شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

The donor community encourages the creation and the development of such centres. According to the new policy agenda and post-Washington consensus, there should be simultaneously empowerment of the civil society institutions and disempowerment of the state. The university was seen and treated as a public institution as if it were part of the State. Though they have recognized the institutional pitfalls in moving research outside the domain of universities, they highlight the benefits of doing research within small scale units that are not hampered by university bureaucracy and are flexible and efficient. In this process the university becomes a very marginal actor in term of research.The growth of research groups outside the university has led to three contradictory consequences for the production of research. First, it has discouraged faculty members in universities from conducting research, although some have engaged in collaboration with off-campus centres. Second, the centres have well endowed libraries and are better stocked with recent titles than those within the universities. They are off-limit to University students and scholars. The third relates to the quality and form of the production of research. Research promoted by these centres is policy oriented, such as the research on population studies. A majority of these studies remain unpublished or, if published, they do not undergo a proper peer review process. Additionally, this form of funding has encouraged consultancies. Such research is based on low-level generalizations and extrapolates from tables derived from small samples. This research draws upon the fieldwork conducted in the framework of the project “Evaluation of Scientific and Technological capabilities in Mediterranean countries (ESTIME)” (Published Abstract)