Beyond@ivory.tower – From Traditional University to Engaged University

Botes L¹*

1. Centre for Development Support- University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa

The traditional university has often been characterised as an ivory tower, unconcerned with its surroundings and paying scant regard to the real world. The engaged university is an institution that bridges the gap between itself and the surrounding community. The combination of real-life experience and expertise with academic knowledge can generate socially-engaged knowledge benefiting both the university and the community, whether business, public sector or NGO. This article is therefore a plea for a scholarship of engagement.

This paper will firstly share some views on development and development studies and academic entrepreneurship in the research context. If human development is defined in its broadest sense as expanding human capabilities it opens up a plethora or opportunities for engaging communities in any planned development intervention. Secondly, the paper will argue the necessity for policy-related research (PRR), practice-oriented research (POR) and implementation-driven research (IDR) as elements of a scholarship of engagement. In this regard it will be argued that quality development research should always have elements of academic entrepreneurship and engagements with local community knowledge i.e. indigenous knowledge. Different contexts of socially-engaged scholarship will be explored. Thirdly, it will reflect upon four case studies, to illustrate how we have pursued research for development beyond the ivory tower i.e. as an entrepreneurial engagement of communities in the South African context. Lastly, the paper will elaborate on the essential conceptual building blocks of scholarly entrepreneurial engagement.

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