This article examines the case of academic drift, as an example of a theory developed and applied within higher education research. It traces the origins and meaning of the term, reviews its application by higher education researchers, and discusses the issues it raises and the critiques it has attracted. It concludes that academic drift is at the heart of the longstanding liberal/vocational education debate, so is likely to continue to attract attention. The contemporary application of this theoretical framework also illustrates both the tendency for researchers to re-invent similar ideas in different times and places, and to ignore or overlook the work of some researchers whilst acknowledging that of others.
IntroductionHigher education is an inter-disciplinary field for research (Brennan and Teichler 2008, Kehm andMusselin 2013). With only a limited number of academic and other researchers devoting themselves full-time and long-term to researching higher education -at least outside of North America -most of those researching this field come from and remain based in other disciplines, departments or institutions, and their contributions are usually part-time and/ or short-term.While this means that higher education researchers are highly dispersed, it also has a more positive aspect, as a diverse range of both methodologies and (more particularly for the present analysis) theoretical frameworks are applied to researching higher education. While the latter are often, therefore, introduced from other disciplines -by researchers with a background or interest in those disciplines -other theories are also developed within higher education research itself (Tight