An invited roundtable conference on "The Relationship Among Research, Policy and Practice in Higher Education" was held at the University of Tokyo the first week of September 1997. Delegates included high-level policymakers in higher education, higher education researchers, and representatives of several international associations involved in higher education policy or research. Sponsored by UNESCO and the new Center for Research and Development of Higher Education (University of Tokyo), the conference provided participants with an opportunity to explore a number of extremely important themes related to this broad topic. Two recent publications provided a strong foundation for these discussions: a recent book edited by Jan Sadlak and Philip Altbach entitled Research on Higher Education at the Turn of the Century: Structures, Issues, and Trends (Garland, 1997); and the special issue of Higher Education (vol. 32, no. 4, 1996) edited by Ulrich Teichler, focusing on "The State of Comparative Research in Higher Education."

One of the central issues discussed at the conference involved the conceptual relationship between research, policy, and practice in higher education. If one assumes that higher education research should have some direct impact on policy and practice, then it is important to understand these relationships so as to increase the impact of research on both policy and practice.

A number of presentations examined recent policy reform processes in several countries, further illuminating the complexity of these relationships. In some situations, major policy reforms have directly or indirectly resulted from the identification of particular problems by higher education researchers. More commonly, the desire to reform higher education policy provides the stimulus for higher education research as policymakers or advisers struggle to understand the situation and seek alternative policy approaches. Policymakers may turn to research as a legitimizing tool within the political process, but policy can also be made in situations where there is no research base. Several participants noted that in some respects higher education researchers need policymakers and practitioners more than the later need higher education researchers.

Another layer of complexity is added when one considers the various ways of defining or understanding higher education research. For a number of participants from the United States, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom higher education was viewed as an interdisciplinary field of study, a broadly defined area of academic research. In these countries there are scholars who define themselves as specialists in the study of higher education, as well as research centers, peer-reviewed journals, and--especially in the United States--graduate programs and other attributes of a scholarly field of study. Some participants from places with a less-developed infrastructure for research tended to discuss higher education as an area of emphasis associated with the more traditional disciplines. In other words, an economic study of a particular university might be viewed as a contribution to economics based on the application of economic principles to the university, rather than as a contribution to higher education as a distinct field of scholarly inquiry.

There were also discussions about the relationship between higher education as an interdisciplinary field of study and the parent disciplines. Several people suggested that higher education is a largely derivative field, borrowing theoretical frameworks and methodologies from parent disciplines but seldom contributing new perspectives to the scholarly debates within those disciplines. Others pointed to the benefits of being interdisciplinary: the pulling together of ideas and perspectives from a variety of disciplines. How we view higher education can also be influenced by the way in which centers and academic programs are configured within our own universities--academics attached to a faculty of education may have quite a different view from those working in a research center attached to a department of public policy, for example.

Despite differences of opinion, participants agreed that more research on higher education is needed. This was articulated by policymakers who often find that there is no indigenous research on even the most essential questions related to higher education, and who, in the absence of local expertise, have been forced to employ international consultants to provide guidance on local issues. Some scholars from less-developed nations reported sometimes being unable to obtain data on even the most basic research questions and having to rely on information published by international agencies to understand local issues. Even in countries with a more established tradition of higher education research, important policy and practice issues may receive relatively little attention by researchers. In some countries, higher education is a major area of government expenditure and yet there is little support for research on higher education. Participants concluded that UNESCO and the new United Nations University should be asked to play an active role in articulating the importance of higher education research, facilitating the broader development of expertise in higher education, and developing additional forums for the dissemination of research findings. These and other issues raised during the Tokyo roundtable will be communicated to participants at the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education later this year in Paris.