Linking Teaching and Research: A Critical Inquiry.

What is the relationship between research and higher education? Is there one? By speaking of a relationship, I want to raise the question as to whether or not there is a conceptual connection between the two. Clearly, much research goes on in institutions of higher education. Indeed, we can probably find some kind of research in progress in each of the two hundred or more institutions which offer some kind of higher education in the UK. The question, though, is whether or not, qua institutions of higher education, they have an obligation to sponsor research. Is it part of the meaning of "institution of higher education" such that we would not be prepared to grant the name to an institution in which there was no research taking place? This issue has formed a key element in the historical debate over the idea of higher education.' Or, rather, over the idea of the university.