Higher Education, Technical Change and Dependency

Abstract

Higher education plays a central role in any modem society as a supplier of qualified personnel to industry, government and the professions. In this respect it combines what has become an important social function, that of satisfying demands for social mobility, with the economic one of selecting and training people for economic roles and of carrying out scientific and technical research. In modem Western societies higher education is the major source of ideas and of scientific and technical personnel for the research and development centres of both industry and the state which are so integral to their economies. In Britain, for example, universities contributed about 60 per cent of all basic (as opposed to applied or developmental) research and development (Herman, 1984).