Searching for Relevance: A Note on Policy Research and Teaching Within The University of the West Indies System

Abstract

In the past few years, policy research and teaching has become somewhat of an obsession among Caribbean social scientists. The growth in this obsession coincided with the reduced availability of sources of University funding. In a rapidly changing world in which competition for scarce resources has become the order of the day, the Caribbean is being forced to accept that it is a low priority region among aid donors, and social scientists are being forced to accept that their output must not only be, but must appear to be more relevant to the needs of the wider community which supports them.