Group of Eight | 18 April 2013
Not all universities are the same: indeed, each university is unique in its history, culture and intent. As the importance of higher education has increased the sector has diversified in response to government policies, the demands of the market and local, regional or national needs. Taking a global view, some universities may specialise in certain disciplines, focus on educating certain professions, emphasise the use of distance education, or seek to attract students sharing particular characteristics. Some focus on teaching, others may concentrate more on building their research capacity; some on creating domestic networks, others on developing international linkages. The extent of this differentiation varies between countries.
Despite this diversity it is possible to recognise in most countries a group of universities which share a particular set of values, have a set of similar attributes and which together perform a significant proportion of the national higher education research effort. Some countries define these as their research intensive universities because of the proportion of their total resources that they devote to research and related activities; in other countries there may be a less sharp demarcation between research intensive and other universities, but even when this is the case, a relatively small proportion of the total universities account for most of the higher education research expenditure. Interestingly, there is a trend in many countries to use funding and other policy tools to increase this differentiation within the university system to make it more effective and in particular to attract greater international recognition.
While all universities are communities of scholars and in some countries most universities perform research, the breadth and depth of research activity and of doctoral education in research intensive universities provides a particular texture to their academic environment. This helps provide a distinctive and distinguishing experience for the students, including and especially the doctoral students, and the academic staff. Moreover, as well as sharing some common attributes and promoting well-established values of scholarship with all other universities, the research universities tend to connect to each other, both directly and indirectly, through cooperation and competition that both strive after even higher levels of effectiveness, excellence and performance.
Research intensive universities promote excellence in research and education by emphasising the mutual dependence of these activities at the highest levels of learning. But they do more than this: the Millennium Declaration of 2001 on the future of research universities, prepared by a group of scholars from Western Europe and America stated:
In a society of shifting goals and uncertain values, the university must stand for something more than accurate data and reliable information; more, even than useful knowledge and dependable standards. The university is the custodian, not only of knowledge, but also of the values on which that knowledge depends; not only of professional skills, but of the ethical obligations that underlie those professional skills; not only of scholarly inquiry, disciplined learning and broad understanding, but also of the means that make inquiry, learning and understanding possible. In its institutional life and its professional activities, the university must reaffirm that integrity is the requirement, excellence the standard, rationality the means, community the context, civility the attitude, openness the relationship and responsibility the obligation upon which its own existence and knowledge itself depend.
This is why governments around the world recognise that research intensive universities are crucial national assets. It is also why governments need to understand the complex but profound and necessary contributions that all universities make to national and global wellbeing, and the often indirect pathways through which they do so.
See
The role and importance of research intensive universities in the contemporary world
