Knowledge as a Public Good

Abstract

Universities routinely carry out research, and through staff and graduate student ‘outputs’, produce knowledge. In recent times, however, demand for an increasingly mercantile feasibility of knowledge among academic knowledge producers has become significant. Economists consider higher education to provide both private and public benefits (Marginson, 2007; McMahon, 2009) and one of the central concerns of contemporary higher education policy debates is the extent to which higher education contributes to the ‘public good’.