Challenges of Growing Research at New and Emerging HEIs

Newer institutions are accused of adopting the accoutrements of traditional universities, actively copying their research profile and teaching programmes, and engaging in ‘academic’ or ‘mission’ drift. For others, however, these changes are part of the natural or inevitable process of institutional development and historical change, or a further step in the democratisation of the ‘Humboltian ethic’ (Neave, 2000, p265). If massification and expansion in 1960s differentiated the second stage in higher educational development from its elite origins, then the late 1990s marked the beginning of the third stage. By then, it was clear that a broadly educated population could no longer be formed by and within universities alone. In societies where knowledge and knowledge creation are highly privileged and integral to both national and institutional prestige, advanced learning and research capacity are allied and critical. Paradoxically, by seeking to conform to their mission, new and emerging HEIs soon outgrew the straitjacket of their birth. This chapter looks at these tensions and challenges