Diversified university funding in this paper is not identified as a sufficient
condition to enhance university autonomy. Behind diverse funding, however,
there is an important message which merits attention. That is, as Williams
(1992) argues, a university with several funding sources ‘is likely to be active
For universities, autonomy is always a matter of concern in pursuing knowledge and truth. It is also believed that governments in democratic societies know how to value university autonomy.
In practice, however, no governments in the world ‘can afford to leave its higher education system to its own devices’ (Salter and Tapper 1994, p. 18). Several competing agendas exist in driving universities’ development. There include that the public resources available to universities are limited; university’s contribution to upgrading national competitiveness in the knowledge-based economy is taken for granted; and the ideology that university education provides the manpower which the national economy requires is prevailing. These pushing and pulling forces have already revealed how hard it is to strike an effective balance between university autonomy and accountability