The Changing Landscape of Higher Education Research Policy in Australia

Abstract

Over most of the twentieth century, higher education has been shaped by the norms of science, democracy, and the need for an educated citizenry, cultural preservation, and trained bureaucratic elite. But with the advent of the so-called knowledge economy/knowledge society, higher education has been recognized by politicians, industrialists, and some academics as well, not only as a creator and transmitter of knowledge but also as “a major agent of economic growth: the knowledge factory, as it were, at the centre of the knowledge economy” (The Economist, 1997). According to Scott (1997), “[H]igher education systems are no longer simply ‘knowledge’ institutions, reproducing the intellectual and human capital required by industrial society; they are becoming key instruments of the reflexivity which defines the post-industrial [and postmodern] condition.”