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Policy Scholars Are from Venus; Policy Makers Are from Mars
- The Review of Higher Education
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 23, Number 2, Winter 2000
- pp. 119-132
- 10.1353/rhe.2000.0002
- Article
- Additional Information
Policy scholarship and policy-making are, and ought to be, two distinct knowledge-producing activities whose insights may inform, but are not dependent on, each other. Criticisms that higher education scholarship is not valuable to practitioners is based on a misleading linear view of how social knowledge influences behavior. Policy interests are ultimately better served when scholars determine their own long-term research agendas, rather than attempt to respond to policy makers' current issues.