Higher education research: global themes and local settings

In the last two decades, the scope and volume of higher education research has grown enormously. But the debates about what it is and what it is for are by no means settled. Questions about its institutional settings and functions; its relationships with disciplinary interests and cross-disciplinary themes in the humanities and social sciences; the most appropriate methodologies for it; the blurry distinctions between academic and policy oriented research; the balances between theoretical and applied dimensions in the research; and questions about its take up and social impact continue to be raised. However, the now unquestioned importance of higher education in social and economic development has brought policy-oriented research on higher education to the forefront in many higher education reform agendas. The idea that ‘evidence-informed’ policy will best support effective decision-making in higher education (as in other policy areas) is a useful half fiction attractive to both policy-makers and researchers. When necessary, the former are able to claim expertly and scientifically gathered ‘evidence’ (rather than ideology or realpolitik) as legitimation for policy choices and actions. The latter can presume influence over policy and politics and dream of real social impact. Despite analyses pointing to the contradictions and ambivalences in the ‘research-policy-practice’ nexus and the dangers of simplistic and un-nuanced understandings of it, the generalised idea that higher education research could furnish knowledge, information, data and strategic options to inform actual policy choices continues to reverberate. The market for ‘evidenceinformed’ policy has now gone global since higher education is no longer the business of nation states alone The market for ‘evidence-informed’ policy has now gone global since higher education is no longer the business of nation states alone, nor of a few economically well-endowed regions. Large organising concepts in the form of the ‘knowledge society’ or ‘sustainable development’ are invoked by globally influential multi-lateral bodies like the OECD, UNESCO and the World Bank to draw higher education into their policy agendas. The relevant policy frameworks, research themes, data collection areas and projects of these organisations are now routinely informed by a familiar premise about the strategic role of higher education in socio-economic development, both nationally and within regions. National policies for higher education in both the developed and developing world echo this premise, although on-the-ground realities are hugely divergent in all major respects. The challenges of giving effect to the strategic role of