university graduation rite harks back to the days in fourteenth and fifteenth hundred England when the academics at Oxford, who walked from individual college to another, would hire the services of beadles carrying maces to guard them from hostile townsfolk. The