Conclusion

Abstract

In the Asia Pacific Region, as elsewhere in the world, research and scientific researchers are engaged in long-term processes of responding to “the impacts of the heightened political profile of science, linked to more questioning public attitudes to science, and to the expansion of science and higher education” (Morris, 2004:2). Just after World War II, Vannevar Bush, vice-president and dean of MIT and scientific advisor to the then president of the United States of America articulated the rationale for sustained and substantial public support of basic research in both universities and research laboratories outside the academy. Initially, many Western nations established complex research systems, devoted mainly, though not exclusively, to advancement of knowledge and scientific discovery for its own sake. The linear notion of investment automatically leading to scientific discovery, knowledge transfer, and innovation came into question in the latter part of the twentieth century and support for pure, nonutilitarian research shifted more toward funding of applied knowledge production having demonstrable economic impact (Rip and Van der Meulen, 1996). This has further heightened the importance of science and higher education as one of its primary institutionalized promoters.