Panta rhei - on phenomena of academic drift: The case of the Austrian University of Applied Sciences sector 1993-2015

In comparison with many other non‐traditional university higher education sectors all over the world, Austrian University of Applied Sciences (UAS) continuously strive towards an enhanced positioning onthe tertiary education market. Critical voices claim that this endeavour has increasingly led to blurred boundaries between traditional universities and UAS and that the latter are losing sight of their core mission of vocational‐oriented higher education. This quantitative study asked top‐management of UAS about the current situation with a particular focus on evidence of “academic drift” and intra‐sectoral diversity and found several indications for academic drift tendencies, but also remarkable differences between views concerning convergence towards or differentiation from universities.