Universities are expected to interact with society and to promote the societal impact of research. However, no shared practices have yet been established for assessing the societal impact of science. Traditional impact assessment based on publication counts and citation numbers works only within academic disciplines and serves primarily the scientific community, in which researchers both write and cite publications. In society at large, research findings are generally not cited in the same way. Therefore, traditional metrics are insufficient for demonstrating societal impact (Brenninkmeijer 2022; Spaapen and Van Drooge 2011).

Rather than citation counts, a broad interaction between scientific communities and the rest of the society can be understood as making efforts to achieve societal impact. Interaction can be defined as productive if it leads to an increased use of research results and scientific knowledge across different sectors of society (Ravenscroft et al. 2017; Spaapen and Van Drooge 2011). The SIAMPI project identified three types of interactions (Spaapen and Van Drooge 2011): direct interactions between people; indirect interactions through physical outputs such as publications; and financial interactions such as research contracts and grants.

In the pilot study conducted at the University of Eastern Finland (UEF) within the Europe Horizon project GraspOS (Next Generation Research Assessment to Promote Open Science) in 2023–2025, the focus was not on societal impact itself, but on the conditions for achieving it, namely interactive societal activities and processes. In the UEF pilot study, metrics that are less commonly used in research evaluation were examined in order to implement societal interactions and processes more broadly in the university’s knowledge management, research assessment, and monitoring of its societal impact.

In Finland, research activities are recorded voluntarily to the institutional research information systems’ (CRIS) ‘Research activity’ topic by researchers themselves, but the gathered information is not yet widely utilised or analysed. The research activities include e.g. consultancy, editorial and other work related to publications; evaluation, assessment or examination; granted research funding; leadership in research work; media visibility; membership; prize or distinction; supervision; and teaching merits.

In the pilot study, a hybrid indicator model was developed to describe the level of societal interaction efforts. The model combined data on the topic of ‘Research activities’ stored in UEF CRIS with curated data on the topic of ‘Publications’, narrowed to the professional and popular publications which were also seen as interactions with the society at large.

The calculation of the hybrid indicator was based on combining the datasets according to the main academic disciplines, after which relative values were calculated for each discipline. When different types of interactions were included in the calculation, four indicators were obtained for each discipline. These indicators were then combined into a final hybrid indicator.

As a practical application of the development of the hybrid indicator model, reports and analyses of the recent research activities in UEF are demonstrated and produced during 2026. Similar reports and insights into publications have been created earlier, but the new interactions themed reports concentrate on the research activities.

Both the indicator model itself and the reports on research activities can be used to verify and highlight the university’s activities related to societal interaction and to illustrate the importance of recognising the diverse actions taken by researchers to achieve societal impact. In this way, the model indirectly makes the societal impact of science visible. The CRIS research activity data can be used, e.g., as evidence in research assessment or accreditation processes.

Currently, the research activity data is aggregated at the level of the university and its disciplines. Individual researchers cannot be identified from the reports. However, researchers may create their own researcher profiles in the national Research.fi service, where they can also add their research activities. If they wish, researchers can therefore use their research activity data as evidence of their expertise and experience, e.g., to support applications, teaching portfolios or narrative CVs.

The development of the hybrid indicator model aimed, among other things, to stimulate discussion on the societal interaction and impact of science. In this presentation, we showcase how the steps of creating the hybrid indicator model can be applied through a practical example from one university.

Across Europe and globally, higher education is facing growing pressure to demonstrate its societal relevance, public value, and capacity to cultivate innovative and responsible graduates. Declining public trust in expertise, the spread of disinformation, geopolitical tensions, and rapid technological change have intensified questions about what universities actually deliver for society—particularly at the undergraduate level, where massification has often been accompanied by concerns over quality, disengagement, and instrumental learning. In this context, undergraduate education has become a critical but under-examined site for rebuilding trust between higher education and society.

This paper asks a fundamental question: is it possible to create a new model of undergraduate education that systematically integrates research, learning, and innovation, while remaining scalable beyond a small elite? Drawing on long-term empirical and conceptual research on research-based undergraduate education in China, the paper examines whether recent Chinese experiments represent merely context-specific reforms, or whether they offer analytically transferable insights for European and global higher education systems.

Theoretically, the paper reconnects contemporary debates to the Humboldtian principle of the unity of teaching and research, while critically reassessing its feasibility under conditions of mass higher education, digital transformation, and intensified social expectations. It argues that trust in higher education today cannot be restored through symbolic commitments to excellence or rankings alone, but must be grounded in visible educational practices that enable students to participate meaningfully in knowledge production, inquiry, and problem-solving.

Empirically, the paper draws on policy analysis, institutional case studies, and program-level evidence from leading Chinese universities since the 2010s, including Tsinghua University, Peking University, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and selected disciplinary initiatives extending beyond STEM into the humanities and social sciences. These cases illustrate a deliberate shift from treating undergraduate research as an enrichment activity for a minority toward institutionalizing research participation as a standard learning experience. Key features include deep curricular integration of research, structured collaboration between universities, research institutes and industry, interdisciplinary training platforms, and vertical linkages between undergraduate and graduate education.

The analysis shows that China’s approach represents a large-scale educational innovation experiment rather than a finished model. While notable progress has been made in institutionalizing research-based learning in elite settings, significant challenges remain: high resource intensity, uneven disciplinary development, limited scalability to non-elite institutions, and a lack of robust indicators to measure creativity, innovation capacity, and long-term learning outcomes. These tensions raise critical questions that resonate strongly with European higher education debates.

Rather than presenting the Chinese experience as a model to be copied, the paper proposes a comparative analytical lens that highlights conditions of possibility. It identifies three issues of direct relevance to European researchers and policymakers: (1) the role of policy coordination and governance capacity in sustaining research-based undergraduate education; (2) the risks of reproducing new forms of inequality if such models remain confined to elite institutions; and (3) the need for international, evidence-based research to assess learning outcomes beyond conventional performance metrics.

The paper argues that research-based undergraduate education has the potential to contribute to rebuilding trust between higher education and society by making universities more transparent, participatory, and socially responsive. However, this potential can only be realized if experimentation is accompanied by systematic evaluation, cross-national comparison, and collaborative knowledge production among researchers.

By sharing empirical findings and conceptual reflections with a European audience, this contribution aims to open a dialogue on whether a new undergraduate education paradigm—linking research, learning, and public trust—can emerge across diverse higher education systems in an era of uncertainty.

This article examines how external actors shape the governance of academic research, drawing on qualitative case interviews with research administration representatives at four Norwegian universities across four disciplines. Additionally, the article builds on documents and statistics of research portfolios at Norwegian universities, mapping the research profiles and main research funding bodies of different disciplines.

Using Mode 1/Mode 2 theory as a central analytical lens, complemented by additional frameworks on research governance, the study investigates how universities and university departments navigate increasing expectations from funding bodies, policy agencies, industry partners, and societal stakeholders.

The findings reveal an alignment between institutional research practices and the priorities of external actors, manifested through strategic funding mechanisms, increased competition in external funding schemes, and an orientation towards industry funding. While such external governance structures can promote relevance, accountability, and cross-sector collaboration, they also introduce tensions between disciplinary autonomy, blue-sky research and societal demands.

Furthermore, as university budgets shrink, universities become increasingly dependent on external funding in order to recruit new scholars. This dependence challenges the core of the academic disciplines, especially as interdisciplinarity and societal relevance are included as criteria for external research funding (mode 2). Thus, the research portfolios are increasingly steered by external funding bodies, and the researchers themselves have diminishing influence on their research activity. This steering may also impact the recruitment of Ph.D. students, and drive research activity to the margins of the disciplines’ expertise. In turn, this will challenge the continuation and maintenance of this expertise, as externally funded research projects may diverge significantly from the faculties’ core expertise. This may further challenge the quality of higher education, as the competency that is needed to teach students in faculties’ core programmes may not align with the expertise needed to carry out the research in the externally funded projects. The misalignment of competency to carry out core activities and competency to carry out externally funded projects challenges disciplinary autonomy and the continuation and development of academic disciplines.

The article contributes to ongoing debates on research governance by showing how these tensions are mediated in practice. The study highlights the need for more nuanced understandings of how external steering shapes research trajectories across disciplinary contexts.