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knowledge economies. The higher education sector expanded and became massified
systems in most countries.
The expansion and massification made the higher education sector a huge enter-
prise. Universities and academic systems became complex organizations requiring
professional expertise and specialized knowledge for managing their administra-
tion, student services, research, finances and governance. Although higher educa-
tion was traditionally a well-developed field of study in some of the countries,
notably in the USA, the massification of the sector necessitated higher education to
emerged as a separate field of study in many other countries. However, teaching and
research on higher education remained limited in volume in some of the large higher
education systems such as India.
India has the second largest higher education system in the world. This paper
shows that despite its large size and continued expansion, higher education has not
yet emerged as a separate field of study in India. It further argues that given limited
volume of research and study programmes, emergence of the sector as a field of
study may remain a distant dream in India. The share of research on higher educa-
tion in total research output and relative absence of study programmes leading to a
degree in higher education in India are reflections of constraints to evolve higher
education as a separate field of study in India. Indian universities offer a large num-
ber of study programmes in education which are essentially oriented to prepare
students to teach at post-primary levels of education.
The plan of the paper is as follows. The next section discusses the emergence of
higher education as a field of study in other countries. Section 3 deals with higher
education as a field of study in India followed by discussions on programmes of
studies in higher education institutions in section 4 and a discussion on institutional
framework and research in education in India in section 5. Section 6 discusses some
trends in research in education and higher education by highlighting some features
of research carried out by education departments and by social scientists. The final
section draws some conclusions.
The Origins of Higher Education as a Field of Study
Universities in the early twentieth century were small entities peripheral to social
life with very little impact on economic growth and social development. They had
simple organizational structures, small budgets and served mostly the elite sections
of society. Over the decades, especially after the World War II period, the higher
education system expanded in developed as well as in developing countries. In the
recent decades, the emergence of knowledge economy gave a premium for knowl-
edge in production, and hence knowledge production and institutions producing
knowledge became dear to public policy and for corporate investments.
Given the role of universities in knowledge production, research by higher edu-
cation institutions and demand for higher education graduates increased fuelling
worldwide expansion of higher education. At present most countries in the world
N.V. Varghese