Evolution in the role of research universities: Lessons from three continents

The evolution of the modern research university has been a complex journey beginning with the University of Berlin and extending through Johns Hopkins into the United States and then spreading around the world. That story is well known and often discussed. At its core is the strongly held belief that universities have fundamental responsibilities for discovering new knowledge and transmitting it. These responsibilities, captured in the concepts of education and research, are enabled by academic freedom.

While that foundation remains intact, I have seen significant change in how this mission is interpreted and directed through the unusual experience of leading major research universities across three continents over the past two decades. Across all three universities and time periods, the essential foundation of first-rate research and education remained unchanged. What changed considerably were society’s and government’s expectations of what a university should deliver.

In this essay I draw out those changes and comment on historical approaches that may become counterproductive if they are not adjusted.

Monash: Engagement as an emerging responsibility

Let me start with Monash University, a young Australian institution with a history of strong leadership. When I came to the university presidency, a key task was to continue to strengthen the university academically, as reflected in ranking tables with the university moving towards and into the world’s top 50.

That work involved major reforms. It also required a deep responsibility to support the Australian economy through interaction with government and industry at multiple levels. While Monash recognized that need probably more than any other Australian university at the time, it was very much a “bolt-on,” embraced by a minority of faculty and not well embedded in the university's promotion or appointment processes. Society’s expectations of the university sector in this regard were patchy, poorly structured, and not well expressed or defined.

King’s College London: Finding a new gear

Some years later, I became president of King's College London, an old and well-established university well positioned in the upper echelon of world universities. It had strong foundations but its engagement with the world beyond traditional academia was uneven.

With broad support from the university community, I led the establishment of new leadership portfolios around engagement with London, where the main campus was based, and broader service engagement. This included a new service leadership portfolio focused on structured impact engagement across multiple sectors.

The change led to the explicit recognition that a great university has three core responsibilities, with an impact and service portfolio sitting alongside the traditional research and educational roles. For many members of the university community this represented a significant change in mindset. As expected, adoption was patchy but there were some big wins.

Former UK Education Secretary Charles Clarke and I captured some of this thinking in a book we wrote towards the end of my time at King’s entitled The University Challenge: Changing Universities in a Changing World, the key thesis of which was that universities not only needed to describe what they do better but to be open to doing a wider range of new things. In simple terms, there was a need to find a new gear.

KAUST: Research excellence and national transformation

That mindset proved a perfect opening for my third leadership role, at KAUST in Saudi Arabia. Under a visionary government, the country is undergoing massive transformation not only economically but also sociologically and culturally. Strengthening the university sector, aligning tertiary education and research capacity and outcomes with the needs of the country, and grounding change in evidence are central to Vision 2030.

The university I am privileged to be the current president of, KAUST, plays a major role in that transformation. For those unfamiliar with it, KAUST was established by the late King Abdullah to be a beacon of research excellence and education mirroring the House of Wisdom from ancient Baghdad, established 1,000 years ago. It was also intended to show that a great new university in the Arab world could be established within a relatively short period of time.

KAUST sits alongside well-established universities in the Kingdom but is unique in having a distinct research leadership focus supported by very high levels of ambition and funding. It has an outstanding faculty recruited from all over the world who have among the highest field weighted citation rates per faculty of any university, a very high complement of Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers and, for some years, has been the strongest research university in the Arab world.

From discovery to applied outcomes

A significant change in recent years is the expectation that KAUST’s strong research base be matched by an explicit range of applied contributions in areas of scientific importance to Saudi Arabia and much of the Middle East.

These include energy, food production in arid environments, water (particularly desalination), and health, especially in areas unique to the region. These fields are underpinned by a strong focus on data and informatics, particularly in AI, supported by housing one of the world's leading supercomputers, Shaheen 3.

This journey builds on great science and strong postgraduate education, while increasingly emphasizing the need for timely applied outcomes. That expectation is more explicit at KAUST than in the other universities I have led. It reflects both the confidence of the Saudi government in the capacity of universities to deliver in these crucial areas, and a broader recognition that many of the most capable individuals in the world are found within universities, as faculty, scientists and students.

Why universities must engage more directly

A more explicit engagement with the major challenges facing the world, both locally and globally, is now more important than at any time in the past. There are many problems that need to be solved in the coming years, and their solutions must be evidence based and draw on both existing science and new discoveries. Universities, both individually and collectively, have a crucial role to play.

Many readers may see this as self-evident. But several hurdles remain.

The limits of inherited models

Deep institutional history is not always an advantage. Over the years, I was sometimes surprised by discussions with other university leaders whose approaches I only partially shared. Put simply, the prevalent view was that the role of university leadership is to enable an environment where outstanding faculty are supported in doing their research and in delivering high-quality education, with strategy emerging bottom-up and requiring no further overarching direction. I exaggerate only a little to make a point. The more prestigious the university, the more prevalent this view can be.

There is much to commend in this perspective. My concern, even two decades ago, was that it did not fully reflect the evolving role and responsibilities of universities. Identifying the key areas where individual universities have unique opportunities and responsibilities requires strategic thinking around capacity building, focus, and alignment with both national and local needs, alongside the broader responsibility to contribute to global knowledge.

Most readers will regard this as self-evident, as university strategy has evolved significantly in recent decades. Yet new initiatives are often enabled by new funding rather than significant structural change. It's difficult to get this right because it is a balancing act between faculty independence and the need to address national priorities. The key is to ensure broad engagement of faculty with external stakeholders, facilitated by university leadership, but not necessarily directed by it.

Rankings, incentives and impact

Other impediments remain. First is the negative impact of global university rankings that place disproportionate emphasis on traditional research outputs - papers, publications and citations - while giving minimal weight to education and societal impact. Put bluntly, this encourages an “ivory tower” mindset that is no longer fit for purpose. A university focused solely on rankings will underperform in its broader responsibilities.

There are attempts to amend this, such as the Times Higher Education Impact Rankings, but this is an area where the key ranking tables remain highly deficient and sometimes counterproductive.

Second, internal processes often reinforce this bias. Promotion and appointment systems are still heavily weighted towards research output, with education and societal impact playing secondary roles. While strong research foundations are essential, universities must increasingly recognize multiple pathways to success.

Most universities have started to think about how success in impact through industry engagement, working with government, and developing policy should be reflected, but generally these areas remain poor cousins to research excellence.

In one sense, that is understandable: Without strong foundations, universities cannot make significant contributions. But more explicit recognition of multiple pathways to appointment and promotion has an increasing role to play in reflecting the diversity of challenges the modern university faces.

Rebuilding trust and responsibility

Finally, in many societies, especially in the West, the status of universities with both government and society at large has declined compared to previous decades. This reflects, at least in part, the idea that universities retain a vestige of ivory tower thinking, concerned mainly about their own success in a traditional university sense rather than their success as highly engaged agents essential to meeting national and international challenges. This is changing, but this must change faster.

I have tried to draw this out in a very precise sense through my own journey across three universities in different time frames and in different countries. For universities, especially great research universities, the opportunities to make significant differences to the future of the communities they serve both nationally and globally are greater than ever. With these opportunities come increased responsibilities, requiring explicit, ambitious, and individualized strategies. This does not mean abandoning academic independence but rather building on strong foundations to ensure universities play a full and impactful role in the modern world.