Abstract
Research is considered to be something elite and is often related to predominantly graduate schools. Recently, there is a push in the United States toward putting the burden of research on individual faculty members, arguing that university should exist with the sole purpose of teaching and any research should be done at the professor's own time. It is even suggested that any extra incentive of doing research during the academic year be eliminated and professor focus on nothing but teaching during the academic year (Bess, J. Higher Education: 69(1), 1998). This short-sighted view can be attractive for many who are interested in making a university professor's life more miserable than it already is, but in-depth look will reveal that this policy is guaranteed to make a university less than third-class in ranking. If one understands the meaning of research and higher education, one can clearly see that research is not luxury, it is rather a necessity for even the most modest of undergraduate institutions. Particularly in engineering education, the need of research is often misunderstood while the need of fancy equipment is glorified. An engineering educator should instead focus on productivity, collaborative research and its inherent relationship with creative thinking and innovation. Most universities in developing affluent countries are indeed predominantly undergraduate institutions and can fall in the trap of non-research, based on the fallacy that research belongs to graduate institutions. Administrators, who often do not rationalize from the perspective of faculty members, have crucial role to play. It is a matter of deciding to make the university strong both in research and teaching or let the university slide into a pitfall of a merely mediocre government institution. Both are possibilities, and the probability of one of them being the option is not trivial.
This paper details the need of research and provides one with a guideline suitable for a seemingly prosperous yet developing country, such as the United Arab Emirates. In this context the recent developments in the western countries are discussed and compared vis a vis efforts in the developing countries.
