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13 A VIEW OF POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION RESEARCH FROM UNIVERSITY-BASED RESEARCH CENTERS Marvin W. Peterson Center for the Study of Higher Education University of Michigan Dealing with the topic of my assigned presentation is complex and con­ fusing. The questions posed for the symposium itself are clear. From the perspective of university-based research centers, I am to report "objectives and priorities for postsecondary research," "type of research currently in­ volved in" and its likely "impact," "future funding needs," and needed "chan­ ges in the present system of postsecondary education research." While it is not feasible to cover all this, the complexity and confusion is deeper. First, the bounds of postsecondary education research are, at least, vague and diffused even for those of us working in the field. I applaud the Coalition's efforts to provide a taxonomy (even though that taxonomy is al­ ready controversial) and to describe the broad areas within it. Second, the university-based centers of research are diffuse— especially if one does not restrict consideration to just those limited groups who are well-known for large scale efforts and whose primary focus is postsecondary education. There are many other research groups who have some partial, regular or inter­ mittent, involvement in this arena. These would include the disciplinary units; the interdisciplinary research groups such as centers and institutes for social research, management or economic studies, public policy studies, and others; those educational research groups that often do elementary and secondary studies; and the administratively-oriented offices of institutional research, faculty development, etc. Since some of these groups have made significant research contributions--and incidentally compete for research funds— they cannot and should not be ignored. Consequently I am in the un­ comfortable situation of being assigned too many objectives to cover in a brief paper on a diffuse research arena, while supposedly representing a di­ verse clientele whom I suspect have few consensus positions. Nonetheless, the advantage of representing the university-based sector is that it is acceptable to use a little professional license which includes overgeneralizing from my experiences and knowledge of faculty and administra­ tively oriented research groups and arbitrarily focusing my comments. Given this license, I propose; 1) to comment briefly on the Coalition, 2) to sug­ gest a two dimensional view of the "postsecondary research system," 3) to identify five issues that I think university-based researchers are concerned about and their implications, and 4) to return to some issues for the Coalition . The Coalition To date I detect strong endorsement of the basic premise of the Coali­ tion: that postsecondary education research has been neglected and that con­ tinuing neglect is undesirable. Admittedly this reflects a self-interest po­ sition. There also is acceptance of the Coalition as a loosely structured group representing organized research groups and associations. However, a review of its constituent members suggests it is not yet well known by uni­ versity-based groups whose primary mission is not postsecondary education. Further, the four goals of the Coalition seem consistent from a univer­ sity-based perspective: 1 ) to develop a research agenda, 2 ) to raise the visibility of the needs for postsecondary education research, 3) to encourage and facilitate communication among research centers, and 4) to facilitate the dissemination of research findings. These purposes reflect a "professional, non-political" view of the Coalition to which university-based researchers can easily subscribe. However, it is the absence of a fifth purpose: to im­ prove the system for identifying research priorities and allocating resources (particularly governmental) that raises a dilemma for the Coalition. Most university-based researchers, I suspect, would be reluctant to publicly 14 endorse such a purpose and particularly its implication for a more "politi­ cally active" Coalition oriented to lobbying and overtly influencing the ex­ ternal funding system; yet many of the issues with which I believe they are concerned suggest such a purpose. Iwill return to this point in closing. The Postsecondary Education Research System Before proceeding, it is helpful to think of the postsecondary education research system as a two-dimensional system. First, there is a horizontal system in which the producers of postsecondary research, the research commu­ nity, are the primary actors. Clearly...

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