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Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
10.1057/9780230274624 - Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education, John Harpur
Issues in Higher Education Titles include: Jürgen Enders and Egbert de Weert (editors) THE CHANGING FACE OF ACADEMIC LIFE Analytical and Comparative Perspectives John Harpur INNOVATION, PROFIT AND THE COMMON GOOD IN HIGHER EDUCATION The New Alchemy V. Lynn Meek HIGHER EDUCATION, RESEARCH, AND KNOWLEDGE IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION Guy Neave THE EUROPEAN RESEARCH UNIVERSITY
Snejana Slantcheva PRIVATE HIGHER EDUCATION IN POST-COMMUNIST EUROPE Sverker Sörlin KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY VS. KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY Voldemar Tomusk THE OPEN WORLD AND CLOSED SOCIETIES
Issues in Higher Education Series Standing Order ISBN 978–0–230–57816–6 (hardback ) (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above. Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England
10.1057/9780230274624 - Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education, John Harpur
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Mary Ann Danowitz Sagaria WOMEN, UNIVERSITIES, AND CHANGE
Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education The New Alchemy John Harpur
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National University of Ireland, Maynooth
10.1057/9780230274624 - Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education, John Harpur
© John Harpur 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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hardback
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Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Contents
vi
Preface
vii
Series Preface
ix
1
Prolegomenon
1
2
Shopping in the Aula Maxima
34
3
Atlantic Mouse Becomes Celtic Tiger
52
4
Science and Universities: Shilling for a Living?
110
5
Firing up the New Alchemy – the Furnace of Innovation
164
6
Secrets – the Future of the Future University
210
Notes
244
References
276
Index
307
v
10.1057/9780230274624 - Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education, John Harpur
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List of Tables
List of Tables
3.1
Enrolments of full-time students in institutions aided by the Department of Education by level and year
58
3.2
Third-level colleges aided by the Department of Education, 2005/6
58
3.3
Number of full-time students in institutions aided by the Department of Education, 2005/6
59
3.4
Numbers of students per subject area, 2000–6
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vi
103
There is a saying in the Holy Land that only those who believe in miracles are realists. With a similar sense of a daunting challenge, this work is an examination of current higher education commercialization and innovation policies. Despite their ambiguities and thin evidence base the policies are “not for turning.” They are politically too convenient. The higher education (HE) sector consists of a binary system which divides HE into an academic or theoretical leg and an applied or vocational one. The latter includes the various types of technical institutes knows as Hochschulen in Germany, polytechnics in the UK and institutes of technology in Ireland. Little direct comment on this category appears in the text. Firstly, many of these institutes offer academic programs similar to the universities. Secondly, traditional binary higher education has become unstuck by a drift in the vocational sector towards a university model, and vice versa. Ethical questions that affect, even afflict, the universities are relevant to the institutes. Guy Neave, commenting on the likely complexion of the post “Bologna process” university, stresses that “Bologna” has returned an explicit sense of vocational mission to the university sector.1 What was once outside the university, under the banner of institutional diversity, is now firmly inside it. Hand in glove with these changes, certainly in Europe, has been the consolidation of economic aspirations by national governments to varying degrees. Put simply, governments are much keener on their HE sector playing a greater role in domestic economic prosperity. Research and development driven by serendipity are unwelcome. Itinerant wanderings in science and technology, and their ever-broadening cognate disciplines, are disappearing. New R&D highways are more certain of their staging points. Each research milestone inscribes both the scholarly distance traveled and the economic points accrued. Failure to travel fast enough in both dimensions presents academics with difficulties at career tollgates. Yoking research “done” with economic potential is essential for continued success in research awards and, at an institutional level, government funding. Coupling national economic aspirations with university success has profoundly affected governance, scholarship, teaching and the institutions’ public orientation. It entails many risks, including the loss of the traditional standing enjoyed by the sector. One should not be too precious, however. Throughout history academics engaged in commerce and politics, but the scale and mode of these engagements post-Second World War are vastly different. Now commitments to research commercialization, through patenting, licensing and product development, increasingly reflect institutional, vii
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Preface
industrial and governmental priorities. Many associate the concentration of such interests in postwar America with the astonishing economic growth of that period and its resulting technoscientific global dominance. Understandably, the “American university” is the de facto reference model for societies seeking to connect academic productivity with industrial needs and economic development. A tireless search for policies to underwrite this panacea is tackled with a resolve that saw the ancient alchemists blending all and sundry to transform mere “stuff” into gold. The contemporary philosopher’s stone is not an esoteric gewgaw, but innovation policies have similar intent – to transform knowledge into economic growth by unifying disparate and often conflicting resources. This faith licenses almost any action on the fabric of HE. Once the economic “spin-off,” “spinout” or “spillover” has been sanctioned, few strictures are considered. Superfluous are the boffin in his garden shed, the college dropout who founded a technology empire or the barrow-boy with a global merchandising chain. These geniuses are embarrassing “nonacademic” anomalies. Faith in research innovation can explain some success, less than policy makers admit, but enough politically to justify its continuation. Faced with global challenges, governments are open to being convinced that research commercialization is a viable industrial development policy. Assuaging the anxieties of political masters is never far from the minds of university executives. Ireland is one of a few countries that have wholeheartedly embraced research commercialization, believing that it will lift the economy. From being bit players providing skills for the economy, the universities have been elevated to national strategic importance in the quest for economic growth. Naturally, comments on Irish policies pepper the text. Ironically, as this work was in the final furlong, the Celtic Tiger collapsed, smothered under a mountain of real estate debt. Guy Neave afforded me the opportunity to undertake this work. I am enormously grateful to him and for the patience of the staff at Palgrave Macmillan. Professor Liam Downey gave me a perspective on Irish HE. I picked over some early ideas on innovation with Professor Finbarr Bradley. The human side of academia was laid bare in my trade union work, particularly as a vice president of the Irish Federation of University Teachers between 2002 and 2006. My experiences while acting as Head of the Computer Science prompted several conclusions, and an acknowledgment is due to Professor John Hughes, President of NUI Maynooth. Responsibility for errors is solely mine. Email comments to
[email protected] JOHN HARPUR
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viii Preface
Little in higher education has not undergone radical change in the course of the past quarter century though one thing remains constant. This constant is the general consensus of governments, international organizations and intergovernmental agencies, as well as rapidly coalescing continent-wide trading blocs, that the success of their particular agendas and the vision they entertain of the world as they believe it ought to be, passes through education in general and higher education very specifically. Higher education has become the central instrument for boosting national efficiency. It is seen as a sensitive and indispensable pointer to the place of individual nations in the global economy. Its ability to constantly adapt is anxiously scrutinized, weighed in the balance and that with increasing frequency and rigor. Never have so many agencies and interests, both public and private, been engaged in ascertaining and interpreting the trends, feats, shortcomings, and performance of higher education as they are today. And rarely have the consequences of their judgement been so influential upon the way interests within the nation, be they public or private, perceive higher education itself. Indeed, across different nations, such bodies play a crucial role in determining the support higher education may expect from public opinion. At the very least, higher education is seen either as maintaining the place the nation thinks it ought to have in the burgeoning knowledge society or knowledge economy. Or, on a less optimistic note, as confirming the fears that some anticipate of “national slippage” from a once confident place in the sun to a less enviable one in that constantly changing strife involved in the “delivery of educational services” and the “attractiveness” of a country’s higher education system at home and abroad. Higher education is a highly dynamic system. And such dynamism is easily represented. The number of higher education establishments worldwide grows yearly. And while not all are of university level, still the “density” of the higher education infrastructure worldwide has grown remarkably in the past decade. In 1993, the world stock of university-level institutions of higher education stood in the region of over 4000. Ten years on, the corresponding figure has doubled to 8100 – a dramatic pointer to higher education’s place in the wider process of globalization. As the pace of internationalization speeds up, as systems of higher education are drawn more deeply into the swirling transnational traffic of ideas, applications, training, personnel, students and experiences, so the series Issues in Higher Education brings the best of timely, relevant and focused scholarship from around the world to address matters of central concern to both ix
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Series Preface
specialist and the general public, to university leadership, administrations, teachers, practitioners and students. Issues in Higher Education is resolutely committed to advancing the comparative dimension in the study of higher education. In the 20 or more domains that contribute to this field, the “comparative aspect” has sometimes been seen as a “second string” to the domestic, national debate. This is no longer so. In a world of international knowledge flows, comparison is an indispensable, constantly renegotiated and fundamental building block in the positioning of the nation’s schools and universities. From insights derived from comparative analysis, they may be better equipped to flourish in a changing world. Policy is not simply about how we fare alone. More than ever, today, it also demands we know how others fare as well; how they respond to what we do; what they in their turn are doing and why. Comparison is the essence of competition. Without it, competition would be a lame duck. Comparative analysis and the scholarship of comparing across different systems of higher education allow us to see how far our intents are matched by our feats on the international academic marketplace. Issues in Higher Education actively encourages original scholarship building on and out from the international and comparative perspectives. Particular preference will be given to studies of a given topic compared across a minimum of two national higher education systems. GUY NEAVE
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x Series Preface
1 Prolegomenon
University ethics is everyone’s business. The proposition seems incongruous, but as universities jostle with corporations for shelf space, the ethical and political impacts of their decisions go beyond the remit of traditional academia. A plethora of interests, policies and market forces are charting new commercial routes for academe. The most notable drivers of change are often squirreled away in approving policies on student consumerism, education commoditization, research commercialization, new managerial imperatives, and an “alchemical” faith in the transformative capacity of corporate-style policies. Attention focuses increasingly on the role of academic entrepreneurship, not just in today’s university, but also the economy of tomorrow.1 Flip the coin over and one finds that scientific misconduct, managerial failings, a culture of passivity and indifference are equally in need of scrutiny. Schools of thought on higher education’s embrace of commerce have divided into camps. Splitting the “good” from the “bad” is ringed by debates about Marxism versus capitalism, classicism versus philistinism, and more broadly liberal arts versus science and technology. In these disputed territories, protagonists traipse two paths recurrently. Firstly, higher education is a public good. Setting aside the question of means, it should be available to all who are eligible. Secondly, higher education has a destiny of sorts in the economic life of a nation. If the first path is relatively uncontroversial, the second is littered with intellectual mines. The issue is less whether higher education has a commercial effect on an economy, but whether such effects can and should be planned, managed, and by whom? An uncomfortable question, with all the appeal of a half-drawn dagger, is who should benefit from the commercialization of higher education? Is a “for profit” higher education system a price too high? While no one country has resolved such questions to the satisfaction of all, increasingly countries have drawn from the well of North American experience in framing responses. Within the largely US system, the challenge is less whether 1
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University ethics and the last of the lost resources
commercialization should proceed (that debate is largely over) but how best to manage it, especially how best to distribute the benefits flowing, if they do, from research commercialization. Many of the activities devoted to changing the global face of higher education have their organic roots in economic and political imperatives. Official policies often exhibit a crusader-like zeal urging the embrace of “innovation” and “innovation thinking.” Governments have dedicated ministries to supporting innovation and research in higher education – Australia, Canada, the UK, and Ireland are but a few examples. The little codicil being that their higher education sectors must remake themselves to deliver the innovations the economy so badly needs. To continue receiving public support, the sector must reexamine its strengths and weaknesses to enhance its economic value. Several “value-for-money” arguments coalesce to justify these imperatives. The standard economic justification for the public funding of research and development (R&D) runs along the lines that R&D output is essentially knowledge.2 This knowledge can produce new goods and services. But there is a rub. Knowledge is nonrivalous. If one firm uses it, other firms can too. Public knowledge cannot be kept secret. Firms investing in the production of public knowledge find themselves not being the sole private beneficiaries. Since they cannot appropriate the knowledge exclusively, commercial firms will shy away from investment in its production. The result is that R&D declines, and competitive advantages assumed to flow from R&D, in generating innovative technologies, are lost. Policies derived from the “market failure” of R&D investment are used to justify all manner of incentives to private industry and interventions by nation states and global agencies.3 Governments view themselves bridging the investment “gap” between R&D and its commercial realization through industry subsidies and targeted funding of academic research trends. Economic success in this scenario rests in the faith that such strategies lead to more innovation. This justifies a broad welcome for academic patenting, licensing and research commercialization – the heart of academic capitalism. The production of “human capital,” educated research-savvy graduates, is deemed so crucial to innovation that universities are encouraged to spin off cohorts of entrepreneurs. It is a matter of debate whether such initiatives can correct “market failures” in R&D and (re)generate commerce and economic growth. The globalization trade, reliant upon the removal of tariffs and barriers, has its counterpart in higher education. It is a second policy lever, dislodging academia from any privileged dogmatic isolation. Institutions in the “West,” particularly medical schools, have recruited overseas students for many years. The main attractors in this field traditionally have been North American, UK and, latterly, Australian institutions. Europe also fields a number of attractor countries, including Germany, Denmark and Ireland. In recent decades, emphasis on recruitment into the home country has also
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2 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
been supported by overseas “outreach” offices and campuses. The target populations are invariably the youth of emerging economies, with China springing significantly to the fore. Among the rationales offered for internationalized higher education is the principle that innovative technological development, the flesh of the “knowledge economy,” is dependent on “brain circulation.”4 Policies favoring cross-border education through improved student mobility are not remote from concerns about economic growth. The internationalization of higher education has therefore three facets relating to recruitment: into a domestic setting, into an overseas “branch” of a domestic institution, and importantly into domestic institutions of foreign postgraduates. The sustainability of each and all of these activities is open to challenge in the light of economic circumstances. The process of internationalization along any or all of these dimensions has become a key component in the corporate strategy of recruiting institutions. Trade in higher education has become an established practice, deplored by some and proclaimed by others. More to the point, such trade and the inevitable commoditization (or “commodification”) of higher education that results, are also central to government polices favoring technology-supported education, “elearning,” across the EU and the OECD.5 Government and institutional support for initiatives in computer-mediated learning, “digital classrooms” and Internet learning are rooted in the presumption that elearning and technological innovation go hand in hand.6 The creation of technology-enabled educational “courseware” for distance learning is not a recent development, as witnessed by the Open University’s history, but it has gained a different for-profit flavor influenced by anxieties about global competition for students, viz. their fee income. The rapid evolution and deployment of technology have also coincided with increases in student access to higher education that would have seemed fanciful barely a generation ago. Policies favoring “mass access” to higher education are a third factor weighing on university transformation. These have their roots in political commitments to egalitarianism and economic imperatives. Technological change, and its association with US wealth creation post-WWII and post-Sputnik, spurred governments to provide greater access to high-quality technical and scientific education. The longer-term effect has been the creation of a plethora of species of higher education institutions in Europe, ranging from the traditional “vocational” model to the elite university model. In all cases, mass access has cost governments more than originally predicted and, not withstanding good intentions, has brought several new challenges in its wake. One recurrent concern is that undergraduate education is no longer of the same standard. The standard has dropped both to legitimate mass access as a political ideal and to retain institutional funding. Failure to retain sufficient numbers of undergraduates results in budgetary reductions. Undergraduate expansion earns institutions a direct financial reward. Discomfortingly, it is in areas
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Prolegomenon 3
that are crucial to the knowledge economy, science and engineering, that student recruitment and retention are most problematic. Despite the widespread promotion and use of technology, and its obvious benefits, student enrolment in these disciplines is faltering across most of the OECD member states. Institutions have reacted in different ways, often under government prodding. There is a restless straw in the wind of sufficient weight to suggest that some element of grade inflation is playing a role. Institutions dependent on the fee income of overseas students, or hoping to attract greater enrolments from this cohort, may be particularly vulnerable. Rapid developments in information technology, changes in the ability contours of student populations, intense pursuits of research commercialization and almost a frenzy of policy iterations addressing the university’s role in fostering economic growth are synonymous with the culture of permanent change experienced in the sector. Dealing with change has become a major factor in reshaping and transforming academic agendas, ambitions and management. Modern Western society is deemed post-industrial and a recovery in traditional “dirty” industries is neither sought nor expected. Rather the new industrialism will rely upon the creation of ‘brainpower’ products, the results of the intermingling of innovation with academic entrepreneurship. Institutions that may once have prided themselves on having the luxury to pursue sedate and reflective research and teaching, find themselves gathered up in global corporate responses to changes in competition and technology.7 Avery, writing about leadership in a globally fluid environment, comments, “people have no sooner adapted to one change than the next one is upon them, bringing more uncertainty and complexity. The challenge is for leadership to operate under rapidly mutating circumstances, which requires a rethink of paradigms of leadership both in theory and practice.”8 Many academics growing up in the postWWII generation, inspired by the “welfarism” that facilitated university expansion, have experienced the shift in traditional roles and responsibilities as unsettling intellectual and social changes.9 Others accept that new managerial strategies are a sideways reflection of major shifts in corporate approaches to leadership, management and risk awareness.10 The emergence of the “dominance of management,” the hallmark of the “new managerialism” is foreign to traditional organizational structures in the universities.11 Forced reorganization and the adoption of alien criteria for measuring institutional adaptability, such as patents, access rates, student retention and grades, are susceptible to interpretation as political responses to other shortcomings in the higher education system. For some the pace of change is so great, in policy and practice, that basic premises, arguably sui generis, which sustained the university as an ideal have been unseated within a relatively short period.12 The sense that change is becoming “too much” to bear, is not limited to a few academic outliers languishing after tradition. A sense of resignation seems to permeate even the corporate world about the reality
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4 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
of “faster” technical change, “greater” global competition and increased “volatility.” Change has become so much a way of life that it appears inexorable – a necessity to remain alive and competitive. John Kotter, a “change management” expert, concludes unsurprisingly that change is not the problem.13 Stopping change is unrealistic. Instead, change demands more leadership. The resulting leaders, those who bridle change, are “transformational” and “visionary.” Not everyone agrees that change is either inherently good or requires the hand of a demiurge for its containment. Management theorists such as Binney and his colleagues, argue that corporate responses to the pressures of globalization and change have been in many cases dysfunctional. Leaders are no sooner “built up” into heroes than they are “knocked back” by failing to deliver an impossible vision, an unrealistic goal. The corporate mantra that “change is the only continuity” leads in their view to the unstable proposition that “the abnormal has become normal, endless upheaval and chronic insecurity has become the norm.”14 Actual corporate life is often a place of turmoil, anxiety and personal dislocation. Much of what both schools of change management have to say echo with transformation policies pursued in higher education. However, both adopt very different approaches to the inherent challenges. Whereas Kotter favors visionary but empathic leadership, Binney and colleagues look to a less visionary presence, one more mindful of the human experiences and limitations of those around them. A sense that the university is on a runaway train to God knows where, finds an echo in Anthony Giddens’ concerns about globalization foisting a “runaway world” on its citizens.15 He leans on the side of the argument that globalization has produced several out-of-control phenomena.16 The rapidity of technical and commercial change, bound up with faster communications, has meant that putting a brake on initiatives and policies has become more difficult and the effects of runaway policies are less easy to predict. Unlike many policy entrepreneurs pushing for greater change and inter alia, more leadership and vision, Giddens argues that change must be “brought to heel.” What is particularly interesting about these various debates, apart from their oppositions, is the general sense of ambivalence and ambiguity they manifest about transformation processes. It is little wonder, therefore, that the universities should reflect some of these tensions back. But reflecting them back is not equivalent to acknowledging them. Governments and supranational bodies continue to attach expectations of commercial returns to science and technology research conducted in the universities. The practice has been entrenched in US practice since the passing of the Bayh–Dole Act in the early 1980s. Europe, in contrast, is “playing catch up” in the area of patenting, licensing and royalty generation. Faith in theoretical knowledge is twinned with faith in a post-industrial future dominated by academic elites producing profitable intellectual property. One of the most notable and again, uneasy, phenomena of contemporary life is that as vested interests weigh in behind science and technology (S&T), public
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Prolegomenon 5
disquiet amounting to distrust seems to increase. Factors influencing public perceptions include previous revelations of fraud, “bad” science, dangers arising from conflicts of interest and overall a heightened sense of risk. Higher education is inextricably entangled in scientific research and technological progress. There are many reasons for this, ranging from the happenstance of history to the deliberate engineering of new research institutions and networks. Nonetheless, the role of the scientist as objective inquirer after truth, uninfluenced by self-enrichment, appears ever more anachronistic. The emergence of cadres of for-profit scientists impinges not just upon the traditional hard sciences, but also engineering and technology. The relationship between researcher and the researched has been affected by conflicts of interest in many cases. Outside sponsors, especially corporations, have interfered in the presentation of scientific data and in doing so have presented inaccurate information to the public. A citizen, so informed, might expect academe to assert “freedom to publish” and spring to a worried researcher’s defense. Unfortunately, this is not happening as frequently as it should. Institutions find that the loss of corporate donations inconveniences their expansion plans. It is less costly to inconvenience an “awkward” faculty member with threatened unemployment. Two issues coincide here. On the one hand, universities are not engaging sufficiently with the phenomenon of risk that permeates the modern outlook. They struggle to connect risk, roughly speaking as the space between chance and danger, with ethical behavior. Ethics committees guiding clinical trials are not a substitute for addressing motivations derived from for-profit research. In the second place, the presumed important relationship between the “information age” and economic growth has drowned out critical analysis of the rights and wrongs of pursuing technology solutions in academe. An analysis by Ulrich Beck is intriguing in this regard. He argues that a sense of imagined risk is endemic to modern societies due to their reliance on ever more science being present in daily life and the use of sophisticated technologies in commerce and administration.17 Everything from food, fertilizers, and mobile phones through to medicine seems to possess an “unthinkable” future risk. For the scientist, and the policy entrepreneur, knowing the likelihood of public skepticism is not a prophylactic. The result, Beck continues, is the “immiseration” of society as the public contends with evermore sources of threat. Applause for scientific and technological discoveries is increasingly met with frosty choruses of skepticism – set against a background of highprofile scientific failures, professional negligence and technologically caused accidents. These points lead neatly to considering the relationship between the university and society in the current age. It is not entirely true to claim that the university has always been a place for disinterested research, but neither is it entirely false. On any balance of probabilities, contemporary institutions are more affected by “interested” research than at any point in the past. A reason-
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6 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
able question is whether the pursuit of commercial objectives, and the attendant restructuring that follows, is to the benefit of the Common Good of society. Over the past 20 years dozens of books and hundreds of articles have addressed the future of the university, not always in equally flattering or respectful terms. Recurrent issues, in what at times is a heady but deeply polarized debate, are tensions between traditional liberal arts values and encroaching market imperatives. Many commentators are troubled by fears that conventions about the role and authority of the university within a community are being erased by online learning, recruitment of overseas students and the insinuation that education and research are commodities, ripe for exploitation by the state, industry, the public and the internal academic stakeholders. A familiar refrain by those opposed to change is that exhortations to profit and innovation are scrubbing away the traditional ethos of higher education. Undoubtedly such worries are exaggerated in many cases, but exaggeration does not entail their nonexistence. It is difficult to ignore policy statements from the EU and OECD that portray the universities as the site of lost resources – somewhat similar on a scale of fantasy and promised riches as the mythical lost world of King Solomon’s Mines. A major tenet of faith among contemporary policy entrepreneurs is that higher education is a fundamental engine of economic growth conferring competitive advantage on those most able and willing to exploit it. It is all a matter of mining it correctly and ensuring its unrefined gems, once polished in an innovation process, are rushed to market. Technology transfer opportunities, in the form of licensing agreements and saleable patents, are treated with a respect once only extended to the trade in precious stones. Innovation, however, extends beyond mere product development and “pre-competitive research.” As a salve for commercial ills, it can also be applied to the core business of the university, an activity once known as education. Governmental and supranational agencies’ demands for expanded virtual campuses have led to innovation in teaching, course delivery and even exam formation. All of this occurs while most publicly funded institutions are struggling to maintain and enhance their traditional physical campuses. The idea, once unthinkable, that universities could “fail” despite working to comply with official directives and policies – such as realignments of disciplines, institutional mergers, outreach programs, online courses, and a welter of “access” initiatives – seems more credible in a period of economic recession.18 Ironically, policies designed to bolster the sector through various change programs, could end up destabilizing it – innovation, accountability and quality control do not necessarily form a collegiate trinity. If education were a flight of stairs then attendance at university marks the high landing. What was once an elite, largely remote, institution is now accessible by almost anyone who completes second-level education. Ever
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Prolegomenon 7
since the beginning of the 1970s, mass access to university education has become a realizable ambition for many people in the developed world. Graduate numbers across the globe have jumped by orders of magnitude since WWII. Once upon a time countries could count their attendees at tertiary level in tens of thousands, now those figures are in the millions. Historian Tony Judt, commenting on Europe of the 1950s and early 1960s, has described a ‘cultural fault line’ running between the vast majority of those who left school before they turned 15, and the small minority that continued to university. In 1949, the UK, an advanced industrial society by any standard of the time, had a total population of 49 million, but a student population of a mere 100,000.19 Perceptions of the universities as elite institutions were hardly undermined by these figures, or similar ones from other countries.20 An important consequence of mass access, foreseen by a prescient Martin Trow in the early 1970s, would be a changed social role for universities resulting from increases in both student numbers and divergent student backgrounds.21 The sector would find itself gradually tilted towards greater vocational content in degree programs. A combination of a postwar demographic bulge, American prodding of Europe to increase productivity and the rise of a new wave of technological and scientific fervor following Sputnik’s launch (the beginning of “the space race”) coincided to influence higher education reform.22 The reforms varied from country to country, but all embraced the principle that greater numbers of young people ought to benefit from university, benefits that were largely couched in terms of developing an individual’s talents. While the 1963 Robbins’ Higher Education report in the UK and the near contemporaneous Irish government’s Commission on Higher Education emphasized the importance of higher education’s contribution to an individual’s employability through furnishing him/her with technical skills, the reports equally emphasized the importance of a scholarly outlook and the formation of reasoned well-balanced citizens.23 In common with international reforms that “opened up” higher education to mass access, the main requirements at the time across the sector were that the state provide more institutions, upgrade existing institutional infrastructure, recruit staff and develop more supports for research. A combination of the oil crisis of 1973 and the arrival of a sustained global economic recession at the end of the decade forced many governments to reexamine their expenditure on public services, not merely in terms of quantity but in terms of return. Government involvement in shaping aspects of economic life had begun to trouble several thinkers, particularly as such involvement was not perceived as bolstering economic growth. Most noted among these was the economist (and Nobel Laureate) Milton Friedman. Together with his wife Rose, Friedman published an economic manifesto Free to Choose in 1980, presenting the case that there was too much government interference in the market. This resulted in inefficiency, wastage and most
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8 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
significantly “blocked” innovative development.24 Friedman singled out the regulatory regime in the US for particular attention, denouncing it as too strict compared to the UK, which resulted in fewer pharmaceutical innovations, raising the spectral possibility that Europe would overtake the US in biotechnological innovation. Although Friedman is inseparably associated with monetarism (and in political terms the Reagan and Thatcher administrations), his identification of a deficit in innovation in the US struck a chord with industries failing before Japanese manufacturing. The historian Paul Kennedy, in his study The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, observed that at the time the likelihood that the “West” would lose its preeminence in technology was anxiously but candidly acknowledged in industrial, military and political circles.25 Japanese computer companies, already supplying the bulk of memory chips, were evolving from component manufacturers to system providers. It seemed only a matter of time before Japan also seized the higher ground in software development. In the early 1980s, the personal computer market was in its infancy. Computer companies were defined by their mainframe computers. American corporations such as IBM, DEC, Perkins-Elmer, Italy’s Olivetti, Germany’s Nixdorf and the UK’s ICL, competed against Japanese multinationals such as NEC, Toshiba and Fujitsu. Wryly, the trajectory of the sector contains a warning for policy bodies promoting the certainty of higher education innovation. Several of these highly innovative companies (DEC, Perkins-Elmer, Olivetti and Nixdorf) either no longer exist or have been absorbed by rival multinationals. Amongst the many characterizations of the atmosphere of the recession of the 1980s, a demoralizing mood of innovation anxiety among industrialists is by no measure unimportant. In a series of essays on the last quarter of the twentieth century, Paul Krugman describes a crisis of confidence hanging over the decade based on a fear that technological innovation had all but disappeared.26 The oil crisis in the 1970s, when OPEC cut back production, reminded the developed nations of their vulnerability to energy shortages. A general sense emerged among several primarily OECD countries, the traditional industrial nations of the previous century, that they had lost their economic footing. This slippage was associated with the emergence of technological challenges and energy uncertainties. Analysts, commentators, business leaders and politicians associated much of the challenge with the rise of the “Asian Tiger” economies of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. Explaining how such “backward” countries could rise to technological prominence and become global commercial forces intrigued economic growth theorists. Richard Nelson, a major proponent of evolutionary economic explanations, notes that irrespective of theoretical differences about the causal dynamics almost all theorists accept that rapid adoption and expansion of modern plant (capital stock) and high rates of investment in human capital (training to develop necessary knowledge, attitudes and skills) were crucial factors in
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Prolegomenon 9
explaining Asian Tiger growth.27 Pushing the argument favoring entrepreneurship and innovation, Nelson finds it “odd” that anyone would deny their significance, given the countries’ relative ignorance of technology a decade or so previously, i.e. the 1960s. A supporting analysis is provided by a study of post-WWII Japanese industry. Nonaka and Takeuchi focus on the stimulus given to industries by the “uncertainty” of the postwar environment to think differently about product development. Survival and prosperity depended on nontraditional unconventional reactions. In response, companies developed new and more creative methods for developing and disseminating “organizational knowledge.” Continuous investment in improved production processes was coupled with rolling innovation programs. In order to succeed, Japanese companies were willing to abandon technology and product lines that had long been successful. Uncertainty compelled companies to “make their existing advantages obsolete.”28 Change was considered a “positive force” as it compelled companies to look outside themselves for new sources of knowledge – among customers, suppliers, agents, and so forth. While a range of lessons was drawn by Western industries from the Japanese experience from the late 1960s onwards, within the context of higher education policy perhaps the most persistent insight is less the importance of continuous innovation and more that knowledge is a resource that potentially grants a competitive advantage. Vast amounts of words have been written about the importance of innovation over the past 50 years – spanning the information society, the knowledge economy and the importance of higher education in an era of global mobility – yet, the major postwar policy puzzle preoccupying higher education policy entrepreneurs remains: how can nation states consistently profit from the research and teaching produced in their universities? Irrespective of the historical vicissitudes of the Asian economies, their successes renewed interest in innovation, viz. its possible formulations for transposition onto other countries. The Asian miracle was a ray of hope to countries that had been passed over by mass industrialization, more often than not small postcolonial states e.g. Ireland. It seemed possible that a country, if its citizens were sufficiently educated, would not have to submit to a long expensive phase of industrialization in order to move to a postindustrial future where economic growth was underpinned by technological wizardry. Being “backward” could even be an aid, a means of circumventing the pathdependent advantages that had accrued to established industrial economies.29 Faced with mounting competition from nontraditional rivals, whose strengths seemed to rely on technological innovation and human capital, it is not surprising to find both the US and EU pushing forward with patenting amendments and enhanced research programs from the early 1980s. If Europe is perceived as having being occasionally blasé about the commercialization of innovations, and letting slip several key technologies
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Prolegomenon 11
down the decades, the same could hardly be said of America. A forthright “gung-ho” attitude has shaped American achievements and policies – hence the shock of the Asian economies. So entrenched is this belief, raised almost to the status of constitutional dogma, that the authors of the best-selling textbook, Inventing America, declare boldly that their book
Unsurprisingly, given the force of such an anthem, the possible loss of technological supremacy deeply unsettled US policy makers at the time. The connection between technological excellence and cultural influence went beyond obvious economics. It entailed a capacity to lay down policy standards and objectives for other countries. Through these avenues, influence could be exerted on global debates about patenting, intellectual property rights, research priorities and the commercialization of innovations. Fundamental to retooling public opinion favorably in the 1980s was a requirement to adjust public expectations of state involvement with the economy and society. In the UK and the US emphasis was laid on reducing numbers employed in the public sector, privatizing public services where possible and “cutting” public spending in general – practices quickly followed by other states.31 These policies were an explicit rejection of Keynesianism with its emphasis on “welfarism” and the state taking a major role in supporting the labor market. In the resulting exchange of ideas over the past generation, between governments of the developed nations and their public sector, one constant has been a demand for greater efficiency in state services. Where once that demand might have been blunted, however mistakenly, by claims of the “success” of the command economies of the communist states, the failure of these states in civil and economic terms has left few counterpoints in play. Not only could the state not provide for everyone’s needs, as shown by the demise of communism, but there were questions about how efficiently the modern state could provide for its needs even in the limited domains within which it operated. It is doubtful if it makes sense to speak of one “free market perspective.” Different economies (within the OECD) operate varying versions. Most states have checks and balances in place on the sale and supply of staple
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is a new history of the United States whose unifying theme is innovation. It aims to integrate into a compelling narrative the persistent inventiveness of Americans in devising new political institutions and practices, economic arrangements, social relations and cultural motifs, adaptations to the natural environment, and exploitations of science and technology. Americans have repeatedly resorted to experiment in the face of changing circumstances drawing on ideas and practices from abroad or from native soil. They have long considered this penchant for innovation a distinguishing feature of their culture and history.30
12 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human wellbeing can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices. The state has to guarantee, for example, the quality and integrity of money. It must also set up those military, defence, police, and legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets. Furthermore, if markets do not exist (in areas such as land, water, education, health care, social security, or environmental pollution) then they must be created, by state action if necessary. But beyond these tasks the state should not venture.32 It cannot be unexpected, therefore, that OECD countries should find themselves, as the wealthiest countries, reviewing state investment in the public sector. Saluting Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” as a principle of market selforganization, bestowing efficiency and order, is the fashion.33 In this milieu, drawing back from unconditional public funding of higher education is a prime example of the state both wishing to preserve what is best in the sector, the exploitable output, while at the same time signaling to the private sector tax base that the state is no longer keen on preserving the defining traditions of the sector.34 Neoliberal public sector reforms rest on presumptions about the superiority of private sector procedures, diminished outlays on education, health and social welfare in order to support national debt repayments, substitution of domestic consumption by export production to balance the budget, and deregulation of financial and labor markets to attract foreign investment.35 As a result higher education has been directed towards the market, and a “new managerialism” has begun directing higher education.36 Policies urging universities to do better and compete for the top ranking in their class are manifestations of neoliberal principles at work. Improvements in graduate output and university ranking are presumed to bring with them competitive economic benefits – particularly when fishing in the global market for students and resources. If anything connects the various motivations behind university commercialization
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foods, essential services, fuel and so forth. Nonetheless, at its heart the free market perspective, the neoliberal economic perspective, holds that the state is doomed to inefficiency and that only a market in goods and services can deliver efficiency in production and also generate the type of welfare state that is most conducive to maintaining the market. The more the state privatizes its services – energy, health, and even education – the better for the consumer. This is the indispensable nostrum. Harvey offers the following comprehensive definition of neoliberalism as
Prolegomenon 13
together it is a belief that brainpower, to cite the crudest measure, is the last natural resource that the West has at its disposal – despite the possibility that the conditions for its exploitation are poorly understood.37 Little wonder then, given official faith in innovation, that governments, industry and international policy agencies concur that higher education is too important to leave entirely in the hands of academics.
A natural tendency is to react to all change during one’s own educational epoch as significant. Among others, Maarten Simons has pointed out that it was Peter Drucker, the 1960s economist, who first persisted with the semaphore that “education has become too important to be left to educators.”38 At the time, his axiom was confounded by a lack of clear direction about not just who would step in to do the work of the educators but how. Espousing a policy to move education out of the hands of educators was not equivalent to having a mechanism to achieve it. Drucker was hardly advocating that educators should not educate, rather that they should not be solely in charge of setting strategic directions and goals. Due to the “skyrocketing” costs of education in America “the taxpayers are getting restless.” He articulated common doubts about the efficiency of the educational experience, the efficacy of many programs in terms of raw value for money, and the socioeconomic benefit assumptions of the enterprise. To develop education in compliance with Drucker’s analyses hinted at a sea change in how education was managed. Educators would need to accept a different form of managerialism in order to develop objectives that went beyond the traditional education as selfimprovement ethos. A logical consequence of Drucker’s arguments is that educational establishments would require reinvention as business entities. Writing 30 years later the organizational theorist Charles Handy, having benefited from exposure to the information technology revolution, espoused similar sentiments. Arguing from projections that jobs would shift from traditional manual settings to more cerebral ones, he concluded, “education needs to be re-invented.”39 Handy advanced the thesis that traditional school organizations could be better “learning” organizations, fostering a diverse range of skills with a more flexible workforce in attendance. Flexibility is provided by a range of subcontractors whose task is to provide a form of “just in time” education to support central activities. Schools enter into individual contracts with students who in turn take their education in the “mini-schools” provided by subcontractors. While the school can continue to teach a core curriculum (what would it contain?), Handy stipulated that the job of the school proper would be to set and monitor the standards of these mini-school outsiders, to ensure an adequate variety, to help students and their families decide on an educational programme from
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Bombproofing innovation – enter the managerialists
14 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
What makes Handy’s proposals interesting is not that they have been adopted wholesale by universities but the idea that the core business of an educational institution involves management and standards, both of which are recurrent themes in university governance thinking – managerialism and quality assurance. Secondly, the germ of academic branding is also present in the arrangement whereby the core institution oversees the awarding of credentials while most of the teaching is done in mini-schools – off campus. Similar arrangements are operated by many universities in the education export market. For Handy, the virtues of this arrangement lie in its adaptability and “flexibility.” The core professionals manage the school while the subcontractors, ultimately the bearers of flexibility, provide the services. In a novel sleight of reasoning Handy adds that the bonus of flexibility is that “you do not make your suppliers redundant, you simply do not renew their contract.” Handy’s theorizing about organizations focuses on the problem of how to bring about managerial innovation. This continues to be a preoccupying theme in public and private sectors since the end of the days of plenty of the 1970s. As a result of the recession in the early 1980s, a growth occurred in “business process re-engineering” consultancies each of which promised to reshape a traditional business into a service-directed entity using the new computer and communications technology of the day and new “effective” management practices. Influenced by Japanese success in displacing the American automotive industry, corporations reexamined their own structures to establish how greater efficiencies could be achieved while improving standards, developing innovations and expanding customers. The most notable standard-bearer for the thinking of the times was the international best-seller In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best Run Companies.41 Based on 43 case studies, 8 chapters of the book (out of 12) offered a collection of guidelines for corporate business success. Each chapter addressed a particular theme. Successful corporations had a bias for action, which meant less discussion and more “doing.” The business was there to serve people therefore it should obsess about being close to the customer. Organizations have natural champions and innovators, autonomy and entrepreneurship must be recognized and rewarded. Employees are the most valuable assets of a company in the quality assurance channel; therefore productivity through people is paramount. Management must be seen to be hands on and value driven if it is to motivate. Businesses should focus on what they do best and stick to the knitting. Successful companies often have slim administrative bureaucracies based on a simple form, lean staff philosophy. Production centers should have a degree of independence provided company objectives are well understood, leading to the promotion of simultaneous loose–tight couplings. The book
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all that was available and to manage a core curriculum itself in order to maintain some sense of group cohesion at the centre.40
bestowed on management gurus novel turns of phrase such as “stick to the knitting,” “loose–tight coupling” and “managing by wandering around.” By combining case studies with a fast-paced delivery style, the text imparted a powerfully persuasive message. From a corporate perspective, at the time struggling with recession, the tome (and numerous similar ones that followed) promised a detailed policy formula for success. Moreover, it promised a renewal of the corporate mission; one that would not go to hell in a hand basket if the policy recipes were followed. The search for policy recipes that guarantee organizational success is not limited exclusively to commercial missions. For instance, the educational sociologist Burton Clark has praised the rise of the reengineered higher education institution as an “entrepreneurial university.” Clark’s Creating Entrepreneurial Universities: Organisational Pathways of Transformation describes several recipes for success (transformation pathways). Based on a series of case studies of “successful” universities, he identifies five common policies underpinning their accomplishments.42 The entrepreneurial universities exhibited a strengthened steering core based on a combination of executive and consultative management styles. Research groups and centers were given increased autonomy to define their mission leading to an expanded developmental periphery. The universities had developed diversified funding bases. An intellectual vigor and ideas culture produced a stimulated academic heartland. Most importantly, the centralized values of the organizations were attuned to an integrated entrepreneurial culture. Underlying Clark’s argument is the promotion of “self-directed” autonomy, variously referred to as the “stand-up” university or the “self-reliant” university. Just like Peters and Waterman’s corporations, these stand-up universities manage ambiguity and paradox in ways that do not compromise their entrepreneurial mission. Handy’s distinction between the responsibilities of the core professionals and their peripheral suppliers is also reminiscent of Clark’s demarcation of institutional tasks. Predictably, with the exception of the policy recommending a diversified funding base, Clark’s sentiments reflect those of Peters and Waterman. These can be recast to define the modern university outlook as: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Centralized broadcasting of values Emphasis on overt managerialism Discretionary allocation of resources Productivity-driven rewards systems Consensus on the innovation mission (including customer care and quality assurance) 6. Dedication to revenue generation However, for these objectives to have any significance some means must be found for the universities to function in the marketplace. Enter the patent.43
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Prolegomenon 15
16 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
In studies of the commercialization of higher education in America, much has been made of the passing of the Bayh–Dole Act in 1980 – almost uncannily simultaneous with Peters and Waterman’s policies. The Act has had a major significance also for the development of higher education in the European arena. It “liberalized” patenting by the US university sector and encouraged greater fostering of private–public partnerships in the development of products and technologies. Prior to the Act only federally funded research could be patented in a process regarded as torturous.44 This stage, between basic research (known pejoratively and inaccurately as “blue sky” research) and actual product development, is the “pre-competitive” interval during which the innovative value of an output can be assessed and refined. While the Act was important for the degree of freedom it gave universities to profit directly from their federally funded research, the American university sector had a long history of assisting industry, including codevelopment work. The Act therefore was also a significant corroboration of a commercially minded outlook in the university sector. Reviewing existing “political instruments” used by governments to shape university research policy, Grant Harman expresses a commonly held judgment: By far the best known legislation relating to knowledge transfer is the Bayh–Dole Act of 1980 enacted by the United States Congress that allowed universities to appropriate property rights to an invention resulting from university research that was financed by federal grants. The fact that property rights were awarded to universities rather than inventors gave strong incentives to universities to set up their own offices of technology transfer that have become instrumental in negotiating the appropriate mechanisms of commercialization …(…)…Over the past two decades many other countries have followed the US example, revising and often amending legislation with regard to [intellectual property] IP. While some countries such as Sweden continue to award rights to academics, the clear trend appears to be to give IP ownership of university inventions to institutions.45 Commenting on 1980 as a historical turning point in American university life, Roger Geiger records that the Act was only one of a number of measures that strengthened intellectual property rights, the overall effect was to induce all research universities to establish internal offices for patenting and licensing faculty inventions. These steps were relatively controversial at the time. However, they were encouraged and in some ways validated by the coeval revolution in biotechnology. Here was an indisputable example of basic university research having
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For whom the Bayh-Dole’s?
Prolegomenon 17
Emphasis on the “irrelevance” of critics, as against the new “relevance” of university research, is fully consistent with Douglass’s admiring reference to the Bayh–Dole Act as constituting “a First Stage in an aggressive effort to further university–business collaboration – part of an emerging post-Cold War drive towards technological innovation.”47 Granting that some of the claims regarding the influence of Bayh–Dole are exaggerated, Douglass observes that the Act had two profound effects. Firstly, it galvanized a “cadre” of research universities to develop strategic commitments to technology transfer – no longer a peripheral activity. This academic awakening was matched, secondly, with a rekindling of interest among local state administrations and federal agencies to harness universities to support high-technology industries. It is clear from the above and similar opinions too numerous to list, that the Bayh–Dole Act is regarded as an early linchpin in science and technology derived entrepreneurship – at both institutional and individual levels. Based on its perceived success, the temptation by other countries to emulate the Bayh–Dole Act has been irresistible. Mowery and Sampat press the point, echoed also by Kitigawa, that much of modern EU and OECD research commercialization policy reduces to attempts to internationalize Bayh–Dole.48 Noting that its success at kickstarting commercial research is taken for granted in international higher education bureaucracies, they issue the caveat emptor plea that the preBayh–Dole history of industry–academic collaboration in the United States is more significant in the overall success of the Act than is normally acknowledged. In addition, the “unusual scale and structure” of supports for US university research may be difficult for other OECD countries to emulate with the same expectation of success. Incongruously, considering the welter of accolades that the Act attracts for liberating the commercial potential of the universities, Jennifer Washburn cites sources showing that in the US “the share of state budgets going to higher education has shrunk by more than one third since 1980.”49 One 2002 study of the growth in university licensing suggests that the intended effects of Bayh–Dole on the university appear to have been achieved – in terms of greater receptivity to industrial contracts, more patents and licenses, and a greater churn of innovations.50 The weakness of the study is that it could not determine if Bayh–Dole was crowding out some lines of research. A recent 2007 survey of doctorate recipients by Paula Stephan and colleagues concluded that the intended effects of Bayh–Dole were not adversely affecting publications by this group. The conclusion was heavily qualified with caveats that the study was precluded from determining (a) if
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a momentous commercial impact. Universities could scarcely avoid this fast-moving scientific revolution, but involvement brought with it patenting, licensing, and firm formation. Critics became irrelevant as universities were swept along by this tide. Regular ties with industry became another component of the multi-purpose university.46
there was a trade-off between publishing and patent applications, (b) the relationship between the quality of publications and quality of patents, (c) the impact of changing incentive structures on research, and (d) whether Bayh–Dole was “crowding out basic research.”51 A study by Lowe and Gonzalez-Brambila concluded that “faculty entrepreneurs” who started firms in engineering (and to a lesser extent biomedicine) did experience a significant diminution in publications. Lack of information about the productivity and success of the firms indicates that the conclusions should be treated with some caution.52 In these studies, and these are just samples from a wider range, the dependency between the research grant incentives flowing from Bayh–Dole (and by implication similar policies) and the pursuit of basic research remains an imponderable. Using these studies, it is not possible to conclude that disinterested research is being suppressed. There is an equally good argument lurking that publication trends may well reflect incentives; what is not the subject of incentives may not receive the support required to develop. What is more, the studies cited above must admit the contentious assumption that patenting is related to knowledge “flow” which in turn is related to knowledge production. Scientific knowledge and patenting are locked together like an uroboros in a cycle of self-devouring and renewal. The relationship raises uncomfortable questions about the direction that scientific inquiry is taking and presumably will continue to take. Will only potentially patentable research strands be grant aided? The aspect of a research grant application that probes for commercial relevance has undoubtedly become significant in deciding research directions. In their study of the rise of academic commercial forces, Slaughter and Leslie speak of an emerging “congruence” from the early 1980s onwards in aims, attitudes, and policies shared among multinationals, political establishments and nation states. Globalization brought increased competition, and congruent polices emerged as liturgical responses. Business leaders in turn cited the need for increased research and development to deliver more innovative products with a shorter time to market. In turn this stirs political anxieties. “Political leaders seek to stimulate technoscience as a way out of the impasse created by the failure of the Keynesian nation state. Leaders of nations, corporations and universities hope that subsidy of technoscience innovation will recreate the prosperity of the post-World War II period (1945–1970).”53 It is a plausible position. The “past,” which is presumed in some sense to be better, has slipped away. But it is far from certain that the major actors in higher education wish to recreate the past. If anything, the function of new academic commercialization policies is to avoid the economically unwelcome nonlinearities of the past. Confidence in technology being a tide to lift all economic boats is of course not a new phenomenon. It is often convenient to promote that sentiment as a secure solution rather than look at other less pleasant alternatives. In 1993, the then President of the European Commission, Jacques Delors, gave an address in Copenhagen to European leaders ostensibly about unemployment
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18 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
and its causes in Europe. Commenting afterwards, the economist Paul Krugman wrote that rather than examine the less palatable impacts of welfare policies and overregulation on the maintenance of European unemployment (an analysis shared by many economists), Delors asserted “that the root cause of European unemployment was a lack of competitiveness with the United States and Japan and that the solution was a program of investment in infrastructure and high technology.”54 The “rhetoric of competitiveness,” in Krugman’s words, had taken over the mindset of national and international opinion leaders to the extent that there was no serious questioning of the underlying assumption linking economic ills to lack of competitiveness and inter alia the ebb and flow of technological innovation.55 There is no doubting the importance of a Bayh–Dole-type initiative in fostering this kind of political posturing. It stands as an example of a positive policy measure that is believed to produce measurable commercial outputs in an arena where outputs are normally measured in printed articles rather than printed money. Tendencies to “borrow,” as Mowery and Sampat delicately put it, successful policies are quite marked in innovation and technology transfer circles. Borrowing or emulating other policies shortens the thinking cycle, the phase when a detailed analysis might hold up a bias for action. The practice does not abolish serious structural weaknesses in a higher education sector that is far from homogenized – as undoubtedly the EU is at present. The very fact that many official EU documents are routinely translated into at least 22 languages is cause for pause in itself. The European Commission following the Bologna process, mindful of ongoing attempts to homogenize higher education in Europe, and latterly the Lisbon Strategy, applauds the Bayh–Dole Act while lamenting its poor rate of legislative absorption in Europe: A major obstacle to better application of university research results is the way intellectual property issues are handled in Europe. In the USA, the ‘Bayh–Dole’ Law has given organisations in which research is conducted using federal funds, particularly the universities, ownership of their results in order to encourage application of academic research results. In recent years, in Europe, several national legislation[s] have converged towards solutions of the Bayh–Dole Act type, and other Member States where provisions of this type have not yet been adopted are about to do so. The actual effect of these measures cannot yet be evaluated. However, the divergences which continue in relation to the provisions enforced in certain Member States and the national nature of the regulations concerned, have in Europe complicated and limited the transfer of technology and transnational cooperation.56 Similar to Delors’ retort, the underlying message is that competitiveness requires greater unity of opinion about the significance of technological innovation and by implication, how this is best mined within higher
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Prolegomenon 19
20 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
education. On this matter it may be worthwhile tempering impatience with caution. Other work by Mowery and his colleagues shows that despite perceptions of success post-Bayh–Dole, by 2001 only seven US universities had any measurable return from patenting.57 Nearly 90 percent of patent income arose from a handful of patents held by each university. In almost every case the patents were related to either biotechnology or pharmaceutical discoveries. It is therefore difficult to share unreservedly “official” European enthusiasm for mimicking Bayh–Dole. Emulation of the Act, as has been happening patchily in Europe, leads to a premium being placed on various select academic sectors that are held to be commercially promising, but when these are rubbed up against the reference model of US experience only a minority within the select minority is likely to be financially fruitful. A recurrent theme in this work is what price must the rest of academe pay to keep these modern Laputas aloft?
Intellectual property generation, patenting and competitive gestures are not the only initiatives driving the transformation of higher education. Universities have always assisted industry whether by producing graduates, or producing the very knowledge and information that serve as the ladders which industry mounts. So the key motivation for change has less to do with the usefulness of the university as an institution, which is established beyond denial, and more about how it can be improved as economic partner. Making more of the resources given the sector and getting more out of it in return depends upon the universities doing something new. Some new trick is required. Bayh–Dole put its finger on patenting, licensing and industry cooperation. However, only limited parts of the institution, limited specialties, can make their mark here. To bring more of the university faculty within the fold, more of what the faculty “does” has to be evaluated as saleable. The commoditization of higher education as a tradable service or good is crucial to realigning university values and direction. In effect, the education experience as a learning experience becomes a good, something for export, and research something for commercial exploitation. John Seely Brown and Paul Duiguid, plowing fields ridged with similar values to Drucker’s, muse that university reform is not only long overdue but essential if it is not to become extinct:58 Yet, before we can envision change and contemplate alternative types of institutions, it seems important to begin by asking what it is that colleges and universities do. What, in the language of business that has pushed its way into the halls of the academy, is the system’s core competence? Why are students, their families, states and federal agencies
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Tell me a nice long story with a happy ending
Prolegomenon 21
they ask the reader and answer that it is “degrees.” The main business of the university, in their analysis, is simply “credentialing” – akin to describing the assembling of a research paper as merely “documenting” – an activity that can be taken over by distance learning institutions, if not in its entirety (due to the presence of laboratory subjects), then mostly. Information and communication technology makes “mostly” possible. Universities may well become knowledge management companies as the new technology tears at the “seams” of the traditional institution. Brown and Duguid classify the reformed university as largely an exercise in knowledge management underpinned by a suitable technology. Their institution is a distance learning corporation poured in part, if not in whole, out onto the Internet. Stretching a metaphysical point for a moment, the university becomes a technology for education.59 Clark’s university, in complementary fashion, is essentially a cloak for a business corporation. Within this nexus, economic return, entrepreneurship and innovation, knowledge delivery and scholarship management are braided together. It is not that the insights or analyses of these authors are singularly unique; it is just that so many of the threads tugging at the university are thoroughly knitted into their narratives. And narrative has a powerful pull on the human imagination. Love of a good narrative, a good story, is at the heart of much of what is contentious in contemporary higher education policy. Enthralled by millennia of fairy tales where after suitable tribulations “everything worked out” in the end, and the prince and princess lived happily ever after, has conferred on policy formation exercises mythic powers. The old tales helped make sense of a dark world. They lent coherence to what was at times scarcely audible and discernible, but still profoundly apprehended.60 Humans have grown accustomed to narratives carrying within themselves certain expectancies. Jack will triumph over the giant and will clamber down the beanstalk in time for tea. In the nick of time, the woodcutter will save Red Riding Hood from the desires of the Evil Wolf. Scrooge will be redeemed through a good moral thrashing in time for turkey at the Cratchets. And so forth. The good are generally rewarded and the errant punished. Despite the greater verisimilitude in stories of defeat and disappointment, the commoner stuff of life, few in higher education want to hear about the entrepreneur that stumbled, the product that did not sell, the market niche deserted by its customers, or the plethora of e-learning initiatives that evaporated. It is much more comforting to tell tall tales of unsurpassed success, of braggadocio and intellectual swagger. Choose a hero. Imitate him. Wear the same clothes, Read the same books. Develop the same interests. Success is all but inevitable in this scenario seeded with business emulations.
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willing to invest so much in them? What is it that they want and the system offers?
Unfortunately, even if Oscar Wilde correctly identified imitation as the sincerest form of flattery, it is no guarantee of success. Yet time after time, be it in curricula, in research, or in management, universities are told that if only they emulated the best in class, they too could join in the happy ever after narrative. If only they embraced wholeheartedly, pathways, principles, recipes and reengineered themselves accordingly. The admonitions are not merely local but global. The World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the OECD regularly take to the field in the interests of harnessing the artillery of higher education in the fight to improve global productivity. As a result of this picaresque matinee, many universities are engaging in transformation on a scale unimaginable a generation back. The worth of the enormous laboring by the universities to reengineer themselves is assured by policies largely promulgated by a quadrumvirate of state, industry, academics and international policy agencies. The policies, a thin veneer between them and legal fiats, are not limited to advice on doing and understanding change but are deep expressions of expectancies. They imply a perfected metatheory of how everything is pulled together. It is expected therefore to find official policy documents exalting change, transformation and business reengineering.61 There is no room in these recommendations for thoughts about dystopian disturbances. It is all forward thinking with the expectation of success sown in. Central to all policies on university transformation is the dual role that private enterprise plays a role as a partner in research and as an objective of the university. No longer is profit (the flesh of private enterprise) a tricky antagonist. The private sector is presented instead as omniscient and omnipotent, a perfect magus for the transformed university sector. A private company may work with the university in developing a product or the university may develop a product with a private company. The difference is far from subtle, and the benefits and risks may be unequally shared. In a runaway world, the enterprise mirror is perfect. It is academic reality that is warped.
Beneficiaries or benefactors? When the universities decide to operate as semiprivate enterprises, it is reasonable to inquire into the ethical implications of these decisions: what good is served by this action? What ambiguities are present? Who is it benefiting? What risks are incurred? Will any harm arise as a result? And most importantly, is this necessary? A minority of universities within the OECD are private foundations. One might opine that whatever they do, because of their status, is really their own business – literally their own business. Yet like their publicly funded bedfellows, even the private institutions draw handsomely on the public purse, be it through fees, research contracts or infrastructural support. Their graduates enter the same labor
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22 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
markets as all the other graduates. Their faculty competes in the same research pool as other faculty. Courses, curricula and general organizational structure have a strong family resemblance between private and public universities. The executives from private and public universities participate in the same public forums, sit on the same policy-making committees and share a wide range of common institutional aspirations. In every conceivable way the private and public universities are just as inserted into society, just as involved in political lobbying and at least as attracted to economic benefits as their public counterparts. Consistently in the international university league tables, an annual series of cerebral beauty contests, the prestigious private universities have led the field.62 Their status as a referential model, indeed as a performance model, continues to have a profound effect on how the public universities esteem themselves and frame their policies. It is precisely because of their influence and the cyclical undercurrent of rumor about the merits of privatizing public universities that what they do is of great importance. The example they set, the policies they pursue and the stance recognized by the public, to leave it at its broadest, that they develop to the issues of the day cascade into how state-funded universities, many of which are relatively “young,” shape their own agendas – especially the most insecure ones. Just being private in itself does not absolve institutions from responsibility for the ethical implications of their work. The process of transformation in the universities is marked by a tendency to move the once peripheral activities to the core and the core to the periphery. Governments, funding agencies and international policy agencies regularly make appeals for the universities to become more relevant. “Relevant to what?” is the question. And the answer is usually the national economic interest, padded out with references to global trends, competitiveness, innovation requirements, and of course the Common Good. This new alignment of the university carries important implications for how public money is spent, who benefits and why certain policies are favored. Even at their very best, the command economies of the communist bloc were unable to synchronize university activity with the national marketplace shortfalls. Nonetheless, international agencies such as the World Bank, the World Trade Organization and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recommend that the university be in lockstep with global economic development. These demands amount to an imposition of a purpose on the sector, one that was once treated as a throw from providence. Regardless of any limitations of the traditional “disinterested” university, new global economic policy demands that the university reinvent itself as distinctly interest-driven. Its “good” intentions are equated with its economic ambitions. Debate about these policies has divided into “pro” and “anti” camps, although some have tried to divine a synergy in the new institutions. For
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Prolegomenon 23
example, a sense that a fundamental change in the ontology of the university is coming about, of phoenix-like proportions, is teased out in the work of Ronald Barnett. He argues arrestingly that the university is entering an age of “supercomplexity.”63 Its only means of survival will require nothing less than the “death and resurrection” of the institution. The general iconography of death and resurrection, demise and renewal, is powerfully embedded in Western culture. It is a potent motif to introduce into discussion of higher education policy. Given the scale of challenges set the sector, and the scale of changes it is expected to accommodate, the motif is not as esoteric as it might seem. Barnett is less clear about whether the death should be voluntary or involuntary. Will it be suicide or institutional manslaughter at the hands of industry, government and at least some academic stakeholders? The important dimension of the idea, not to be lost in mythic connotations, is Barnett’s insight that the university after transformation is unlike the university before transformation.64 This realization lies at the heart of the alchemy winding its way though policy formation. It also justifies describing university transformation, the commercialization of higher education effectively, as radical transformation. The difference between the traditional and the emerging new, it is intended, will not be one of degree but of kind. It is this insistence on changing both the cultural and organizational ontology of the university that is so redolent of ancient alchemical rites and objectives. Among the factors driving the imposition of market-oriented policies on the university is the “need” to remain competitive in a global market. Technological innovation is credited with delivering a crucial advantage over rivals. It is the backdrop against which all university restructuring dramas are played out. The virtual disappearance of restrictions on trade and capital investment over the past 25 years has enabled trade and services to “move” around the planet more freely, and quickly, than before. The net effect is that low-cost labor markets have been “opened up” to multinational investment boosting in turn local consumer demand. Policy consensus is that high-cost “old” economy countries need to rely increasingly on innovation and advanced service provision to remain productive. It is taken for granted that innovation is grounded in developments in (a) information and communication technology (ICT), and (b) pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.65 Given the assumptions about productivity, policy direction and the range of powerful stakeholders involved in policy formation, it was logical that the universities be looked upon as sources of unexploited innovation treasures.66 Although individual states may adopt diverse policies towards higher education in the face of global “threats,” and react differently to regional needs, there are three common positions fuelling the demand for change in the publicly funded university sector. These are (1) consumerist disenchantment with public sector services, (2) political commitment to the hypothesis that the research outputs of the
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24 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
university can dramatically enhance economic growth, and (3) scaremongering about a twin crisis in funding and graduate production by academic lobbies. Taken collectively, the traditional roles of university-as-beneficiary and state-as-benefactor are being inverted. The state is a benefactor only in so far as it expects to become a net beneficiary (through economic spillover); while the university wishes to multiply its likely benefits “beyond number” by becoming a selective benefactor of chosen commercial activities. Patenting and licensing, both of which may confer private benefits, have priority over the public good. The latter, understood as public benefactions flowing from the universities into society, may cease if they have commercial potential.67 In the first and second instance, the state presents itself as an investor expecting a much greater return on its investment. The implication that the public service, the universities therein, are not “doing enough” to justify the subsidy they receive is an altogether different proposition from the one stating that they are not doing enough for the economy. It is the latter that has arrived center stage post-Bologna and more recently with the Lisbon Strategy.68 The observations by the European University Association on the Lisbon Strategy highlight the economic potential of the sector and its willingness to serve the “knowledge society.” In a mechanically unphilosophical document, 29 policy objectives are divided into 6 categories, none of which refers to conflicts of interest, ethical research investment, the moral aspirations of the sector or the contract that ought to exist and be strengthened between society and the universities.69 Putative “public sector inefficiency” has been cited as an additional reason for backing commercial initiatives in the university sector. Many research grant programs explicitly require applicants to make a commercial case for their application over and above its scholarly merit. Despite the flow of criticism in many states of public sector inefficiency and wastage, there is little evidence of substantial reductions of numbers. For example, the UK, Ireland and Italy have witnessed increased public sector employment in the past ten years.70 Numbers of public service employees in education have consistently risen over the same period. This trend is repeated across the OECD.71 The state may very well want to retreat from the welfare state, but has not shown a clean pair of heels. Redefinition of the state’s traditional relationship with the university catapults institutional restructuring center stage. An increased role for managerialism is required to move the institutions away from traditional collegiate structures towards a type of corporate structure, favoring “top down” decision making, quality assessment and performance measuring.72 Governments and commissioned experts concur that the collegiate model is inefficient for the new global economy, and need it be said, the “knowledge economy.” The importance modern states attach to developing a knowledge economy, one based largely on exploiting the notional riches of the third-level research environment, has not arisen by happenstance. A systematic process to infiltrate knowledge economy thinking onto national agendas has been diligently
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Prolegomenon 25
pursued by the OECD according to one review of its policies.73 No fewer than 60 indicators of the knowledge economy are collected by the OECD currently, which collectively underpin and legitimate policies. On the one hand, the data provides empirical evidence of strengths and weaknesses in areas deemed crucial to supporting the knowledge economy’s development, while on the other the sheer weight of data appraised under the auspices of the OECD adds political cachet to associated policies. Such a policy critique is not derived from occult renderings of unpublished documents. Within OECD policy circles there is official consensus that what binds a state’s economic growth and employment prospects together are its “knowledge stock” and “learning capabilities.”74 Improving both, in terms of quality and access, is considered crucial to technological innovation and ipso facto wealth creation. An important outcome of these policy explorations is an acceptance that traditional output measures, such as numbers of academics, postgraduates, papers, research grants, and so forth, do not constitute a reliable measure of progress towards a knowledge economy. Rather, while these are acknowledged as necessary, the important consideration is how the knowledge stock is put to use. In other words, the level of interactions with market forces has become a significant measure of policy efficacy – if not, in fact, the significant measure. The precise contour of the knowledge economy shifts depending on the forum. At one remove it marks a radical change in production patterns. But it can also be understood as merely a bandwagon concept – a rhetorical magnet sufficient to gather up whatever is good on the laboratory bench, and sufficiently vague, “flexible,” to admit the interests of diverse constituencies including politicians, industrialists and academics. In a narrow sense, it recognizes that professionalized knowledge and training in modern societies is increasing as more people achieve higher levels of educational attainment. Reminiscent of a protean involution, the idea suggests an intelligent progressive intentionality, affirming that following through on knowledge economy initiatives (whatever they are) is a betterment obligation, a process of perfection. It is premature at this point to anatomize the discrete nerves and sinews as they stretch into all areas of higher education, but it is imperative to suggest that concepts like the knowledge economy and its fellow-traveller the “information society” contain a utopian seed. Rather like the witch doctor shaking his beads in anticipation of the harvest yet to come, the policy entrepreneur sprinkles knowledge economy nostrums about to ward off prejudicial traditional phantoms. In both cases, a requirement to keep at bay dystopian specters overrides all objections to means, ends and consequences. Promotion of the knowledge economy as an ideological axiom that all economies should be shaped around academic knowledge to secure growth is not a neutral undertaking. In Europe, the knowledge economy as state-of-becoming has received a great deal of airing in EU policy declarations about the future shape of higher education. Elaborations of the purpose of the
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Prolegomenon 27
universities in the knowledge economy are noticeably concerned with innovation, economic growth and higher education governance. Helpfully, a doyen of higher education consultancy and professional academic, Malcolm Skilbeck, sums up official European attitudes with the suitable understatement that
The Dearing Report in the UK, the Australia West Committee Report, the Skilbeck Report in Ireland, the Bricall Report in Spain and the Attall Report in France, all conclude that a fundamental change in university governance is required to bring about a new dawn in higher-education-driven research and innovation. A managerial “ad-hocracy” in higher education is potentially too erratic to offer an alternative vision, even in the most collegial atmosphere. The recommendations gain further support from OECD reviews of national higher education systems, which usually advocate changes and “improvements” in governance. Even at the highest levels of academic leadership one can detect no significant dissent. Commentary from the European University Association on the Lisbon Declaration fully accepts that governance reform is a major priority for the sector.76 Corporate management models are favored because a corporate model would knit the university more tightly into the industrial development agenda of the state. However, it is an assumption that a change in governance, a shift to a corporate style with manager-deans and executives from non-academic business sectors, will meet the targets set by national governments; targets that are fully endorsed by higher education bodies such as the European University Association. One is tempted to harangue the thinking as a fine example of modern cargo cult devotion. The original Micronesian cargo cults built jetties and airports in the expectation that if they imitated the facilities and processes of colonial companies, they too would enjoy the comforts of unlimited amounts of cargo. Like many exercises in sympathetic magic, it was an unmitigated failure. In his analysis of the many management fads that have swept over the higher education sector, Birnbaum concluded that the gap between intended management outcomes
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if there is one factor presently underlying the ambitions of nations in seeking competitive advantage, it is the encouragement and application of knowledge. The twin engines of knowledge are research and education or, more precisely, research-based innovation and formal schooling, from infancy to adulthood. Undeniably, there is a global race to build powerful, knowledge-based economies, and to infuse them with a permanent dynamic of innovation, creativity, and international competitiveness. Schooling is an integral part of the race. The “most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world” was the major strategic goal for the decade set by the European Commission in 2002.75
and actual ones is particularly acute in the universities.77 There is an added danger that with so many demands for change arising so frequently the sector will develop a “burnt over” feel, similar to that experienced by congregations jaded from the ministrations of teams of revivalist preachers. One of the paradoxes of the “change agenda” is that while many governments have moved to grant increased autonomy to their universities, the new notional “freedom” has come at a price. The costs include greater accountability, the acceptance of new stakeholders or old ones in newly defined roles and a blanket subscription to market values and practices.78 University transformation could not happen if the state and global agencies were unable to insinuate marketplace values into the equations of change at some point. Having something to trade, and a market to trade in, are both necessary to make a market. Steering the universities towards this type of thinking is therefore necessary for change to occur. It is an essential part of the enchantment. This is the juncture where the commoditization of higher education and the insistence on a consumer model of the educational experience gain persuasive significance. Without these concepts coming into play, the rest of the panoply of market jargon would be a harmless exercise in armchair economic speculation. The export of education and the correlative rise of the student-consumer have created potentially enormous commercial opportunities for universities and their governments. Education export from Australia, for example, is its third largest service export.79 The focus on industry–university linkages and the great spoils to be liberated from the research university are major planks in global thinking about university transformation. The acceptance of the linkage is so widespread that to question it is akin to appearing confounded upon meeting a man with two legs. All over the developed world, science research policies are being shaped to serve economic objectives; shaped to throw off products and technologies for commercial exploitation. Industry benefits by both accessing the basic research for “free” and being ready to mop up any commercial spillover. Since science policy is inextricably bound up with postgraduate training and the development of succeeding generations of researchers, ethical shortcomings here may have deleterious effects on the formation of the universities’ most valuable asset, human capital. Mary Henkel observes that with commercial values flooding research policy, postgraduates are increasingly urged to look at the commercial potential of their work. She worries that the focus on commercial values and intellectual property rights are distorting the traditional scholarly focus of postgraduate formation in favor of market-driven demands.80 Bolting the university research sector to industrial, largely multinational interests, gives the state a cachet with industry. Industry attitudes towards their host nations’ alleged cachet can be revealing. Evidence from Ireland, with a 50-year history of foreign direct investment (FDI), overwhelmingly
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Prolegomenon 29
suggests that financial incentives, by way of tax concessions, carry far more cachet than governmental flirting with industry–university linkages. Low rates of corporation tax and preferential treatment of intellectual property rights have acted as major lures. A study conducted on behalf of the US Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), which had access to confidential firmlevel data on multinational companies, concluded that
Ireland and Luxemburg were identified as “popular tax havens” for US multinational investment. Profitability figures released by the BEA for 2005 revealed that US multinationals operating in Ireland declared $48 billion in profits for that year – a steady year-on-year rise since 1998 in line with reduced corporation taxation rates.82 The UK-based charity Christian Aid produced a concordant study in May 2008 confirming Ireland’s popularity as a tax haven for multinationals.83 Yet even in this low-tax climate, companies like US software giant Adobe’s two Irish subsidiaries had a combined turnover of US$2.6bn (€1.66bn/ £1.31bn) last year yet paid just US$5m (€3.19m/£2.53m) in Irish corporate tax, an effective rate of 0.5 per cent. The company trades extensively within itself and, as it doesn’t report a geographical breakdown, it is very difficult to see exactly where profits are made and what taxes are paid. In the same month the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, was reported as being sufficiently concerned by the shift of UK multinationals to Ireland’s accommodating tax regime as to consider amending domestic tax law.84 Irrespective of higher education policy, corporate tax incentives are hugely significant to an economy’s growth. A 2007 OECD study showed that Ireland has fared remarkably well overall from FDI. Some $62 billion flowed into the country between 2001 and 2003, while $40 billion flowed out due to a US tax amnesty in 2004/5. In 2006, inflow was back up to $12 billion.85 As impressive as these figures are, between 1973 and 1983 US multinationals were making profits of £800 million annually on a total investment of £3000 million. Financial correspondent Ken O’Brien writing in The Irish Times described the US multinationals as “vague” on what happened to their profits. At that point in time, profits could not be repatriated to the US without being further taxed. O’Brien quotes one spokesman as saying “we don’t know what to do with our accumulated earnings in Ireland.” US Commerce Department figures at
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[t]he behavior of U.S. multinational firms as revealed by the evidence collected by the BEA surveys consistently demonstrates that taxes play a critical role in shaping the volume and location of foreign investment, the financing of foreign investment, and the organizational structures of multinational firms.81
the time showed profit levels on average of between 25 and 30 percent.86 One may conclude that little if any of the profits of this period made their way into supporting higher education research initiatives. Bearing out the suspicion that the multinationals adopted a near-colonial attitude to local enterprises, a study of linkages between multinational corporations and local companies showed at best a weak spillover effect.87 There was only slight evidence that the latter were improving their R&D as a result of contacts with the multinationals. Despite the enormous financial benefits accruing from their Irish operations, few corporations were seriously interested in the development of indigenous companies that could potentially become competitors. Interestingly, this position is consistent with the theoretical result of Glass and Saggi – when FDI is particularly attractive to a corporation, a government should act to discourage it precisely because such corporations will suppress potential spillovers.88 Several studies have not uncovered convincing evidence that the promotion of higher education is nothing other than one factor among others that influence multinational investment. In a study of Ireland’s attractiveness for FDI Barry and Bradley identified a wide variety of factors among which were macroeconomic stability, the emergence of a “streamlined” bureaucracy, infrastructural improvements and increases in educational attainment.89 In a later study of the linkage between FDI and higher education, Barry, noting that traditional higher education policies concentrated on providing skilled labor, observed that the future challenge would be the provision of an FDI-led innovation environment.90 And though corporations have formed research alliances with individual higher education institutions, the fact remains that the quality of Ireland’s second level and primary levels is uneven. Barry concludes that the sustainability of linkages is dependent upon improving results at second level in line with international recommendations. The wisdom of “betting the house” on thirdlevel outputs alone seems highly speculative. Ferreira and Vanhout, in a study of human capital factors assumed to underlie the “Celtic Tiger,” such as the “quantity” of education, note that educational attainment in Ireland between 1980 and 2000 was paralleled in other European countries.91 Indeed, they further argue that assumptions about the Irish experience as qualitatively better are not borne out by international comparisons in reading and mathematics attainment. Results are at best inconclusive. Ireland is largely a middling performer in these areas. Educational spending is also in the middle range of OECD competitor countries. Weighing education, let alone higher education which has received selective governmental attention, against other factors such as low wages and investment “friendly” financial incentives does not produce convenient proof of a critical contribution by higher education to economic growth. Universities around the globe have been in a state of continual response to rafts of state, industrial, global and consumer goals. The pressure to
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Prolegomenon 31
maintain a focus on change has become an end in itself. The “threat” of globalization is used in much the same way that Goldstein served to consolidate political loyalty in Orwell’s 1984. Few academics would disagree with Ingrid Moses’ review of institutional autonomy in Australia, when she writes,
And still questions remain about the ethical implications of the myriad changes imposed on and generated within the transformed university. How is this affecting them ethically? And as for the Common Good, at times, in the midst of so much consumerism, one could be forgiven for concluding that only the desires for personal profit, wealth and power remain the true constants marking human endeavor. Modern consumerism is partly a reaction to traditional public sector values that emphasized public service and restraint, even if not always followed to the letter. If anything threatens good judgment, it is the unchecked multiplication of desires. Aspects of the agenda for change are worthwhile, but many aspects are delusional, quite simply stubborn false beliefs. Who would think it reasonable if several multinationals were told to transform themselves into higher education institutions over the course of a few years? The same interests have no difficulty and see no incongruity in advising the universities to restructure themselves with business practices to the fore. Tellingly, the very same interests limit their concentration to the here and now. If they were to look back on the history of commerce within living memory, they would notice a large attrition rate among companies that would if time moved backwards be cited as exemplary models for university attention. The Standard & Poor’s index of 500 best performing companies in 2006 contained approximately 70 companies from 50 years previously. The other 400 odd from 1956 had disappeared one way or another. Inferring therefore that the universities would do better if they moved closer to marketplace activities is far from certain. University-related consumerism is intimately related to governments seeking to secure greater legitimacy with free market interests. It is also influenced by the university obsession with internal beauty contests advertised as “league tables.” Each stakeholder, the state, industry, and university, manufactures its
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within the boundaries of the changing autonomy universities have been responsive to societal expectations. They have been value adding considering the broad access to higher education; they have been trying to be learner centred for some 20–30 years; they are of uneven but generally high quality; they are all committed to equity; they are responsive to stakeholders; they are diverse and trying to be more so; they promote innovation and innovative people; and they are flexible within the constraints of legislation and agreements, cost-effective, publicly accountable and socially responsible.92
own propaganda, makes tactical alliances and generally entrenches to secure its own self-interest. How all of this affects the institutions, the value of higher learning and society at large, are central concerns with sometimes troubling and contentious answers. Tackling these questions piecemeal by picking off one policy or another, or criticizing one research collaboration or another may be useful. Inconsistencies and contradictions may be revealed. The occasional conflict of interest may crash onto the classroom floor. Ultimately, it is unsatisfying. A framework of values, of purposes, of ebbs and flows in contemporary and historical tradition provides a better set of standards with which to assess the concerns above. Some academics, perhaps many, will argue that there are no questions to be asked beyond clarifying implementation details. In this mold, tradition plays no useful role. It is stagnant. To the academic committed to modernism in university management, calls to respect tradition appear to have all the respectability of a séance. Society is so widely infiltrated with consumerist values and practices that it is little wonder that the universities have been stirred to cupidity. The unbridled pursuit of “relevance” in courses and research has created an academic covetousness that extends over the possession of the “best” people, ascension in university league tables, bulging files of patents, industrial “spin-offs,” celebrity honorary degrees, jealous shepherding of donors and permanent assuaging of “pet” politicians. The hypothesis that investment in R&D boosts industrial output and secures jobs has been accorded doctrinal status.93 Such thinking risks confusing cause and effect. An OECD report on Ireland’s academic performance, for example, applauds investment in higher education for raising employment.94 No proof is offered that this (assumed) causal relationship exists. The reverse is equally plausible – that full employment accelerated investment in education. Separation between academe and commerce does not imply elitism, isolationism or lack of relevance. But it does imply independence in outlook. When the world of commerce looked on the university, it saw that academe had none of the vices it admired and all of the virtues it detested. Of course that is a shibboleth. Benefactors of universities, private and public, have often expected concessions. Few are immune. Even the iconic Oxbridge institutions have been subject to government influence intermittently over the years. A study of honorary degrees awarded by Oxford and Cambridge between 1900 and 2000 revealed that “after the war, both Oxford and Cambridge used honorary degrees to reinforce the UK’s alliances with the USA and its western European allies, principally France and West Germany.”95
Concluding remarks Everywhere higher education finds itself in a process of continuous performance appraisal. Those institutions that are publicly funded have come in for particular scrutiny. Governments demand improved accountability,
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32 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
Prolegomenon 33
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more outputs and greater engagement with national economic objectives. What exactly much of this means, and how it impacts on the public sphere that is shared by higher education and Common Good, are the subjects of this work.96 The results here are just one set of views, one set of arguments, resting on reciprocal beliefs that civil society needs the university and the university needs civil society. Just what these needs are, and the extent to which they are recognized, let alone realized, strike at the heart of contemporary analyses and government policies. It would be hard, if not impossible, to conclude an analysis of the status of the university without having not just a sense of its purpose, but also a sense of the purposes various stakeholders assign the institution. Purposes may conflict. They may be benign in intent but in practice are insidious. Policies shaping the sector are confused, riddled with a precipitous enthusiasm for change at all cost. Terrible as it may seem, but perhaps the price of change is the triumph of ambiguity in ends and ambivalence in attitudes.
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2 Shopping in the Aula Maxima
The Milan Furniture Fair is the archetypal showcase for preciously crafted artifacts. It has a fairground atmosphere where the surreal combines with the technological and Design parades its love affair with Innovation. For casual visitors, if they manage to brave the throng of perfumed aesthetes, artistes, and literati, the fair is a cathedral to discerning global consumerism. It offers the modern pilgrim-consumer something of the sense of splendor that so awed the weary travelers of earlier ages. Aisle upon aisle, shelf upon shelf, is tactfully arranged with products that are at least as carefully marketed as they are crafted; icons as robust in definition and suggestiveness as any medieval Madonna. The beauty and elegance of many products are undeniable, striking even. But what is more conspicuous is the Babel of languages detected in the hubbub of cooing approval. Serious citizens from lands that European explorers once boasted imperiously to have “discovered” discuss delivery logistics, make distribution deals and place volume orders. Negotiations hinge on export guarantees, quality assurance, brand recognitions and quotas. Demonstrating its global force, and far from being a bar, modernity dominates taste. Traditional products are “refocused” with new modern materials and motifs. Strange geometrical forms precision molded from polycarbonate are sat on and sat at. Muscular shapes in the latest timber technology lie about coquettishly, confident of catching an admiring eye. The presence of neutral woods, natural textiles, and the prominent advertising of “green thinking” signal that though designers favor mobile phones, laptops and the Blackberry, they are conscientious folk tuned to the mood swings of the public – and the need to make a buck. The more time spent browsing, the more the fairground reveals itself as a place of entertainment. To attract and retain attention, customer attention, designers are reduced to “stunts.” The requirement to produce something new, something novel out of a hat (or more likely from a bathroom unit designed by the latest genius), is preponderant. It is a competitive business, not just all beauty and reflective chrome. Leaving aside the 34
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Furniture for the masses
Shopping in the Aula Maxima 35
By 2010 there will be 200 million people in China with the equivalent of a European middleclass income. Consumer spending in urban China is rising by 10–12% a year, every year. That is a market bigger than France, Germany and Spain combined, with an estimated spending power on high-value goods of 1 trillion euros a year by the end of the decade. And the Indian middle class will be about the same size, and growing… By 2010 China will be the biggest consumer of wine in the world – which makes it the world’s biggest market for Chianti and Barolo and Amarone. Global coffee consumption will rise by 6% over this decade – most of it among newly-rich consumers in the developing world… The twentieth century European furniture industry – like the European textile and shoe industries – was built on mass production, but it will survive on quality and brand identity, which is why Italy’s frequently smaller but professional producers have a future if they adapt and follow new market trends and trade flows. In a world where almost anything could be made anywhere, identity is everything. Europe has more design and fashion brands than the rest of the world put together and Italy is the epitome of that European reputation for design, style and quality. Globalisation plays straight to that strength – it creates global markets and outlets for locally produced highend goods. And not just in fashion or lifestyle goods but in white goods and precision engineering as well.1 Mandelson’s speech, part prescription and part description, was an embrace of global merchandising imperatives. It recommended exploiting European brand name recognition, adapting production processes and emphasizing quality assurance. Europe must innovate was its central theme. The facts are deemed uncomplicated: the once Third World is becoming a powerful consumer force. Profit from it, or go under. Perhaps it was overlooked because of the audience, the venue or the enormous size of his portfolio, but had the Trade Commissioner added higher
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fawning and drooling that occur, and not just by the designers and industry representatives, the fair is a cameo of the world today. It is the same world where the global educated classes express ersatz commonality through shared tastes in lattes, mochas and herbal tea. What happens at these global fairgrounds, the trends they mirror, are not incidental to the future of higher education. Significantly, they already presage it. The EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson presses his benedictions on the event, admiring with a connoisseur’s gaze the harvest of ideas. Impressed, he confesses, “I’d need a new house to hold the furniture I’d like to take home.” His main need is not a new house though. He is here to remind the exhibitors of the global market at their feet. What opportunities are theirs for exploitation – even if the ground under them is ablaze with low-wage competition. The Trade Commissioner, tuning his voice to a persuasive pitch, notes:
36 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
education to his list of furniture, shoes, and lifestyle goods for global marketing it would not have seemed incongruous. Who could be surprised to learn that
Extrapolating from furnishing homes to furnishing minds elicits several common themes in higher education: globalization, commoditization, consumerism, innovation and industrialization. The most obvious is the emphasis on producing commodities for export. Just as household goods are exported and imported – traded – so is education increasingly accepted as tradable. The growth of the trade in higher education, particularly in China, has meant that the establishment of overseas branch campuses appears to be more advanced here than elsewhere. And such initiatives, very real pointers though they are towards the “commodification” of education, are for that very reason also pointers to the importance that China itself has for the hawkers of e-learning, the sellers of e-business and the practitioners of virtual learning.3 Medical degrees led the way historically in the “internationalization” of higher education in attracting overseas students. Within the past generation, however, almost every imaginable degree is marketed beyond a host country’s borders. The likely implications of the activity, in terms of the example it sets for tolerance of market forces, are influenced by a second theme. Hand in glove with the global marketing of higher education is the rise of the student-consumer. Without consumerist values coating academic and managerial policies about restructuring the university, change initiatives would arguably collapse with springs and stuffing everywhere. Consumerist thinking elicits a favorable reaction from the larger economy. It lends firmness to academic policy discussions.4 This, by turns, grants other vested interests, among them industry and funding providers, a hold on the intellectual capital of the university. All consequential transformation in the sector, as a commodity provider, stems from the coincidence of commercial agendas shared between industry, the state and lastly the university. To explain the drive towards higher education commoditization it is necessary to consider two interdependent influences. One is the creation
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the cover of the Fall 1999 Abercrombie and Fitch catalog provides final proof, if any were needed, of the interpenetration of consumerism and American study abroad. The cover simply declares “Study Abroad” in bold red letters above the half-naked body of a 20-something White male, with vague hints in the background that he might be in London. It does not even mention the name of Abercrombie and Fitch. Obviously, companies now see study abroad as a large enough market among young adults to use it as a marketing strategy.2
Shopping in the Aula Maxima 37
of educational commodities and the other is the emergence of the student as customer, as consumer. The task is to reconstruct how these influences play a role in designating higher education as a saleable good.
After stripping out product descriptors, Mandelson’s speech is a lucid statement of official attitudes towards globalization, consumerism, competition, innovation and productivity. Its key principles transpose mutatis mutandis onto the higher education sector, especially the universities. Throughout the developed world, higher education has been urged to recruit overseas students, market courses abroad, set up global outreach campuses, and make itself relevant to consumer needs, i.e. student needs.5 The World Bank, World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), at various intervals urge the higher education institutions of the developed world to increase global access to educational programs. These bodies reflect the EU Trade Commissioner’s points, except directed towards higher education. The establishment of overseas branches by US, UK, Australian and Irish universities evidences widespread pursuit of a higher education export agenda.6 All too often the globalization policies appear driven less by altruistic concerns about fellow humankind, and more by economic imperatives and state directives. The unanimous importance placed on the global marketing of higher education by so many national and international policy agencies dictates that the process is unlikely to wither in the near future, barring an international force majeure. An immediate analytical reaction might be to scrutinize the meaning of globalization in the hope of finding solace in some unreported terminological ambiguity. To avoid the likelihood of being trapped underground in definitional tunnels, globalization here is understood to refer to “global flows of information and resources along networks transcending nation-states’ influence and disturbing nationallyorganized systems and practices. Such networks intimately connect the local and the global and may have any combination of physical, social and economic characteristics.”7 This does not deny that globalization has other dimensions but purely focuses on its broad intersection with the roots of economic prosperity. Why are overseas students, especially undergraduates desired? Because they pay fees – once upon a time the business of empire demanded a trained civil service, but this is no more. Postgraduates may bring a lesser fee income, but may bring more research capital for exploitation. Occasionally, there is a gap between a policy and the cost of its implementation. Not every institution is equally well equipped for the global marketplace. The business of overseas HE is complex and costly. The university sector is learning from past recruitment mistakes. A 1997 survey of UK institutional responses to postal enquiries from overseas students revealed tardiness in
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Exporting higher education: commoditization
replying to queries. Often, insufficient attention was paid to producing the specific information required. The study concluded that on commercial grounds “this is madness,” warning that a university that deals responsively and provides a “personal customer service” will stand out “from the crowd.”8 An Irish survey from the same period of medical undergraduates revealed dissatisfaction with the lack of dedicated contact staff. The study lamented likewise that the universities were displaying significant gaps in their attitudes towards marketing. Did they not understand that recruitment was influenced by the experience of family and friends in their institutions? Any negatives in that experience could jeopardize repeat business.9 Recent figures from the UK, as an example, are consistent with claims that the universities have improved their marketing. In the past ten years, enrolments of non-EU international students have more than doubled, generating fee income of approximately £1.5 billion.10 The appointment of international student officers, “meet and greet” contact staff, translators and culturally aware counselors are not routine elements on every campus, but a glance at the websites of universities marketing education overseas reveals they have been increasing.11 These changes can be viewed benignly, and even enthusiastically, if understood as a utilitarian response – as services that “help” the overseas student adjust to a foreign environment. An alternative view is that they are merely the thin end of a consumer wedge – not that thin in practice, rather thick in that the policy creates several more stakeholder groups in the bureaucracy. In practical terms, such services are largely an economic response to a demand, but that does not preclude their being ethical as well. Nevertheless, a cynic might argue with some conviction that helping the overseas student boosts the business of education, and since all business depends on repeat business, helping the student is primarily a commercial decision rather than a moral one. At the risk of cynicism, it must be admitted that the motivation for assistance is often bound up with commercial objectives. If a sizeable amount of fee income is supplied by a small number of students, that financial fact, coupled with “customer service” prescriptions, has its own gravitas. This leads inevitably to the fear that more will be done for those who pay the most. The scope of the assistance may extend beyond what is reasonable or desirable. In some instances the structures that facilitate assistance may ease exploitation and in extreme cases outright corruption. If an institution is new to the overseas market, it will have difficulty attracting suitable cohorts of able students. A publicly funded university may have pledged (in a Hobson’s choice sense) a state agency that it would indeed raise a portion of operating costs from overseas student fees. Retaining students becomes not just a pedagogical objective, but also a financial one. To all intents and purposes, the overseas fee income is a source of potential profit. And where choices exist about the means for maximizing profits, latent conflicts of interest abound. In broad terms, a conflict of interest exists when a private
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interest clashes with a (public or official) duty that may result in a loss of impartiality. If a university decides that its overseas fee income (its “interest”) is jeopardized by a higher failure rate among its overseas students, it may decide to reinterpret the rules governing exams, or make questionable adjustments to its public duty to examine all students fairly – it surrenders its impartiality, in other words. Opportunities such as these may give rise to malpractices – unethical academic practices – and malpractice does occur even in academe. Common malpractices, benefiting both domestic and overseas students, include minimizing failure rates by ignoring plagiarism, marking up exams, or introducing ad hoc compensation schemes.12 Such malpractices are guided by the concern not to lose the students’ economic input.13 In one instance, students in an Australian-managed offshore university in Malaysia (the university’s graduate school for business) had been failed for plagiarism. However, their work was “secretly” remarked and subsequently passed. In other instances, mitigation relies on perceptions of the Internet being in some inchoate sense an “ethics-free zone.” Because its technology formation is incomplete, its use incurs little moral cost in acts of cheating, fraud and document theft. The value to the miscreant lies in the efficiency of the technology and the ease with which “relevant” material can be retrieved. Rather than assign culpability exclusively to the technology or the student, some researchers prefer to take a broader institutional perspective, arguing “Internet plagiarism is symptomatic of declining trust and the degrading of the conditions needed to maintain a community strong in intellectual virtue. It is not the disease itself.”14 Despite democratic societies and their universities valuing meritocratic norms, malpractices in admission, examination and research are far from uncommon. Recruiting international students imposes significant overheads on many universities – leaving aside the questionable practices and merchandising that recruiting agents employ on occasion. Short-term or short-cycle courses may not be economically viable, as the “cost” of providing the courses is not met by the additional fee income.15 Universities lacking a tradition in overseas student recruitment are at a disadvantage. OECD figures for 2007 show that more than 50 percent of the market in overseas students is absorbed by the US, the UK and Germany.16 The remaining 20-odd OECD countries retain between 7 and 1 percent of the market each. Significantly, in absolute numbers, Australia, Canada, the UK and the US dominate the market. Reinforcing the advantages of a common linguistic heritage, the Anglophone countries of Australia, Ireland and New Zealand recently showed the greatest growth in foreign students between 2000 and 2005.17 It follows that education export policy in the Anglophone countries is de facto the dominant policy for globalized higher education. The conclusion may be strengthened further: their practices have become the standard of legitimacy in education export. If the paradigmatic thinking of the WTO and the OECD is embraced then a university is a brand name, and education is an export commodity. Every
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Shopping in the Aula Maxima 39
curriculum risks being reduced to a bare marketing hook. Satisfying “consumer” demand means making high-value courses available to those who will pay the most. Admission standards are often adjusted in the rush to fill overseas student places.18 In Ireland medical students from overseas can be admitted on lower qualifying standards than EU citizens.19 A quota system arbitrarily decided upon by the government in 1978 set an upper limit on the number of EU students admissible to medical degree courses – on average 30 percent of places are automatically reserved for overseas non-EU students. This is just one example of entry standards adjusted in the interests of keeping the market happy. There may be a fear among universities that if one of them should baulk at this principle, the others would find some casuistry to justify absorbing the disgruntled consumers. Perhaps, this is an example of the problematic reality of competition in the age of consumer values. More certain forms of corruption entail selling exam papers, bribery to pass exams, awarding unearned qualifications, and false accreditations – several of these abuses occur even in countries with long university traditions. The behavior is hardly surprising as the global market in higher education qualifications is driven by a heated consumerism that many OECD members might prefer to deny. The universities may be oversensitive about casting their recruitment activities, let alone fund raising, as exercises in consumerism. But what else are they? Every student recruitment “fair” is saturated with tables groaning under the weight of laptops showing an institution’s latest benefactions to humankind, stacks of gaudy course brochures and free pens, pencils and fridge magnets. A lot of this is unadorned gimmickry, on a par with furniture trade shows except a good deal less aesthetically pleasing. Just how sustainable is education export? Global demographics paint a landscape of an aging world population, with fewer people in the age bracket that is the bedrock of undergraduate enrolment. The world is not likely to run out of young people, barring a global catastrophe, but if population predictions bear out, there will be a shortage in 2050. Less young people, not merely natives but overseas also, will be available to fill university placements. Almost certainly not enough to satisfy education export policies and commitments. Adult learners may be coaxed to enroll but there is no guarantee that they would oblige in sufficient numbers to compensate for the drop in the young cohort. A recent United Nations report noted that both aging and fertility decline are global population trends unlikely to be reversed in the near future. There is a marked transition from high to low fertility in Europe. It is unlikely to be a random feature, as the trend has been identified since the nineteenth century. Other concerns are the acceleration of aging in the developed world, and the shrinking of the potential support ratio (PSR): The potential support ratio (PSR), that is, the number of persons aged 15 to 64 per each older person aged 65 years or over, indicates how many
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Shopping in the Aula Maxima 41
Even modest reflection on the above raises troubling questions about where the universities are going to find their students in a generation. If many universities are expanding student numbers under current global education policy initiatives, what happens when expansion is no longer sustainable? The cross-border trade in tertiary education requires students of an age and health status that are found more among the young than the old. As the population ages, government resources will become increasingly strained, leading to a restrictive effect on education funding.21 Aside from shifting demographics, collapses in global economic resources, as witnessed in the “credit crunch” of 2008, pose significant threats.22 Could the overseas student market wither away? It is not impossible. If it happens, it opens up interesting possibilities for the universities to redefine themselves in civil society. At the moment, demographic deficits in Europe mean that it has spare capacity across the higher education sector. If increasing numbers of countries find themselves with spare capacity over the coming decades, there will likely be a huge contraction in the sector. Governments will sharply reduce funding. Looked at from the perspective of global demographic trends, it is conceivable that education export is nearing the top of the market, if not already there. Those universities that entered recently stand, relatively speaking, to lose more than established institutions. Nations that once assisted their students to gain education abroad may be obliged to restrict education migration to maintain services. These are conjectures, of course, but startling ones to ponder for universities just embarking on education export. The idea that a market for education might disappear, not entirely, but sufficiently to force major adjustments in the scale of higher education operations may sound overly bleak and exaggerated. But the point is this. If higher education is just another commodity, why should it have any more a secure eternal market than any other commodity? If the universities are intent on plunging themselves wholeheartedly into marketplace practices, there can be no guarantees of perpetual comfort. The commoditization of higher education in the long run could be more destructive than considered previously. As a result, it should be embraced with more circumspection than political agendas allow.
Consumerism and commoditization The idea that education can be bought and sold like furniture, coffee and wine enthuses, frustrates and troubles academics to varying degrees. It has
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potential workers there are per older person. As a population ages, the value of the potential support ratio tends to fall. Between 1950 and 2007, the potential support ratio declined from 12 to 9 potential workers per person aged 65 or over. By 2050, the potential support ratio is projected to drop further to reach 4 potential workers per older person.20
been happening none the less for a very long time. Private universities could not exist without a market in their courses. The commoditization of higher education is a provocative phrase known to raise the hackles of humanists, among others. From one banal perspective, it merely means a trade in education services. A university enrolls graduates using recruitment methods (often through state examination boards). It markets places on its courses, to fill spare capacity on some courses and extend capacity on others. Critics of commercial trends in the universities forget that the internal market between universities in postgraduate admissions could not exist if the institutions themselves did not accept some measure of commoditization. Cross-institutional degree recognition, at least within broad geographical boundaries, is evidence that for decades universities have accepted, through accreditation bodies, the commoditization of qualifications long before “globalization” became contentious. Commoditization traditionally refers to changes in market conditions and competition leading to previously distinct brands becoming undifferentiated products. For example, a well-known breakfast cereal is confronted with several competitors leading in time to a loss of its unique brand identity. A degree is a degree is a degree, is the higher education variant. Undoubtedly some students are more concerned with achieving a specific qualification than the status of their alma mater. A survey of first-year entrants to an Irish medical school showed that less than half the sample had it as a first preference.23 Degree recognition “back home” was the major factor in accepting a place. Undergraduate and postgraduate migratory trends have consistently shown a preference for migration to regions with established authenticated universities.24 And within those regions certain universities have more cachet than others. Name recognition is very important. Differences in fee scales and the willingness of overseas applicants (and indigenous ones) to pay higher fees for enrolment in prestigious universities undermine suspicions that the landscape of higher education is being abruptly leveled. Yet fears about commoditization leading to indistinguishable degree programs based on reducing teaching to a service are widespread concerns among faculty.25 The demands of the student-consumer are never far from the collective university consciousness. The influence of consumer-driven thinking affects how almost any major issue is tackled in the sector. Corporations, research agencies, policy bodies and governments all insert themselves within a supposed consumer loop running between the universities and society. Support for a student-consumer model seems, at best, weak among academics.26 Why does consumerism seem so threatening? One answer is its association with self-interest. In a narrow sense, consumerism is a theory that economic growth benefits from the consumption of goods. The consumption of goods and services is therefore an activity that attracts approval. Consumption in turn involves access to a market where these goods are traded, and where the consumer exercises his or her choice. Different schools of thought offer broader, and competing, theories. As the theories expand to include more phenomena,
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42 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
differences open up. Divergent analytical, ideological and normative assumptions produce mutually hostile accounts. Negative appraisals of consumerism focus on environmental impact, differentials in pay and working conditions, service inequalities and so forth. In this guise consumerism forms an intrinsic component of a sociopolitical outlook usually associated with neoliberal economics. This is related to the “Americanization” of global trade, especially technology.27 The aim here is not to offer a new critique or new theory of consumerism, but it is proper to acknowledge that diverse views exist. Even so, the global boom in trade and services is dependent upon an unprecedented selfinterested consumerism – begging the question: how has it impacted on the universities? If self-interest can be partly measured by a pulling back from political engagement, an increase in consumption and a decline in voluntarism, there is a case worth investigation. One of the most challenging developments facing traditional Western democracies is the rise of an electoral ennui. Voter turnout is low, suspicion of political parties is high and demographic trends in the Eurozone suggest that societies are indifferent towards their own replication.28 Everyday life is peppered with media distractions and inconsequential statements of self-fulfillment. Gossip is promoted to almost eschatological significance. Celebrity status is the mark of consequence and achievement. Conceptual complexity is dismissed as elitist obfuscation. Human suffering must be raised to the level of entertainment to gain credence and attention. Personal satisfaction is heavily dependent upon the worship of frippery including gym shoes, ecologically sensitive heating systems and inordinately complicated beverages. Everywhere the ordinary citizen is struggling for air in an agitated sea of instant gratification. It would be a remarkable testament to complete isolationism if the universities were not affected by consumer sentiments. More disturbing is that all this is occurring in countries containing the graves of some of the greatest thinkers in the history of humankind, the forefathers of modern civilization, and the greatest universities. Studying itself has become a hobby manqué, something to be attended to during intermissions at the fairground. The response of the universities often seems lugubrious, bound up with institutional self-interest. In their obsession with honoring the consumerist slogan that “the customer is always right,” one retired Harvard dean reflected that “the universities, eager to maintain their attractiveness in the marketplace, respond by matching concessions to complaints rather than offering educational vision.”29 The erosion of academic standards is frequently cited as the clearest evidence of pernicious consumerism. Student retention is a case in point. Retaining the greatest number of students possible in the publicly funded sector will produce a rise in funding generally. Privately funded institutions are equally enticed to maintain high retention rates. Not just income, but an institution’s prestige is at risk if failure rates drift too high or grade averages sink too low. A failing student is a dissatisfied customer.
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Shopping in the Aula Maxima 43
When improvements in grade averages are consistent with a rise in the academic caliber of undergraduates, a case can be made that a legitimate increase in grades is a logical outcome. In other circumstances, the suspicion of grade inflation remains. Grade inflation is a controversial subject, the existence of which is mutely debated across the sector. The net effect of inflating grades is that undergraduates receive higher grades (higher grade point averages) than they deserve. It has measurable beneficial consequences. Graduates with higher grades can choose from a broader range of graduate schools, and are likely to receive more prestigious job offers. Whether grade inflation results from disparities in marking practices, uneven faculty skills, or from institutionalized collusion, are moot questions.30 An analysis of rising grades at Harvard over several generations showed no evidence of malpractice. The study offered several reasons for grade inflation including student pressure, tenure evaluations, small courses, better teaching standards by staff, and interuniversity competition.31 In contrast, David Riesman and Allan Bloom attributed grade inflation to a combination of 1960s student militancy and consumerist values. University leaders discovered, they argued, that capitulating to student demands made campus life easier.32 The phenomenon may well have a benign explanation but in the light of current ambiguities over the problematic influence of student consumerism that seems doubtful. Simple oversight, inexperience or a precipitous rush to grab a slice of the student consumer market are other explanations of grade inflation. A study of grade inflation in the seven Irish universities revealed that one university witnessed an exceptional rise in graduates’ grades over the period 1994–2004 – despite no significant improvement in the entry requirements for many courses.33 In percentage terms the improvement was of the order of 500 percent. Over that period of time the same institution was shifting from administration by academic clergy to lay academics, adjusting to a new autonomy, expanding its range of subjects and attempting to attract greater numbers of undergraduates beyond its traditional catchments. Without a strong historical sense of mission, a “new” institution facing multiple pressures risked its engagement with student consumerism becoming overly sensitive, and in the process losing its footing. Grades “cash out” in postgraduate research choices and future employment options. They also affect the allure of an institution. Institutions like to boast that their students are achieving high grades. The US studies mentioned above showed little sign of the grade inflation peaking. In fact in Harvard, when faculty decided to address the issue, the following year grade averages rose again. With so few studies of the practice in print, it is tempting to conclude that it is a rare occurrence.34 However, rising undergraduate admissions coupled with rising graduation rates suggest it is not so much rare as rarely spoken about. The OECD Education at a Glance series reveals that in most countries surveyed the number of graduates is increas-
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44 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
ing annually. At face value, this is an appropriate and welcome trend, but it hides a tension. To enable more students to graduate, entry standards have to drop to recruit the necessary numbers. The baser end of student consumerism is given rein to assert itself. For courses such as medicine, traditionally high entry standards effectively restrict graduate production. Other courses, desperate for students to maintain budgets, must either reduce their standards to fill places or potentially lose staff. Courses in science, technology and mathematics (broadly speaking) have been particularly affected. Across the UK and Ireland, indeed across the OECD, entry into these courses is at a more variable standard than is desirable. The expectation of undergraduates is that they will graduate nevertheless. Their focus is on the output they gain rather than the input they bring. Grade inflation, where it occurs, clearly contributes to student happiness, and thereby helps maintain student consumerism. That much is undeniable. Without a “reasonable” expectation of benefiting from grade inflation, consumerist tendencies among students would be blunted – not thwarted. Any adjustment to grade policies, no matter how equitable, once it is a step away from grade inflation, will inevitably have a deflationary effect on student retention. Without an adjustment in grade inflation policies, traditional standards seem hopelessly naïve rather than appropriate. Not everyone can be above average. In the long term the gains made by a university from grade inflation will jeopardize its academic standing. This is a dilemma facing the marketplace university. If “good” grade averages and high retention rates are among its marketing strengths, how can any university change policy without losing students? To effect change, the linked self-interests of the university and the student must be reformed. Therein lies the challenge.
How can one be against consumerism? Apart from predicted demographic impacts on higher education recruitment and the uncertain status of grade inflation as an incentive to retain students, there are several reasons for rejecting the student-consumer tag. But how can one be against consumerism? It does not seem to make any sense to oppose the notionally weaker party, the student, getting value for money (whatever that might mean), exercising subject choices and demanding assurances about service quality. Growling about students as customers seems like evidence of intended mental cruelty. Nevertheless, the combination of student and consumer is a contrivance of propaganda. The very coupling forces consent on the faculty, with all the sympathetic overtones that innocent-victim evokes in the public mind. It implies an inversion of relations. The uncultivated mind becomes the master of the scholarly one. The tag is a clever device to remove authority from faculty, replace it with obligations, and confer authority on the student while absolving him or her of responsibility. Most fundamentally, it removes the psychological presence of the academic as a factor in
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Shopping in the Aula Maxima 45
undergraduate education. Over and above being a source of analytical and technical skills, the academic also fulfills, perhaps imperfectly, a psychological task. Anonymizing the “teacher” is entirely compatible with other transformation assumptions, such as the idea that technology completely determines organizational structures. Until authority is taken back by faculty, with possible economic repercussions, the current deformity in faculty–student relations will persist. This is pressing task if the university is to recover moral significance in its work.35 There are at least two reasons for reconsidering the importance attached to student-consumer policies. In the first place, academic management may use the promotion of the student-consumer concept through “customer charters” as a useful lubricant for exerting greater managerial control. But students are not authentic customers. One may as well claim that prisoners are customers of the prison system. For in neither instance can the service provider easily shake off the customer, no matter how awkwardly behaved the latter. From time to time unpleasant facts about a student’s performance have to be discussed. Lax standards and grade inflation are expedient where traditional normative principles meet ambivalence and official equivocation. Along a second dimension, consumer jargon suggests to students that their judgment about their learning goals has parity with faculty expertise – rooted in the jaded slogan that “customer is always right.” The converse, which rarely gets a hearing, is the implicit demeaning of faculty advisory roles. Technology has played a contributory role in distancing faculty from students. All too often university administrations insist on inserting the computer into the space between student and faculty member, in the blind assumption that it must be good, meaning better than tradition. As a result, photocopies, web pages, slide shows and even video have been rolled out as evidence of institutional commitment to a knowledge industry. In turn the role of the faculty as more than providers of information is undermined. In the final analysis, the relationship between student and faculty is not intrinsically economic, although other stakeholders including parents present it otherwise.36 Contrary to the assumption expressed by agencies promoting change there is no a priori principle dictating that the interests of faculty and students must coincide on terms that the student finds favorable. The earliest scholars did not teach under the threat of consumer boycott or negative student evaluation. There is a long tradition of academics treating students adequately, fairly and respectfully without any recourse to customer service charters. As long as the university refuses to uphold and renew traditional values, de facto encouraging their erosion, a mature philosophical debate about the responsibilities of student and university to each other is delayed. It is easy to be cynical about such calls, but where else in society can such debates take place?
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46 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
Shopping in the Aula Maxima 47
Et in arcadia ego? Now it is tempting to conclude that there is a great deal of cant in the sector about the commoditization of higher education. And no doubt there is some. But questions about the purpose and value of higher education persist. Every generation has concerns about the direction of education. Where will change carry learning? Who will benefit? What practices and values will be changed? Some issues are recurrent. Bertrand Russell writing in 1935 bemoaned increasing preoccupation with technical education:
Russell enthusiastically promoted “useless” knowledge: knowledge which gave pleasure, made the tapestry of daily life richer, and lent a complementary depth and breadth to specialized learning. His point was that training a student in a skill is not equivalent to training him or her in a purpose. In spite of his admiration for scholarship, Russell offered his view that training in antiquity and the ancient languages had very little relevance in his own day. Tradition unless it takes cognizance of the demands of the day is bound to be less useful. But being “useless” did not mean that it should be repudiated. The indirect benefit of “useless” knowledge is to make life better, more contemplative. The pursuit of professional competence should not be undertaken at the price of acquiring general less technically efficient knowledge. The idea that there is a tension between tradition and newness, humanities and science, is a recurrent theme in modern appraisals of higher education policies. Writing in the1950s, Erwin Panofsky, the art historian, echoed the familiar themes and concerns. “You are paid for educating me; now, damn you, educate me” was an attitude he associated with creeping philistinism.38 The shift in manner, he concluded, emerged from an increasingly functional view of the world; a view derived from a utilitarian framing of the purpose of education. Panofsky’s theorizing on what separates the functional from the aesthetic has a direct bearing on several issues discussed above. Loosely put, the functional object is one whose communication is intended. A traffic light turning red intends a particular communication. Stop! If a driver chooses to ignore the intended communication and focus on a different aspect of the traffic light (perhaps the intensity of light) – see it in a new frame – the aesthetic perception comes to the fore. Sometimes an object must be completely separated from its normal context of use to cause reflection on its functional role and appreciate it aesthetically (Marcel DuChamps’
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Knowledge, everywhere, is coming to be regarded not as a good in itself, or as a means of creating a broad and humane outlook on life in general, but as merely an ingredient in technical skill. This is part of the greater integration of society which has been brought about by scientific technique and military necessity.37
“urinal” being a interesting example). The idea of seeing an object as functional and seeing it as other than functional is at the heart of many misunderstandings between science and the humanities. For the scientist the conflict is almost unbearable, an attack on reason itself. The liberal arts person on the other hand, Panofsky claims, sees the conflict as a necessary tension: a recognition of the ambiguity between what is intended and what is perceived. Business and finance disciplines have a similar difficulty as they share many postulates about scientific measurement and quantification. Since science and its cognate disciplines have enjoyed an economic and ideological ascendancy for several generations through their success in nurturing consumerism, it cannot be a surprise that a functional approach to higher education, its commoditization, has become so widespread. Any equivocation over ethical directions makes the task of steering the university past temptation all the more difficult. The humanities have been unable to build a consensus with science and technology, “technoscience,” about the purpose of a university education.39 Complicating matters, a large number of humanities-linked disciplines, anthropology, sociology, and psychology among others, have adopted scientific methods, such as mathematical modeling, data surveying and statistical analysis, which run counter to the deliberative style of the humanities’ interrogation of phenomena. The quest for certainty across disciplines is increasing the “pull through” of science and technology. This trend towards distributed scientific functionalism serves to further isolate disciplines whose bread and butter is abstract thought. Few scientists would bat an eyelid at population surveys of “happiness,” “boredom” and a host of other dispositions, assuming that the concepts were terminologically unproblematic once properly “parameterized.” However, academic consensus over the purpose of education is equally affected by ambiguities. To understand how this impacts on higher education policy it is necessary to reflect briefly on postmodernism. Critics of commoditization and the rise of technoscience-influenced policy thinking have given more than ample ammunition to their consumeroriented colleagues in not providing a clear vision of the purpose of education. The ground for consensus has been made stonier by the rise of postmodernism in the past 30 years. Difficulties in conceiving concepts that implied “moral significance” became cemented into a rejection of any moral significance. A great deal of postmodern thought is based on rejecting traditional academic consensus. For example Parsons, while advocating a postmodern review of policy, seems to imply that the exercise is self-contradictory: Advocates should also be pious and understand that postmodernism tends to be anti-communitarian while higher education is dependent on communities. In seeking to understand the various narratives that define the multiple higher education policy arenas of the 2000s, advocates should apply postmodernism loosely … (…) … A strict application of a
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48 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
Shopping in the Aula Maxima 49
So in order to develop a postmodern perspective on policy, one has to reject a postmodern perspective. Having a debate about the purpose of education has all the merits of the abyss calling onto itself. The origin of much of this thinking was the boundary between continental philosophy and literary criticism.41 Questions about the self and subjectivity encountered doubts about the validity of cultural artifacts. The tradition of “Western” reason was suspected of being just another ideological prejudice with global authoritarian pretensions. Postmodernism, with its vast caravan of various “isms,” each linked to a putative cultural interest group, represents a distrust of science, declaring that it is largely a (male) chauvinist exercise, grounded in primarily Anglo-Saxon canons of reason and taste. Timehonored “great books” taken once to define the Western literary canon are equally scorned. Scientific reasoning and its assumptions are villainous constraints on creativity – the creativity of the “isms” – no more valid than other culturally specific modes of explanation.42 Standards for establishing the superiority of scientific explanations are further instances of chauvinist control tendencies. To escape this repression, the postmodernist asserts a fullblown relativism. Traditional canons of logic, reason and science are not superior to other nontraditional standards. Acknowledgment of cultural diversity is churned into reverence of multiculturalism. Criteria for truth and inquiry are reduced to just so many competing recipes. Not just scientists, but many academics with a respect for reasoned inquiry, were perturbed by these claims and their influence on campuses.43 Some of the thinking echoed the suspicions of the Frankfurt School, namely that the university perpetuates doctrinaire traditions wherein elite scientific and technological criteria become dominant. However, where the Frankfurt School traced dominance to capitalist demands, the postmodernists mapped dominance to a plethora of heterogeneous and conflicting interest groups. The legitimacy of each group was located in their internal valuation of their own rituals. Ultimately, if only society could see it, cultural and social phenomena were washed through with segmented narcissisms. With relativism “licensing” criteria and narcissism defining identity, is it any wonder that the purpose of higher education is not addressed coherently? Ambitions for an Arcadia of common intellectual purpose seem egregiously misguided and naïve. All in all, if postmodernism has had any effect it is to widen the chasms between science and the humanities, without
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postmodern perspective is also dangerous in that it removes the foundational basis for rationales. If rationales have no ethical or moral foundation, then there is no claim of privilege for access, equity, desegregation, public funding, or other rationales designed to make higher education fair, open and available. Without the ability to claim a special role or privileged position in society, higher education is nothing more than another special interest group feeding at the public trough.40
50 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
demonstrating a respectable intellectual rigor for its position. One of the most significant and unfortunate consequences of postmodernism is that it led many scientists to question the value of the humanities in their entirety. Far from seeing off, deconstructing and overturning consumerism and philistinism, postmodernism proved a boon to the latter. It is entirely laudable to lament vulgar shows of commoditization in the universities. Perhaps, too often, commentators urging traditional academic values uncritically presume that the universities are adequate to the task of moral education. It is the “mootest” among moot assumptions.
Global agencies have managed to implant a changed perspective into higher education policy across the developed world. American trends have been crucial in defining the broad legitimacy of this new higher education model where service profitability is to the fore.44 Consumerist ideas about product relevance are spliced into economic assessments of the university’s supplyand-demand capacity. Faculty, departments and even entire institutions live and die according to the reactions of the market to the products and services on offer. Faculty members who claim to understand the market’s craving for relevant offerings are rewarded. Dissidents, who insist on pursuing scholarly pursuits uncoupled from the market, are “incentivized” by admonitions, and hints of sanctions. Analyses of shortcomings of economic performance over the past few decades have become more fused with attempts to find solutions in higher education. These solutions take the form of commoditizing the educational process, inserting consumerist values and so-called “checks and balances” into the delivery of higher education and relegating policy criticism to the sidelines. Strange as it may seem in a university environment, one of the major features of these policies is deliberately un-self-critical. The reality is that such policies are always self-protective. They are not documents meant to be deliberated upon by any mass of academics over and above those that form the academic executive. Higher education export is a real, tangible, and for some, very profitable phenomenon. It is not possible, even if desirable up to a point, to row back its implementation. It is infinitely better to export or “internationalize” education for the greater benefit of humankind than for the advantage of a select number of elite institutions. Few seriously doubt that education is a greater potential good than its absence. Doubts remain that policies are being pursued for entirely appropriate reasons. Education export poses challenges for universities along the diversity front also. Although this has not been explicitly addressed, the contention here is that the mingling of profit motives with academic assessments, especially in institutions new to the market, is a powder keg waiting to explode. The paradox is that the
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Policy: an unpleasant reality
more a “new” institution needs to access the export market, the more caution it should exercise. But the more caution it exercises the greater the likelihood that it will impede the development of its “market niche.” There is no resolution to these conflicts of interest that satisfies all parties. One cannot sign off on the commoditization process without being left deeply unsatisfied by the muddled consumerism in the universities. No one is suggesting, no one sensible anyway, that students should have rights taken away or they should be punished in some obscure way for reflecting the values of the society they live in. Rights bring responsibilities, and it is always much easier to write a charter of rights than to elucidate responsibilities. A right suggests a positive quality that often comes unearned, but responsibilities imply obligations, burdens that require careful examination. Rights also imply that the subject is more transgressed against than transgressing. There is a certain imputation of previctim status that plays upon the underdog role of the student. Whether due to oversight or ignorance, but the nonappearance of these issues as problematic in the policies directing the commoditization of higher education and championing student-consumer rights is a worrying indication of the diminished status of ethical debate in the sector. Perhaps so, but there is no escaping that these policy exercises are experiments in social engineering and their long-term implications require consideration. Is it really a social good, the commoditization of education as currently rolled out? Some may find the promotion of any principle linking what the university sector does with what it ought to do extremely quaint. Indeed, there may be a certain old-fashioned fustiness to the premise that whatever the business of the university is, allowing that such an attribution makes any sense, it ought not to be value-free. But perhaps it was always so? That is something to be tested later in this work, but for the moment some educational archeology is required. In the next chapter, how some of these issues have played out in Irish higher education, a neophyte before the priestly US reference model, is discussed.
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Shopping in the Aula Maxima 51
3 Atlantic Mouse Becomes Celtic Tiger
At the beginning of the twenty-first century Ireland set itself the challenge of joining the most developed knowledge-based economies in the world. Supporting this objective was the entire education system with higher education assigned the preeminent mission of producing more PhDs, more innovative research and more commercial “spillovers.” The stage was set by the National Development Plan (NDP) for 2000–6 which underwrote the creation of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). The body was established with a clear economic agenda to foster an R&D culture by investing in superb individual researchers and their teams. We want them to uncover ideas that attract grants and inspire patents. We want them to recruit and train academic scientists and engineers from home and abroad and to explore daring ideas as well as ideas that can lead to knowledge-based businesses, create jobs, and generate exports. Perhaps most important, we want them to help inspire Irish students to pursue careers in science and engineering.1 Modeled after the American National Science Foundation (NSF), SFI began with an R&D budget of €635 million. A sizeable sum for a country with a population of 4 million, and when combined with the Higher Education Authority’s (HEA) investment of another €600 million between 1998 and 2001 in higher education infrastructure, the amount was enormous. Soon, even that sum slipped into the small change jar. The National Development Plan for the years 2007–13 committed €8.2 billion to develop eight research-driven programs in science, technology and innovation (STI). The importance of commercial potential was restated: “The goal is to place world class research and world class people at the centre of the national system of innovation.” By the standards of previous decades the promised expenditure was awe inspiring, if not a little frightening in its implied 52
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New Celtic world order?
Atlantic Mouse Becomes Celtic Tiger 53
expectations. In return three research councils, the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS), the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET) and the Irish Energy Research Council would foster excellence through something called “interlinked research supports.” Working with the HEA, the overseer of the university sector, the research councils would strive “to maximise synergies between their respective activities.” The primary output from the research councils would be postgraduates and postdoctorates who
In line with previous policy aspirations, the university sector was expected to gratefully harness itself to the economic cart of the nation. Evident in the plan were the marks of a succession of committees and reports on industrial development and higher education over the previous ten years. An organic linkage between education export and researcher import had already received official approval. A wide trawl for excellence beyond native shores was already contained in the policy objective that Ireland’s future economic development strategy will rely to a major extent on our ability to attract leading internationally mobile researchers … The attraction of leading overseas post-graduate, post-doctoral and senior researchers into the Irish system is therefore a critical strategic issue for Ireland over the coming years. A range of measures aimed at enhancing the attractiveness of research careers, expanding research opportunities and at facilitating inward mobility of skilled researchers into Ireland have been identified separately by an inter-Departmental group charged with responsibility for preparing Ireland’s national action plan for the achievement of the Barcelona target.3 With the benefit of hindsight, it is striking that so many fundamental assumptions about the connection between higher education and the economy could be expressed so concisely. The dual activity of research and development (R&D) is essential to economic well-being. Knowledge is a tradable commodity. Subsidization of foreign investment (overseas researchers) can improve competitiveness, innovation and productivity. These assumptions are not just fundamental to the policy machinations of Irish policy makers, but to OECD and EU policies in general. Choosing the right end of the telescope to view global influences on Irish higher education is highly revealing of the state’s ambitions.
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will be key drivers of research and innovation. These experienced researchers will also play a key role in the transfer of knowledge to students. The scope of the Research Councils, which between them cover all areas of science, engineering, technology, arts and humanities, positions them to address the need for postgraduate students across all sectors and dimensions of society.2
54 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
By tradition Ireland, like many island nations, may appear small and faraway, but in terms of higher education culture and ambitions, it is very large and global. The emergence of a new Irish higher education environment, an almost aggressively ambitious one, was acknowledged in the influential OECD 2004 Review of Higher Education. Although mollified by the farsightedness of Irish education policy as
the report nonetheless concluded with no fewer than 52 recommendations.4 In spite of annual growth in public expenditure on R&D increasing from 5.6 percent for the period 1992–97 to 12.3 percent for 1997–2000, Irish higher education was presented as a case of “could do better.” The specter of R&D failure and the consequences for economic growth were also flagged by the OECD team because “the overall research environment is not yet adequate to support the achievement of research of international quality in the range of fields necessary to promote the economic development that Ireland is looking for.”5 Evidence of governmental approval of the Review, and its influence, is found in the 2007 NDP: The OECD Review of Irish Higher Education makes a series of farreaching recommendations for reform and development of the sector. This Report is the catalyst for the major reform and modernisation agenda being undertaken in the Universities and Third Level Institutions as set out in this Chapter. The Government approved the broad reform agenda outlined by the OECD. This in turn has been used as a basis for extensive consultation and policy formulation that will drive the reform agenda throughout the sector.6 While there are many interesting, pertinent, and some impertinent, forays that can be made into how the NDP “came about,” perhaps the most useful one is to analyze how close the Plan is towards a perfect expression of global trends sweeping across the higher education sector. The aims of this chapter are to discover how Ireland found itself in a position that such a plan could be made to seem meaningful, and how change in higher education there is symbolic of the general alchemical change in the sector.
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Ireland was one of the first European countries to grasp the economic importance of education and economists suggest that this upskilling of the labour force accounts for almost 1% per annum of additional national output over the last decade or so. The growth of tertiary education has been accompanied by a two and a half fold improvement in average material living standards,
Atlantic Mouse Becomes Celtic Tiger 55
Although Ireland is reputed to have dispatched many erudite Christian missionaries to Europe during the Dark Ages, some of whom founded distinguished monastic settlements, local efforts in subsequent centuries to develop higher education foundered under the weight of conflict, colonization and sectarianism. The first and for several centuries, the only university was the University of Dublin, with its one constituent college known universally as Trinity College.7 Founded under an Elizabethan edict in 1592, Trinity provided a gentleman’s Anglican-influenced education within a governance and pedagogical model similar to that operated in Oxford and Cambridge universities. Its association with the British ruling establishment and the Established Church of Ireland (the Irish equivalent of English Anglicanism) limited its appeal to those few Roman Catholics in a position to participate in higher education. A combination of religious tests applied by Trinity and laws restricting the rights of Catholics to exercise their religion excluded the most able and encouraged a bleed of talent to Catholic universities in Europe (e.g. Salamanca, Paris and Rome). These “Irish colleges” abroad were viewed with suspicion by the British authorities following the French Revolution, suspicions shared though for different reasons by the local Catholic hierarchy. Anticlerical Napoleonic policies closed several of these institutions, seriously curtailing overseas educational opportunities for wealthy Catholics. A solution attuned to clerical and political needs saw the establishment of a Catholic seminary for training priests in 1795 in Maynooth. Catholic priests could now be trained at home, their formation shorn of exposure to harmful republican ideals. Throughout the nineteenth century, particularly following the repeal of anti-Catholic legislation, the Catholic middle classes agitated for the establishment of universities for education and training in the humanities, law, medicine and the sciences. Neither the people nor the clergy were seeking secular institutions. The desired universities would provide a suitable Catholic education. Just as it was held that Trinity academics must conform to the precepts of Anglicanism, the Catholic universities (once founded) would enforce their creed. Successive British governments rejected calls for denominational institutions, settling on the provision of three nondenominational “Queen’s” colleges at Belfast, Cork and Galway. Attracting strong disapproval from the clergy, the Catholic laity was advised against attending the new colleges. An alternative initiative, relying on funds from abroad and drawing on the success of the Catholic university founded in Louvain, led to the foundation in the mid 1850s of the Catholic University in Dublin under Cardinal John Henry Newman. Newman ran foul of the Catholic hierarchy with his drive to recruit English staff.8 His Idea of a University by far outlived this practical experiment. While satisfying
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A brief prehistory of tertiary-level education in Ireland
56 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
…the church would not allow the education of Catholic students in overtly secular institutions as this could lead to the erosion of Catholic faith and morals, due largely to their exposure to the works of suspect philosophers, historians and scientists. It was also deemed vital that liberalising tendencies, suspect textbooks and teachers who refused to teach according to Catholic principles must be avoided.10 The vista this opened up, and the implications of which were not foreseen, was that by keeping the aspiring Catholic middle class “away” from “secular” science curricula a dearth of science and engineering successes would result. Contemporary universities in England, France, Germany and Italy were turning out practical industrial innovations, while the Irish scene remained broadly bucolic. The higher education dispute remained without a satisfactory remedy until the beginning of the next century. A measure of compromise was achieved with the passing of an educational Act in 1908 guaranteeing Trinity its autonomy within the envelope of Dublin University and creating a federation of nondenominational “National University of Ireland” (NUI) colleges in Dublin (absorbing the lingering Catholic University and two of the Queen’s colleges), Cork and Galway. While technically nondenominational the Catholic clergy were satisfied that with over 90 percent of the population Roman Catholic, its ethos, influence and judgment would hold sway. Maynooth was admitted a short time later as a “recognized” college of the NUI. From the very outset, religious differences influenced the purpose of the new university colleges. In a very short time, the ideological position described by Paseta above would intellectually mold the NUI colleges for decades to come. The economic funding of the new federated NUI colleges was “niggardly” for most of the 50 years following the Act.11 Ironically, following inde-
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denominational ambitions, only its medical school managed to attract more than a trickle of students. The educational ambitions of the Catholic middle and upper classes could hardly be described as having been met, given the divisiveness among the competing higher education institutions. Apart from medical education the general condition of the “natural sciences” was diverse. Despite the establishment of zoology in the 1830s, mathematics and physics were considered the “strong” subjects for scholarship examinations in Trinity College. An anonymous contributor to Nature felt obliged to express his aspiration, with respect to Trinity, that “before long the governing authority will look with more favour on the Natural Sciences.”9 Roman Catholic aspirations, particularly as interpreted by the clergy, were bound up with the greater political agenda of Irish nationalism and consolidating the political influence of the Church. Senia Paseta sums up the position as one where
pendence in 1922 funding worsened. Trinity fared better because of her endowments. Up until the 1960s, investment in higher education was not deemed a major priority by any government. Ireland was largely an agrarian economy, with a shortage of industry to absorb the employment of her young people. Robert Briscoe, parliamentarian and the first Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin, lamented in his autobiography that out of the whole 1957 class of engineering graduates in TCD, all 135 emigrated.12 Private equity investment favored the traditional imperial certainties with the result that there could be little development of indigenous industry unless foreign investors were major actors in an enterprise. A culture with a low tolerance of private risk and a narrow receptivity to innovation was the result.13 Ireland had extensive trading relations with Britain in agricultural goods, and Britain and the United Stated in people (as emigrants). Though a nonparticipant in the Second World War, Ireland was included in the Marshall Aid plan. Despite the theoretical capacity of the Plan to lift productivity in the economy, it has been put forward that inexperience in strategic planning meant that the country was unable to develop the opportunities presented.14 The 1950s remained a decade of stagnation marked by peaks in unemployment and emigration. A major economic plan with the twin policies of easing the country away from trade protectionism and opening it to foreign direct investment was adopted by the government in 1958. The first earnest engagement with higher education began in 1960, when the government initiated a Commission on Higher Education in Ireland. An attempt to detail the training needs of technicians in Ireland was presented in a report by an OECD team in 1963, conducted in the service of economic planning. This was quickly followed by a joint Irish/OECD report on investment requirements in education (not that there was a great deal to audit after decades of underfunding). In line with European shifts to greater educational access, free second-level education was introduced in 1967, which in turn was expected to broaden access to third level. Ireland’s education at first and second level was almost entirely organized in denominational divisions – largely unchanged even today. The state was the paymaster for the salaries of teachers, and the building and refurbishment of schools, but left the management of the school with local religious representatives. This strong denominational system is an inheritance of a situation in pre-independence times when religious orders provided the bulk of educational instruction. Despite the overtly Christian complexion of the nation, second-level education was not considered a birthright prior to 1967. Educational change in Ireland has generally been slow. The first multidenominational school was only established in 1977. Access to “free” second-level education almost tripled attendance within 20 years. Over the same 20-year period, the numbers attending third level similarly increased, while over a 30-year period the numbers enrolled in third level rose almost sevenfold. A factor was a government decision to
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Atlantic Mouse Becomes Celtic Tiger 57
58 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
Level
1965/66
1975/76
1985/86
1995/96
2005/2006
First
481
528
567
479
458
Second
132
268
335
370
332
Third
19
32
53
95
137
Total
632
828
955
944
927
abolish third-level fees in the mid-1990s. The effects of the changes can be seen in Table 3.1. The foundations of a binary higher education system were laid in 1969 leading to the establishment of the first “regional technical colleges.” In the subsequent 20 years, 13 such colleges, similar in intent to the German Fachhochschulen, would be funded and the university sector would grow to seven. Two of the original technical institutes, in Limerick and Dublin, would be transformed into the University of Limerick and Dublin City University, respectively. The original NUI colleges gained full autonomy following the passing of the Universities Act in 1997. With the exception of one period of contentiousness following a proposal to merge Trinity and UCD in the late 1960s, the former institution’s autonomy has remained remarkably intact. Although the publicly supported institutions of higher education have been granted institutional autonomy, approximately 90 percent of their income is still derived from the exchequer. Table 3.2 lists the number of governmentfunded institutions funded by category. The duties and responsibilities of the universities are laid down by the Universities Act 1997. The HEA monitors performance and allocates state funding. Notwithstanding the dominance of the publicly funded sector, a range of specialist private-sector colleges have emerged to cater for specific student demands for legal studies, media and communication, and a range of humanities. The commitment to educational Table 3.2
Third-level colleges aided by the Department of Education, 2005/6
Type
Number
Technical/technological colleges/institutions
16
HEA institutions (includes the seven universities)
11
Other aided colleges
2
Teacher training/home economics
5
Total
34
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Table 3.1 Enrolments of full-time students in institutions aided by the Department of Education by level and year (in thousands)
Atlantic Mouse Becomes Celtic Tiger 59 Table 3.3 Number of full-time students in institutions aided by the Department of Education, 2005/6 Level
No. of students
First level
457,889
Second level
332,407
Secondary
183,766 51,738
Vocational
96,903
Third level
136,719
Institutes of technology/technological colleges
53,386
HEA colleges (“the universities”)
80,801
Other aided (incl. teacher training) Total
2,532 927,015
attainment, as a socially desirable end, is borne out in a set of recent figures showing almost that 1 million students, 25 percent of the population, is at some stage of education (Table 3.3).
The intellectual and policy milieu of the sector From the foundation of the state in 1922, a deeply traditional Catholic society recognizing the primacy of Catholic social teaching was intended.15 Trinity stood out in this milieu because of its political heritage, its endowments, relative independence and the many notable thinkers that had attended there – and Trinity was not amenable to Catholic influence. In contrast, the NUI colleges were struggling to establish themselves with leaner budgets, a meager intellectual pedigree and a great deal of oversight from Catholic interests. Clair Wills sums up the intellectual interests of the NUI universities at the time as strongly “Irish-identified” expressed “in scholastic philosophy, in empiricist history, in medical and educational reform, in journalism and in literature.”16 In-house academic journals such as the Irish Monthly and Studies (both produced by the Jesuits), and the more mass circulated Irish Rosary and the Irish Ecclesiastical Record focused on managing exposure to modern trends without sacrificing the “best” in Irish traditions (i.e. Catholic precepts). Debates about modernity, inevitably identified with secularism, and its challenges, which might be now cast as debates about consumerism, were “a sincere attempt to develop practical ways to organise Irish society on Catholic social principles, particularly as these were laid out in two Papal Encyclicals, Rerum Novarum and Quadragismo.”17 The struggle that Catholic social teaching faced to get
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Community and comprehensive
itself heard in Britain, the United States and across Europe would not be repeated in the new Ireland. A taste of the robustness of the hierarchy on matters pertaining to higher education access came in the form of Archbishop McQuaid, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin from 1940 onwards. He adopted such a vigilant attitude towards the “ban” on Catholics attending Trinity that the sanctions were not lifted by the Catholic hierarchy until 1970.18 It is something of an insight into the homogeneity of thinking in official government circles that this form of sectarianism was not regarded as remarkable. Fear of offending the Catholic hierarchy ran deep in all political parties. The education, philosophy, psychology and even several language departments in the NUI colleges were largely staffed by Catholic clerics. One rationale was that these institutions should offer nothing that would offend faith or morals (nor interfere with the training of priests). The curriculum used in the philosophy departments was fully compatible with the scholastic curriculum approved for Catholic seminaries. A well-understood doxology hung over the intellectual landscape at the time.19 The other side of the argument, in partial mitigation, was that the clergy were the one group of Catholics that had access to higher education during their training. It was no surprise therefore that they could field a great number of trained academics. The problem was that the type of thinking that followed was more preoccupied with avoiding dogmatic error than accommodating change and innovation. Ironically in the early years of the twentieth century, the country experienced what Ferriter describes as a new “cultural vibrancy” fuelled by the emergence of new writing talents, new modes of cultural expression and a revival of interest in the language and history of the nation.20 The emergence of the Irish Literary Theatre and writers such as Joyce and Yeats indicated that the country was far from intellectually moribund. The contrast between the promise of those earlier times and the reality that followed within a generation is sharply illustrated by the passing of the Censorship of Publications Act in 1929. It may be apocryphal, but it is said that when graduate students outside Ireland wished for a list of the most interesting modern literature, they wrote to the Censorship Board. Banned authors included Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Simone de Beauvoir, Bertrand Russell – and many distinguished others.21 Many Irish authors and playwrights emigrated rather than risk the suppression of their work or being “denounced” by the Church. The late and distinguished novelist John McGahern, praised by Ferriter as the “prince of the Irish novelists,” was a primary schoolteacher who witnessed most of his early work banned. His second novel The Dark was immediately proscribed for touching on the sensitive realities of domestic violence and incest.22 One of the great ironies of the Censorship Board is that several of its members over the years were also serving university academics. There is little doubt that the period was one of intellectual poverty, partly but not entirely wrought by the neuroticism of the Catholic hier-
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archy and associated lobby groups about matters cultural and sexual – it was also a period of grinding economic poverty. Emigration had taken a huge toll. Unemployment, poverty, marginalization and slum living conditions were widespread.23 The stagnation of the period, on all levels, was not unconnected with the political deference to Church interests, which was accepted as a price worth paying to remain in government.24 About the effects of the intersection of interests, the historian Joe Lee commented that
Within all but one university, there was a culture of compliance, obedience and deference to hypotheses about the human character that Bertrand Russell characterized as representing the “teeth of the opposition” through which scientific progress had to travel.26 The educated establishment in both government and the university only nervously countenanced reform and interference in education in case any change was likely to upset clerical sensitivities. The point is not that a culture of intellectual curiosity did not exist, rather what did exist was hidebound, ideologically charged, and frequently an alloy of the worst in unscientific thinking and atavistic suspicion of novelty. Even the political actors at the time were suspicious of novelty. Their “intellectual” agenda and that of the Catholic Church were not markedly divergent. Garvin noted in his study of the foundation of the state that its political elites held profoundly authoritarian attitudes verging on repressively antidemocratic.27 Personal fidelity, uncritical deference and rigidity in political allegiance were admired characteristics. Curiosity about the possibility that the status quo could be improved upon was considered unpatriotic. Something of the lasting effect of this insular inflexible thinking on higher education can be gleaned from Lee’s comment that there remains “a feeling that there is something suspicious about a person that does not know his appointed place in the hierarchy of specialisms, and seeks to transcend the boundaries of conventional specialisation, so reassuring to the dependent psyche.”28 In theory, it would always be easier to introduce change in areas that were safe from direct theological scrutiny, such as the sciences and technology. Predictably, the education reports commissioned by the Irish government in the 1960s had little to say about addressing the grossly disproportionate religious presence in scholarly areas. Modernization of the university sector was complicated by Ireland’s protectionist attitude to trade and its marginal significance to international productivity. Local products were subsidized while imports were heavily taxed.
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rarely has the Catholic Church as an institution flourished, by materialistic criteria, as in the Free State. And rarely has it contributed so little, as an institution, to the finer qualities of the Christian spirit. Censorship, Irish style, suitably symbolised the impoverishment of the spirit and the barrenness of mind of the risen bourgeoisie, touting for respectability.25
“Foreign” investors could not solely own manufacturing companies. This policy was not an easy fit with Ireland’s membership of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) in 1948, a creature of American free trade ambitions focused on improving industrial productivity. Membership was a precondition for receiving Marshall Aid – also known as the European Recovery Program. In Ireland the “bonanza” represented by the aid was spent primarily on improving electricity supply, telephone services and even afforestation. An opportunity to jump start higher education research was missed. Apart from stifling competition and investment, protectionism reinforced a cultural inwardness. Innovations from overseas were regarded as threatening. Government subsidies helped maintain an unhealthy industrial stasis. Ireland’s admittance to the United Nations in 1955 surprisingly did not mark a significant shift in attitudes towards higher education. Greater awareness of the European arena also seems to have only flowed from Britain’s engagement first with EFTA (European Free Trade Association) and then with the EEC (European Economic Community) in the early 1960s. A significant aim of the 1950s European Recovery Program was to foster contacts to neutralize intercountry tensions and create a receptive market for American and European goods and services. The program promoted the doctrine that free trade and economic expansion were grounded in productivity improvements across Europe. A more technologically efficient and scientifically geared Europe would be best for trade and by tenuous implication best for peace. Whether it was cultural insensitivity or an attempt to achieve too much too quickly, the success of the reconstruction program was uneven. De Grazia points out that those countries that prospered pre-World War II were also the countries that prospered with Marshall Aid.29 She makes the case that while the ostensible aim of the Plan was the reconstruction of Europe, the real success of the Plan is that it dictated to nation states conditions for its own disbursement.30 A doctrine of secondary effect applied and it was this effect, the shaping of conditions, practices and procedures under which the Plan operated, that produced the most impact. Interestingly, and consistent with the importance the Irish government placed on agriculture, one historian, Mary Daly, concluded that it was exposure to developments in agricultural science and technology at trade shows initiated under the European Recovery Program (and through academic contacts at professional conferences), that stimulated Irish scientists to reevaluate domestic policies and practices in scientific research.31
Edging towards the modern university It is difficult to identify a moment of epiphany for government policy on funding higher education. Certainly there was a complex network of influences crisscrossing ministerial desks from the mid-1950s onwards. The reports of the 1960s period suggest that the authors (and also the main actors in the sector) were responding to both current deficits, projected future labor needs and
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what may be broadly termed “expertise.” Daly’s observations on the influence of agricultural developments abroad resonate with the premium the government placed on agri-industry and the widespread distribution of state-funded agricultural research centers operating outside the university sector. Other factors included an awareness of the different standards of living enjoyed by more advanced industrial societies, the levels of educational attainment in these societies and the rapid technological changes that were occurring in the United States post-Sputnik. Economic plans emphasized a reduced role for protectionism and an increased role for foreign direct investment, if Ireland was to have a foothold in the developing world economy. A backcloth to these deliberations was the reality of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Post-World War II demobilization had led to a reduction in US military expenditure. The launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite reversed that trend. American prestige had come under threat and the Eisenhower administration swung resources from driving consumer demands (“freezers and lipsticks”) to rearmament. Alan Dulles, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, linked technological superiority with the maintenance of global political power amidst claims that the Soviet Union was using its technological breakthroughs to demonstrate the superiority of communism to developing and postwar countries, in the process compromising American influence over its allies.32 The immediate effect of Sputnik was the passing by Congress of a bill to channel more research funds into the university sector thereby, as during World War II, resecuring the connection between academic output, industrial interests and foreign policy.33 Ireland’s much trumpeted neutrality during and after the war meant it had little tactical relevance for the US during the Cold War. If anything the Irish stance was antagonistic, not because of American disdain for the Irish but perhaps because of the attitudes towards the development of postcolonial countries. Michael Adas explains the tension between the American fondness for modernity and rejection of tradition as follows: a developmentalist thought in the 1950s and 1960s was often organized around dichotomous and antithetical ideal types. Modernity was celebrated for its emphasis on rationality, empiricism, scientific investigation, activism, technological innovation, continuous change, and the domination of nature. Tradition was equated with superstition, intuition, a veneration for untested custom, indiscipline, fatalism, material backwardness, stagnation, and helplessness in the face of the “whims” of nature.34 Commenting anthropologically on the “paradigmatic isolation” that defined Irish higher education at the time, Dennis O’Sullivan noted that one influential educator from this early period, Timothy J. Corcoran, the first Professor of Education at University College, Dublin, has, in fact,
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64 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
No credible yardstick in 1960 could judge Irish higher education an exemplar of modernity.36 If anything the entire system was still weighed down by the punitive lashes of tradition, a steadfast lack of transparency and official government inertia. Both primary and secondary levels were performing poorly. Underfunding and financial constraints limited the potential of secondary level. One important strand in an attempt to address the problems was the Lynch/OECD Investment in Education report. While it was not a policy exercise, it immediately made plain that without expanded second-level access the universities would be in an unpromising position in the years ahead.37 A symposium, organized by senior academics to discuss the Lynch/OECD report, drew even more attention to the underfunding of Irish higher education compared to other countries.38 Participants wondered how the targets for second-level education could be met, when investment in third level was so low (less than 50 percent pro rata that of the UK). Where were the skilled science and mathematics teachers to come from? The symposium also reaffirmed the concerns of the earlier OECD 1963 report on the shortage of technicians. A rapporteur for the 1963 report, Dr Rasmussen, had rejected the official government response that small countries could be expected to spend less on technical education and training than larger ones on the grounds that smaller countries usually did not carry the military overheads of larger neighbors and were therefore able to devote more resources to research, relatively speaking. In fact, as White points out in his study of Irish higher education expansion, a substantial cause of misunderstandings between the OECD experts and official sources arose from the lack of clear definition of the role of technician on the Irish side.39 Such was the state of industrial underdevelopment, that the principle that “technician” might be defined by a fixed set of tasks and responsibilities could not be readily matched to existing practices. At the time of the symposium, the government was still awaiting a report from the Commission on Higher Education that had been established in 1960, prior to Lynch/OECD. A leisurely seven years would pass before the Commission produced its two-volume report in 1967 – oddly enough, the body had finished taking oral submissions in 1961. Membership of the Commission varied between 26 and 31 members depending on retirements, illnesses and other duties. Only two of the members on the Commission were practicing academics, three were judges, including the chairperson, only
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been described as “rejecting the modern world” (Titley 1983) because of his antagonism to non-native educational ideas and programmes. The insulation lasted longer in education than in economic and industrial policy, literature, cultural tastes, and recreational pursuits. Increased foreign travel, expansion in the mass media, and international professional contacts were important sources of change. The 1950s and, in particular, the 1960s appear to have been a watershed in this regard.35
one member was drawn from the technology industry sector – which was minute in any event. The remainder represented the Catholic hierarchy, other churches, teaching and assorted government interests. A final report reflected a high degree of dissent – almost half the members signed the report with reservations. The most senior Catholic cleric on the Commission, Archbishop Philbin, availed himself of the opportunity to reaffirm that Trinity was unsuitable for Catholics. Compared to the NUI colleges, Trinity was “seen as having a neutral and secularist character.” Speaking approvingly of “protective measures” and the need to tend to the moral and philosophical aspects of student life, Dr Philbin noted that “wherever possible, universities have been and are being established where it is expected that a Catholic rather than anti-Catholic point of view will be adopted in regard to departments of knowledge that invite or admit ideological attitudes.” The Catholic hierarchy’s considered opinion was that “the Colleges of the National University as at present constituted and functioning are accepted as substantially satisfying Catholic requirements.”40 Presumably, the main theologically comforting feature of the NUI colleges was their cultivation of the “dependent psyche,” which Joe Lee so trenchantly railed against. Dissent aside, the report made several suggestions that eventually would be adopted by successive governments. These included establishing the Higher Education Authority (1970), the establishment of a Science Council (1970), the creation of two new nondegree-awarding colleges in Dublin and Limerick (1970s) and, eventually, the independence of the NUI colleges (1997). A recommendation for a “Technological Authority” was realized in various manifestations over the years. The Commission was equivocal on the merits of university collaboration with industry. It might be surmised that native suspicion of change pushed it off the agenda, but for the occurrence of discussions about the merits of industry–academia linkages in the media. A series of suggestions for aiding scientific research through industrial involvement had appeared in The Irish Times as far back as New Year’s Day 1960.41 The most pertinent suggestion was that government would subsidize industry to the amount of 50 percent to participate in research. There was no shortage of thinking, most of it clear, on science policy but it just was not being done by the parties with influence. In other words, the right thoughts were in the wrong minds. The point is borne out by Ó hEocha’s analysis of science policy in 1970 that revealed confusion about budgets, objectives and priorities.42 There was simply no coordinated planning – defects that dogged the sector for years to come. The time taken by the Commission to produce its report was itself symptomatic of a general analytical malaise affecting higher education policy. The Commission was not unmindful of its limitations. One of its recommendations was that educational research be “firmly established” in the universities. However at this stage, not merely were the universities creaking on delivery fronts, they were also failing in governance. On April 8,
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1968 The Irish Times published a report under the headline “Professor Accuses University Bodies: Ineffective in their Respect for Academic Freedom” of a talk given by Professor John O’Meara of UCD.43 O’Meara had been speaking at a Pax Romana conference the previous weekend expressing concerns about academic freedom in the universities. He criticized the universities for putting self-interest ahead of other interests and failing to keep the public, through its political representatives, in its confidence. Warming to his theme, O’Meara highlighted a recent report by three judges who investigated deliberate understaffing at UCD, in violation of its charter, necessitating government intervention. He pointed out that the Commission on Higher Education Report made “constant reference to the play of selfish interests within the university.” O’Meara concluded that the manner in which the universities conducted their affairs was itself a threat to academic freedom. He singled out the attitude of a previous Minister for Education, Risteard Mulcahy, as indicative of the inertia and lack of imagination displayed by successive governments. As an example of the mindset of the period and the uphill struggle facing those wishing to modernize Irish higher education, the original contribution by Mulcahy in response to a parliamentary question is illuminating: Deputy Moylan has asked me to philosophise, to give my views on educational technique or educational practice. I do not regard that as my function in the Department of Education in the circumstances of the educational set-up in this country. You have your teachers, your managers and your Churches and I regard the position as Minister in the Department of Education as that of a kind of dungaree man, the plumber who will make the satisfactory communications and streamline the forces and potentialities of the educational workers and educational management in this country. He will take the knock out of the pipes and will link up everything. I would be blind to my responsibility if I insisted on pontificating or lapsed into an easy acceptance of an imagined duty to philosophise here on educational matters.44 In contrast, just one year before O’Meara delivered his speech, and 12 years after Mulcahy’s riposte, the then Minister of Education, Donogh O’Malley, was being criticized in The Irish Times for introducing change too quickly.45 An apparent sea change in attitude, expectation and foresight had occurred following the various governmental reports over the previous seven years. From approximately 1967 onwards, it was accepted in political circles that fundamental investment and changes were needed in higher education. While this might read reassuringly, the universities lost out to the development of regional technical colleges – the start of a dual or binary system in Ireland. Partly this was a response to what was already being developed in the UK and in Europe, but also the failed attempt to convince UCD and Trinity to agree a merger had alienated politicians.46 Whether the affair damaged uni-
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versity ambitions is debatable, but it coincided with a shift in interest to the UK model of a “comprehensive university.”47 It certainly made politicians wary of introducing initiatives in the university sector. Spurred on by the promise of support from the European funds, throughout the 1970s successive governments pursued a de facto binary system with enthusiasm. Although much emphasis was placed on developing technical education and funding capital programs, still Archbishop Philbin’s satisfaction with the state of ideological development was valid a generation later. The sociologist Tom Inglis in a study of the “moral monopoly” enjoyed by the Catholic Church charts its discretion over huge areas of social and educational policy.48 Politicians to a large extent were unwilling to risk confrontation with clerical interests. The partnership between Church and state was an unequal one. Not only were many important social demands left in suspension, such as contraception, divorce and mixed education, but also even discussion of them was regarded as subversive. Writing post-Paris 1968, Charles McCarthy, an academic and trade unionist, thought the Irish citizen was in an unenviable position compared to her European counterparts.49 In other states, citizens felt that they were served by an anonymous official bureaucracy. By contrast, in Ireland the relationship was the obverse – the citizen was anonymous. As late as the 1980s, Lee found cause to remonstrate with the universities for failing to deliver the quality of thinking necessary to contribute to the intellectual and social development of the state. “Ireland desperately needed thinkers capable of synthesising varieties of experience. Unfortunately, her institutional structures forced most of her best minds to think sectorally. The demand for integrated thinking scarcely existed.” 50 As more people remained in education, the sphere for public debate and dissent expanded. The possibilities of change along economic, political and social fronts became less vaguely transcendental and more tangible.
Government, industry and foreign direct investment By the end of the 1950s it was plain that neither agriculture nor native industry could deliver high levels of economic growth. New policies aimed at attracting overseas investment, with expectations that indigenous industries would benefit from outsourcing, crosspollination from modern management styles, and exposure to modern plant infiltrated official thinking. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s there was little enthusiasm or interest shown in official circles for harnessing the universities to the future economic development of the country. Government policy selected the regional technical colleges for this role. The emergence of the universities as potential drivers of growth was a multifaceted belated affair. Ireland’s indigenous manufacturing base was historically small and weak. Governments turned to taxation and investment policies to attract foreign direct investment from multinationals drawn from countries as diverse as
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Britain, Japan, Korea and the United States, and many European ones.51 Most foreign direct investment came from multinationals seeking low operating cost bases with minimal taxation of profits. Both these needs could be met under Ireland’s industrial development policies. Apart from manufacturers of fridges, pumps and televisions, computer multinationals, such as IBM, Amdahl and DEC, also set up plants – pharmaceutical multinationals also populated the landscape.52 Without the arrival of the computer multinationals, even if almost all the work was assembly line, general awareness of the significance of the technology would have been delayed. And while the publicly touted centrality of higher education and research to attracting foreign direct investment is relatively recent, politicians and industrial policy advisors have been habitually mindful of the needs of the sector and the employment potential.53 A government program for the 1980s, Building on Reality 1984–1987, provided limited capital funding increases for higher education. On the other hand, it also imposed recruitment restrictions and deflationary pressure on public sector pay. Throughout the 1980s most research funding of any significance came through EU programs under policies designed to bring European academics and industrial interests together on specific research projects (e.g. ESPRIT, later to become the Framework Program). The domestic funding agency, the National Board for Science and Technology (NBST), had a very small budget for research. It often acted as a broker, putting Irish researchers in contact with European counterparts. Subsequently the NBST’s role in funding software-related research was assumed by the National Software Centre, which was affiliated to the Industrial Development Authority, only to be relinquished to another body a few years later. The NBST was superseded by a new body in the early 1990s, EOLAS, which eventually became Enterprise Ireland around 2001, and research projects were broadly and stably streamed between “basic” and “applied.” A stream that directly enabled the universities to partner with industry was introduced in the 1980s, and named originally the Higher Education Industry Cooperation scheme was maintained in a variety of modalities. Irrespective of whether a project was EU or domestically funded, the presence of an industry partner required that between 20 and 50 percent of the funding come directly from industry. In principle, this allowed agencies to argue that they, and inter alia higher education, were not subsidizing industry, since industrial partners were “paying their way.” Companies were naturally inclined to capitalize the time the employees spent on projects, with the result that the actual cash contribution towards a project was variable.54 To understand the recent shifts in attitudes towards academic research, the significance of foreign direct investment to successive Irish governments’ attempts to master unemployment, considered a major curse of the postindependence period, must be appreciated.55 Experience of foreign direct investment had shown that it could change unpredictably. Financial
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The Confederation has over the past number of years engaged in an active campaign aimed at strengthening the links between industry and the schools with a view to ensuring that the education system is at all times fully informed of the most recent developments in modern high technology industries.56 Keeping the education sector informed, the response suggested, would require that syllabus committees at second and third level should contain appropriate representatives from industry. The addition of foreign language skills directed towards supporting “international marketing” was one example.57 Another was a recommendation that computer studies be introduced rapidly at second level, because “the computer industry is one of the most rapidly growing branches of modern technology. It has expanded very quickly in the past two decades, and Ireland is fast becoming a European, if not a world, leader in this industry.”58 The motivation for industry enthusiasm for languages, computers and mathematics was a Drucker-like belief that education was not sufficiently focused, not sufficiently relevant. It contained a prescription that still underlies all recommendations to tip higher education’s shoulder to the wheel of the economy, namely that “The education system does not exist as a closed system, and educational planning must go hand-in-hand with the planning of all other developments in society.”59 Lee remarked that the final White Paper “grabbed” at linking technology expansion with third-level education “with all the commitment of a drunk grabbing at a lamp post.”60 So hardpressed were policy advisors in this period that almost any suggestion that hinted at reversing indigenous economic failures would not receive undue scrutiny once it contained a few benedictions on technology. The flow of advice on the importance of cultivating technology came from both industry lobby groups and the state’s own Industrial Development Authority.
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lures meant that the enormous profits generated by the multinationals remained (and still do) largely beyond meaningful taxation. Governments were content with the corporations’ capacities to ameliorate unemployment. Publicly the image was promoted of the multinationals favoring Ireland because of its education system, native English speakers and even culture. But a government, regardless of whatever chimera the majority of its citizens might believe in, could be in no doubt that the multinationals were attracted to low taxes and low costs. In a response to a Department of Education White Paper in 1980, industry expectations of Irish educational policy were outlined by the Confederation of Irish Industry. The syllabus at postprimary (and by implication at university) was out of kilter with the needs of the “users” of the system, namely the employers. Like many sectoral interests the Confederation was mindful to suggest how the state’s own resources, with a little tuning, could serve the national interest:
Attracting, massaging and placating foreign multinationals were, not unreasonably, major political preoccupations. Indigenous industry was under a cloud. A report in 1980, the “Telesis” Report after the eponymous consulting agency, went so far as to conclude that taxpayers’ money was subject to less moral hazard when invested in multinational corporations than indigenous firms.61 It was a dismaying conclusion. “Telesis” concerns that the grant subsidy per job (capital grants, technology acquisition grants, R&D grants, feasibility study grants, etc.) was too high and that the bulk of “high technology” jobs being created (especially in the microelectronic sector) were of low quality produced a dilemma. The problem, “Telesis” concluded, was how best to attract the best, i.e. those that would beneficially leak skills and knowledge into the rest of the economy. Over the succeeding years, government policy towards multinationals has consistently relied on a “honey trap” constructed from the lowest rate of corporation tax in the EU, and a variety of generous tax schemes covering property purchase, leasing, and broadly defined R&D support. Within higher education the direct policy impact was felt initially by the new technical colleges. They were expected to provide curricula meeting the expertise and skill needs of multinationals. 62 Not infrequently, the corporations themselves would take a hand in shaping curricula. Job creation was the overriding priority in government industrial policy, operating on the assumptions that certain industrial sectors needed specific skills and that the state should ensure a steady supply. Electronics companies need electronic engineers and technicians. Computer software companies need skilled computer programmers. Pharmaceutical companies need access to life science-trained staff. Industries deemed “leading edge” would require a stream of highly trained technical graduates if they were to base themselves in Ireland. In 1992, another industrial policy exercise was concluded. The Culliton Report decreed that what must not be allowed to creep into industrial policy were arbitrary or overly “academic” assumptions about dependencies between technology, economic growth and higher education.63 Industry needed to be served more earnestly by practical measures. In response, the government reconfigured several state agencies already charged with industrial development, and began to increase funding to information technology R&D – complementing funding already coming from the EU programs.64 Higher education, in so far as it figured at all in the report, was pigeonholed as a source, once again, of specialist skills to serve multinational corporations. If research had any orientation, it should be an applied one. Government policy on higher education in the early 1990s, although mindful of improving access, increasing the quality R&D output and enhancing the international reputation of Irish universities, was conditioned to be supplyside directed. Policy was directed towards serving extant “safe” industrial sectors as against giving the same weight to indigenous technological endeavors. Higher education’s role was largely confined to attending to labor require-
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ments. Official suspicion of domestic innovation by state agencies at the time is suggested in Breznitz’s comparative study of industrial policy and innovation in Ireland, Taiwan and Israel. He notes that multinationals first and foremost established themselves as manufacturers in Ireland and Taiwan, but as high-level R&D enterprises in Israel. He offers a number of reasons for this occurrence, but he singles out a historical lack of financial and official supports coupled with the emphasis on employment creation over industry creation as central to the innovation weaknesses in Ireland.65 Recognition of innovation weaknesses had been noted in both the Telesis and Culliton reports (and a small host in-between). Frustration with successive indigenous economic failures had Irish economists chafing at the bit. Cathal Guiomard, as late as 1995, proclaimed colorfully that his book was “an attempt to shine the blow-torch of economic modernisation up Ireland’s collective posterior.”66 According to this account, economic development had been crippled historically by a combination of overdependence on state intervention, uncritical regard for mercurial political approaches to the market, and a cursory inconsistent attitude towards enterprise. The Irish economy was a decree economy, infected with authoritarianism. Rigid decision-making hierarchies relied on bureaucratic mechanisms to effect change rather than market forces. National wage agreements permitted the “big” unions, “big” employers and “big” government forces to accentuate native cartelist tendencies. Regulation of state monopolies was favored over competition between private industries. Guiomard alludes to the existence in 1995 of almost 100 semistate “enterprises” as indicative of the anticompetitive obstacles to be overcome. When the Control of Manufacturers Act was rescinded in the late1950s, foreign ownership of manufacturing plants in Ireland became legal. A zero rate of tax was applied to all corporate profits derived from manufacturing enterprises geared towards export. Later, in 1980, this was replaced (under pressure from the EC) with a 10 percent rate of taxation on corporate profits. The low corporation tax rate (currently 12.5 percent), labor subsidies and the tax advantages granted to commercial leasing arrangements meant that many companies set up European “headquarters” in Ireland from the early 1990s onwards whose major focus has been maximizing the amount of profit that could be declared for taxation in Ireland. This meant that, for example, Microsoft’s Irish operations were the most profitable of all its units despite having only a few hundred staff.67 Arrangements involving transfer pricing between individual business units of multinationals meant that it was much more lucrative to have Irish subsidiaries accrue the bulk of profitable transactions. Despite the immense profits earned by multinationals in Ireland, only a very small fraction was channeled into higher education R&D – an uncomfortable reality usually overlooked in the framing of higher education policy. Given that the bulk of graduates recruited by the multinationals are indigenous, the higher education sector prodded by the Industrial Development
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Authority has been tuned to the importance of foreign direct investment. Official pronouncements on the future direction of research and university transformation by the Irish Universities Association have been heedful of multinational corporations, acknowledging their requirements and the historical importance of FDI to the economy as a whole but strangely not demanding that they do more given the enormous tax benefits they enjoy.68
A major aim of government policy is to have higher education research stimulate innovation development in industry. The success of the policy hinges on the willingness of industry to engage in some level of R&D – to move research from the laboratory into a marketable product. The readiness of industry for this role is a moot issue. Just how much R&D is being undertaken by companies in Ireland, as opposed to making payments for R&D undertaken by subsidiaries in certain cases is unclear, but historically it has been low relative to the scale of FDI.69 A commissioned review of state supports for business expenditure on R&D (BERD) noted that for the period between 1993 and 1999 BERD expenditure grew at between one third and one quarter every two years.70 By 2001, this had dropped to less than 8 percent. Considering only the seemingly good rates of growth Ireland still hovered around fifteenth in OECD rankings of BERD as a percentage of GDP for the period. By 2004, as some thought was given to the post-Celtic Tiger “knowledge economy,” developing a good growth of BERD had become increasingly central to government thinking.71 Notwithstanding the various plaudits directed at the university sector by industry, and the admiration reflected back through the inclusion of many business objectives in higher education planning, business expenditure on R&D (including third-level partnerships) was sufficiently underwhelming to place Ireland twenty-fourth out of 33 countries in the European Innovation Trendchart for 2006.72 The report commented ominously that [i]n many of the more innovative EU countries, business R&D has been declining instead of increasing, as required to meet the Barcelona objective of an average business R&D intensity of 2%. Notable declines in business R&D have occurred in Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and Sweden, while remaining stable in Finland, Italy and Luxembourg and only increasing in Austria, Denmark, and the UK. For those countries with a decline, the peak year for best performance in business R&D ranges between 1998 and 2003. The decline in business R&D could therefore be linked to the collapse of the dotcom bubble and high technology stocks. However, the decline in business R&D could also be due to other trends, such as a shift in R&D abroad combined
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Growth of BERD or just innovation stubble?
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Ireland was classed as an “average performer” in the innovation beauty contest, slightly ahead of countries not known for their technology output, such as Greece, Cyprus and Malta. The Innovation Trendchart also classed Ireland with countries where “evaluations and appraisals [of innovation measures and supports] are published or debated occasionally.”74 The figures raise troubling questions. Do they indicate an apparent indifference by industry to state objectives in R&D or not? In spite of generous financial incentives for the promotion of business R&D, there is no transparent mechanism for testing whether subsidization is crowding out private financing of R&D – financing that the multinationals and indigenous enterprises would undertake in any event; or whether it is merely giving a fillip to already consolidated R&D lines – the “icing on the cake.” The American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland, representing some 600 companies, explicitly identified increased tax subsidies for BERD as essential to the continued attractiveness of Ireland as a base for growing the “knowledge economy,” i.e. continuing to be an attractive FDI destination. The group was ostensibly concerned with threats to competitiveness and productivity, advising the government that any solution involved “rigid cost control and maximising value for money on public spending.” Stressing the ultimate importance to companies of return on investment, the group’s spokesman advised “we need to use the tax system to incentivise research and development. We have to make Irish-based R&D stand up as a good deal.”75 Additionally the government was counseled to increase its spending on R&D from 1 percent of GDP to 3 percent (an aspiration of the Lisbon Agenda). The group’s policy document Retuning the Growth Engine equally advised making more use of third-level R&D partnerships to facilitate the early commercialization of R&D. Sober concerns of the American Chamber that the state spend the contents of the public purse cautiously and receive value for its subsidization of R&D must be set against OECD figures showing that in 2004/5 due to a US tax amnesty, US multinationals repatriated $40 billion in profits.76 A reality check on commercial commitments to R&D and any notional benefits it might bring to academia was contained in the OECD 2004 higher education review’s caution that there is also an under-investment in R&D from business and industry. Ireland will only be able to come near the EU objective set in Lisbon, to invest 3% of GDP in the future-oriented area of R&D, if industry shoulders two thirds of the costs as is the case in the most developed economies. This will require a growing readiness amongst multinational firms to undertake R&D on their Irish sites (so far only a quarter of them
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with a decline in national competitiveness for research, that are worth following closely over the next few years.73
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are active R&D performers) as well as a greater investment amongst indigenous companies; Irish-owned firms account for only one third of total business expenditure on R&D.77
contain the largest pool of scientists and researchers within the national innovation system and it is a key policy aim in most countries to encourage industry to make more use of this resource. It is increasingly recognised that this is essential if significant increases in BERD are to be achieved. A range of current Enterprise Ireland programmes are the principal mechanisms for promoting such interaction, including the Innovation Partnerships scheme and more recently, the Industry-led Networks. The Innovation Partnership scheme aims to build links between companies and research groups to allow industry to access the expertise and facilities available. This programme will be modified to encourage larger projects and encompass additional activity created as a result of the Industry-led Networks.78 One advisory body affirmed, “Universities, institutes of technology and research institutes should see commercialization of R&D as an essential mission.”79 Expertise in product development and technology was projected onto the higher education sector with astonishing certainty. Indeed, the government-appointed Enterprise Strategy Group were unequivocal in their judgment that policy-makers in Ireland have already taken major steps to build expertise in science and technology through Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and the Program for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI). This investment in basic research is essential to further scientific advancement through new discovery as well as to enhance the country’s ability to absorb new technological developments from elsewhere. In particular, these investments will help to produce the skilled people necessary to build product development capacity in the enterprise base.80 The step between higher education expenditure on R&D (HERD) and BERD was intended, seemingly, to be a short one. In sharp contrast to official aspirations, the 2006 European Innovation report mentioned earlier, paints a picture of industry indifference to basic research funding – let alone to keeping in step with research funding trends in the EU.81 The report noted that while intellectual property trends were weakly positive, new technology to market initiatives were turning negative. Though such trend charts might “overinterpret” meager data, nonetheless doubts
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Aspirations for the national strategy on innovation rest to a large extent on the premises that higher education institutes
about the groundedness of aspirations to have higher education boost BERD, in an industrial policy milieu which has historically prioritized job creation, are legitimate. To assert that the universities are essential to BERD is a very strong claim. A complicating factor is that any broad valuation of the significance of BERD in-house is difficult to achieve. Problems have been identified due to gaps in monitoring, shifting definitions of R&D (is it “blue sky” or “close to market” activity), the scale of enterprise commitment, government supports with sometimes conflicting criteria, and so forth. The risk that apples and oranges are being mistakenly compared, and compared favorably, cannot be ruled out.82 A domestic survey of BERD between 2001 and 2007 recorded that 1264 enterprises were R&D active in 2001, dropping slightly to 1211 in 2007.83 Over the same period, the number of PhDs employed in BERD-related enterprises rose from 420 to 1191. Once the totals in categories of “other researchers,” technicians and support staff are factored into the headcount, the overall figures for those involved in BERD directly indicate a rise from 12,320 to 13,861 over the period. It is hard to reconcile this 12.5 percent rise over a seven-year period with the reported expenditure data. The latter show an increase from €900 million to €1600 million. Impressive figures on their own, but once annual inflation is taken into account current expenditure for the same period was largely static (€833 million in 2001 to €1300 million in 2007). Capital expenditure, on the other hand, rose almost fourfold, from €67 million to €279 million. Small enterprises involved in BERD, those with less than 50 engaged, actually reduced employment over the period (falling from 4057 in 2001 to 3864 in 2007 – the latter figure being almost 1500 less than recorded at a high-water mark in 2005). Large corporations, with more than 50 engaged, increased their R&D headcount numbers from 8263 to 9997. The very least that can be said about these findings is that they paint a muddled picture. Rising capital expenditure coupled with relative static current spending suggests that companies were cautious about human capital investment (as opposed to plant possibly or fixed assets). From another perspective, the figures suggest that less commercialization of academic R&D is taking place than might have been expected given the substantial funding poured into the sector over the previous ten years.84 The lack of granularity in the figures is attributable to the broad definition of R&D used in the survey. The definition is so embracing that practically any activity could be defined as contributing to the R&D profile of an enterprise: Definition of Research and Experimental Development (R&D) in Industry R&D is creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to create new or improved products, processes, services or other applications. R&D is distinguishable from other activities by the presence of an appreciable element of novelty and by the resolution of problems and uncertainties
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Discarding a doubling in the employment of PhDs, the reduction in small to medium-sized enterprises engaging in BERD appears to reinforce innovation concerns raised by European Innovation reports. The figures, even treated cautiously, suggest a steady drift in favor of large corporations, i.e. the multinational sector. Because of policy commitments to “strengthen manufacturing” through a range of soft supports including higher education, trends in BERD offer some measure of the impact of academic research and the value for money returned to state investment. Uncomfortably, the trends are also reflections of the realizability of policy expectations. Figures quoted by Gorg and Stobl show that by 2002, 16 percent of all government grants to industry were marked for R&D activity.86 A generation previously just 1 percent went to similar activity. Raising BERD is, admittedly, a major challenge across the European community.87 Even in countries singled out for their tax incentive schemes for BERD, such as Estonia, Norway and including Ireland, the 2006 European Innovation report is less than certain about whether any additionality has resulted. The uncertainty boils down to this: in the absence of financial support would the work have been done or not? If the answer is “no,” the support aided additional R&D and produced a competitive benefit; otherwise the subsidy was wasted. The Innovation report warns that across the EU the relationship between government tax subsidies and industrial R&D expenditure is uncertain in the absence of long-term studies and mature evaluation metrics. Lenihan and Hart in their examination of state funding (not necessarily inclusive of R&D funding) to Irish firms concluded that by international standards additionality was low, but enter the caveat that evaluative methodologies are at an early stage of development.88 A key tenet in the commercialization of higher education research is that investment in commercially directed R&D creates technology spillovers that trickle out into the broader economy and thereby create a larger commercial pool of sustainable high technology industries. In the case of Ireland several studies have shown only weakly positive correlations.89 Therefore, “an important question is whether the policy-maker can increase such spillover effects by subsidizing R&D activity by foreign multinationals within the host country.”90 This question can be reframed from a higher education perspective as asking whether using the universities to subsidize multinational R&D will achieve economic targets already operating for the commercial sector. There are good reasons for reflecting on Ireland’s commitment to subsidize BERD, since the process weaves higher education ever more tightly into a basket of industrial development policies. Similar policies in one shape or
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using scientific or technological means. Routine activities, such as routine software development, routine monitoring/analysis or pre-production preparation, where there is no appreciable novelty or problem resolution, are not considered to be R&D for the purpose of this survey.85
form are being pursued across the OECD group of nations, however. Variants on these policies provide the ideological skeleton for much of the policy discourse on university commercialization.91 Gorg and Strobl point out that Ireland is second in the league table of OECD nations in terms of the percentage of R&D expenditure arising directly from government support. All the more remarkable given the country’s size and the almost exclusively export-directed orientation of its resident multinationals. Their analysis of government subsidization of R&D among domestic companies suggests that grants crowd out private sources of finance. In contrast, they could identify no such effect in the multinationals, suggesting that these firms tended to pursue their own R&D agendas irrespective of local government subsidy. A controversial conclusion is that in these cases grants to multinationals for R&D are wasted – they simply bloat the R&D budget. Admittedly, the grants may serve to “fix” some R&D in the host country but the evidence is tentative at best. Ireland’s employment figures may be better but there is no evidence of significant R&D transfer. Subsidized BERD runs the risk of simply being absorbed in the existing basket of capital and labor grants. Besides, there is simply no evidence that substantial investment in higher education will trigger substantial investment by multinationals in higher education and alleviate state investment. Evidence from money flows and profits made in the 1980s and 1990s in Ireland suggests that the state of higher education research is largely irrelevant in comparison with financial investment incentives. It may be the case that nation states wish for the health of their economies to be reflected in the health of their university sector, but correlation is not causation.92
Impetus for the new funding After decades of indifference, underfunding and official inertia, why did the Irish government decide on a funding indulgence of the sector unthinkable a decade previously, and comparable on a relative scale to the Eisenhower refinancing of US higher education? Whereas the Culliton Report regarded higher education as a source of skilled technical labor, after 1995 reports from the government’s educational and industrial development arms stressed the importance of higher education to economic growth.93 The most significant development, set in the context of the Lisbon Strategy of 2000 for “Europe to become the most dynamic knowledge-based economy by 2010,” was an indigenous report under the auspices of the (then) Irish Council for Science, Technology, and Innovation (ICSTI).94 The Technology Foresight Report argued that global competition entailed reconsidering traditional complacencies about higher education’s benefits. Advice on the “repositioning” of industry to cope with changing technological trends was its key objective. Everything else, in terms of research and education recommendations, theoretically flowed from this concern. In somewhat shrill tones the press
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release accompanying the report’s launch warned that the future would be unlike the present:
The report was inspired by similar studies that had begun in the US in the 1950s and over time had been imitated by other governments. These studies were explicitly exercises in futurology, meaning that they were attempts to forecast technology trends, market conditions and labor market resources. In the Irish context, the study embraced eight sectors of economic interest: chemicals and pharmaceuticals, information and communications technology, materials and manufacturing, energy, health and life sciences, natural resources, transport and logistics, and finally, construction and infrastructure. Each sector was assigned to a panel of experts and stakeholders drawn from academia, government and industry. Its key presumptions were that “Technology Foresight studies help to fuel the knowledge debate and thus contribute towards building common visions for the research community, governments, trade and industry as well as society. This helps research to become embedded and accepted in society.” Consultation with other interested parties was encouraged. Unlike traditional White Papers and run-of-the-mill state-sponsored reports, the Technology Foresight initiative reached out to a much wider constituency of interests. One of its strengths, arguably, was “handshaking” with cohorts of specialist and commercial interests. It afforded an opportunity to inform the same groups about dependencies between research, technological change and economic growth.96 It also laid bare that Ireland’s research commitments to these sectors needed a considerable boost, despite improvements in government research funding in the late 1990s. Regarding future investments in higher education, it forecasted that increased numbers of information technology and general science graduates would be needed to sustain the international dimension of Irish trade and commerce. The phrase “knowledge society” entered official parlance as an objective that Ireland must set its sights on.97 Thereafter, the step from accepting the centrality of knowledge for economic well-being to the centrality of research funding to produce such knowledge was inevitable. A Technology Foresight Fund was created and, the following year, the government established the
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Today, a generally high level of education is not alone sufficient to ensure future prosperity. In the future, Ireland and the Irish must survive by being more skilful and quicker at research and development than our competitors – otherwise, we shall see a reduction in living standards. Thus, education, research and technology are closely linked with industrial policy. Research and its results play a vital role in modern society – the research institutions must therefore constantly meet current challenges and demands in order to retain their dynamism and value in society.95
research-funding body Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) – originally entitled the Foresight Research Foundation – to administer the fund with specific emphasis on biotechnology and ICT. By the standards of a generation previously it was established with an unimaginably large budget exceeding half a billion euros. SFI’s remit was to make grants to individual researchers and research teams. This included funding specialized research centers (akin to peripheral research “embassies” populating many US campuses) known as Centers for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET). Among the objectives of the CSET program was the creation of clusters of research expertise for industry collaboration.98 None of these initiatives would have been out of place in universities in the upper tier of OECD countries. Predictably, university interests were quick to concur with the report’s forecast of economic growth reliant on knowledge grounded in information technology and biological science.99 Concerns that technology foresight studies merely reflected mainstream research biases that could prove difficult to challenge once infrastructure was in place, were intrinsically crude, or served to crystallize already politicized perspectives on certain science and technology trends, did not surface. The possibility that such exercises were inadequate for grounding national innovation systems in the absence of detailed consideration of the social dynamics affecting invention and innovation also did not arise. Furthermore, the dangers inherent in committing to a science and technology “push” rather than “pull” strategy were not fully examined.100 In their response to the Technology Foresight Report, the Conference of Heads of the Irish Universities mentioned that technology push policies could fail but only if they were not supported by education measures.101 Once research was supplied, innovations would follow. Doubt was a luxury the sector could ill-afford. For years, university presidents had lobbied collectively for greater resources. Most had experience abroad. All were cognizant of the gap between Irish higher education and many other OECD systems. Despite periodic protests from Irish university presidents, compared to its neighbors Ireland significantly increased its expenditure on higher education throughout the 1990s and into the twenty-first century.102 By the standards of international comparison, unlike most of its EU counterparts, in 2000 Ireland had continued for the best part of a generation to put public money into higher education less as an act of social welfare than an investment in an economic good.103 The EU-supported “Bologna Declaration” of June 19, 1999 committing EU states to improving cohesion and quality in European higher education, and creating greater “competitiveness” in the sector, was another impetus to achieving a greater international standing for Irish universities.104 Exposure to ICT over the previous 20 years had lent confidence to aspirations that Irish universities could “spin out” another DEC, SUN or Google. The Industrial Development Authority, responsible for “landing” overseas
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In an environment of rapid technological change, it is crucial for companies to continue to improve their existing products and to increase the efficiency of production in order to minimise costs and maintain competitiveness in the global market. Industry must continually seek to develop new products to meet changing patterns of demand and the increasingly high expectations of consumers familiar with technological change. Research and development in third level institutions is recognised as vital to the development of a pool of expertise capable of providing support to industry. Investment in modern state-of-the-art technology and research facilities is vital to the creation of a skilled pool of researchers who have the knowledge and capacity to co-operate with industry in developing new products and enhancing existing methods of production. The availability of research and development resources will ensure that companies based in Ireland can continue to compete successfully in the global market.106
The OECD speaks Towards the end of the 1990s, several dominant domestic research funding streams emerged. Enterprise Ireland took over the remit of Forbairt, maintaining the existing project streams but with an improved budget and a greater mindfulness to industrial objectives. The Health Research Board (HRB) directed biomedical research on small to medium-sized budgets. Science Foundation Ireland was operating with a budget of several hundred million euros, dwarfing the other bodies. It was charged with funding international quality basic research assessed by international peer review. The projects were to be divided between individual researchers and centers of excellence with time periods typically of five years’ duration. Overseas recruitment of internationally known academics, at points above domestic
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investment, made frequent references to higher education in its official publications. The quality of higher education training, alongside financial incentives, was often laid out as part of the bait package for likely investors. It followed that direct investment in university research and investment was direct investment in the economy. Several indigenous companies, a few publicly traded on the NASDAQ and the London Stock Exchange had been founded with the assistance of university research.105 Others, though not driven by university research, retained links through alumni with an alma mater. ICT companies also were partners in university undergraduate (and to a lesser extent postgraduate) work experience schemes. A number of companies had academic staff operating as either directors or consultants. Any reservations about the wisdom of direct subsidies to BERD did not lead to qualms in volunteering the universities to fill hypothetical industrial R&D gaps:
academic salary scales, more or less gave SFI a blank slate to begin building clusters of expertise from the ground up. The SFI funding model was closely based on that operated by the National Science Foundation in the US. In addition, largely through the philanthropy of one Irish American businessman, the government established a Program for Research in Third Level Institutions (PRTLI) with the express mission of funding “leading edge” infrastructural projects in the sector.107 Typically, these were capital-intensive multimillion-euro projects. Funding for projects, regardless of funding body, was competitive, relied on peer assessment and provided feedback to candidates on the quality of their proposals. Emphasis on the likely proximity to industrial realization is one of the key criteria separating applied from basic projects. Additional research-awarding functions were granted to two further bodies, the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) and the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET). Throughout the 1990s a veritable family of domestic reports and government White Papers had grown up, suggesting improved dependencies between higher education research, technology and economic growth. With apposite millennial gusto, several further influential reports followed. Among the most influential of these, in terms of joining up the dots in the policy of academic research commercialization, were the OECD 2004 Review of Higher Education in Ireland and Building Ireland’s Knowledge Economy – Ireland’s National Plan for Promoting Investment in R&D to 2010.108 The latter, a domestic production, recommended a twin-track approach to stimulate both business and academic research – although its expectation that industry would have annual BERD of €2.4 billion by the end of 2010 seems widely optimistic. It held out the impressive prospect that “Ireland by 2010 will be internationally renowned for the excellence of its research and will be at the forefront in generating and using new knowledge for economic and social progress, within an innovation driven culture.” To achieve these ambitions the report recommended that almost every entity involved with research in whatever sector of the economy must double its efforts at least – and by 2010. Industry would have to double its expenditure on R&D (from 0.9 percent of GDP to 1.7 percent of GDP). The number of indigenous companies involved in minimal R&D, defined as in excess of €100,000, would have to double (from 500 to 1000). Strikingly, the number of indigenous companies performing significant R&D, defined as in excess of €2 million, would have to quadruple (from 26 to 100). Similar ratios would have to be met by foreign companies engaged in minimal and significant R&D (from 239 to 520, and from 47 to 150). Funds coming into higher education R&D would also have to double (from €440 million or 0.4 percent of GDP to €1.1 billion or 0.8 percent of GDP). These were staggering expectations, based on a presumed causality between investment in R&D and economic growth. Domestic expectations, far from being deterred, were soon to be enthusiastically reiterated.
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The OECD 2004 Review of National Policies for Education: Review of Higher Education in Ireland contained 52 recommendations for the sector, covering almost everything conceivable from student fees, university governance through to innovation and research. The report pulled together a slew of domestic reports and policy documents and situated them within the context of international trends, sometimes critically, more often approvingly. Among its more quotidian recommendations was the retention of the binary system that maintained a semblance of a separation between the university and technology institute sectors and a reanalysis of the 1995 decision to abolish student fees as part of an “access” strategy. It also recommended consolidating and pruning the population of more than a dozen research grant awarding and oversight bodies.109 Research councils, an additional set of actors, could be absorbed into the reduced population. Achieving efficiency in governance and management was emphasized. Underscoring the policy importance attached to innovation and its management, the report recommended the creation of a Council for Tertiary Education and Innovation chaired by the Taoiseach no less. Reminiscent of complaints made almost a generation previously, the OECD examiners observed that public policy governing higher education was fragmented, lacking in “strategic guidance.” An apparent tension between demanding greater strategic uniformity, in terms of common aims and programs, across the sector while at the same time the universities were becoming comfortable with almost ten years of autonomy, was completely overlooked. The evident influence of innovation theorizing, in the guise of academic capitalism, is manifest in its recommendations that academic salary scales become more flexible to attract high-caliber researchers. Not only was such a shift deemed beneficial for research but also for innovation promotion. The counterargument that exceptionally comfortable academic employment may not only be inequitable but also lessen the likelihood of industrial risk-taking was unacknowledged. Regarding the presumed crossover between research and innovation, the report primarily justifies increases in research funding in the name of global competitiveness, along with mandated increases in undergraduate and postgraduate numbers. At first glance, these recommendations seem reasonable, even necessary in the context of policy aspirations. On the other hand, given the historical legacy of underinvestment in academic R&D, it was surprising that the report passed over the likely implications of R&D funding inflation. At least one issue for consideration should have been the capacity of a system, in transition from a famine to a feast, to manage the cornucopia of funding that had already come its way. It is a strange omission. Moreover, much of this funding was being directed into science and engineering, areas that were not attracting the highest caliber performers in the state’s matriculation exams. Irish universities were investing more heavily in subjects attracting students who had underachieved at second level relative to their peers. Indeed, the entry
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points for the humanities, law and medicine were (and continue to be) up to 200 points higher than science, engineering and computer science – typically the latter were attracting students with 350 points or less from a maximum score of 600 points.110 The OECD report further recommended that “greater strategic focus” can only be achieved through “modernization and adaptation” in governance and management. Indicative of the confused thinking about what changes are actually practical as opposed to “needed” in theory, the report recommended that institutions have “annually renewable contracts” with the proposed Tertiary Education Authority, while paradoxically advocating that institutions should have a “secure environment for financial planning.” Recommendations for improvements in governance have a viral persistence in OECD studies. A 2006 report recommended, again, that the sector give greater thought to its “strategic steering,” in the context of improved governance and management of research and innovation.111 Questions about the practical implications for a country with 4 million people adopting managerialist policies for “steering” the sector did not arise within the studies. The possibility that the sector was experiencing the funding equivalent of an Indian summer was equally unvoiced. Doubts about the wisdom and sustainability of ambitions to mold the universities for membership of the upper tier of OECD universities (the majority of the university “league tables” are dominated by institutions subscribing to the US research university model) are noticeably absent.112 Ireland’s expenditure on R&D in higher education was lauded by the OECD – at its greatest in Irish higher education’s history between 1996 and 2002. Between 1998 and 2004, public monies flowing into higher education R&D (HERD) doubled. To meet the Lisbon expenditure target of 3 percent of GDP on R&D, industry and the government would need to invest “much more.” Integration of research and innovation with economic and regional policy is a key recommendation of the review. In theory, the spillover from local academic institutions into the local industrial base would create opportunities for new industries, partnerships and growth. The assumption that regional improvements arise from R&D spillovers is based on evidence that, in the European arena, is tenuous.113 In a review of policies and aspirations intent on linking academic entrepreneurship to regional development, Kitigawa observes that in the cases of many of the reference models, usually American, positive economic factors were already in place. 114 Aspirations for the European emulation of such successes, he counsels, must be tempered by more realistic expectations. Arguably, the most important lesson to be drawn from attempts to seed regional economic development in Europe with the outputs of higher education is that knowledge transfer to the regions cannot be mandated. Policies can facilitate knowledge transfer but they cannot compel it. If anything, university R&D tends to cluster around existing commercial industrial settlements. Put bluntly, the lucky get luckier. Scattering investment in
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R&D across the whole tertiary sector may be no more profitable than spread betting. What makes a “flow of knowledge” between university and industry viable in one regional setting may be entirely absent or even counterproductive in another. Kitigawa argues that an appropriate regional network model is an important determinant of success, and concentration of resources, human and physical, has a better chance of leading to longterm spillover effects. But the model cannot be simply an ad hoc collection of vested interests but must include an altered university governance model. Effectively, in Kitigawa’s scenario, the university as a center of innovation and entrepreneurship becomes an arm of regional development. A Spanish study by Acosta and Coronado is particularly relevant to a country like Ireland with an underindustrialized past and a traditional emphasis on attracting low to medium quality assembly line focused foreign direct investment.115 Their study concluded that regional differences significantly influence innovation programs. How the “science” is translated into the “technology” is complicated by geographical microeconomic factors not usually taken into account in framing innovation policies. Little of value is obtained in situating high-powered R&D in regions where the technology uptake is generally dependent upon using low to medium grade technology. A controversial implication, one that runs counter to not just the OECD report on Irish HE but general OECD policy, is that the capacity of a region to take up scientific research and innovation should be the main driver of investment in higher education R&D and not merely the capacity or inclination of a university to undertake a specific form of R&D. The global context within which Ireland operated and the state’s global aspirations were not lost on successive OECD examiners. The OECD 2004 review restated the objective as follows: Ireland’s determination to move from being a technology-importing, low cost economy to an innovation-based, technology-generating society requires that Irish tertiary education and research, and innovative indigenous enterprises, have to become the new drivers of economic development and of the country’s international competitiveness.116 Even in a seemingly innocuous document entitled “A Brief Description of the Irish Education System” space is found to forcefully assert official R&D policy: As Ireland develops as a knowledge-based economy, a key challenge for education is to develop the necessary mix of creativity and skills to respond to the needs of a changing labour market. Research, development and innovation are critical elements in achieving and maintaining economic competitiveness and securing continued prosperity. The availability of an adequate number of graduates skilled in the fields of Maths, Physical Sciences, Biological Sciences, Technology and Engineering will
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be a critical factor in supporting this strategy. For Ireland, future economic growth relies on the ability to attract and retain higher value activities and higher skills with an emphasis on research, design and innovation. This involves moving from technology based development to innovation based development which is less vulnerable to competition from lower cost economies.117
The Department is also actively involved with a wide range of international agencies, including OECD, UNESCO and the Council of Europe and, bilaterally, with a large number of individual countries. This objective reflects our commitment to the EU “Future Objectives Process” and the Bologna and Copenhagen processes in the context of the Lisbon Agenda. Education is a key factor in the European Union’s competitiveness, sustainable growth and employment and therefore a prerequisite for achieving the economic, social and environmental goals set in Lisbon.119 A foundational collection of assumptions in all the above cases is that global “competitiveness” and “investment” are intimately related to the health of the higher education sector, specifically the ability of university R&D to develop innovative artifacts for the “knowledge economy.” The Foreign Policy Globalization Index for 2006 showed that Ireland remained amongst the most globalized countries on Earth. Having been in second place in 2001 and 2002 it dropped back to fourth place due to recent shifts in FDI to Eastern Europe and Asia.120 The seesawing of rankings indicated how vulnerable the country was to external events outside its control. The OECD 2007 review of FDI revealed that Ireland had succeeded remarkably well overall in FDI with some $62 billion flowing into the country between 2001 and 2003.121 As mentioned previously, $40 billion flowed out due to a US tax amnesty on profits made overseas in 2004/5. In 2006 inflow was back up to $12 billion, again underlining the fragility and volatility of this type of investment. There is little doubt that the innate vulnerability of the economy arising from its dependency on FDI, usually couched in terms of competitiveness pressures, has influenced policy support for increasing university R&D.
Double, double, toil and trouble … possibly? The OECD 2004 report and the domestic interdepartmental report consolidated official opinions on the importance of research commercialization and its putative criticality to innovation. A consensus was fostered about
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The official education strategy document makes no bones about “the urgent need for investment in science and research to support a knowledge and innovation based society, essential to our economic competitiveness and continuing prosperity.”118 Cohesion with a global agenda arises by virtue of the fact that
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if the government is to invest in the doubling of PhD numbers over the coming five to six years in line with the Lisbon Declaration and retain its commitment to building the knowledge economy through university-based research, then the pace of university and doctoral studies reform cannot slacken. A dependency between economic well-being and university R&D was taken for granted and, now, seemingly elevated beyond questioning. Nevertheless, a flavor of the conflicted nature of the commitment is found in the later admission that 90% of R&D carried out in Irish industry is by non-PhD grades. It is important to recognise however that the destination for approximately 50% of PhDs is in academia. Thus it is essential to balance national targets of doubling PhDs with the current reality of industrial demands. Yet the traditional European PhD is still often seen as tailored to the research needs of academia, but hardly ever to a prospective industrial employer. Little thought was spared for PhDs outside the science and technology areas – the areas with ostensibly immediate industrial relevance received most attention. Although the Minister in her opening address also queried the possible drift of PhDs and researchers to other jurisdictions, the likelihood that large numbers of PhDs could simply be preparing themselves for unemployment was hardly considered. If “industry” can only absorb a relatively small percentage of PhDs at the time she spoke then a doubling of PhDs in five years could still leave the percentage employed constant. Unless the public sector greatly expanded its future intake of PhD graduates, which would be unlikely in any period of economic contraction (let alone an unforeseen recession), the outlook for increased cohorts of PhDs
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creating a dedicated research infrastructure, a “fourth level”, to support science, technology and innovation commercialization in higher education. But, even as the domestic interdepartmental group was putting its report together, inconsistent ambitions were in evidence. A commitment to increase PhD graduate numbers (to double the numbers) was endorsed by the OECD report, which recommended that research funding be aligned with PhD enrolments. It was hardly a coincidence, therefore, that at an Irish Universities Association conference on “The Future of the PhD” one of the main items on the agenda was the funding of industry-relevant research within PhD programs.122 The OECD 2004 review, in fact, had recommended that the institutes of technology discontinue doctoral education. The Minister for Education, sidestepping some of the tensions in her address to the conference, asserted official policy that
would be uncertain. Many could find themselves overqualified and overspecialized for available positions. Given the crest of the economic wave at the time, preparing for a rainy day was considered irrationally pessimistic. The possibility that Ireland would be producing a human capital export by way of PhDs was not seriously countenanced. That something amounting to anxiety existed about industry’s capacity to absorb increased numbers of PhD students was publicly aired by the chairperson of the Advisory Science Council. She urged industry to become more involved in the R&D process and hire more PhD graduates.123 Since government was funding R&D and innovation, it was now time that industry took advantage of all that was and would be on offer. If there is any weakness in the argument it is in the assumption that industry and the R&D community share similar developmental trajectories. Exhorting industry to improve its commitment to R&D and postdoctorate employment implies a complete lacuna in thinking about the role of market forces in shaping an industry. An account of Canadian experiences in a recent OECD workshop revealed only a “tiny fraction” of companies become R&D leaders.124 Their CEOs described that the greatest challenge was finding someone technically proficient with commerce skills. To become a market leader more than antecedent R&D skills are required. Bearing this in mind, the general belief permeating Irish policy that a likely supply-side surplus of R&D expertise should drive demand is simply naïve. Even the corollary assumption that employment of PhDs is necessary for industrial innovation has at best sectoral, and at worst, marginal significance. It probably is the case currently that significant areas of biotechnology require postdoctoral qualifications due to specialized training. There is no barrier to certain companies providing much of this training in-house, but largely state-subsidized postgraduate training offers a convenient indirect subsidy. On the other hand, the history of ICT is replete with innovators who did not attend college, dropped out or graduated with a primary degree. The general principle that industry needs PhDs to innovate is therefore debatable. This does not detract from the assumptions that higher education and postgraduate training are desirable as likely moral, social and personal goods. But this is not the justification being offered. Instead, the argument turns on affording industry opportunities to exploit academic R&D initiatives. Commenting on the OECD 2004 concern that Ireland may not produce enough PhDs to service industrial R&D, economist John Sheehan countered that young researchers are highly mobile: [the] Review expresses the fear the insufficient number of doctoral students may ultimately constrain levels of industrial R&D as well as the research intensity of Ireland’s university system. Young researchers are highly mobile, and will come to Ireland given appropriate incentives. Conversely, the production of more PhDs is no guarantee of subsequent Irish research
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activity (just as the output of medical graduates does not guarantee a corresponding domestic availability of medical practitioners).125 Richard Tol, another economist, also expressed reservations about the capacity of industry to absorb increased numbers of PhDs, implying that the problem is one of moving beyond a “one-off” industry flirtation with R&D innovation to a consolidated long-term relationship.126 If industry does not absorb increased PhD output, it is likely that the state will find itself employing even more academic public servants. Tol recommends fine-grained evaluation of commercialization objectives to ensure value for money. Leaving aside methodological issues about what precisely would count as data, a weakness in these exercises is the paucity of actionable sanctions when programs fall far short of commercial objectives.
Perhaps undeservedly overlooked has been the concentrated lobbying by university presidents to obtain more funding for the sector, expand the role of the presidency and restructure their universities. In their submission to the OECD 2004 review of higher education, the university presidents signaled an impatience for recognition as major partners in economic development: “because of their extensive role universities should be partners in the national planning process.”127 It was an extraordinary demand when set against a past of near-invisibility. Greater cohesion has been brought to their persuasive efforts through the Irish Universities Association (IUA) – its predecessor was the Conference of Heads of the Irish Universities (CHIU). Reviewing their “communications/lobbying” labors for CHIU in 2005, they noted that: Despite the intensive lobbying of Ministers and top public servants, and the supportive findings and recommendations of Reports – the OECD Review of Higher Education in Ireland and the HEA Financial Position of Irish Universities – the Estimates allocation to universities represented a 3.5% cut in university funding … While there continues to be regular media coverage of university reform and funding issues, there is a need to reassess sectoral communications/lobbying strategy with a view to securing the investment in universities needed if the sector is realistically to aspire to meeting the government’s objective of being in the top rank of the OECD.128 The media, especially The Irish Times, developed a high-profile interest in “communications” about education and technology. The regularity with which third-level issues, particularly those of the universities, continue to feature suggests it plays an important role in “getting the message across,”
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Lobbying for prestige
especially the “funding concerns” of the presidents. In 2004, the then president of University College Cork warned in near ominous tones that underfunding of the universities was endangering the health of the economy.129 The emeritus founding president of the University of Limerick, Edward Walsh, recommended that university presidents needed more freedom to deal with mediocrity and underfunding – rooted in the perception that “the US universities are no-nonsense performance-driven organisations that in the relatively short time since the second World War have managed to outflank their European counterparts.”130 In his judgment, the absence of business-minded governance structures hindered the development of the Irish universities. Among the challenges facing the “EU University,” identified by Walsh in a presentation to Microsoft in April 2004, was a requirement to “push back the state.”131 The irony surely could not have been lost on some of his audience, as Ireland has done more than any other state in the EU to push itself back from the affairs of overseas multinationals. The president of NUI Maynooth in January 2005 reassured the public that any tension between utility and academic values was “imagined.”132 His position is not out of kilter with other views. In May the recently retired president of Dublin City University warned that a lack of “integrated planning,” along the lines of Finland, meant that investment in education might be falling short of its goals.133 The following December, the president of UCD, Hugh Brady, lavished praise on the government’s decision to pour €1.2 billion into higher education over the coming ten years.134 In the midst of internal dissent over proposals to reorganize TCD allegedly in favor of technoscience disciplines, the provost in 2006 announced that the Irish academic community had the capacity to lead the world.135 All that was needed, it seemed, to fulfill ambitions were unlimited amounts of public funding. The myopic focus of lobby groups sometimes causes them not to see the wood for the trees. It was at the least unfortunate that in the same week when the IUA chose to criticize the government (yet again) for underfunding the sector (the “crisis” being that the OECD 2004 recommendation for a “quantum leap” in funding was being ignored), the government simultaneously was launching two new funding initiatives worth €360 million. Even the normally admiring Irish Times was prompted to editorialize indignantly that in truth, the Government has hardly been mean-spirited when it comes to the third level sector. Total funding has doubled since 1999. More than €13 billion has been allocated to higher education as part of the National Development Plan and in excess of €1 billion has been invested under the four cycles of the PRTLI.136 A glance at lobbying efforts offers an insight into how academic presidential roles have changed. Lobbying is not a belittling activity, but there is always the risk that the leadership tone and philosophy adopted by a president
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will become confused with the function and role of his or her university. What makes lobbying effective is less likely to be the quality of one’s message as opposed to the potency of one’s allies. In this regard, Edward Walsh was praised by the philanthropic agency that underwrote a great deal of university expansion in the late 1990s for his appreciation of the American university culture. Atlantic Philanthropy contributed to three cycles of funding between 1999 and 2001. In total this consumed €670 million, comprised of 60 percent government funding and 40 percent philanthropic – about one fifth of the profit made by US multinationals in Ireland in the same period.137 The phenomenon of the high-profile lobbying university president is new to Irish higher education but well established in the US. It is a demeanor potentially fraught with ambiguity and conflict of interests. Past president of Harvard University, Derek Bok, has characterized the role of a US university president as that of a professional fund-raiser: “The launching of larger and larger capital drives has provoked concerns that university presidents are now being chosen primarily for their fund-raising abilities.”138 Nannerl Keohane, previously president of Wellesley College and Duke University, records a common megalomaniacal urge, though misguided, to increase the power of a president on the assumption that many of those who trace our problems to defects in our governance systems have hit upon an obvious solution: strengthen the presidency. If only the head of Stanford or Michigan would act more like the head of IBM or General Electric, striking off the fetters of entitlements and veto powers, we would be well on our way to reforming higher education.139 Stephen Trachtenberg, reflecting on his time as president of George Washington University, observes that in spite of a desire by scholars to be more distant from market forces, university budgets are big and big budgets inevitably bring about, to some degree, a shift to business values. With this in mind, he argues candidly that “schmoozing” for money is a required competency of university presidents.140 At a time when universities are increasingly alert to league table implications, the desire to enlist leaders assumed capable of guiding their institutions to the top of the academic arms race is predictably infiltrating policy. Presidents are meant to be executives and for that role they need specialized training, and possibly some degree of deskilling in their academic specialty. In the UK, for example, the principle that a university president needs specific management skills has been fostered through specialist management training programs. The initiative was designed to produce a hybrid university executive, tuned to academic responsibilities but with an appropriate business outlook. Howard Newby explains, Universities UK (UUK) have developed a Top Management Programme, which has now been running for three years, and gaining positive feed-
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back from those who have been on the courses. We have also developed a mentoring scheme in which 40 or so heads of universities and colleges have the opportunity of mentoring or job shadowing with leading managers from other parts of the economy.141 Bearing the above in mind, the views put to the official body charged with setting remuneration for the heads of the Irish universities are revealing:
From the perspective of an Arcadian vista on academe, such admissions are disturbing, and rupture the idyll. However, and though it dilutes the vinegar of the traditionalist, it must be admitted that institutions are experiencing change at a more rapid pace than previously imagined. There is some merit in the case made by university presidents that their traditional roles have changed substantially, if not utterly, following global corporate trends. If the argument produced by the Irish university presidents is read again in this light, their self-understanding as transformational leaders is entirely reasonable. However, it is precisely because presidents have become agents of political change that they find themselves in conflict with traditional academic practices, their roles appearing strangely incongruous. Reactions to such admissions of role “development” are often strong. This is because the change lays bare an identity crisis at the very top layer of leadership – the hero’s lair, so to speak. Uncertainty about the future, one’s role in it, is compounded by uncertainty about the leader’s role and responsibility.143 It seems, therefore, that declarations by university presidents that they are no longer academics, merely express an uncomfortable truth.
University beauty contests In spite of unanimous presidential recommendations for increased business-mindedness and competition in the university sector, when the president of UCD, Hugh Brady, attempted to recruit academics from sister colleges, he found himself embroiled in a “poaching” controversy.144 The affair, a storm in a teacup, demonstrated the cartel-like thinking that is the de facto business model in the sector. It led the universities to agree under ministerial watch a “nonpoaching” protocol. Brady’s defense was that he
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It was also put to us that university Heads are no longer academics and administrators but rather strategic leaders who are required to assess opportunities and risks against clear strategic priorities and to take decisions with far reaching implications. In summary, it was suggested to us that the changes since the last review in 2001 combined with the full implementation of the Universities Act, 1997 meant that the role of a Head of a university had developed to the stage where it closely resembled the role of a chief executive of a major Irish company.142
was simply trying to move UCD into the top 30 world ranked universities – a position entirely consistent with OECD approved aims for the sector. It is hard to fault his defense without being inconsistent. If poaching grants a competitive advantage why not do it? Official government policy towards the universities explicitly encourages ranking exercises as measures of performance. In 2007, both UCD and TCD were able to announce improved positions in these all-important cerebral beauty contests.145 In the Times Higher Education Supplement rankings, TCD moved from 78th to 53rd position. While UCD made its debut in the top 200 universities with a ranking of 177th. These “improvements” were seized upon readily by respective press offices. However, the THES league table is not beyond criticism. A large percentage of “marks,” 40 percent, is awarded for peer review. In each case, an “expert” offers an opinion on up to 30 institutions. The validity of any academic’s review of dozens of external institutions, let alone her own institution, is open to question. Neither the 2007 nor 2008 university rankings prepared by Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Institute of Higher Education has any Irish university in the top 200 places.146 In 2007, TCD, UCD and UCC appear in 203rd, 305th and 404th places respectively (in the 2008 ranking, UCC moved up a rank – one “notch” ahead of UCD). The remaining four universities are outliers. Crossreferencing by economist Constantin Gurdgiev and his team amongst the THES ranking, the Shanghai University index and the Webometrics dataset, produced a poor assessment of Irish higher education’s overall performance.147 Comparing the top three performing Irish universities against OECD counterparts (and a half dozen developing nations) ranked Ireland 22nd out of 38 countries. If TCD, the top performer, was removed from the equation the ranking plummeted to 33rd of 38 countries. All of these results are probably open to dispute on several grounds, not the least of which is lack of consideration given to teaching quality. However, if policy makers and academic elites place their faith in the value of these cerebral beauty contests, then they also live or die by them. It was noted in the OECD review of Irish higher education that ascending the ranking tables was a national policy, supported by government and endorsed by the university presidents. Escaping most comment was the debatable shift of an unrealistic aspiration into an unachievable mandate. Scant thought was given to the consequences of failure. There is little doubt that the methodological assumptions of the ranking exercises are questionable, but this in itself is not sufficient to justify ignoring them.148 The widely quoted Shanghai Jiao Tong University index, in relying more on hard achievements such as the number of Nobel and Field Medal winners and international scientist citations, favors an extreme form of excellence as a measure of quality.149 The difficulty here is that the construct may result in paring down the institution to a small set of unrepresentative empirical indicators. The likelihood that rankings can distort reality must also be entertained as “soft” outputs such as teaching quality remain beyond the
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frontiers of assessment. Using ranking systems for marketing purposes may propel shifts in government policies, student enrolment patterns and create a two-tier academic labor market – an “upper” tier of globally mobile researchers and “lower” tier of local teaching academics. The overall academic value of such shifts is uncertain, and possibly to be regarded cynically.150 Moreover, the seesaw pattern of ranking that affects institutions outside the top 100 is likely to distort student perceptions. If a university leaps or drops several dozen rungs over a short period of time, is it of any significance? The nonoccurrence of a university in the top 500 is not necessarily evidence of falling, or failed, teaching or research standards. Current university ranking systems favor research-driven institutions, with a noticeable bias towards English-speaking nations. Inevitably, this excludes many others with a greater focus on the humanities and professional education. The effect of league tables on European institutions, according to Maijk van der Wende’s analysis, is less diversification among institutions and greater “vertical” stratification of offerings.151 Diversity of offerings is internalized, producing competition between institutions in the same areas, where lateral diversifications could produce more cooperation and a greater net benefit to the organic higher education system. Current European higher education policies promote the advantages of institutional collaboration (cost sharing, hybrid vigor, efficient resource allocation, etc.) but looked at from a league table entrant’s perspective it is a curious policy as it demands collaboration with competitors. Michael Gibbons, reflecting on the phenomenon of increased collaboration, suggests that collaborating institutions are engaged in dynamic competition, looking outside their walls to fill gaps in knowledge and skills.152 These institutions embrace the risks of competition while presuming they can capitalize on any knowledge crossover. In other words, they are not truly collaborating but entertaining one another in a trial of strength. The scenario resonates with the explanation offered by Nonaka and Takeuchi for the success of Japanese industry mentioned previously. How does a government, which is responsible for framing public policy, respond to university rankings? Some issues may be beyond easy remediation. David Dill and Maarja Soo note that rankings appear to be reaching consensus on several assumptions, several of which are contentious, e.g. the “rankings suggest that one of the leading determinants of a good university is the quality of its incoming students.”153 Despite obvious concerns about bias, relevance and validity affecting the measures favored by the league tables (assessments of teaching and learning are still orphans), Dill and Soo’s cross-national analysis found that, within their largely Anglophone cohort, assessments of academic quality were beginning to converge. Nina van Dyke’s analysis of university “report cards” over a 20-year period, also notes consensus growing around broad principles.154 She points out that institutional comparisons are increasing in popularity, and therefore influence, among students, parents and policy makers. If this trend is replicated consistently over time in global comparisons, the use of league table rankings as policy inputs appears
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inescapable. As research-intensive universities “move up” the league tables (or attempt to do so) a greater share of national resources moves with them. The tentative effect is an uneven distribution of the notional benefits of competition. The pursuit of improved rankings by select institutions needs to be carefully measured against the overall cost to the higher education sector. If the effect of the league tables is to strengthen some institutions at the expense of permanently weakening others, the overall benefit of the competition to an individual state must be reassessed in the light of sectoral policies and government performance measures.155
The above gives an overview of the historical development of higher education in Ireland and its interconnection with government policy, foreign direct investment and R&D industrial aspirations. Until very recently, the development of the sector was mired in processes characterized by tightfistedness, sectarianism, and insularity. Reports into the state of the university sector in the 1960s revealed a system working with a level of funding well below its nearest neighbors. Economic policies of the time were gradually shifting from an import-substitution protectionism that marked the first four decades of the state, to initiatives that were export oriented, largely underpinned by foreign direct investment. From the end of the 1960s onwards a gradual consensus began to emerge about the presumed importance of higher education to economic growth. This was not to blossom until the beginning of the 1990s nevertheless. In a state where deference to authority was expected and individualism met with stiff opposition, the universities were arguably a greater part of the problem and a lesser part of any solution. The relative lateness of the sector (the majority) in developing confidence in secular modes of thought meant that early policy debates were stunted, being driven instead by state-supported industrial and economic interests. There was no vision for tertiary level education aside from an economic one – a condition that White has implied is persistent.156 Patrick Lynch, one of the key authors of the 1963 Investment in Education report, is cited by Lee as regretting the near absence of debate on the role of technology in society, both as artifact and manufactured product: Few countries needed such a debate, in view of the vulnerability not only of their economy, but of their society and identity, to the implications of technological change, as urgently as Ireland. The official mind wanted no debate. If doubt were cast on the new faith in high tech, what was there left? Every other economic option had failed.157 An 1994 editorial in The Irish Times reheated similar criticisms. It castigated the “intelligentsias” for ignoring pressing policy debates. In contrast to
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We believe what we want to believe?
several scientists, “many of the intelligentsias involved in the humanities and the human sciences, centred most obviously in the universities, contribute minimally to the analysis and discussion of public policy.”158 State support for technology industries, and all that implied, was beyond “intellectual” critique. This resulted in major policy premises enduring unchallenged for nearly a generation. Technology was wrapped in the smoke of alchemical fire, intellectual mystique and patriotic deference. It was the great flux that could bind opposites together. The unspoken truth known to many policy makers, and pulled into daylight by Telesis originally, was that much of the hailed technology investment was investment in run-of-the-mill assembly line production. Compounding the dilemma of honest analysis was the implicit understanding that questioning of technology policy was tantamount to bad citizenship. Reflecting on the influence of political networking and clientelism in Ireland, Schmitt warns: “authoritarian norms impede democratic responsibility and responsiveness in ways such as limiting the propensity of citizens to challenge authority and making elites more resistant to political controls.”159 The fact that so much theorizing about university transformation and commercialization has occurred in EU and global forums is a tremendous convenience to the state. Opponents risk being labeled as enemies of modernism, Luddites with a bloody-mindedness towards anything commercial. On the other hand, the critical mass of global interests supporting change requires only minimum consultation with indigenous academic stakeholders.160 Current research commercialization policies emphasize a good deal of spending rather than earning by the universities.161 In order to earn, they must spend and spend willingly out of the public purse. As Mr Micawber found out belatedly, economic ills are not cured by spending. Spending is eventually an output of a successful earning period. Increasing the number of graduates and postgraduates in the universities does not entail that private sector employment will increase. The relationship between educational achievement and employment is not entirely arbitrary, but nor is it entirely assured.162 Graduates are more likely to obtain gainful employment, earn more and remain longer in secure employment than unskilled workers, but there is a risk here of confusing cause and effect.163 Propagandistic claims, for instance, that the Celtic Tiger was built on a solid base of highly qualified graduates rather than low-cost graduate production, low wages and tax incentives have been thoroughly contested.164 A rapidly expanding economy will generate greater need for specialists, its range of services will broaden and general exchequer discretionary spending is more likely to increase. Significantly, William Harris, founding director of Science Foundation Ireland, cites four reasons for Ireland’s growth and prosperity between 1995 and 2005.165 In contrast to the government’s trumpeting of higher education as a crucial driver of innovation, Harris cites higher education achievement as only one factor in the economy’s success, viz. the slightly above OECD average output
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of science and engineering graduates. The other three reasons advanced by Harris are high levels of EU investment in Ireland’s infrastructure, a demonstrated political commitment over decades to supporting multinationals and a “shrewd” corporate taxation regime. In the absence of the economic and financial incentives, factors exogenous to academia’s self-assured claims, the capacity of higher education to shoulder an economy of ideas and ensure growth is mythical. The most significant justification for commercial R&D in the universities in Irish policy has been the nostrum that academia influences industry, not in a trivial sense but by creating, preparing and massaging innovative outputs. This belief was reiterated in a recent rededication of the patria to perform more R&D in the national economic interest. Ireland would seek to become an “innovation island,” home to a “smart economy.” The new policy, under the rubric of Building Ireland’s Smart Economy: a Framework for Sustainable Economic Renewal, was largely a recapitulation of aims and aspirations found in legacy policies going back to the Foresight Technology Report.166 Apart from a shift in jargon from talk of the “knowledge economy” to that of the “smart economy,” the main innovative aspect was a commitment to increase research into environmentally sensitive, “green,” technologies. Three months later, in March 2009, Science Foundation Ireland produced its own supportive policy response with appropriate brio. The strategy, entitled “Powering the Smart Economy,” detailed four areas the agency would attend to in support of the smart economy. These referred respectively to improvements in linkages between human capital production, the quality of research output, the swiftness of knowledge transfer and the enhancement of Ireland’s global academic reputation as a lure for multinational corporations. And the basis for all the promised innovation and commercialization to follow is the wisdom that “only the highest quality academic research provides sustained knowledge capital that is the bedrock of innovation, commercialization and development.”167 No thesis or student project could be left unturned in the quest for a “smart economy.” At one remove innovation is the turning of knowledge into money, whereas research turns money into knowledge. But not all research can be trundled along this track into money, and not all that is research is quantifiable knowledge. A good deal of research output also entails laying down traditions of thought and experimental practices. The National Development Plan referred to at the beginning of this chapter charges that all the research councils combine their energies to serve economic objectives. What is meant by “synergy” in this context is unclear. Troublingly, the implications may only become clear should the economy run into even greater difficulty and fewer funds are available for research that does not directly support innovation. Putting it crudely, the greater the perceived nonlinear relationship between research outputs and innovation objectives, the more research will be herded around a few bright beacons.168 Greater awareness of the serendipity
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between research and eventual commercial innovation may encourage funding policies that are defensive, reflecting an anxiety that only greater control and direction can exclude randomness. Paradoxically, a “fantasy of control” mentality takes over. This scenario is not as far-fetched as it seems. The week of March 11, 2009 saw the Irish government announce a research merger, an Innovation Alliance, between TCD and UCD largely on the grounds that they jointly produce 50 percent of the state’s PhDs, but also much was made of the fact that both were the only Irish universities in the THES “top 200.” Given that the initiative would attract a €650 million government commitment for ten years, promises of a return were in order. Cementing government ambitions for a “smart economy” based on “fourth-level” research, both institutions’ presidents duly opined that the alliance could create up to 30,000 jobs and several hundred businesses over a ten-year period. The alliance would result in what was variously described as an Innovation Academy or an Innovation Centre with a renewed focus on creating private sector employment. Much to the irritation of other members of the Irish Universities Association, it transpired that “secret” negotiations had been in progress for two years between representatives of the two favored institutions. Fears that research funding would be “ring fenced” for the new partnership dominated IUA reaction, compelling the government to deny that any “sweetheart” deal was in place. Amidst the fanfare, the credibility of promises to create 30,000 jobs and hundreds if not thousands of companies went remarkably unchallenged.169 The research merger initiative was tantamount to a subversion of the organizational objectives that defined the IUA. One can speculate about the reactions of those outside the undisclosed negotiation process, but studies of organizational psychodynamics suggest that the less favored members must experience increased anxiety in such circumstances.170 Organizations like the IUA depend upon collaboration to work effectively. When the work task is undermined, the capacity of the group to manage the future, in terms of containing risk and uncertainty, is damaged. Less fortunate institutions and less favored research objectives are more likely to be left like untended candles to sputter dimly. The government, on the other hand, faced a problem with economic and political facets. Firstly, it needed to justify continued investment in R&D aware that a consumption of €1 billion over the previous ten years had not yielded an economic miracle. Secondly, if investment was to continue, and at some level it simply had to continue, the government needed to imbue any decision with a technical credibility that would be politically persuasive. Any suggestion that the economic ambitions in themselves are components of fantasy or rest upon unrealistic expectations is, for the state, too painful a conclusion. In this light, the consensus fashioning of the IUA towards research and innovation policy was an obstacle, i.e. a risk to the realization of state ambitions. Splitting consensus implied splitting the group into the “good” performers and the “bad” performers. The triumphant feel more secure while the vanquished, associating their treatment with
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Atlantic Mouse Becomes Celtic Tiger 97
punishment, feel more threatened. An unintended effect, presumably, is that the concentration of funding on the two major universities may confusingly shield less effective research programs within the institutions from the type of scrutiny feared by external peers. And the justification on the upward and downward cycles will remain the same – research influences the direction of industry and the economy crucially. It is an assumption at the heart of OECD, EU and Irish policies. It is also an assumption that signals a radical expectation of future history, one that seems tenuous in the round. By way of illustration, a retrospective analysis by Terry Shinn of the past two centuries of progress in six nations (the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and Japan) concluded that the influence of the university on industry was uneven, uncertain and possibly more imagined than real. Looking into the past therefore suggests that the evidence for a crucial dependency between the university and industry is questionable. If Shinn’s conclusions are accepted, the foundations for current policy are based more on rhetoric, passion and illusion than on realistic expectations. The certitude of a university–industry–growth relationship is less grounded in historical precedent than popular policy grants. An objection against this conclusion is not that it is false, but that the university “of the past,” the traditional university, is a poor marker for the university of the future. Extrapolating from past academic behavior and attitudes is not a sure guide to future institutional ambitions and their realization. Continuity with the past suggests a likely flaw in commercialization policy. Discontinuity with the past suggests a much altered institutional identity, assumed capable of realizing commercial expectations. It is difficult to be confident that either of these two antithetical positions offers a sound rationale for higher education transformation policies.
Raw material issues The likelihood that higher education transformation in Ireland is “short changing” the undergraduate curriculum, has also been raised by Bradley.171 It is a common concern internationally amongst critics of university transformation. Martha Nussbaum fretted over the citizenship impact of the process. Allan Bloom resented its philosophical indifference. Jennifer Washburn extracted from academics that undergraduate teaching was a drag anchor on career development. Harry Lewis opined that smoothing the undergraduate experience with grade generosity made faculty life easier. Derek Bok has called for a reinvigoration of undergraduate teaching. Many similar opinions can be adduced. Bradley tackles the issue from a different perspective. If the goal is innovation, he reasons that early exposure to innovative thinking is better. However, if all innovative development is assumed to arise from postgraduate investment, how can undergraduates become involved? A variant of this question is not so much how to involve undergraduates, but what is lost if they
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are not involved? If greater integration between research and undergraduate education is desired (leave aside desirable), there is a risk that subjects will be excluded from the curriculum that do not fit with faculty research interests. On the other hand if greater self-development and self-exploration are desired at undergraduate levels, faculty may need to dilute their own involvement with research to address what could become a more dynamic and challenging student environment. Irrespective of whether one supports “education and research” or “education through research,” if innovation is harnessing the genius in the mundane, cross-disciplinary student formation should be given more earnest consideration. A concern by policy entrepreneurs might be that “breaking” traditional discipline specialisms would negatively impact on the investment in R&D – strengthening one teaching area at the expense of diluting investment in “mainstream” research programs. On the other hand, drawing on their UK experience Lambert and colleagues show that reinvigorating undergraduate teaching may benefit rather than obstruct higher education commercial objectives.172 The difficulty in effecting change in the Irish context is that the current policy paradigm and with its emphasis on science, technology, patents and commercial spillover, hampers presentations of academic life as a coherent whole. Teaching in particular is hardly alluded to in any of the substantial policy documents.173 What does this say about the values that the policies promote? From the Skilbeck report, through to the OECD 2004 review and IUA encyclicals to the latest National Development Plan, there is unassailable evidence that Irish higher education policy makers trenchantly believe that traditional academic values cannot accommodate the “new” expectations associated with the knowledge economy, the innovationbased economy, the “smart” economy, and so forth. Meyer and Evans offer the analysis that such policies may at best have superficial success in the long term, since they fail to appreciate the whole of academic life, choosing instead to pick out the parts that fit policy objectives. Rather than reasoned debate, they continue, bureaucratized “attempts to achieve new-order objectives by relaying governmental and other societal demands to staff, unexpurgated and untransformed, [are] generally unsuccessful.”174 The net result is a risk that a significant proportion of faculty will feel alienated, cynical about the purpose of transformation and fall back on the rhetoric of compliance rather than genuine engagement. An “innovation indicator” favored by the European Innovation Scoreboard is the “production” of science and engineering (S&E) graduates. The quality of the teaching received as a function of its contribution to innovation is oddly not subject to assay. The Scoreboard has consistently congratulated Ireland for its above average performance in the production of S&E graduates, which is welcome, as domestic educational policy has long elevated the production of more technical graduates to a patriotic pitch.175 In the international innovation stakes, quantities clearly matter. With so much official enthusiasm and support for S&E at second level, and no obvious
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Atlantic Mouse Becomes Celtic Tiger 99
population-specific cognitive incapacity, the continued drop in numbers choosing S&E subjects in university is perplexing. Official statistics on schoolleaver choices reveal at best a static interest in S&E (once construction-related disciplines are subtracted a serious reduction is evident).176 Ominously, the figures reveal that interest in areas that combine mathematics and computing is declining – precisely the areas singled out as crucial to a knowledge economy. A government Task Force on the Physical Sciences in 2002 reported serious gaps in the mathematical competency of school-leavers conjoined with a decreasing interest in science subjects, especially chemistry and physics.177 Tertiary-level S&E students reported difficulties making the transition from school subjects to college ones. During a presentation at the University of Queensland in November 2004 the then chairman of the HEA revealed underlying trends in S&E enrolments that were far from optimistic.178 Between 1999 and 2004 there was a 19 percent drop in school-leavers with a first preference for a science-based degree. In the same period, the computing and information technology courses experienced a 45 percent reduction in applicants. Full-time science undergraduate enrolment was back to 1995 levels. Overall graduation rates in absolute numbers in science have more than doubled since 1987, but the percentage of school-leavers choosing S&E has been in decline since the early 1990s. The trend has not passed unnoticed in national life. A parliamentary committee recorded in 2000 that “the general picture remains of relatively low interest in science subjects.”179 The drop in engineering graduates prompted the national electricity supply company to state unambiguously that it was seriously concerned by the sharp downward trend in the number of school leavers entering third level “Electrical and Electronic Engineering” (or similar) programmes in Universities and Institutes of Technology. Other Engineering programmes appear to be suffering a significantly smaller downward trend nationally.180 The PISA 2003 assessment of Irish 15-year-olds in science literacy revealed only a marginally average performance, a result consistent with a similar 2000 exercise, and too small to confirm any improving trend.181 It is of no mean significance therefore, that Dave O’Meara, CEO of Havok, one of Ireland’s few internationally renowned software firms, expressed a lack of confidence in the mathematical reasoning skills of indigenous computer graduates.182 O’Meara also expressed disappointment that so little interest was shown by the Irish third-level sector in an international competition hosted by the company.183 The aim of the competition was to foster a greater understanding of the roles of physics and mathematics in computer game design. A senior Google executive, John Herlihy, vented his frustrations with graduate quality after a failed attempt to recruit an additional
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100 software engineers to the group’s Dublin-based European headquarters.184 Given the much promoted centrality of the “knowledge economy” in Ireland’s third-level funding policies, Herlihy is quoted as saying “I’ve been back in Ireland for four years and still don’t know what it is.” A measure of skepticism is evident in his further comments about the “streams” of graduates with first-class honors degrees, observing that such “results used to be hard to get.” Although not mentioning grade inflation specifically, Herlihy opines that there is a “huge amount of dumbing down at third level,” a sector he believes is having “too much” money thrown at it. Such conclusions are not readily dismissible as uninformed, especially when they are echoed by experienced academics.185 Perhaps the sleep of Reason, or what passes for such in higher education circles, should be troubled by the possibility that the requisite skills are present but not accessible to industry – possibly due to the attractive conditions of employment in third level. Several of the sentiments above simply witness patterns of shifting interest in technical subjects, but they also support the suspicion that as higher education confronts student retention challenges, grade inflation is an awkward presence. This latter view has gained some degree of official currency with the admission from Tom Boland, a senior figure in the HEA, that it is remarkable that academically weak school-leavers entering science courses, with mediocre entry points, are nonetheless graduating with first and upper second-class honors degrees.186 This begs thorny questions about the quality of the degrees awarded, and while Boland did not reach a specific conclusion he asked his audience, at least rhetorically, if there could be a tacit multiinstitutional conspiracy at play in the issuance of high grades. Fittingly, Boland delivered his talk before an audience of the Royal Irish Academy. Almost a year previously the then President of the RIA, Jim Slevin, an Emeritus Professor of Physics, expressed similar concerns about falling standards.187 He was particularly exercised by the shadow of grade inflation in masking the real, and declining, quality of undergraduate education. Yet, he observed, the phenomenon was receiving hardly any serious attention. This suggested in turn that the attainment of quantitative measures of mass access allied to the provision of workplace “relevant” skills were overriding questions about their compatibility with standards of excellence. An extrapolation might be that the “rounded” education associated with the Humboldtian tradition was largely extinct in Ireland. Such conclusions express somewhat romanticized expectations nonetheless. As Garvin convincingly argued in Preventing the Future, the “rounded” Humboldtians were always an endangered species in Irish higher education. The trends of disinclination towards S&E in Irish school-leavers are consistent with those reported in 2006 by the OECD Global Science Forum – while absolute student numbers in S&E have increased over the past 15 years, percentage-wise the numbers have been in decline.188 The question is how to
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Often times policy decisions are made on projections of increased demand or evidence of declining student interest. The result is that this inevitably leads to “looming shortage” forecasts. Traditionally, the response of policy makers has been to enhance supply through incentives for domestic students and, in the case of the United States, through the increase of foreign students and professionals. However, science and technology labour markets are “odd”. For one, demand often takes the form of shocks, booms and busts (e.g. IT boom of the 1990s). On the supply-side, research funds are an important stimulus … By and large, (…) claims of researcher shortfalls lack rigour.189 Teitlebaum advocates making greater use of adult learners and master’s-level researchers to “plug” gaps rather than trusting in policy based on long-term forecasts of demand. The quantum theorist Lee Smolin recalls a concrete instance of mistaken forecasting.190 The US physics community lobbied persistently for additional research funding at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s to “combat” an impending shortage of PhDs. Not only did the shortage not occur, but the additional funding created a surplus of underemployed postdoctorates – many living off low-paying teaching assistantships with little prospect of tenure. For Smolin the effect of the “cure” was much worse than the prophesized “disease.” One of the most striking tensions at the heart of Irish higher education policy is that at undergraduate level some element of demand thinking has crept in as witnessed in student choices, but at a postgraduate level the thinking is almost entirely supply-side driven. Simultaneously the system finds itself charged with addressing a shortage and a surplus – finding undergraduates to fill employment gaps, and finding employment gaps to fill with postdoctorates. Ironically, in December 2006 The Irish Times ran a story under the headline “Research the best medicine for investment.”191 The article reiterated the government’s “key strategy” to improve R&D and innovation, and cited recent successes in attracting biopharmaceuticals “enamoured with Ireland.” One of these successes was Amgen, a “$1 billion investment,” which as the “largest biotechnology firm in the world” was bound to employ a goodly percentage of PhDs among its projected 1100 employees. The fit was ideal. It was a ringing endorsement of government policy and a good omen for the 2007 National Development Plan. Ten months later, in October 2007, the situation
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interpret such declines. Are they “natural” market phenomena, indicative of a crisis of confidence in specific sectors, or flagging up impending shortages? Irish higher education policy reactions have preferred “shortage” explanations. Given that much government and sectoral rhetoric has praised the alchemical power of S&E to attract FDI, is this position reasonable? Citing American research, Michael Teitlebaum at an OECD Science and Innovation related workshop in 2005 observed that
was much changed.192 Amgen aborted the project. Irrespective of the causes of Amgen’s woes, its actions reflected the extraordinary volatility of the industry, particularly its fragility in the face of shifting international competition, diverse regulatory regimes and drug trial outcomes. All that is required for the “doubling” of PhDs policy to flounder is for a small number of Amgen-sized projects to be aborted. Questions about the reliance on S&E graduates and subjects have also been raised by the TCD economist Sean Barrett.193 In a critique of Irish university restructuring, he drew attention to the low grade point averages required by school-leavers to enter university S&E courses relative to the humanities, business, law and medicine. School-leavers are awarded points based on the grades they receive in six subjects in their final second-level “graduation” examination. The maximum points obtainable are 600 (100 points in six subjects). Entry to medicine, as an example, would require a school-leaver to score in the region of 575 points. Entry to business studies and arts would require 450 and 405 points on average, respectively. In comparison, entry to science, computer science and engineering degree courses require averages of 350, 310 and 305 respectively. Moreover, traditional requirements for engineering (such as an “honor” in second-level mathematics) and a foreign language for science and engineering – meaning French, German, Italian or Spanish – have been abandoned by most of the universities. The unspoken reasons are straightforward. Courses would be empty if the requirements remained in place. In practice the requirements conflicted with demands to “massify” and “universalize” technology education. A perceived “dumbing down” of mathematics requirements has meant that most if not all S&E curricula, especially in computer studies, have radically recalibrated their mathematics content, delivering the leanest diet compatible with nostalgia for past standards.194 Net acceptance trends for S&E subject areas over seven years are given in Table 3.4.195 Using the absolute figures, in rough percentages, arts intake has increased by 30 percent, science and applied science by almost 7 percent, business studies by nearly 10 percent, but engineering and technology has fallen 10 percent.
Table 3.4
Numbers of students per subject area, 2000–6
Subject area
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
Arts/social science
6140
6535
6911
7309
7817
7669
8286
Science/applied science
3477
3283
3412
3486
3666
3730
3675
Admin/business
4550
4562
4632
4523
4737
4654
4973
Engineering/technology
3160
3080
2521
2853
3257
2913
2810
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The official response to the intake uncertainties has been couched in terms of a “leveling off” of growth at worst.196 Returning to Barrett’s analysis for a moment, it appears that the key disciplines for R&D and innovation are not attracting students at rates comparable to broader subject areas. And still, as Barrett highlights, all university restructuring is premised on the development of these areas, even at the expense of areas that are attracting more “customers.” How wise is current policy? At the moment the implications have not been thought through. One possible scenario is that grade policies will simply shunt the more “able” through to PhD level, where specialization will disguise deficiencies in broad scholarship. If school-leavers’ results are measures of ability then almost every subject outside those deemed central for R&D and innovation success are attracting the academically more able students. If the incongruity is striking, the silence about it is equally so.
A difficulty in addressing the “raw materials” problem with any objectivity is that any remediation may reveal the weakness of supply-side thinking in the 1990s. Back then, the working hypothesis (later accelerated under the Technology Foresight exercise) was that computer and engineering graduates must be churned out at greater rates. The development of the Internet and all that implied for commerce was one major influence. Student retention also had turned into a political issue of significant influence.197 Government expectations demanded greater numbers of ICT graduates. Having recruited staff and put courses in place, the universities (and institutes of technology) simply had to sit on their hands as student intake dwindled dramatically after the millennium. The system of tenure, the reliance on grants related to full-time student numbers, and the “prestige” element all combined to prevent a commercial response to the loss of a market. From one perspective, the universities found themselves in a “race to the bottom” to fill places – a risk with supply-side thinking. Once projected demand does match supply, scarce resources are difficult to recover from the supply infrastructure and reassign. Since supply-side planning dominates the implementation of current R&D and innovation strategies, inflexibilities remain latent until triggered by an external crisis, such as a recession. The HEA has been a regular advocate of supply-side planning. Its chairman, Michael Kelly, confident of rising student numbers, opined “the demand is there, but what then about the supply position?”198 Gazing into whatever passes for the policy equivalent of a crystal ball, he predicted that [we] need to go even further and faster. It is a sobering realisation that the plans and choices we make now will have their greatest impact in 10–20 years’ time. Unless we are planning to at least keep up with the
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Future shock
Atlantic Mouse Becomes Celtic Tiger 105
From force of habit, such supply-side prophecies routinely, and uncritically, link utopian expectations of economic productivity with graduate output and societal fulfillment.199 The possibility of oversupply, with negative social consequences, is rarely entertained. As luck would have it, just two days after Kelly’s opinion piece, the fragility of the future became evident with the launch of yet another tax credit scheme in an attempt to stimulate industrial R&D.200 On this occasion €500 million was promised in tax subsidies to the business sector. Industry seems willing to avail of supply-side outputs, such as those planned by the HEA, once it pays little for them. A further pyrrhic slap was delivered by a survey on linkages between higher education institutes (HEIs) and industry. It concluded that “the greater the frequency of direct interaction with HEIs the lower the probability of both product and process innovation in these businesses.”201 Greater academic input into industry plans means less commercial potential is realized. In the light of government faith in the capacity of higher education to sculpt economic wealth from the solid rock of science, technology and innovation, the conclusion is profane. The main professional academic stakeholder favoring supply-side doctoral and postdoctoral production, predictably, has been the Irish Universities Association. Based on notions that the universities are trapped in a pocket of underperformance, the IUA has lobbied for increased funding to improve infrastructure and inter alia human capital. Barrett has also taken issue with their position, inclining to the view that claims of underfunding are exaggerated and any talk of a “crisis” is manufactured largely to enhance the powers of the academic executive.202 As can be adduced from examples cited in this chapter, funding for the universities has never been as bountiful. Even along the international competitiveness dimension, the OECD 2004 review does not support claims that the sector is in the doldrums: Output indicators thus show that Ireland still has some way to go to achieve its goals in research and innovation, but they also suggest that significant progress is being made. With regard to scientific publications (per million population) Irish researchers at 327 are well below the European (460) and OECD country averages (402). Ireland contributes a relatively low number of triadic patent families (11.3 per million inhabitants) compared with the average of 36.3 for EU countries. With 49 researchers per 10,000 of the labour force Ireland is below the EU (53) and the OECD average of 62 (OECD 2002). But the growth rate of scientific productivity is one
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best performers internationally, we are unlikely to continue to yield the competitiveness dividend from our skills base that we have in the past, and that we need for the future. Our future plans for higher education are intimately tied to our perception of where we want to be as a society.
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of the fastest and the Irish research community performs above the European average and the US in terms of highly cited papers as a percentage of total number of scientific publications (data from 1997–1999). Irish patent applications to the European Patent Office (year 2001) amount to 86 per million inhabitants against the EU average of 161 (Sweden is at 367, Finland 338, Germany 310) but Ireland is improving its performance steadily, at significant growth rates.203
Irish annual growth rates over a decade were 3.5 times higher than in Finland. Finland had 9.1 per cent unemployment in 2001 compared to Ireland’s 3.1 per cent and Irish GDP was 15 per cent higher than in Finland …[making] a far more plausible case that other countries should emulate Irish economic policy rather than that Ireland should emulate GDP shares spent on R&D by low growth countries.204 Relating GDP to R&D expenditure may be a classic case of correlation confused as causation. A nation’s expenditure on R&D probably better reflects the state of its economy than vice versa. Committing a greater percentage of GDP to R&D may not make the achievement of economic goals easier or more certain. In the long run, it could make matters worse through creating waste and underutilized infrastructure.
Meanwhile back at the desk … The purpose of this chapter was to show just how exposed Irish higher education has become to international policy initiatives and trends. It also identified several global influences that have a direct bearing on domestic anxieties about foreign direct investment trends, competitiveness, and economic stagnation. The very “smallness” in scale of the Irish arena and the openness of its economy serve to amplify policy effects. Irish higher education is more than a good sounding board off which international influence pedlars can bounce ideas. Decades of supplicant status by successive governments before European agencies and multinationals, have rendered the state amenable to international policy titrations. With almost three decades of official emphasis, if not always consistent, on the importance of higher
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Laments about Ireland spending slightly less percentage-wise of its GDP on R&D than the OECD average are, as Barrett points out, overlooking the enormous economic growth that took place over 1990–2000. If percentage measures of GDP investment in R&D were valid as predictors of good weather, countries with higher percentage expenditure should be producing higher annual growth rates. There is little unequivocal support for this proposition. With promoters of Finnish policy in his sights, Barrett records that
education to the economy, it is no wonder that economists have frequently been to the fore in analyzing policy implications. While these exercises have been very useful, the net effect has been to situate debate about the future of higher education in terms of the success or failure of its putative economic targets. In a university system with a longer history of secular intellectual critique, a greater breadth and depth of analyses from different disciplines might have been expected. It is not at all clear that policies promoting academic knowledge and information technology development are amenable to empirical testing and refutation. Indeed, policies promoting “information society” advancement, the equivalent of a postindustrial nirvana, often rely on “scanty and ambiguous empirical evidence.”205 Official policies connecting higher education research with economic growth rest upon shale of theoretical concepts, the empirical stability of which is uncertain over time. The arguments above have stayed shy of detailed criticisms of future capacity and output predictions. Current Irish higher education transformation reveals an unsettlingly degree of ambiguity. Both certainty and uncertainty dance attendance on policy development in different circles. Funding levels and current research outputs show that the university sector is performing well by international standards. University league tables, the beauty contests of the sector, witness a growing Irish presence over the past few years. All of this is welcome, but in a country with a small population, concern must be expressed about any cyclopean pursuit of science and technology R&D indices. Undermining undergraduate formation is too high a price for supporting postgraduate formation. Continual emphasis on the importance of having science, technology and innovation processes aligned with economic objectives is another cause of concern. There is little evidence in Ireland that any thought has been given to what checks and balances are needed. Pertinently, Breznitz argues that past innovative successes have curiously been dependent upon a less structured, less formalized, less government responsive research environment. In contrast, the recent National Development Plan calls upon the various research councils to combine their “synergies” for the good of the economy. The implications of radical transformation of higher education into an economic actor are hardly commented upon. Nonetheless the policy smacks of a proprietorial authoritarianism towards thought production that is unhealthy in a democracy. It appears that the universities having gained a measure of autonomy from the state find that they have no autonomy from the agenda of the exchequer – but they appear content so long as R&D expenditure continues unhindered. An alien could be forgiven for concluding that in Irish higher education the common good is indiscernible from the economic good. What immediate lessons can be learnt from the Irish transformation initiative? One is that the impetus is largely unstoppable – short of a complete economic collapse. There are many reasons for this, some related to
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Atlantic Mouse Becomes Celtic Tiger 107
deferential Irish discursive traditions, but the philosopher’s stone is the alleged importance of university transformation to economic well-being. The dominance of the North American university as a reference model incorporates a strong imperative. It influences ideological debate through “acculturating” various constituencies. Rarely raising their heads are wider ethical and philosophical questions about the wisdom and value of so much investment in R&D, the implications of university restructuring for both staff and students, and the type of ethos that will emerge. Subservience to industrial interests and economic goals finds these questions of little relevance, gauche at worst. They do not generate the kind of knowledge that fits with patent production, education export and assuaging of commercial objectives. Still, answers to them are essential to probing the function and contribution of the university to the civic society. A second lesson is that the outcome of the initiatives is less than certain. Ambiguity and inconsistency are evident. The role of the state in attempting to shape a market in R&D is at variance with free-market aspirations and competition. If the state weighs in behind one set of stakeholders, does that action automatically crowd out others of equal or greater merit? The universities themselves have shown a willingness to operate as cartel. Although recent events that have seen the formation of a research alliance between UCD and TCD will undoubtedly hurry to mind the Animal Farm dictum that ultimately some animals are more equal than others. If evidence were needed of the futility of gainsaying the future, recent venture capital investment data reveal a downward trend. The policies on state investment in higher education and the generation of innovative firms risk becoming increasingly lopsided.206 Thirdly, the fairness of resource distribution in the name of the general social good has not been examined. International peer review of the excellence of a proposed research project is the sole arbitrator of a kind of higher value. Market values are surely jarred when academic researchers can be both tenured with good salaries and yet directors of campus enterprises from which they can also draw a salary. The elaboration of conflicts of interest is still in its infancy in the Irish university system. Few question whether the level of subsidy going to industry R&D is already too much without rolling the universities into the package. Contradictory alignments between inputs at undergraduate level in S&E and outputs at R&D level have not been thoroughly appraised. Government expectations that the universities will “do more” for industry have been undermining the binary system. Vocational training, largely the remit of the institutes of technology, has returned to the universities albeit circuitously. The value of undergraduate formation is given an occasional rhetorical outing but teaching is valued less highly than research. The result is that the traditional coherent unity of the academic mission is likely to expire.
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Atlantic Mouse Becomes Celtic Tiger 109
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These are just some of the lessons from the Irish experience. But they are not exclusively Irish processes. Similar policy reels with similar audiences and actors have been on global tour for a considerable time. What is fascinating is the swiftness with which a small relatively backward country has embraced the repertoire in the full expectation of staggering economic success. The learning experience is not over. The worry is that it may be too late to reverse any damage.
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4 Science and Universities: Shilling for a Living?
The experimental quest for the philosopher’s stone was the search for a universal catalyst that would “guarantee” the results of any transformation. Among the alchemists the “goal became to strip metals of their properties, thus reducing them to prime matter, and then to impose the qualities of gold on the resulting undifferentiated mass.”1 Once the process of transformation had been mastered, the next challenge was multiplicative. Given one kilogram of gold, how does one produce two, three and more kilograms? Transforming base elements into noble ones was a demonstration of the perfection inherent in the environment. The difference between the before and after states of an element was one of kind not of degree. Centuries of failure in their misguided endeavors taught one valuable lesson: transformation in appearance is not equivalent to transformation in essence – it remains to be seen whether similar lessons will be learnt during any radical transformation in higher education. Cadences of alchemical experimentation are curiously familiar in a world where universities themselves talk about the value of hybrid research and teaching models and the need for replication of successes. The universities must have their traditional roles and structures pared down, reducing them to primarily technoscience institutions better conditioned to accept industrial partnerships, product relevance and marketplace alignment. Transformation will make perfect the university mission (make it a “stand up” university in Burton Clark’s words). It will inject vitality into it and secure it a future, just like the alchemical panacea. The transformed university will be a different kind of place than the traditional element that has been worked over. The old “base” properties will have been “exchanged” for new corporate gold. In the process, the university will have become “innovative,” “devolved” and “entrepreneurial.” Admittedly, it is entirely undecided whether having contemporary academic managerial theories at their disposal would have aided alchemists to recognize their errors sooner. 110
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The new philosopher’s stone – interest-driven science
Without a sufficient grasp by policy makers of the levers of science, effecting change would be much more daunting. This is a fundamental tenet of higher education transformation. Geiger, as just one instance, earnestly makes the case that science made many US universities rich by making them entrepreneurial.2 It is a common refrain. In true Archimedean fashion, it is assumed that the lever of scientific research can shift the academic worldview – profitably. The reasoning is very simple. Science today is a complex business. It requires substantial financial support and its output, quaintly referred to as research, can on occasion yield enormous commercial dividends. Combing for the next scientific breakthrough is increasingly entangled with the search for the next revenue stream. What is valuable is therefore what is dually appreciated as both a useful scientific contribution and a handsome profitable spillover, though the balance often favors the latter over the former. One result is that scientific knowledge elicitation in the university and the conditions of scientific knowledge disclosure risk running orthogonal to one another. Nowhere is this friction sharper than in the crossover between biomedical and biopharmaceutical research. Not everyone is convinced that friction is inevitable. John Taylor points to a subtle blurring of distinctions between research-intensive and entrepreneurial universities.3 They need not be equivalent. Researchintensive universities can produce a great deal of basic scientific research without the entailment of an entrepreneurial commitment. To examine the science “for profit” fabric of higher education policies, it must be acknowledged that contemporary bioscience is both complex and costly. The mode of scientific research “in the past” is not an entirely serviceable yardstick for measuring many features of modern scientific practice. Secondly, industry interest in academic science is far from a fancy. It is not necessarily sinister that industry sponsors or chaperones academic scientific developments. While Marxist critics cast anxious glances about and sniff conspiracy every time a company announces a university partnership, few offer constructive alternatives. It is right and proper that civil society concern itself with the conduct of academic science. This raises a third point for consideration, which may be loosely referred to as anxieties that science has run amok. There are many examples of scientific fraud, fabrication and plagiarism. Several are well known, others barely stir interest in either the popular media or academe. Universities have often not acquitted themselves admirably when confronted with cases of misconduct. Occasionally, institutional conflicts of interest have dictated responses that test universities’ respect for impartial knowledge discovery and the Common Good. Individual conflicts of interest in some areas of research are well documented, to the point of near notoriety. Bioscience cases attract attention because of the human welfare implications of false claims. The focus is entirely correct, and unrelated to the wealth or otherwise of the pharmaceutical industry – “Big Pharma.” Bioethics councils
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have developed partly as a response to abuses but also partly as a counterbalance to the private funding and private profiteering that affect bioscience research. Finally, how is the university to cope with the various conflicting demands made upon it in these circumstances? Ambiguity and inconsistency abound over conflicts of interest. Operating at “arm’s length” from vested interests is affected by an inability to agree “distance” and an unwillingness to look beyond published guidelines and governance standards – observe the letter rather than the spirit of the law. Many puzzles revolve around autoamnestying when wrongdoing is brought to light.
Recovered memories of science history suffer from exaggerated blandishments. The older breed of scientist, especially the fellows of the Enlightenment, and they were nearly all “fellows,” were decent disinterested types, their noses buried deep in the Book of Nature. On rare occasions, they inserted a page marker and tore themselves off to run the English mint (Newton), live off the tenant income of a vast estate (Boyle) or collect taxes (Lavoisier). Indeed, several early modern scientists had little formal education. Pioneering chemists like Priestley and Cavendish could not even attend university because of a religious bar.4 In the rational reconstruction of science that forms the retelling of the story of discovery in every school and college science textbook, the historical context is rarely mentioned. Scientist and author Georg Gamov summed up the predicament as follows: There are two types of book on physics. One is the textbook, intended for teaching the reader the facts and theories of physics. Books of this kind usually omit all historical aspects of the development of science; the only information concerning great scientists of the past and present is limited to the year of birth and death (or – ) given in brackets after the name. The other type is essentially historical, devoted to biographical data and to character analysis of the great men of science, and simply listing their discoveries under the assumption that the reader, studying the history of a given science, is familiar with that science itself.5 To understand the various theories, one does not need to know the cultural context of discovery. But there is a naïve presumption that the disinterest portrayed in the sepia of reconstruction was a reality in the motive lives of various scientists. This has led to an idealization of science in science curricula where it is presented as a process of discovery driven by truth seekers hardly pausing to dress in their rush to get into the lab. In fact, for all but the very wealthy or those sponsored by wealthy patrons, the road to scientific discovery was strewn with hardship and disenchantment. Therefore, the perception of science, its ethical and epistemological claims, and the
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The complexity of scientific research criticism
actions of scientists cannot be decoupled in a world that is sensitive to the historical context of discovery. Analysts, including critics, of academic science commercialization are not always in ready agreement about how much “science culture” to admit into debates. Within the humanities, analysis divides between those with a reverence for a disappeared Arcadian past and those who are openly skeptical of science as a form of knowledge production. Distinctly apart, scientists and technologists share few of these assumptions. A rump of analysts is drawn from intersections between economics, sociology, history and philosophy. What sets this collective aside, is a consensus about the value of science as a mode of knowledge discovery and the need to make its benefits available, with due diligence being paid to the implications of the processes of discovery and commercialization. Karl Popper’s deductive model of scientific discovery contributed greatly, possibly damagingly, to the idealization of the scientist. His theory of scientific discovery, the falsification model, was based on a variant of proof by reductio ad absurdum. A scientific theory continued in existence, so long as it was not falsified.6 Popper took his cue from Einstein’s test of his theory of relativity. Einstein postulated that light passing near the gravitational field of a large body would be deflected, because the body warped the space-time continuum around it. If the postulate was shown to be false, his theory would fall. Within a few years, measurements taken during a solar eclipse indicated a deflection. Hence, the conditions for falsifying relativity were not met. Popper, at least in his early years, promoted an understanding of science disconnected from historical practices, drained of human motivations. It was a skillful expression of science as an idealized autonomous process, in aspiration and practice. A noted student of Popper, Joseph Agassi, summed up the nature of science idealization as follows: The most important part of an ideal role is the standard of conduct and its alleged expression of an ideology, of views and values endorsed by those who fulfil that role. It is easy to describe the views and the values of the scientist. He believes in science and in scientific method. He believes that all scientists agree about science and about its content and he believes that scientists do not disagree among themselves. They do disagree, to be precise-about religion, politics, departmental affairs, at times even about scientific conjectures. But wherever scientific method applies controversy is quickly settled …7 Without intending to impute Platonism to Popper, nevertheless there is a vein of sympathy for Platonic notions in academe. Adapting Swift’s Laputa satire of science, as one example, Allan Bloom criticizes science for disengaging from the Enlightenment project, which he identifies with promoting universal principles of freedom, justice and rational inquiry.8 The
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ecclesiastical elite that science displaced, according to Bloom, was soon replaced by scientific elites. Science became self-satisfied and largely politically indifferent. The point may seem exaggerated but Nybom uncannily locates many of the ills that affected Germany in the last century as precisely stemming from academic science’s self-imposed separation from political debates in the latter part of the nineteenth century.9 This abnegation of a moral responsibility to the civic sphere, arguably, contributed to the catastrophic developments that followed. The German academic Viktor Klemperer makes much the same point in his diaries of the preWWII period.10 He parcels out some of the blame to a shortage of academic ethics, and an unwillingness to look beyond “achievements” and examine their ethical foundations. Striking a similar moral anvil, Martha Nussbaum resurrects traditional concerns about the despotic immorality of Thrasymachus in The Republic and Callicles in the Gorgias to query whether adequate attention has been paid by philosophers of science to the likelihood of powerful groups of scientists defining moral norms to protect their interests.11 Her concern is that the dominance of science, as both methodology and lobby, could greatly restrict critical inquiry into its purposes. A common thread running through the fears for “higher values” is a belief that commercialization of research is distorting science. Public goods, which should sustain the Common Good, are routinely being transformed into private goods. Derek Bok has expressed several reservations about the process without straying outside the bounds of conventional respect for science. Citing a lack of evidence to the contrary, he dismisses fears that basic research (the beloved “disinterested” research of Robert Merton) either has or will be shouldered aside by a rush into corporate-influenced commercial research. Rather, his concerns are that commercialization may close down scientific dialogue from a desire to guard the commercial potential of a result. Secrecy encourages conflicts of interest that reflect well neither on science nor the scientist.12 Another ex-president, Harold Shapiro, has echoed several similar concerns.13 The success of science, especially biomedical science, has led it to exert a major influence on transnational science policies. It has also led to anxieties about a future rife with perfected methods of cloning and genetic manipulation. With the boons therefore comes responsibility, and for Shapiro this is the greatest challenge facing academic science: how to engage in a meaningful public debate about the moral implications of new developments. Far from seeing scientists as either amoral or neutral actors, Shapiro views them as ethical participants in the greater moral community. What distinguishes his analysis is his appreciation that science cannot go unregulated. It must answer to other forums, be they legal, cultural, civic and governmental. In a liberal democracy, as opposed to a tyranny expecting automatic compliance, where cultural pluralism is a reality, science must be especially sensitive. Scientists must accept that, though the rule of law is axiomatic, citizens also recognize a wider range of authorities than in earlier
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centuries. Science cannot promulgate its own validation free from inquiry into its social implications. In a thoughtful conclusion, he avers that to continue its successes science must drive itself forward, while maintaining a demonstrable moral compass and, importantly, relieving citizens of their anxiety about the future. The problem is whether such obligations can be met within the framework of research commercialization policies. Mining a rich vein of Marxist paranoia about the rise of technoscience, the sociologist Stanley Aronowitz presses his case in several books that commercial research is tantamount to a huge social betrayal, infusing the universities and their research institutes with unshakeable corporate values, depriving undergraduates of a balanced education and excluding the broad public from democratic discourse about the purpose of science. He is not alone with his concerns.14 His work follows a trend laid down a generation previously in The Power Elite, itself a stark echo of Eisenhower’s warnings about the burgeoning power of military–industrial collaboration. Aronowitz detects the mind of conspiratorial capitalism in science research.15 Scientific knowledge production is infected with elites who make the transition from professional scientists to technocrats and policy advisors, ensuring that the junctures between knowledge and money, knowledge and power, are smooth and frictionless. In The Jobless Future, with his colleague DiFazio, a picture is painted of a biomedical research center structured along a hierarchy of disciplines – from cell physiology, to molecular biology, finishing at the outer reaches of biophysics. In each instance the transition from the more observable and traditionally instrumented lab through to the replacement of these by the biophysicists’ computers is portrayed as a filtration of knowledge. Layers exist in a hierarchical knowledge and political dependency. The lower the layer, the less likely it is to be replete with “stellar” academics. Almost exclusively, “old-timers” past their research cusp, the reader is told, teach physiology. Aronowitz draws parallels between the hierarchy of academic prestige and the external socioeconomic stratification. Decency and years of service win little respect. The old-timers are at the bottom of the labor pile. Each layer in the hierarchy becomes more secure the more it can hold back knowledge – the more dependent for ultimate explanations the other layers are to it, in other words. The authors declare somberly that the “… rubric of science dominates and limits democratic discourse.”16 They bemoan the lack of funding available for basic science, while condemning the interest of corporations in appropriating research for “products.” But who exactly would qualify for basic science funding in their scenario is unclear. The old-timers, because they are the most put upon? Or would funding go to the brightest researchers who agree to meet some unspecified political agenda? The dilemma is never addressed. In passing, Aronowitz and DiFazio recommend a thorough dosing with feminist critiques of science. They conclude that scientists are transfixed by the aura of power – subscribers to an elitist scientific monoculture. Some of them seek to emulate the power structures that they
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Science and Universities: Shilling for a Living? 115
witness in industry and politics. And this is the root of the distortions that arise between academic science and society. Assertions that academic science is comprised of self-serving elites, more interested in maintaining power than uncovering objective qualities of reality, have been made by non-Marxist thinkers also. The postmodernists Lyotard and Latour berate scientific research for assuming superiority among the “discourses” in the academy. Lyotard questions the objectivity of science due to its dependence on the establishment of the day to prosper.17 Scientific criteria are not superior to other “cultural” criteria. They are constructed in a social milieu and contain certain cultural deposits related to political power and the assumed superiority of Western canons of inquiry. Lyotard has more than science in his sights. Almost any area of “discourse” that puts itself forward as a theory is an affront. It asserts itself at the expense of other putative theories. The cloud raining on Lyotard’s “discourse” is that if any theory is as good as another, his own discourse is inconsistent since there are no criteria to separate his “discourse” from any counterpoint. Of course, if criteria themselves are deemed part of the problem of normative inquiry, there can be no debate and little point in pursuing one. On the other hand, slightly, is Bruno Latour, a fellow-traveler in the postmodern world of discourse. He has taken a sustained, frequently scorned at, critical interest in science. Because of alleged imperializing tendencies to establish itself as the measure of the worth of research, science is classified by Latour as irredeemably subjective, the success of which is as much a product of networks of social authority as anything else. Science’s influence on society is tantamount to an alternative, or parallel, system of political governance. Biomedical science due to its wide impact on human health has figured in several of his critiques, for example his analysis of the success of Pasteur’s microbial theory of disease. Most people who have any passing acquaintance with milk are aware that brucellosis is a serious debilitating disease passed from cows to humans. It was relatively late in the history of food consumption that the bacteriological origins of many food-related diseases were discovered by Louis Pasteur. He demonstrated that certain bacteria could be safely killed in foods, mainly liquids, by the application of heat. The “trick” was to heat the food to the point where the bacteria floundered but the food remained edible – known as pasteurization. Latour presents Pasteur’s efforts to disseminate the benefits of pasteurization as akin to an elitist political conspiracy against the masses, a form of social engineering by stealth. He suggests repeatedly that the “Pasteurians” had an imperious detachment about themselves. For instance, “The Pasteurians provided neither the level nor the weight nor even the worker who did the work, but they provided the hygienist with a fulcrum. To use another metaphor, they were like the first observation balloons. They made the enemy visible.”18 It is not essential to explore Latour’s assumptions in detail, but in brief they reduce to the proposition that science imposes a social order on the objects it discovers, unmasking in the
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process its pretensions to objectivity. Science is a political power in its own right. Two points stand out in Latour’s analysis. Firstly, he attributes much of the success of pasteurization to an extant hygiene program, staffed by hygienists who collected data on various infectious outbreaks. These are the main favorable social networks that take up cudgels both for the microbes, to get them recognized, and against them, as foes to be vanquished. A key implication is that the “facts” of the matter are influenced by social and cultural forces, which are extrascientific actors.19 In an additional postmodern twist on layered meanings, Latour moves microbes front-stage, designating them as both actors and acted-upon. He presents microbes as both parasites to be attacked and parasites that facilitated Pasteur’s reach into other areas of science. The introduction of microbes “into” society by Pasteur and his supporters, Latour argues, redefined social relations by creating various categories of infective agent, expertise, and so forth. Latour’s second apprehension is the seeming resistance of the medical profession at the time to pasteurization. Its emphasis on good hygiene, a preventive act, threatened to usurp doctors’ responsibilities and lessen their elite status. The themes of science being less than honest recur in a later work. Science is so self-enamored that it cannot distinguish between the constructed intent of its work and some “real” focus that is obscured beneath the play of power and social influence. In his desire to chart a political ecology to save nature from science as currently practiced, Latour laments that science is the agent through which nature is interpreted.20 Such distrust of science strikes many as an extreme form of antirationalism that only secures its own legitimacy by being dishonest about the achievements of science. Critics of Latour, and postmodernism in general, have pointed out that frequently the underlying science and historical circumstances are misunderstood and as a result analyzed poorly, leading to unwarranted, and extravagant, conclusions.21 However, one does not have to accept all the flourishes in Latour’s often polemical cultural critique to recognize that it expresses a suspicion of science as subversive in its assumed autonomy, i.e. a little too sure of itself and at the same time unsure of its validity in the absence of wider social acceptance.22 As was noted earlier, Ulrich Beck has also pressed this point, viz. progress paradoxically sows anxiety. Back on more traditional critical grounds, science commercialization has been linked to “the tragedy of the Commons.”23 In a recent critique of neoliberalism David Harvey observes that widespread dispossession of traditional practices and knowledge, as in animal and crop husbandry, is receiving scientific assistance. He concludes, “biopiracy is rampant and the pillaging of the world’s stockpile of genetic resources is well under way to the benefit of a few large pharmaceutical companies.”24 Research commercialization, so the argument goes, is hand in glove with wider higher education privatization objectives. The reverse implication seems to be that if the former can be held in check, the latter will fall from the ladder.
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Academics worry about science reducing the humanities to an irrelevancy, promoting an unbridled corporate culture, assuming unwarranted credibility, reinforcing power relations among elites and facilitating the privatization of the entire sector. There is no doubt that a veneer of truth is present in all these concerns, but most are based on an idealization of science and scientists. The persistence of the idealization within the academy is disturbing. It hinders coming to grips with the actual challenges and problems facing the sector and science. Curiously, few critics of science commercialization (and science “influence”) put forward practical proposals to supplant the loss of private science sponsorship. Even in terms of ethical challenges, none of the political-cum-philosophical critiques mentioned above set out a plan of ethical action that will accommodate science and the Common Good. This is the singular Achilles heel of much criticism of modern scientific research. In mitigation, at least these critiques draw attention to gaps in the connection between university science and civic responsibility.25 Frustrated by overextended puns and mordant philosophical innuendos, the temptation, reached for with ready eagerness by Paul Gross and Norman Levitt, a biologist and mathematician respectively, is to dismiss the theories and literary peregrinations of “left wing” critics, including Latour and his caravan, as crank thinking, a cabaret of highbrow lexicalized cynicism.26 Challenges to scientific objectivity and the validity of science from Afrocentrism, multiculturalism and feminism are given the lash. Gross and Levitt argue that critics are so busy imposing their own, frequently inconsistent, analytical frameworks and values on science that they fail to appreciate how it is actually practiced. These points do not mask the whiff of general distrust of science and scientists that has seeped into several social movements ranging from antiexploration groups to New Age antiglobalization protestors. Behind the Gross and Levitt response is the assumption that when persuasion has an effect on science it has everything to do with demonstrable scientific theories and facts, and little if anything to do with rhetoric and ideology. This attitude is difficult to reconcile with historical evidence that science has frequently accommodated “nonscience,” often as a result of external persuasion. In a vast survey of scientific revolutions, science historian Bernard Cohen highlights the use of political revolutions to execute scientific revolutions under Hitler and Stalin. Nazi scientists such as Nobel Prize winning physicists Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark, and the notorious Soviet geneticist Lysenko exerted enormous influence over science policy in their regimes.27 Cohen, reflecting on scientific errors and mistakes, such as the “mesmeric” fluid of animal magnetism, N-rays, polywater, and so forth, implies that revolutions “on paper” only result from a self-delusion he associates with pathological science. He quotes the renowned crystallographer Bernal misguidedly hailing polywater as “the most important physical-chemical discovery of this century.” This does not
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mean that all science is open to irrational persuasion; neither does it mean that often science falls into error. What is revealed, is that it is often difficult at the time to gain consensus about what is and is not pathological science. Is any of this significant for higher education policy favoring science commercialization? The work of the philosopher of science and legal theorist Susan Haack suggests that it might.28 The traditional assumption that rigorous scientific methods lead to objective truth has been challenged by prominent cultural critics and political groupings. New Age travelers, creationists and environmentalists, and their sometime more literate postmodern kinfolk, have at times been queuing up to throw brickbats at shortcomings in scientific practices. Scientists have responded with claims that they know best, claims which she points out have been dented by legal cases against pharmaceutical companies, and high-profile touting of the “university capitalism.” Haack attempts to rebut science cynicism by appealing to the evidence of common sense about obvious scientific successes while admitting that the traditional “deferentialism” towards Big Science needs reassessment. A recipe for the exercise eludes her, however. Agricultural scientist Colin Tudge speculates that much of the cynicism and disaffection directed towards science stems from suspicions of food science and technology.29 The intersection of science with industry interests has created various myths, granted, but also many reasons to be wary of the science coming from these couplings. He gives an example of a food technology conference in the 1970s devoted to textured vegetable protein (TVP), a synthetic foodstuff. Industry experts and academic scientists, one following the other, spoke at length about an imminent “food crisis,” specifically a protein shortage, if the world did not switch to TVPs. Initially impressed by the presentations, later that evening Tudge realized that if people really needed TVPs, they should be dying in their droves by then. The whole enterprise, he concluded, was “absolute nonsense” driven by marketing rather than any genuinely scientific results. By persuading enough experts to support the project, however, a veneer of scientific respectability was acquired. Tudge offers evidence that among the companies producing food additives (hydrogenated fats, sugars, and so forth), there are also several producing slimming products. Cynicism towards science is not conveniently separable from cynicism towards technologies exploiting that science. If any dimension is the most pronounced among analysts of academic science commercialization it is the ethical one. The importance of science to the university reflects its importance to society, therefore indications that the gravitas of science is diminishing may indicate more profound discomforts in the public sphere. In 2000 the House of Lords convened a Select Committee to inquire into societal attitudes towards science and technology.30 The report concluded that while many took for granted the everyday advances in science about
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them (gas, electricity, telephony and so forth), there was nonetheless a great deal of distrust and misunderstanding about the aims of science. Those sciences outside of the human health arena were being met with a growing public “crisis of confidence” and even “public hostility.” Among those areas under “strain” were the disposal of nuclear waste, management of the environment, experimentation with nonhuman tissue in transplantation, and the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops. Unreasonable demands on health services often stemmed from “public misunderstanding” of scientific limitations, for example the demand for antibiotics to treat viral infections, and the demand from farmers to use them preventively. Among the public grievances was a perception that decision makers tended to treat decisions about science as purely scientific matters, local and internal to the relevant experts. Social and ethical inputs were viewed with suspicion. Nonscientific inputs were classed as “political” in the sense that they were assumed to have the potential to “unbalance” a scientific debate. The report noted that negative reactions towards science often turned on perceptions of the balance of power distributed between the relevant scientific, industrial and consumer interests. A cherished shibboleth of the scientist that misunderstanding was actually due to ignorance was turned on its head. The committee found ironclad prejudices that science critics were dolts drawn from the liberal arts, postmodernists perhaps, were exaggerated. Based on daily experience the public were well able to make reasonable assessments of the risk and uncertainties associated with a scientific enterprise. It was only when science moved to deprive the public of choice that distrust reared its voice vocally – the committee gave the example of “no outcry” when GM tomato paste went on sale clearly labeled and uproar when soybean products went on sale without segregating GM and non-GM components. On the organizational side, the report recommended that institutions come forward with admissions of uncertainty early in the process of disclosure and publication. The universities were advised to improve their “media interface” in pursuit of more openness in communication. Although acknowledging that scientists feel misrepresented by the media, the report notes that many other groups, from actors to social workers, share similar frustrations. Tellingly, when asked to rank the truthfulness and trustworthiness of scientists working in universities, industry, nongovernmental laboratories and governmental laboratories, the university scientist ranked first. This surely is evidence of a deeply rooted societal esteeming of independent science. Illustratively, a study of public anxieties about GM crops and mobile telephony determined that a major influence on public opinion was the perception that industry had “taken private control of the scientific process.”31 The commoditization of science was seen as undermining its public credibility. More recently, an EU-funded study of eight countries’ approaches to science and technology policy formulation, arguably vital to innovation programs, revealed wide variations in convergence and divergence. Where one country
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favored a consensus approach to policy debate, others might fall back on authority and traditions of secrecy. In some instances, the public were less deliberated “with” as deliberated “against.” Despite a growing tendency in the EU to wheel out the rhetoric of “consensus conferences,” in reality many technical experts and government representatives notionally interested in public engagement view the public as a “hurdle” to be cleared. And once cleared, the relevant institutions tend to forget the lessons learned, returning to a “business as usual approach.”32 The risk is that in these instances institutions may be content to apply a patina of consultation unaware of the trouble being stored up by mounting public skepticism. Those touting for science commercialization have had a fairly easy time under university transformation. If they receive criticism it is for not doing more. Outside the mathematical sciences, science has always had an interest in problems in the external world. Chemistry is a prime example of the latter.33 When the French chemist Berthollet discovered that fabrics could be bleached by chlorine in the 1780s, he was less concerned about the unfortunates who made their living collecting stale urine, the staple bleaching compound of the time, than with releasing the bleaching fields (used for weathering clothes) for agricultural purposes. His contemporary Nicolas LeBlanc discovered a chemical process for making soap, a profitable enterprise, only to have his patent revoked during the French Revolution. Antoine Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, a friend and mentor to both men, was also a man of such wealth that he could lavish unimaginable sums of money building two gasometers at the time.34 Although these are short notes on the lives of famous chemists they illustrate the important intersection between money and discovery that has never been far from all scientific research. Strong supporters of commercialization are not hard to find. Few remotely countenance it as a tragedy. In his work on the virtues of commercialized research, the late Nobel Laureate Arthur Kornberg repeats the conventional wisdom that for as long as biotechnology also accommodates basic research there is no reason to spurn its commercial spillovers.35 One should enthusiastically exploit technology transfer opportunities at every opportunity. Kornberg’s achievements in bioscience and his long participation in biotechnology make his contribution instructive. His gradual involvement in commercial biotechnology leading to his direct participation in founding several companies reads as a classic case of “poacher turned gamekeeper.” He makes no apologies for using National Institutes of Health grants to fund the research of which a portion would eventually form the intellectual assets of various biotechnology spillovers. The justification is a function of the risk incurred. Basic research is necessary for applied developments, and few commercial companies could afford the exploratory, often fruitless, phases. Again, the justification of “market failure” is pushed forth. In a noticeable divergence from accepted policy wisdom, Kornberg argues against planned research programs
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that aim for particular outputs. In his experience, serendipity played a major unquantifiable role in determining what would eventually filter out as useful research. For most of three decades Kornberg conducted research without any thought of commercialization. Over time, budgetary concerns about the sustainability of future research and a growing awareness of the potential practical applications of bioscience discoveries stimulated commercial urgings. Kornberg concluded that the state must fund basic research in the Common Good, since no one can predict what will be of real value. Commercialization was necessary to deliver the practical value of a discovery. Without state-sponsored exploratory research, there could be no commercial benefits and research would suffer as a result. If Kornberg advances the scientist’s justification for commercialization, Roger Geiger’s work is an illustration of the policy analyst’s perspective.36 The promisingly titled Knowledge and Money sums up the conjunctive alliance that, in Geiger’s words, define the current “Golden Age” of science and university reorganization. Coincidentally, his review of the evolution of American research universities covers more or less the same three decades that saw Kornberg enter the field of commercial biotechnology. A wider agenda has Geiger trying to fathom revenue pressures as they manifest in recruitment polices, student enrolment, resource allocation, technology transfer and research commercialization. Whereas Kornberg’s analysis is largely addressing a set of consequents arising from science commercialization, Geiger is mainly interested in the antecedent conditions that make such endeavors possible, profitable and highly valued. The main influence he concludes is the rise of market-led thinking in the universities: University biotechnology, and biomedical research more generally, thus lies at the confluence of a scientific revolution of huge import and a dynamic, profitable, high-tech industry. The scientific potential for the field has ensured ample support for research, not just from the federal government but also from industry, states, philanthropy, and universities themselves. And its obvious potential for commercial development has drawn universities ineluctably into commercial relationships.37 His counsel is unambiguous. Biotechnology industries cannot proceed to profitability without university bioscience at their core. Why exactly the universities cannot struggle out of this “ineluctable” bond is explained not just by the allegedly “ample” government support, but by their being factored into the attainment of wider economic goals. This leads to the curious conclusion that the relatively vast resource requirements of industry create a “set of conditions that represent a special case for academic science.”38 Universities must assist industry to deliver, to succeed, while simultaneously being a source of seed ideas – a duality as both midwife and fruitful womb to industry. Haack’s concerns that more for academic science is in reality more for the biotechnology industry do not seem misplaced.
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Similar gusto for the universities taking a role in the development of a global “innovative” economy, through science commercialization, is expressed by Henry Etzkowitz and colleagues.39 The “triple helix” of academia, government and industry is presented as the structural core of the new entrepreneurial university. Evolving over several periods, the fundamental principle is that the university is an independent firm without a direct profit motive. Importantly, the model expresses a crucial legitimating quality of a “true” entrepreneurial university, namely, that its innovativeness is defined by external collaborations. From both funding and policy perspectives, this is a significant qualifier since it removes institutional selfcertification of its own innovativeness and overrides “grandstanding” based on its research triumphs alone. The synergetic properties of this network will push the university from having a moderately important role in serving the economy to a vital primary role. The objective, long term, is to free the university from dependency on state grants, grounding its economic self-sufficiency in its profitable corporate relationships. In his study of the rise of MIT, Etzkowitz teases out the empirical face of this development. The transition of MIT from land-grant model onto science discovery and technology innovation par excellence, through to its active participation in commercial ventures, he contends, is the future if not the present for the entrepreneurial science-based university. A notable point of interest in the study is the revelation of so many interfaculty debates about potential conflicts of interest years, even decades, prior to the Bayh–Dole Act. Etzkowitz situates the current revolution sweeping through science and technology departments less in the challenging research and more in the “rise” of the entrepreneurial scientist – a sprucing up of the alchemist’s status. The emergence of this risk-taking group is the hallmark of “entrepreneurial science.” Leadership plays a crucial role in the success of entrepreneurial science according to Etzkowitz. Vannevar Bush’s successes as both MIT president and senior post-WWII science policy advisor are taken as evidence of the truth of the proposition. Etzkowitz also touches on the translation of MIT’s innovative policies to Stanford University under its president Fred Terman, an MIT graduate and Vannevar Bush disciple. He credits Terman with starting the process that would eventually lead to Silicon Valley. Fellow-travelers with Etzkowitz include Ronald Barnett, whose university of “supercomplexity” shares much with the triple helix model.40 The university, Barnett argues, has lost its way. It needs to engage with research commercialization to recover its significance. Likewise, the European Commission holds that universities committed to research and innovation are the “key” to developing the new knowledge economy.41 In what could be read as an executive supplement to the consensus about the best way forward for university science, two-times university president Nannerl Keohane asserts a distinctive role for patriotic responsibility. Her emphasis on the ideological goals of science commercialization is a sharp
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[t]he level of sophistication of scientific and technological knowledge created by university researchers and the implications of such knowledge for military and industrial power have become significantly greater in the past few decades. These developments are contemporaneous with increasing American concern about international economic competitiveness at a time when we are no longer a hegemonic power and world creditor. This creates strong pressures to hoard useful knowledge for the benefit of our own society.44 Governmental discretion, she continues, to fund certain research themes is constrained. To acquire additional resources, “[t]he alternative of corporate–industry partnerships in research funding is becoming increasing attractive.”45 Keohane is not in the least shy of these partnerships because “[c]orporations direct their support to certain kinds of research rather than to others, but in those areas, enlightened partnerships with business are a strong alternative to government support for university research.”46 The net conclusion is that the commercialization of academic science is intellectually desirable, economically necessary, will immensely improve the quality of science research through the ever-present visionary risk-taking academic entrepreneur, and even a pronounced patriotic duty.47 The above foray into science commercialization commentary shows that there are many ambiguities, in means and ends, overhanging its relevance. It is also striking that university commercialization proponents understand science as more of a means than an end in itself. This is major departure from the historical understanding of science with a half-open book of nature under its arm. Even the alchemists believed that they were working
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foil to the sociopolitical anxieties of Aronowitz and others. Having had a good chew on the tensions between internationalizing higher education while honoring the aspirations of one’s own nation state, she declares that the “[American] government has become increasingly concerned about the outflow of research ideas and trained personnel from our universities into the economies of competitor countries.”42 Evoking the specter of an American military compromised by open dissemination of sensitive information, she asks bluntly “[d]o universities have an obligation to be sure that the results of our research in sensitive fields are available first and foremost to corporate developers and government officials in our own country, so as to enhance American economic strength and protect American military power?”43 In the absence of proven reciprocity from other societies, an “open system of information” could be “dangerous.” If she remained on military ground, her position might be attenuated to something passably pardonable. However, Keohane equates sensitive information with almost any research output that could be of economic advantage to American interests. Shifting from a conservative canter to a xenophobic gallop, she maintains that
towards a truth. The most damaging accusation that logical positivism could throw at metaphysics was that its methods made it irrelevant. Scientific relevance became a stick with which to beat opponents. Terrified of being turned away from the high tea tables of science, several disciplines outside the traditional coterie of “hard” sciences have marinated themselves in variants of the scientific method to secure their legitimacy.48 Much of this is driven by their need to present as relevant. However, relevance is an operational notion, only applicable to some postdiscovery process. The impact of “relevance thinking” on contemporary research life is not hard to find. Valuable science has become a means to achieve innovation. A moot point is whether relevance as a criterion would have funded the work of Einstein, Bohr or many other luminaries. As private profit, in the guise of science with economic relevance, insinuates itself into the social contract between the university and civic society, doubts arise as to whether the university can keep its side of the bargain. Evidence of bad faith, scientific misconduct and conflicts of interest suggest a different, though still largely minority, outcome. The unwritten assumption in science policy, on the contrary, presumes that good science trails good ethics in its wake. With so much research success about, seemingly connected to “entrepreneurial science,” the capacity of even the mildest critics to deflect the transcendent vision of policy makers is limited. But what are the risks of excess? Are ethical standards being observed? And to whom do they apply? These are just some of the questions that arise in teasing out the terms of surrender being negotiated between the traditional somewhat idealized university and the new academic science factories.
Paying for science Modern laboratory-centered science research is a costly undertaking. The days are long gone when a chemist, a physicist or a biologist could operate successfully with a limited materials palette. In the biosciences the range of compounds available for experimentation runs into the millions. To the cost of purchasing any compound must the added the cost of storage, consumption and reorder. Equipment costs can easily exceed millions. Research tools may arrive with hefty annual license fees attached. Sometimes the cost of sustaining an experimental field is just not manageable by one institution, or even a group of institutions. In the case of subatomic physics international collaboration has proved necessary to facilitate construction of particle accelerators. In general, any laboratory discipline will have high recurrent costs due to the volume of consumables used in both educational and research practice. There is nothing new in this, except for the scale arising from the expansion of the university sector in the past 50 years. Historically, laboratory science has always been costly. The alchemists used expensive glassware, bought costly experimental substances, built costly apparatus. Even as science moved through the Enlightenment period, many bespoke pieces of equipment
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excluded all but the wealthiest, or the well-sponsored, from participating experimentally. The net result was that sustainable scientific growth was limited to societies that were wealthy.49 A more recent factor affecting costs is the gradual professionalization of academic science over the past century – its induction into institutions with prescribed training criteria, organized work patterns, hierarchical management and recurrent budgetary needs. The academic environment which houses contemporary research is very different from the one experienced by even pre-WWII scientists. Universities are more complex organizations. Revenue is gathered from a greater range of sources, and a wider range of “cost centers” exist on campuses. Student numbers have ballooned. The selection of research tools has grown in quantity and cost. Research dissemination avenues have mushroomed into print journals, online journals, daisy chains of workshops and back-to-back conferences. More scientists than ever before are employed in academia. A reasonable conjecture is that there are probably more scientists in European universities now than existed in Europe for the whole of the nineteenth century. Determining the cost of research is complicated by these factors. This leads to questions about the relationship between rising research costs and the quality of research output. More money does not necessarily produce better quality research. It was mentioned previously that the Irish Universities Association has persistently complained about underfunding on the assumption that more funding, specifically for science and technology research, entails “better” research. The same is true of other university executives’ elites. The European University Association (EUA) and the American Council for Education (ACE) have also sought increased budgets for the expansion of the university sector, specifically for science research. Serving the elite research universities, the Association of American Universities is a very influential supplicant demanding ever-greater research funding. 50 The common assumption is that “sufficient funding” will lead to better research. But what is meant by “better research” in these supplications? Trite responses of “world-class” simply shift the semantic fulcrum – what is meant by worldclass? Ironically, an acknowledged problem facing all academic science research funding is the absence of consistent value-for-money exercises.51 Few university presidents or academic lobby groups seriously inquire into reducing the cost of research.52 Irrespective of whatever balance of state funding and private patronage sponsored science research pre-WWII, the fact is that the war greatly accelerated funding for academic science research. All the belligerents had a variety of military focused research programs. The launch of sputnik a little over ten years after the cessation of hostilities sparked another accelerated phase of science research investment, predominantly in the US. Most of the funding during that period came from public finances. Since the passing of the Bayh–Dole Act in the US, privately funded R&D has increased drama-
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tically. Shifting focus in privately funded academic science been most marked in the biosciences, driven to a considerable extent by their potential to “spin out” profitable applications. In this area of research privately funded R&D exceeds state-funded R&D. Mirowski and Van Horn cite figures showing that biopharmaceutical “spend” on R&D rose from $2 billion in 1980 to $30 billion in 2000.53 In their 2007 Annual Report, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) recorded a combined R&D investment between biopharmaceuticals and biotechnology of $55.2 billion – a striking $6 billion increase on 2004 levels of investment.54 The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) estimated that in 2005 alone its members spent $19.8 billion on R&D, an almost threefold increase in ten years. Market capitalization of biotechnology rose tenfold in the same period, yielding a combined value of $410 billion. In spite of the enormity of the sums mentioned, when the “spend” on science is looked at across the sector a far flatter landscape emerges. Science policy analyst Daniel Greenberg, reviewing R&D expenditures between 1953 and 1998, revealed that if all the money “paying for science in universities” was counted, approximately 7 percent was coming from industry, and most of that was concentrated in a few elite research institutions.55 The percentage support coming from industry was remarkably constant over the 45-year period surveyed. A major aggravating factor in contemporary science funding has been the sheer costs of doing it. In 1993 the US Congress terminated the Superconductor Super Collider (SSC) project after the magnitude of budgetary overruns approached disbelief.56 Costs had been underestimated and even misrepresented. Researchers and contractors experienced convulsions but the overall impact was one of relief in other disciplines struggling for funds. The project had become so financially mired that it had begun to drain other budgets, with a potentially unrecoverable impact on their research capacity. Big Science is expected to cost “big” money, but more mundane quotidian costs are also significant. A small, but significant, example of the latter was provided by the Association of American Research Libraries and its European affiliates in a report entitled “Create Change.”57 The report looked at the rising costs of academic journals, the arterial networks for scholarly communications. Over a 16-year period, between 1986 and 2002, the Consumer Price Index in the US rose by 64 percent, R&D expenditures rose by 120 percent, but the unit costs of journals rose by a staggering 227 percent. The figures raise important questions that Big Science likes to cautiously shepherd. Assuming Greenberg’s analysis is valid, the conclusion that a degree of industry sponsorship is desirable seems delicately unavoidable. Ireland, given its historic underfunding, never had to tackle these issues with any credibility until funding improved over the past decade and a half. In 2000, Nature reported a degree of puzzlement and doubt among Irish researchers about their ability to manage and steer the new science
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funding responsibly.58 The Irish problem of what to do with a cornucopia of funding was in stark contrast to what appeared to be the trend in the rest of European science at the time, where fears of a “brain drain” to the US were uppermost in some researchers’ minds.59 Irish researchers feared, on the contrary, that earmarking of funds for specific institutes could create a herd of white elephants over time. A brain drain into Ireland would need to be manufactured. Set against any lingering anxieties was a distinct welcome for the order of magnitude increases in research funding. This fuelled a determination to have the funds released as quickly as possible. By 2005, the New Scientist was able to report that strategies to attract researchers into Ireland had begun to take effect.60 However, the sudden shift from being the hunter-gatherers of the international research community to much cited academic sophisticates inevitably was not entirely smooth. A national flagship project, the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience (TCIN), found itself running out of funds for key research tools less than four years after it opened its doors. A series of meetings of the college’s finance committee referenced inadequacies in financial oversight as a major source of its problems – a case in point being the reallocation of building funds to salaries.61 Earlier worries that institutes could become bottomless pits for research funding seemed not unfounded. In TCIN’s case, it had underestimated the cost of running its main MRI facility, with the result that when its funding was disrupted it found itself in a financial crisis. Eventually, TCIN found a commercial suitor and secured funding from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) to continue its work.62 Although something of an academic “bad hair” day, the affair illustrates that problems in paying for Big Science are similar across countries. Over a number of years the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has tracked trends in federal R&D expenditure. Individual decades experience peaks and troughs but the overall trend appears positive.63 The AAAS figures reveal that federal funding of R&D for 2008 would reach $142.7 billion dollars. Federal funding for basic research was estimated as being in slight decline for the fourth consecutive year, reaching approximately $57 billion. At $29.5 billion the National Institutes of Health allocation has by far the lion’s share of the R&D budget. However when adjusted for inflation the figures turn into something quite different. John Irons of the Economic Policy Institute has combined the AAAS figures with those from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, revealing that in real terms the trend is slightly negative, a conclusion consistent with general funding trends noted by Slaughter and Leslie.64 Federal government funding of R&D as a percentage of GDP has fallen to approximately 1 percent from a high of 2.2 percent in 1960. The federal government may be putting more into R&D but inflationary factors are reducing the net value. Nonetheless, with the exception of Iceland, US government budget appropriations on outlays for research and development (GBAORD) significantly exceed most European
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states.65 Typically, debates over science funding are tortured by questions about what percentage is being spent in which area by which party. The assumption is that the bigger percentage of GDP, say, thrown at research, the better the outcome. The UNESCO 2005 study of science revealed what has been self-evident for a long time. Wealthy industrial societies generally spend more on R&D. Rather than focus exclusively on a single GDP measure of gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD), the report looked at the amount spent per inhabitant.66 GERD per inhabitant in the less developed countries averaged 0.7, almost 800 times lower than that spent in the developed world. In the light of the European Commission’s determination to create a Europe of scientific innovation, GERD per EU inhabitant is half that spent by Japan, Israel and the US. Although not all GERD is directed towards supporting academic science, it is a good indicator of general support for science research. Despite increased industry funding for certain strands of academic science, the picture is uneven throughout the OECD. An analysis of European R&D expenditure for the years 2001–4 showed that business support for R&D was greater than government support in Europe but lagged behind that in the US and Japan.67 Significantly the report found that business in Europe tended to concentrate its R&D support in applied fields rather than basic research. Again the European trend is at variance with that in the US and Japan. Coupled with the evidence of the European Innovation Trendchart of a decline in business support for academic R&D in Europe, one could not be entirely certain that science research funding in Europe will improve significantly, or improve its outputs significantly. A recent analysis of BERD delivers a lugubrious image of industrial R&D throughout the EU.68 While biotechnology and pharmaceuticals lifted their R&D by just over 8 percent, the majority of sectors sanctioned low to zero growth in R&D. In an economic zone where the political elites constantly preach the virtues of competitiveness, the research intensity of EU companies is well below that of most global competitors. How all of this does, and will, impact on academic science is conjectural to an extent. It is difficult to understand how academic science can be funded to assist the development of industry, if industrial R&D is itself experiencing a crisis of confidence. Hypothetically, the long-term effect will be a widening of the gap between state-funded science research and the market. The sustainability of science research in this environment is a moot issue. Any answer to the question “who pays for science research” must recognize trivially that certain industries play a major role. That is not to deny that a range of financial incentives, present in all OECD countries, is among the relevant motivators. A more significant question is: how is the agenda of science research created, which the taxpayer is asked to support? The interplay between government funding policies and the development of research agendas is complex. The triple helix motif suggests a trinity of interests jockeying for authority. There is some evidence that the research agenda follows government funding and in turn shapes it – whether the
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the paradoxical effect of discouraging the creation of new knowledge in neglected areas of science, concentrating new expenditures on areas that are already generously supported, stifling democratic discourse over research priorities, and insulating the basic research system from social and political accountability.70 The inevitable conclusion is that not all science gets an opportunity to be paid for. Only “promising” science that will lead to “better” research is assured of a reward. The rich get richer. On a similar note, a study of public and private research funding in Austria, Germany and Norway found that in business R&D (BERD), “specializations” were associated with government funding policies.71 As noted in the European Innovation Trendchart, countries with the highest tax incentives for BERD tended to have more BERD. Is increased BERD in some countries evidence of more necessary BERD taking place in those states, and conversely evidence of a relative absence of need for BERD in other states? The lack of a clear distinction between the public and private components of BERD presents a hurdle in determining precise influence paths. With so many indirect subsidies directed at BERD it is hard to form an honest picture of the influence of academic science on BERD. Regional shifts in economic policy could see BERD shrink radically (possibly the reverse) with direct implications for academic science. In 2007, the Advisory Science Council to the Irish government issued a brief report on where higher education–industry R&D expenditure had fallen down and what might be done to address it.72 It concluded that the desired alchemy between industry and higher education was not evident.
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feedback is “positive” or “negative” is an element in the current debate. Whether it controls government funding is an entirely different matter. Drawing on his experience as a science policy advisor to the US Congress, Daniel Sarewitz has made a study of what he terms the “myths” underlying science research. These he presents as its capacity to deliver continual benefits, act accountably, exercise high moral standards, be the ultimate arbiter of truth and push out towards the “endless frontier.”69 The myth that science acts unfettered by other concerns he finds troubling as it flies in the face of how policy is shaped and funding allocated. Effective lobbying by vested interests, academic, industrial and military, linked to national goals decides the major science funding initiatives. The fact that the various groups and their members cooperate implies conformity to societal norms. Certain types of research, “promising” research, are endorsed, leading to the possibility that neglected or marginal areas fall into decay. The paradox at the heart of this process is that the touted intellectual autonomy of science is revealed as anything but – a strange “Latourian” moment. Acceptance of the myth of neutral nonpartisan “unfettered research” may have
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since the performance of any national innovation system may be judged by the efficiency with which it facilitates the transfer of scientific knowledge from knowledge producers (higher education and non-higher education public research) to knowledge users, it follows that the development of effective linkages between higher education institutions (HEIs) and enterprise is particularly important for the smooth functioning of the Irish innovation system. Enterprises in Ireland are particularly reliant on higher education (HE) researchers as R&D performers, given the relatively small number of public sector research institutes. This indeed may be the view of the council, but it is far from established that Irish industry sees itself as “particularly reliant on higher education researchers.” Based on BERD expenditure and a “low average” grade in the European Innovation Trends, a contrary conclusion could be reached. A confession in the report that industry funding of HERD in Ireland has in real terms fallen by 50 percent over ten years is hard to reconcile with industry’s touted reliance on the same sector. Currently it is approximately half the OECD average. Another admission that Ireland has for 30 years produced all manner of initiatives to link enterprise with academic science begs the question. The greater the GERD, the more incentive there is for industry to “ride for free” is one unwelcome conclusion. The primary concern should not be whether industry is spending twice as much or half as little, but rather why is it not engaging with higher education R&D? Like many market-friendly documents the report is precluded from drawing the obvious conclusion – that the market has signaled its position on HERD. Instead, the audience is treated to calls for more state
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The council’s moniker reflects an underlying identity diffusion. It refers to itself in publications as the Advisory Council on Science, Technology and Innovation. The elision from “Science” to “Science, Technology and Innovation” is a revealing insight into policy assumptions about causality in the domain. A comparison of “enterprise”-higher education policies developed in Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Finland was used as a compass bearing for assessing Irish initiatives. Stripped of political flannel, the report recommends more applied research, clustering industries, “enterprises,” around higher education institutions with matched competencies, support for improving the absorptive capacity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and aiding SME R&D development. Short of reenameling the office manager’s kitchen sink, almost every conceivable exhortation for industry to support higher education R&D (HERD) is bolted onto the report. Higher education institutions in turn must make themselves more available to industry, support its development and solve its problems. Woven into the recommendations is the parable that innovation is measured by the rate of transfer of scientific knowledge. As the report expresses it,
intervention. The inconsistency is blindingly obvious. Working with its invisible hand the market is supremely efficient, but not crafty enough, apparently, to grasp the enormous benefits that await it through closer ties to HERD. If the market cannot absorb the knowledge and expertise cultivated in the universities, the market must be changed. The possibility that the investment in academic science and engineering may simply be sustaining a mother ship increasingly remote from her industrial offspring is never entertained. But the question remains that if industry in Ireland remains in the wings of HERD, as it has done historically, can current academic science policy be justified? Can current “paying for science” policies be permitted? The report concludes with the sentiment that if industry will not invest in HERD, it must be “encouraged” to do so. But there have been no shortage of encouragements over a generation, and BERD, let alone investment in HERD, is still problematical in Ireland and the EU. Time and again the report focuses on the supply side of the equation – knowledge production, more graduates, and more PhDs – without fully grasping that the demand side may have already made its judgment. Failure to accept this proposition leads to science policies that stipulate more from the exchequer to compensate for some notional latency in the business sector around R&D. Unless BERD improves the policy seems at best capricious. In the US a large drop in pharmaceutical BERD would have a major impact on academic science. In Europe, the impact would probably be less felt in academic science. This is an important issue. If academic science is being developed to support industry, but if industry is throttling back on BERD, or adopting a selective approach to R&D rooted solely in fiscal incentives, the purpose of publicly funded science research in this arena is thwarted. A recent review of R&D expenditure in the OECD countries confirmed that European business expenditure on R&D was indeed stagnating.73 The “slack” has been taken up by increases in government expenditure on R&D. Under the Lisbon “agreement,” EU states are committed to R&D expenditure of 3 percent of GDP by 2010. But this assumes that BERD in Europe will surge. The review suggests that this target is unlikely to be achieved. A resulting concern is that if BERD continues to stagnate or at worst falls further, the cost of academic science versus its benefits will become a serious budgetary predicament. The implications for higher education policy are paradoxically as clear as dishwater. Conflicts between industrial and higher education policies play an important role in sustaining intellectual myopia. Traditional sentiment that science should be done because that is part of the mission of improvement in civilized society has no currency in policy circles. And this is because the whole rationale for boosting science R&D has been reversed into general theories about the causes of economic growth in modern societies. The past successes of science are not proof that science will be successful in the future, in terms of the significance of its outputs or their scale. Neither has evidence
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emerged that science research can become self-sustaining. A survey of expenditure on science in 200 American universities by Ehrenberg and colleagues revealed that despite the growth in external R&D funding, increasingly the costs of science research are coming out of internal university budgets.74 The result for faculty and students are increases in the number of nontenured faculty and student/faculty ratios. A reduction in support for initiatives in the humanities and social sciences is another side effect suggested by the study. Brown, a philosopher, observes that the increase in science chairs in the universities, which are funded jointly by external and internal funds, is leading to the “humanities being decimated” – Byzantine history proving less seductive to donors than evolutionary biology.75 Equally, Mary Henkel worries that science policy is dividing up the university in such a way that even postgraduates are enrolled in paying for science through affiliation with private interest initiatives.76 One of the practical consequences of paying for science may be a loss of adaptability, since so much will have been committed to a relatively narrow number of research paths. In a déjà vu irony, it is precisely this narrowness of focus that separates corporate agendas from traditional academic ones. Possibly research science is entering a period of gradual gain, a kind of slow bootstrapping exercise rather than a sudden stall. Two highly publicized reports, one involving errors in cancer research and the other about the frustrating search for an HIV vaccine, suggest that the speculation is not pure fancy.77 In the first case over 20 years’ worth of research was effectively wasted at a cost of millions in government funds and charitable donations. The use of a misidentified cell line meant that researchers were working with material wrongly identified as a specific type of tumor cell. Results derived from the cell line, consequently, were valueless. What is astonishing about the case is that so many researchers, in different laboratories, over two decades could have consistently failed to authenticate the cell line. Even more problematical, academics reported that even when misidentified cell lines were noticed, researchers frequently preferred to “keep their heads down” and continue working with them anyway. In the second case, Nobel prizewinner David Baltimore, in an address to the AAAS, expressed a pessimistic opinion about the likelihood of discovering an HIV vaccine. Despite 20 years of substantial funding, vaccine research was still frustrated by the virus. The setbacks in both cases are for different reasons, nevertheless, they question faith in unending progress in science. Two instances, in spite of the scale of funding and human capital invested, are far from sufficient to conclude that science is in a cul-desac. One might equally assert that science may be poised at any moment to thrust extraordinary results on the world. However, empirical results from the biopharmaceutical industry indicate that fewer genuinely new drugs (“new molecules”) are being discovered, while more “copycat” drugs are being produced.78 A recent meta-analysis of new generation antidepressants, many of which were supported by academic bioscientists, concludes that in all but
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the most severe cases their effects are no better than those produced by placebos.79 Further evidence, one might argue, of the alchemical synthesis between pharmaceutical marketing and selective science – a relationship that is never addressed by higher education policy entrepreneurs. In any event, the basis for doing science is so close to economic goals that academic science is in a very tight pinch should it fail to deliver, because failing to deliver will be associated with an economic “let down” – the academic equivalent of a junk bond. It is not that science will have failed, of course. It is just that science policy will not have succeeded. And policy determines funding. The situation is even more delicate in the EU where the coupling of science research to competitiveness has been a signature tune for decades but one played with little evidence of harmony. In the EU “paying for science,” in terms of the “who” and the “why,” has been caught up in various policy wars and internal wrangling. In a comparative analysis of American and European policies on biotechnology, Sheila Jasanoff has highlighted the policy difficulties arising from the European susperstate still being a “work in progress.”80 As early as the 1970s the EU (European Economic Community as it then was) had identified biotechnology as a potentially significant area of research and industrial growth. Yet, for the succeeding decades, Jasanoff sketches a divisive picture framed by internal squabbling between the various directorates (DGs) over which would oversee biotechnology, mercurial European commissioners unaccountable to neither a national parliament nor an electorate, unforeseen events such as “mad cow disease,” ethical opposition to certain types of biotechnology research and even corruption in the Santer Commission. The absence of cultural and linguistic uniformity further complicated the process of preparing a biotechnology policy – let alone having it endorsed in the various iterations of research programs. Unlike US regulatory bodies, the DGs could be held to account by any number of ministries in any number of nation states. Sensitivity towards European pluralism caused the insertion of various ethical opinions into draft documents, further emphasizing the distance to be traveled in order to reach agreement. “Paying for science” in the EU was hedged with a greater degree of circumspection and suspicion about biotechnology initiatives than in the US. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) were a prime example of a disputed research zone noticeably at odds with US policy. Jasanoff makes the astute observation that the European debate on bioscience and its development as a technology was intimately linked to issues surrounding European identity and global accountability, a situation markedly different from that in America. What is remarkable about the whole affair is that the debate was not limited to elites, as had been the prior intention, but trickled down to a broader citizenship. In conspicuous contrast, the current transformation of university research and its science agenda, as the groundwork for a European Area of Higher Education is being laid, has not enjoyed the status of a public debate.
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By pitching contentious areas in bioscience into the general mix of university transformation, it is hypothetically easier to manipulate the myths of science research neutrality and the benign ivory tower to pass through bioscience policies which if touted for, and by, industry might stir up a hornet’s nest of public opposition. It is a speculative point, but nonetheless not one at odds with the desired outcomes of current policies.
Any suggestion that science has run amok raises hackles. It is important that it does so, since every publicized episode offers civic society an opportunity to learn more about the cohesion between science policy, science practice and institutional responsibility. No doubt the bulk of scientists are upright researchers and most research is conducted scrupulously. From time to time, in fact not infrequently, stories emerge of scientific practice where its ethical wheels have fallen off. One of the features of such events is the rarity with which the institutional setting and its policies are brought under scrutiny. Again, Sarewitz’s myth of intellectual autonomy seems to work its spell, and the academic home of the transgressor is hardly ever subjected to the same rigorous examination as the transgressor. There are instances even where institutions have been only too willing to take up cudgels against staff members who threatened to disclose experimental results at variance with the wishes of a research sponsor. The main features of science run amok are summed up by instances of falsification, fabrication and plagiarism (FFP). Here both individual scientists and their sponsors may collude in misconduct. The issues are contrarily simple and complex. Simple in that the motives are usually related at both individual and corporate levels to a gain in status or commerce, but complex due to the broad nature of the networks of interests that facilitate, ignore and even approve the actions. In addition, the actions are not all one and the same in nature or effect. Fabrication and misconduct are not necessarily equivalent. Clearly a deliberate fabrication, a fraud, is also a case of misconduct, but a scientist who puts his name to work he has not done is unlikely to be judged to have acted fraudulently if he had a supervisory role or was head of a laboratory research team. While FFP may be a feature of individual scientists, at least as troubling are attempts by corporations, especially in biopharmaceuticals, to control information disclosure. Again it must be stressed that in many cases “control of disclosure” agreements are entered into with the full consent of the relevant university housing the researcher. Another reason for factoring FFP into deliberations about current higher education changes is that all too often institutions have been reluctant to publicly tackle misconduct for fear of losing face with sponsors and thereby jeopardizing revenue. Conflicts of interest are yet another area which can have both researcher and university quarrelling with each other and with a sponsor. In
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biomedical research conflicts of interest are legion, unsurprising given the huge levels of private funding available for this type of research and its potential along several dimensions. Before looking at misconduct, it is instructive to inquire into a widespread abuse of authorship tolerated particularly in the medical biosciences, namely, who writes science? To the uninitiated the question seems like a postmodern subterfuge against a tautology. Scientists write science. Every science journal paper will have a list of its authors, all of whom are usually in one field of science or another. This understanding of scientific authorship may have held good once upon a time, but over several decades it has changed. Although bioscience journal editors have been adopting “tighter” policies towards authorship, authorship is still a matter for concern. Firstly, it does matter that a named author is a contributory author. After all, the publication will be archived on the traditional assumption that the experimental hypothesis, the literature review, methodology, results and discussion section involved the authors in a less than cursory manner. If students casually inserted someone else’s name on their work as an author, it would be considered an unacceptable violation of standards. Despite students having to subscribe to one practice the presence of “gift” or honorary authors on scientific journal papers is widely acknowledged. The increase in science publications and collaborations has seen more authors than ever appearing on papers.81 A desire to keep all parties “happy” is often cited as the reason for honorary authorship. But this entails a basic unfairness, since often the “gift” is in the hands of the weaker members of a research team. Junior researchers are even at risk of being bullied into gifting authorship.82 To overcome a gifting tradition, Karen Louis and colleagues encourage scientists and their institutions to recognize authorship as an entitlement arising out of reciprocity.83 Each notional author tries to take the perspective of others while claiming a stake for herself. Authorship in this model does not devolve therefore from a feudal tradition, but evolves through negotiation. Knowing criteria for authorship may not translate into practice, however. Bhopal and colleagues surveyed 66 medical researchers to assess their understanding of the conditions pertaining to authorship.84 The majority, 76 percent, were aware of criteria for authorship but ignored them. Gift authorship was common, and explained as necessary to maintain good relations and motivate research teams. Equally, a Swedish study among medical researchers revealed awareness of misconduct but a high degree of ignorance about appropriate remedial procedures.85 A 2001 survey by Geggie of newly appointed medical consultants in Liverpool revealed that over 60 percent had observed some form of medical research misconduct. Strikingly, almost 20 percent saw some justification for misconduct and did not rule it out in their own future practices. In this overall context, what makes Louis’ paper interesting is less her plea for reciprocity, which is really a call for good manners, than her indirect acknowledgement that reciprocity is often absent in research contexts. The proprietorial drive predominates.
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If gifting authorship threatens ethical connections, based on accountability and responsibility, between content and authorship, another practice involving “ghost” writers ruptures it. Astonishingly, universities have not weighed into the debate, and a benign indifference to the practice reigns supreme. In the case of ghost writing, a putative scientific author (or a group) does not need to draft the paper, or even process experimental results. Specialist medical writing bureaus manage these tasks. The clients of these commercial enterprises are not academics. Rather they are a host of bioscience companies in need of a “good” paper on some experimental research they have funded. Companies provide the data and background, and the ghosts do the rest. Completed drafts are sent to the named academic authors for approval before being sent to the relevant journal. Evidence collected by editors of medical journals, such as Marcia Angell for the New England Journal of Medicine, and Richard Smith of the British Medical Journal among others, indicates that ghost written papers form a high percentage of published biomedical work.86 Flanagin and her colleagues carried out a confidential survey among authors of articles published in several prestigious American medical journals in 1996.87 Honorary authorship was detected in 19 percent of papers, ghost authorship among 11 percent, and a combination of both was found in 2 percent of papers. A survey among the Cochrane Reviews, a source of gold standard literature reviews, found that 39 percent of the reviews showed evidence of honorary authorship, while 9 percent had been influenced by ghost writers.88 Psychiatrist David Healy has persistently drawn attention to the willingness of the pharmaceutical industry to emphasize positive results, preferring to archive drug trials that were terminated early or had unfavorable outcomes. In a study of articles on the effects of a particular antidepressant published in leading medical journals over a three-year period, Healy and a colleague discovered that 57 percent of these showed evidence of ghost writing.89 In addition, the ghost-written articles appeared in higher impact journals, the reputation of the nominal academic authors rising proportionately. These papers were also cited five times more frequently than other “normally” authored articles. Healy concludes that the influence of ghost articles has likely been considerably underestimated. If the various papers belonged to the literature of popular culture or their authors were not biomedical specialists attached in the main to university hospitals and institutes, the troubling status of authorship would have less significance. But it is precisely because authorship in these cases comes with an academic cachet, a guarantee of impartiality, that university sluggishness in responding to concerns is even more disquieting. Concerns about authorship integrity are not peripheral to general discussions about the direction academic science is taking in OECD countries. A consumerist mentality is present in both the practice of honorary and ghost authorships. Honorary authorship is consistent with a kind of “hothouse” of competition for publications. The widespread inability to detect anything
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unethical in the custom is a poor reflection on modern scientific practice. Troubling as it is, ghost writing is a much more questionable practice. Academic peer groups sustain both these practices. Frequently, these are peer groups which number influential scientists in their midst. In the case of ghostwritten pieces, who is accountable for what is published, and who is responsible for its implications may not have the same referents. A significant feature of ghost-written pieces is their underwriting by the biopharmaceutical industry. Ghost writing allows industry to “get” what it wants, and have it endorsed by a scientific collaborator notionally attached to unfettered academic science in a neutral university ambience. The practice is not simply about reporting results. Successful drug trials are advertised widely to doctors. Medical journals make a good deal of income from companies looking for anywhere between 20,000 and 1 million reprints of a favorable drug trial report. Despite almost a generation of these practices, no university or higher education policy maker has condemned them as absolutely unacceptable. This is even more astonishing when one considers that ghost authorship is possibly dangerous to public health. Despite its dismal presence, ghost authorship is only the thin end of the industry–university wedge. A related problem turns on conflicts of interest. Several studies have shown that industry-sponsored research on average returns more favorable results than nonindustry-funded work. A metaanalysis of previous studies of sponsored research involving industry, academics and universities revealed a quarter of researchers in the study had affiliations to industry, and that two thirds of the universities held equity in start-ups that sponsor research in the same institutions.90 A statistically significant relationship was found between industry-sponsored research and favorable research outcomes. The authors concluded that financial relations among industry, investigators and universities are widespread. Conflicts of interest are handled with great variability across intuitions. The net conclusion was that conflicts of interest could influence biomedical research outcomes. In short, conflicts of interest in the area of human health could be hazardous to human health. This result is consistent with Lexchin’s metaanalysis that showed a systematic bias in industry-sponsored research in favor of the industry product.91 Presumably, the triple helix model would detect no difficulty in these arrangements. Are they not precisely what the new scientist-entrepreneur should be about? The distinctions between investigators taking risks that affect themselves, and putting others at risk is blurred as a result. As this ambiguity worms its way into the hierarchical structure of the universities, the institutions become prone to blurring the boundary between their own self-interest and the public interest, the Common Good. One of the more noticeable lacunae in discussions of higher education policy is the refusal to relate the actions of individuals to the formation of institutional culture. Baier and Dupraz attempt to address this through disentangling institutional from investigator responsibilities.92 The individual,
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they argue, has a responsibility to the truth. As a member of a community of scientists, the individual has a duty to uphold “confidence in science.” The institution, while it also has a duty to maintain confidence in science, is charged with applying a common set of ethical standards to investigations of fraud. It is easier, the authors argue, to specify where an individual has fallen short of ethical standards and values, than it is to identify the set of collective institutional values that are violated. This is not suggesting that universities agree with fraud. Rather that any disagreement (about the commission of a fraud) is often complex and even ambiguous. In most cases, the ethics of fraud and misconduct have focused almost entirely on individual shortcomings, rather than collective ones. The point is not polemical. The search for individual prestige and reward can of course be pursued ethically – a moot point is whether, given their complexity, universities can say the same of themselves. While universities do not condone fraud and data falsification, many academics are only too willing to associate their names with a rising scientist-entrepreneur. Several have been left at least embarrassed, if not worse, when fraud comes to light. There is no need to rehearse all the common examples, but one of the striking features of modern science fraud is that often the fabricated experiments and results are reported in multiply authored papers. These cases are distinct, for instance, from the infamous fabrications by the British psychologist Cyril Burt. In order to establish his theory of the effect of heredity on intelligence, Burt inducted a dubiously large number of twins separated at birth into his studies. Most of Burt’s disputed papers were either authored by him or with a trusted understudy – the existence or nonexistence of whom is a source of debate – and largely in a journal under his own editorship. While Burt still retains a small number of defenders, his detractors are by far in the majority.93 The Burt case is an important reference point because it undermines any cherished notions that fraud in science is easily detected, easily rooted out, or has limited impact. Neither of these was the case with posthumous Burt investigations. The importance of fraud prevention for higher education institutions is often understated. Acts of fraud tend to be classed as random departures from high standards, unimportant to the overall mission. Institutions erroneously assume that policy is sufficient to guide practice. Commenting from an American legal perspective, Coggins has drawn attention to the legal need for institutions to have not just fraud prevention policies but compliance programs in place.94 His point is that once an institution can be connected to a fraud, it runs the risk in the US of breaching antiracketeering legislation. Coggins is not a voice in the wilderness. Even when fraud and misconduct are detected, institutions are slow to react. A report in Nature highlighted a resistance in American institutions to dealing with misconduct based in fears of “bad” publicity, labyrinthine legal actions, and the toll on everyone involved.95 So concerned were the US authorities about increasing fraud in the biosciences, that the Office of Research Integrity was established to apply
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uniform standards for both research reliability assessment and the punishment of fraud.96 Contemporary scientific misconduct tends to be if not more sophisticated, certainly better authored. There is no point in an exhaustive trawl through cases.97 Suffice it to say that most detected to date are in the biosciences.98 One case stands out, however, not simply because of its egregious nature but for the light it sheds on institutional responsibility. Jon Sudbø, a Norwegian oncologist, working in Oslo’s The Radium Hospital, an internationally regarded cancer research center, published several fraudulent papers in prestigious medical journals. Sudbø’s final study “showed” that ordinary nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs were effective in reducing the risk of mouth cancer in smokers. Recognizing it as an extremely important result, The Lancet fast-tracked its publication. His patient samples, allegedly drawn from a specialized Norwegian health database, raised several questions. Among these were the facts that the database did not exist for the relevant period of time, and of the “several hundred” patients in the study many were fabricated. An Investigation Commission established by the authorities laid responsibility for the fraud at Sudbø’s door but identified serious shortcomings in coauthor involvement, and institutional policy towards academic research.99 Tying together several of the points argued above, the report unequivocally stated that (a) because coauthors are guarantors of the authenticity of published research, their responsibility is not to be treated perfunctorily, (b) institutional responsibility for ensuring ethical practice cannot be devolved entirely onto individual investigators, and (c) institutions must recognize that fraud can lead to prestige and reward. Sudbø’s reputation was such that he became a collaborator in a $10 million research program hosted by the US National Cancer Institute. This case, and those similar to it, underline that intellectual autonomy, academic freedom and “unfettered” research do not necessarily bring about reliable science or good scientific practices. What makes such cases stunning is the very longevity of some of the frauds. Several coauthors protested to Sudbø about inclusion in publications without their permission, but most did not. Pertinently it was not a revelation from a coauthor that caused the millefeuille of fabrications to crumble. There is no doubting that science fraud exists and is a problem within the universities. A doubt exists about university willingness to see it as a problem for them. The scale, extent and implications of such transgressions only become evident as each individual case is unpicked. One of the constantly cited bulwarks against scientific misconduct has been the procedure of peer review. Medical journals and civic society have a vital interest, literally, in the integrity of the process. Peers determine whether a submitted report is of a standard for publication. A recent survey of leading biomedical journals revealed that few had any antifraud measures in place, and more than half did not issue author guidelines.100
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As mentioned earlier, similar processes apply to grant applications. Since peers are almost invariably drawn from academia, some comments on the shortcomings of the process are in order. Peer review belongs in the category of Sawewitz’s myths about science. In theory it is the Platonic standard for assessing the objectivity, validity and value of research, not just scientific. Practically speaking it can be selective, biased and unwieldy. The scale and longevity of several frauds also indicate that it is not a mechanism that can guarantee the truth or neutrality of published work. In the first place, the presumed gold standard of blind reviewing, where author identity is withheld from the reviewers, seems to make little difference to the quality of reviews.101 Options for “open” peer review are being considered.102 Whether they would lead to a more honest science or facilitate the negotiating “away” of attempted fraud, is far from settled. Secondly, there is really nothing more than blind faith holding together the proposition that peer review helps stop fraud. Taking two diverse fields, nuclear medicine and human ecology, one finds questions being raised in editorials about the bulwark effect of peer review.103 Common concerns are repeated across the spectrum of biomedical journals. Thirdly, there is a requirement within higher education policy circles to ask whether current practices in publications and the associated review processes are usable in institutions under transformation. Are policies promoting academic entrepreneurship a threat to research integrity or an aid? Pressure to publish dissolves into pressure to publish at all costs. An editorial in a British medical journal pointed out that in the previous year some 8 percent of papers had been “salami sliced” – a common practice where one study is cut into several pieces, arguably unnecessarily but presumably useful in promotion contests.104 The important role played by peer review in the publication process is not limited to the specific journal or discipline subfield. The process is intended to mirror the best in academic practice. Any bias in the process therefore reflects something about the culture prevailing in academe. This point is often missed: academic practice in the world outside the cloister is a reflection of the world within. The two domains, loosely speaking, are separable but not separate. It is because of this that domains of interest must be strictly monitored for ethical compliance.
Conflicts of interest and university failings One of the major challenges facing the modern university as it undergoes a form of metempsychosis at the hands of policy entrepreneurs is the ambiguous status of conflicts of interest. Referring back to the section above, conflicts of interest are found within the peer review and authorship processes. Beginning with the latter, it is reasonable to conclude that ghost authorship entails a large measure of conflict of interest, since neither the sponsor, the ghost writer and in some cases even the author may declare their hand.
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Medical journals claim to be relatively diligent in demanding that authors declare any conflict of interest. Likewise, the peer review process may entertain conflicts of interest that can only be excised by relying on the honesty and trustworthiness of reviewers. It is clear that when conflicts of interest predominate, the scope for several types of abuse arises. Journal publications are not the main arena for playing out conflicts of interest (COI). They are merely the archive of such. Taking the data collected by David Healy cited earlier, among others, into account there appears prima facie evidence that bias exists in publications sponsored by industry (more favorable) than those supported by nonmarket bodies (less favorable). The groundwork for partiality preexists publication naturally. Sponsor insistence on secrecy and control of disclosure bring their own special burdens. Investigator focus on patent generation and knowledge hoarding also gives rise to conflicts of interest. A third party is the university that hosts the investigator and is generally a party to any R&D sponsorship arrangement. Emerging from the competing tensions between obliging private gain and serving the Common Good, all three elements have something to lose, gain or hide. An editorial in a leading surgical journal in 2001 noted that in the previous few years, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had accelerated the approval of new drugs.105 While flagged as the result of dramatic leaps in bioscience research, worryingly the rate of drug recalls had also correspondingly risen. The editorial went on to express concern that corporate funding was unduly influencing biomedical research and undermining the integrity of academic and clinical scholarship alike. The editorial concluded that the transition from basic discovery in the university laboratory, to patent, through to product development was deeply and unhealthily riddled with COI, many of which never surfaced in public. Disclosing a conflict of interest is assumed to be the means for reducing and checking bias. In a study of FDA expert advisory panels, McComas and colleagues collected data from 92 scientific experts out of a total of 111 focusing mainly on how they managed the “shared pool” dilemma.106 Given the important role played by the FDA in regulating and licensing drugs, conflict of interest is a major concern. In an ideal world science advisors would divide strictly into those attached to industry and those affiliated to academia. Notoriously, the world refuses to cleave gracefully. Scientists, therefore, form a pool of shared expertise and interests. The dilemma for the regulatory bodies is how to extract the best scientific advice from the pool while ensuring that the advice is uncontaminated by COI. McComas distinguished between three types of COI where the scientist is: (i) unaware of a COI, (ii) aware but chooses to conceal, and (iii) aware and chooses to disclose. Only the latter is deemed the most responsible approach. The survey revealed that the science advisors were mainly positive about the general committee procedures operated by the FDA. Most believed the procedures were impartial. However, a caveat must be entered. The study did not probe the detail of specific COI processes, only
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the general processes in operation. Moreover, the status of a deliberative process among experts may itself be open to question on the grounds that certain entrenched principles are possibly shared by all discussants. The processes may presuppose the superiority of one paradigmatic treatment over another. A study commissioned by the FDA of the relationship between expertise and COI on its advisory committees, concluded that it was tantamount to impossible to assemble conflict-free committees.107 Strikingly, as the quality of expertise improved so did the degree of financial involvement with industry. When an expert discloses a COI, typically the FDA will issue a waiver to allow participation in committee meetings. Waivers are issued only when the need for a member’s expertise outweighs a possible COI. The study also concluded that even if alternative experts could be found, most of these would also require waivers. In the light of the above, it is difficult to be sanguine about the universities’ capacity to manage and avoid COI between the academic scientists and industry sponsors, and between academic scientists and policies urging them to adopt the raiment of industrial entrepreneurs. Profit-minded science carries with it the risk of nurturing a culture of secrecy in science disclosure.108 On the one side, industry may wish to control disclosure, and on the other, the academic may equally wish to convert a discovery into a patent, legally guarding a discovery. Addressing ethical concerns is made more complicated by the immersion of academic science in general revenue generation policies. An examination of the circumstances surrounding the death of a human subject in a gene therapy trial in the University of Pennsylvania revealed a very tangled collection of competing interests. Both the lead investigator and the university had equity in the biotechnology company. Each was poised to benefit from a successful trial. The company also provided substantial funding to the research institute conducting the trial. Aspects of the therapy were subject to a patent by the lead investigator. In short, a successful outcome could have produced a financial bonanza for the university, academic investigator and the company.109 From time to time, scientists may be unclear about proper boundaries between acceptable research behavior and misconduct. A study may be designed that favors the sponsor or the company in which the scientist has equity. The extent to which scientists subscribe to ethical standards of conduct is an open question, and a source of some disquiet. Studies of article ghosting and honorary authorships lend credence to the unease. Reflecting on 15 years of research, Kalichman maintains that up to one third of scientists struggle with adherence to an acceptable standard of research behavior.110 He argues that despite widespread knowledge within the scientific community of major misconduct cases, there is little concerted effort made by institutions to underpin training in research ethics. Many focus on producing the minimum necessary for compliance. In his view there is a general unwillingness among all parties to academic science to develop an ethical “decent minimum.”
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Where responsible conduct of research (RCR) training is in place, it exists on the back of regulatory demands, i.e. experimenting with human subjects. The lack of leadership in developing RCR beyond the status quo indicates a puzzling inertia. Does it result from resource scarcity, indifference, or ignorance? Or is it an implicit admission that RCR concerns could slow down entrepreneurial science? No single answer can suffice, but the mounting influence of commercial values in research cannot be overlooked. Making the task of RCR more thorny have been shifts in R&D funding from public to private sources in certain research areas – the shift has been more dramatic in the US than in Europe. A diminution in the gap between “basic” science and “applied” science has resulted. Scientists are more preoccupied than at any time in the past with patents, disclosure secrecy, stock options, equity funding and asset accumulation thinking. Fears that profit could corrupt and distort scientific methodology have been widely expressed in medical journals. Yet in a university environment where traditional practices are either transformed or retired in favor of business models, trusting in the institutions to discharge ethically their responsibilities to civic society seems progressively optimistic. Once a university takes steps to cross the threshold of commercial entrepreneurship it does so with the attendant bias that accompanies all commercial bodies. The heart of the matter is bias. A semiconductor manufacturer, say, cannot conduct research into its product development and advertise the superior virtues of rival products. This would be economic suicide. It is in a company’s interest to promote its products, regardless of the relative merits of competitors. A biased presentation of information, also known as marketing, is a prerequisite for success. Bioscience companies often insist on confidential disclosure agreements to ensure their control of the results dissemination from sponsored drug trials. In the case of university–industry research partnerships, Wade as far back as 1994, pointed out the contradiction in companies promoting the objectivity of a piece of scientific research when it is in their interest, but otherwise suppressing or ignoring it.111 Like distant cousins, some forms of objectivity bring joy when they arrive and others when they leave. Bias, prejudice and partisanship distort discoveries, deform relationships. So far the concentration has been on academics falling short of the mark, or their being vacuumed up by entrepreneurial science and possibly losing their judgment to boot. It is easier to see how an individual could “go wrong,” attracted by the reward of personal profit, than how an institution, a whole institution’s leadership, could tumble even heavier down the same stairwell of private reward. But it has happened, and it is instructive to examine these cases briefly, if only to pair off the failings, the ethical lapses, with the modern transformation ethos. What these cases have in common is the determination of a university to overlook its own COI in the handling of tensions between research sponsors and investigators.
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The “Betty Dong” case gained publicity because of multiple attempts by the biopharmaceutical sponsor to thwart the publication of a drug trial.112 The attitude of Dong’s employer, the University of California, to her predicament went from being supportive to something less when faced with the threat of legal action should Dong press her case for publication. Having funded a drug trial of a thyroid medication, the sponsor was surprised, as was Dong, to discover that the brand name product was no more or less effective than less costly rivals. However, the sponsor controlled disclosure of results. Dong was unable to publish her research for nearly nine years after the trial when the relevance of much of the research was diluted. She also had to contend with “spoiling” actions by the company, which included prepublishing the data, and producing a paper for a rival journal with a more positive conclusion. The Dong affair is just one example of the abuse of the academic research process, but it highlights the limited understanding in academia of the total importance of profit to companies. During the “delay” between the completion of the trial and the publication of results, the sponsor company had earned many hundreds of millions in additional profits, while the university’s reputation undoubtedly suffered largely through no fault of its own. University naïvety in the face of the promise of additional revenue, as an explanation for inaction and foot dragging, can only hold so much water. In certain cases, other motives must be invoked to explain behavior. The University of Toronto has become something of an unintended icon in this regard. Nancy Olivieri, a medical academic attached to the university and the Hospital for Sick Children, was conducting a study of a drug related to liver metabolism.113 Initially buoyed by favorable results she successfully obtained industrial sponsorship to continue her work. Olivieri had even accepted a consultancy with an emolument from the sponsor. However, she discovered during the sponsored trial that the drug had adverse side effects and indicated that volunteer patients should be made aware of this development. After she obtained permission from the hospital’s research ethics board to modify the patient consent form in the light of safety concerns, the sponsor terminated the study. When Olivieri signaled her intention to publish, the company cited the confidentiality clause in the research contract and threatened legal action. The reaction from the hospital and university to her dilemma was detached, partly due to the absence of formal procedures in the hospital for agreeing research contracts. Miriam Shuchman, a psychiatrist, in her study of the ensuing tensions identified a tendency by senior hospital academics to reduce the disagreement between Olivieri and the sponsor to that of a scientific dispute, and therefore one not meriting their intervention.114 What is truly remarkable about the story, Shuchman revealed, is that neither the hospital nor university disclosed the intensive lobbying taking place behind the scenes to secure a substantial donation from the sponsor. The occlusion of such COI in a human welfare context is testament enough to the disturbing alchemical power of corporate funding.
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Seemingly the University of Toronto did not draw the same lessons from the Olivieri affair as its critics, because in 2000 it was once again embroiled in an ethical controversy, this time with psychiatrist David Healy.115 He was offered a clinical director post in the Center for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) with a professorship in psychiatry at the university, which he accepted in September 2000, only to have the offer withdrawn following a talk he gave the following November. His talk outlined his concerns about the safety of fluoxetine, the basis of Prozac. Ironically, the main corporate sponsor of CAMH was also the manufacturer of the main drug criticized by him. Furthermore, Healy was set to testify in a medicolegal action against another drug company. Since Healy’s reservations were well-documented in the research literature before he was offered an appointment, valid reasons for rescinding the offer are difficult to assemble, outside ascribing a fear that high profile medicolegal work might dissuade corporate sponsorship. A deep-seated unwillingness to upset corporate sponsors is also evident in the case of Aubrey Blumsohn, a UK pathologist.116 He had been senior lecturer in metabolic bone disease in the University of Sheffield until his suspension in September 2005. Previously, he had been involved in a sponsored study on the effects of an osteoporosis drug. When he was asked to agree to several ghost publications he declined, on the grounds that he had not processed the data himself and confirmed its validity. The Blumsohn case ended up being discussed in the House of Commons, leading to its referral to the Medicine and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). Extraordinarily, given its remit, the MHRA had neither seen nor made an effort to retain the raw data. At the core of the Blumsohn case is the question of who owns the data from a trial. The resulting immediate question is whether it makes any academic sense at all to speak in terms of “ownership” of data. The University of Sheffield supported the sponsor’s interpretation of “ownership” and when Blumsohn pursued his concerns in public, he was eventually dismissed. The above cases indicate an institution’s corporate agenda, its presumed role in upholding impartial scholarship and the weight of industry are in an unequal relationship. Intersecting self-interests between the institution and industry usually win out. The losers are academic freedom, truth and fidelity to the Common Good. In almost all such cases it appears that university management is unable to come to terms with a larger moral purpose and pay it due deference. Instead, other motives guide their responses. But this behavior is the triple helix in action. This is the transformed university.
Reorganizing the goals of science Questions about how science is practiced and organized cannot be disconnected from general philosophical discourse about the goals of science.117
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This is because the practice of science is in a very real sense a prescription for doing science. It is not surprising therefore to discover that in the domain of science teaching there are calls from the AAAS to teach science as practiced.118 The scope to insinuate nonscientific values, such as career relevance, into the practice and steering of science is more keenly felt than before. Funding policies are explicitly premised on the assumption that some types of science are more worthy than others, more relevant in other words. As a result, the goals of science are not all equal in value or effect. The role played by the social context of scientific knowledge in influencing goals is contested, depending on the conceptual lens at hand.119 Why do certain types of cancer research receive more funding than others? How is the allocation of funding for breast cancer research determined? Should such research obtain more or less funding than, say, physics research? Frustrated by what they interpret as the skewing of science, in extremis some feminists have argued that the very notion of a shared reality supporting discourse about common goals of science is questionable without reference to underlying social relations.120 Not only is the debate cleaved by the opposing views of philosophers, sociologists, policy entrepreneurs and scientists, it is also steeped in deeply ambiguous shades of “knowledge orthodoxy.”121 Throughout all, the competing elites tend to assert their own superior virtue. Scientists regularly disagree about the value of certain research trends, not their own of course. Ingrown toenail research will never attract the same level of research interest or funding as breast cancer. Both research zones may contain respectable science, but the goals of each are evaluated differently. It is through this latter process, where the aims of science are weighed, that any reorganization of scientific goals occurs. The past chairman of the Committee on Science Engineering and Public Policy, Philip Griffiths, referred in 1993 to the process as “setting priorities,” offering an arguably disingenuous justification that “policy makers have no objective means by which to compare the importance of projects competing for public funds.”122 Any casual glance in the rearview mirror of science history will reveal theories, movements and personalities exercising persuasive influences that with hindsight seem scarcely credible by contemporary standards. Epidemics, plagues, invasions, social and political upheavals have frequently brought forth the best and worst in scientific practice and theorizing. Part and parcel of scientific progress since the Enlightenment has been a tendency to respond to problems in the “outside” world. During wartime nations have commandeered scientific expertise to enhance military capacity and thereby directly reorganize scientific goals. Apart from situations of such distress, scientists are quite capable of reorganizing the aims of research areas to both preserve their topics and enhance their own prestige. At one extreme in the early twentieth century, for example, it was believed for several decades that many psychiatric problems were best remedied by surgery. This was a scientific conjecture based on the premise that many disorders were caused by
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germs. One of the leading medical academics of the period regularly located mental illness in bacteriological infections of various body organs.123 While this may appear crank thinking now, Dr Joseph Cotton was simply elaborating a trend in medical theory at the time. “Infections” leading to psychoses were found in the teeth, the sinuses, the ileum, the colon, almost all parts of the intestines, the cervix, testicles, and predictably the stomach. The solution was excision in all cases, even when mortality rates exceeded 30 percent. Decades passed before Cotton’s eventual fall from grace was engineered. With hindsight, Cotton’s practices appear depraved but he is merely the one that history has studied. During his period in practice, criticism, though it existed was muted, and he could count on the support of prominent peers. Once peer support is in evidence, it is more difficult to park Cotton’s “treatment” as a terrible aberration. In fact, Cotton’s practices had been subject to peer review, and passed muster. Returning to a calmer point in time, quantum theorist Lee Smolin has been openly critical of the continued funding of string theory research.124 The beneficiary groups involved he characterizes as essentially rent seekers determined to preserve the prestige of the topic even though, in Smolin’s opinion, little of real scientific significance has emerged. He is particularly critical of the string theory community’s penchant to cast their discipline as too elevated to bother with banalities such as producing experimentally testable predictions. Alternative explanatory frameworks, as a result, are diminished in importance and inadequately funded. All of this activity is maintained by a carefully interlocking choreography of peer review and peer prestige. A different interpretation, contra Smolin, might merely be that this is a case of competition between different research groups. However, if Smolin’s critique of the substantive value of string theory research is valid, the contrary argument falls. The point here is not whether Smolin’s analysis shows string theory to be less “truth-producing” than alternatives, but to acknowledge his demonstration that competing goals of science exist in even the most far removed from market academic science, and that the dominance of one set may not be entirely explained by scientific criteria alone. It would be a mistake to infer that “reorganization” implies a utopian past where scientists wandered about undisrupted by external sociopolitical realities, or that scientists applied some form of superrationality in setting goals after long periods in deliberative assemblies with colleagues. As in any human endeavor, a degree of veniality and personal reputation has piloted elements of science practice in certain directions rather than others. However, personal science-empire building is not of relevance here. Rather what is of interest is a shift from one type of normative standard dominated by scientific interests to another influenced by commercial ones. A different weighing of goals arises when elites decide that certain kinds of knowledge production are more legitimate than others, and the standard of legitimacy is extrascientific, i.e. commercial or political. In this scenario
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knowledge is harnessed to serve technical goals. Theoretically, having the goals of science pieced together by multidimensional actors is suggestive of a more accountable and democratic science. But in practice both the number of actors and dimensions is very limited. Also the capacity for misunderstanding may increase. Freyfogle and Newton offer a revealing insight into the crossover between science and policy in the area of land management (ecology) and the potential “harm” that arises when concepts in one domain are misunderstood as belonging to the other.125 Ecological integrity is an instance of a concept that on the one hand could be a precise scientific goal and on the other a normative policy fiat. At the core of their study is the conundrum ensuing when descriptive science crosses over into prescriptive science. At what point in an analysis does science cross over into policy and what are the implications for science at this point? Regular trespasses between science and policy domains have become more established, and less novel, with the development of entrepreneurial academic science. The relatively recent addition of ethical specialists to debates over directions in bioscience research is often less about adjusting goals, rather than overseeing the integrity of experimental procedures. Reflecting on the purpose of clinical trials provides a helpful window on the more doubtful reorganization processes being fielded with the connivance of higher education institutions. At first glance, these trials appear designed to answer scientific questions about the effects of a drug on a disease, and to record all such effects faithfully. Note that in naïve neutral science, what might be called Popper’s science, the scientist is expected to record all effects, both positive and negative. Conversely, a raft of editorials in biomedical journals suggests that trials are designed more for marketing purposes than to answer scientific queries.126 Outright fraud has also been found.127 Reasons for these suspicions are not hard to find. Biopharmaceutical companies have a preference for confidential disclosure agreements, termination of trials with unfavorable trends, nonpublishing of negative results, the use of ghost writers to present the best aspects of a trial, and restricted access to trial data and analysis. It is relatively straightforward for a trial to record only positive effects if the data sheets do not contain boxes to record negative effects. Probing the ethical dimensions of drug marketing, McHenry is scathing about the withholding of clinical trial information when it is unfavorable.128 An added concern with clinical trials is their latent capacity to harm human volunteers. There is a good deal of evidence that human subjects have not always benefited appropriately from disclosure of risk.129 As the outward flourishes of the technical goals of pharmaceutical science, clinical trials have an enormous influence on perceptions of diseases, treatments and bioscience aims. They also reflect light on standards in academic bioscience. General concerns about clinical trials are only part of a bigger set of worries that corporate influence in the universities is reorganizing the goals of
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science. Future science is less likely to aspire to Popper science, curiosity driven with no financial reward beyond salaries for the investigators, and more likely to become a business enterprise with a focus on what will sell. Is it all just a case of postmodern paranoia about anything matching brains with money, intellect with entrepreneurship? The central effect of the growing privatization of bioscience R&D and the drive towards proprietorial academic research is that the public sphere, civic society, is having its experts plundered from it. The greater the COI between the researcher and the general public, the less confident can the public be that the researcher will act honestly and impartially. Bias is often dismissed as a one-off event. But even if the bias is at the level of a delta value, once sufficient numbers of investigators share it, the combined effect can be quite massive. So if one investigator decides minor glossing of a result is acceptable on the grounds that only he is doing it, a calamity of potentially enormous proportions is in the offing, should his colleagues silently follow suit. There is sufficient evidence from studies of biomedical journal papers to conclude that bias favorable to sponsors is a cause for concern. Just why it is so, is discussed in a moment. Grant assessment procedures are assumed to settle the worthiness of a research proposal. Like tiller men guiding the barge of normal science, the committees chart future research directions. Successful applications are presumed to be moving closer to world-class than unsuccessful ones. In certain cases, the review process is set aside or reduced to enable the sluicing of funding in particular directions. James Savage, for example, reviews instances where the setting aside of public funds for certain science projects, earmarking, seemed to do little more than give to those that have already received generously.130 Adopting a stance that might strike some as hilarious, presidents of the elite Association of American Universities (AAU) have condemned “earmarking,” while institutional members were busy lodging the checks. Savage further concludes that earmarking funds for pet scientific projects in middle range universities has provided little evidence of overall institutional improvements. He agrees, however, with the position that even if the peer review process is not perfect it is preferable to the politicization of scientific funding, whereby programs, institutions and even individuals are favored by patronage. Of course, patronage does not come unforeseen, but through the assiduous efforts of university presidents, academic lobbyists, politicians and vested industrial interests. Special pleading that “cultural” or historical needs are being met through the process he dismisses as mere excuses for circumventing examinations of the total merit of the projects. Taking the perspective of bioethicists, Grief and Metz skim several pro- and antiearmarking arguments, only to tentatively conclude that earmarking produces excess expenditure in favored areas at the expense of general research expenditure.131 Rolling out the academic pork barrel is a phenomenon not limited to the US. In 1999, Gordon Brown, the UK Chancellor of the
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made payments totalling €35.5 million, that is, €10.6 million directly to MIT and €24.9 million to the company. It also made a property which had cost €22.5 million available to the company for its operations at a nominal rent. MIT is a charitable non-profit educational institution that depends on endowments to pursue its mission. It provided management expertise and technical support, and was to help to secure sponsorship and private contributions. At no stage did MIT commit to provide funding for the venture.133 In the febrile atmosphere of the dotcom boom, even the potential loss of tens of millions on risky technology seemed not to influence the positive outlook of Irish policy entrepreneurs. Within one year of its establishment, the MLE was in financial difficulty. A parliamentary investigation into the collapse of MediaLab Europe was highly critical of the assessment of the project’s viability and the arrangements for stewarding its development. On the other hand, one cannot always be reassured that a peer review process is not just a convenient disguise for a pork barrel. As far back as 1982, Peters and Ceci reported that institutional prestige influenced journal paper acceptance.134 In their study, they took a dozen previously published articles in psychology journals by authors with “prestigious” institutional affiliations and after some minor rewriting of titles and abstracts, resubmitted the articles to the original journals with changed authors and affiliations. Eight of the journals rejected the submissions for being below their acceptance standards. Only three realized they had previously published the articles. Confronted with these results, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that institutional reputation is a weighty sociopolitical factor in evaluating scientific worth. Richard Smith refers to this as evidence of the “Matthew effect” – those that have get more, and those that have not get very little. Others, such as Hottois, wonder if science is not so much well-funded as overemphasized to the point of threatening cultural diversity.135 Earmarking can only aggravate the situation. Charges that earmarking and selective peer review are reshaping and reorganizing the goals of science are largely orphans without taking the
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Exchequer, announced that £68 million would be invested in a joint Cambridge University and MIT venture. The decision was announced without competition. Due diligence studies by the Department of Trade and Industry were spare.132 Ultimately the project failed to achieve its targets. The desire to secure academic “brand recognition” can become a costly and even vain exercise. Just before the “dotcom” collapse in 2000, the Irish government voted almost €30 million to establish an MIT-branded “media lab” in Dublin. Within five years the expensive experiment was wound up at great cost. Between May 2000 and early 2005, when the company behind MediaLab Europe (MLE) was finally liquidated, the Irish state
agenda of biopharmaceuticals and biotechnology into account. No one could ever accuse the CERN researchers of reshaping fundamental physics research through promoting pocket-sized linear accelerators. Collusion between policy entrepreneurs drawn from government, industry and academia has led many to conclude that science is being reshaped and misused into the bargain. Writing about the “professional ethics” required of scientists, David Resnik concludes that while “money” may distort some science, several instances of low standards have been exaggerated to support antiscientism.136 Unwarranted extrapolations from isolated cases, he argues nonetheless, should not be used as a defense by those wishing to deny that science is subject to political influence. Resnik, not entirely in agreement with other science policy critics, interprets the problems confronting scientific accountability as largely arising from a lack of a culture of transparency. At its most sanguine, it is difficult to reconcile his faith in honesty and transparency with some of the demands made of scientists engaged with certain research programs. National security is often a convenient whip to herd scientists one way or another. However, there are other ways. One of President Bush’s science advisors, John Marburger, found himself fending off complaints from fellow luminaries about science policy.137 The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) complained about bias and selectivity in weighing scientific research. Among the charges of committee packing and cronyism, which Marburger denied, one unavoidable embarrassment was the dismissal of cell biologist Elizabeth Blackburn from the President’s Council on Bioethics. Blackburn expressed support for embryonic stem cell research, thus incurring the ire of vocal religious members of the council. The general tenor of UCS complaints was that the administration chose only the science that did not conflict with political values. In what might seem like life imitating art, the New York Times reported the novel decision by the Pentagon to embed more science in film and television scripts.138 The UCS has continued to monitor what it regards as the politicization of science, regularly publishing examples of science either ignored or distorted. To do so, it has had to enter into science policy debates where scientific standards settle certain conflicts but not all of them. The UCS has raised concerns about a wide range of decisions that it argues are tainted by political bias. These range from socially controversial actions such as setting limits on the availability of certain pharmaceutical abortifacients, the “true” risk of lead poisoning in children and on through even restrictions on federal employees’ right to comment on the threat to polar bears from retreating ice fields.139 The moot point is whether its own critiques of these decisions are based on scientific criteria or more than scientific criteria. What is most challenging about the UCS 2008 review of threats to scientific integrity is the assumption that the facts of research could be easily transformed into the oughts of policy. What begins as a scientific critique rapidly assumes the form of a political manifesto. Most of the abuses cited by the UCS are born out of the selective
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use of science to support certain political and commercial goals, primarily in areas relating to human health and ecology. To “restore” scientific integrity UCS recommends that whistle-blowers must be protected, government scientists must have the right to “communicate with the media,” government itself must become more transparent, and “robust” procedures for directly injecting science into policy debates must be found. In all instance, it is assumed that only moral imperatives can set the republic of science back on course. Reduced to its essence, the report (a) asserts that scientific goals are being reorganized for nonacademic and nonscientific reasons, and (b) affirms a long-standing Enlightenment principle that scientific freedom serves the Common Good. The latter point is made far more transparent if recast as scientific freedom is a public good. Much, if not all, of this exegesis is laudable but the report fails to acknowledge that science information is only one input into political policy. It does not define political policy. This is not a defense of political policy making but neither should one assume that, because political policy processes show real shortcomings, science policy cabals equipped with “neutral” scientific information are inherently superior, either logically or ethically. The reality is that the goals of science are always in a state of reorganization with different tensions springing up between intrascientific elites and extrascientific vested interests. The assumption that the scientist has demonstrable superior virtue is just that, an assumption. It is though a troubling assumption since it rides tandem with the presupposition that science knows best. Trading on the historical stereotype of scientist-as-truth-seeker, the proposal is that scientists can be left to reorganize the goals of science since they are neutral denizens of unfettered science. Ironically, and quite unbeknownst to itself, the UCS is also promoting an orthodoxy, though one different from that it criticizes. Inclined to castigate governments for applying “political litmus tests” to science advisors, it applies its own politicoscience litmus tests to policy committees and their decisions. Scientific goals are continually transformed as new discoveries are made and disseminated. The situation that causes anxiety differs from “normal” cyclical phenomena. Explicit political steering of academic science into lucrative avenues is a risky undertaking. Not only may science be unable to reverse out but the potential damage to academic science and the universities may be immense – large enough to force a radical change in governance on the sector as a whole, with possibly more rather than less industry involvement. Still, academic science itself is capable of reorganizing itself in ways that are both dubious democratically and entertain a plethora of policy and philosophical ambiguities. At the end of the day, it is in the nature of “knowledge politics” that the reorganization of the goals of science is shunted hither and thither between the Orwellian 1984 of policy entrepreneurs and the triple helix, and Huxley’s Brave New World of the Alpha male scientific elite. All one can do is push for the ethically best standard, which leads inevitably to the next question.
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154 Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in Higher Education
Among the many problems affecting attempts to relate academic science accountably to civic society, one of these is simply being honest. Scientists are reluctant to pay heed to commentators that assert the importance of setting normative goals for science and overseeing its means. It is a strange opposition, if one allows that science presumes itself to be paragon of diligent rationality. As science has become more complex, and its relationship with society more ambiguous and challenged, the ethical and political implications for its practice in the universities cannot be ignored for fear of closing the corporate tills. Of course, this does not imply that scientists loftily pursue goals with an indifference to ethics. But even where ethics intrudes into science, such as stem cell research, scientists’ appreciation of the “ethical boundarywork” exposes complexity, uncertainty about responsibility and mixed deference to experimental regulations.140 It is not that the scientist is so inclined to act with intentional immorality, though it happens, as much as at risk of reflecting too narrowly within a discipline-prescribed set of ethical strictures. The importance of external measures of the value, and values, of science is hotly disputed. In his study of “Nazi science,” Robert Proctor concluded that the internal rationality of science under Hitler was neither inconsistent, nor irrationally at variance, with scientific logic.141 It is only when assessed against “nonscientific” ethical measures, that the true extent of its moral degeneracy is apparent. Other studies have revealed that, far from avoiding service to the broad agenda of the regime, constant politicking by scientists currying favor with the Nazi elites was widespread.142 Many of the most prestigious research institutes, those with celebrated staff, enthusiastically applied the racial segregation laws, and conducted inhuman experiments in the name of racial hygiene science. Counter critics have found it convenient to dismiss Nazi science as either a pseudoscience or so egregious a departure from rational practice as to be nonreplicable. These perspectives are only tenable if the attribution of superior virtue to scientists working for the Allies is deemed axiomatic, and, with pungent irony, the Allies were quick to enroll Nazi scientists into their own research programs. Experiments on either unwitting or poorly informed human subjects were conducted by the Allies on sections of their own populations long after the war had ended. These included radiation experiments on civilians and military personnel. Apart from direct military abuses, the infamous Tuskegee “public health” experiment led to the intentional nontreatment of syphilis in a section of the US population in order to chart the disease’s epidemiology. Even in academic psychological “studies” such as the Stanford Prison experiments, ethical boundaries were pushed to the limits. It is true that none of these experiments were part of a science program devoted to research and cruelty in equal measures. Nevertheless, they witness that science cannot be left entirely to its own devices in framing its goals. This does not amount to the entirely different argument that science
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How ethically short is arm’s length?
therefore needs to be chaperoned by policy entrepreneurs who, once secure behind the wheel, will steer it away from its worst excesses. Taking a long look at the presentation of science, Joseph Agassi, a philosopher of science and technology, is of the opinion that many proponents of popular science exaggerate the success of science in order to maintain its legitimacy, notionally for the Common Good.143 In his view, the public promoters of science, including science policy, rely on idealizations of science that are tantamount to dishonest. As a result, various elites that have a vested, but conceivably disingenuous, interest in preserving a cheerfully impartial image of science are hostile to suggestions that science lacks both intellectual and moral autonomy. One trouble with science promotion, especially the idea that science is based on infinite progress, is that its adherents are rarely flexible about challenges to their idealizations. Agassi particularly targets the idealization of science as almost always infallible, acting benignly and with scientists as near perfect moral agents. The crux of the issue is the complex web of public relations that now govern the positioning of science in public consciousness. Agassi accepts that some form of idealization is useful, indeed even necessary, to sustain a debate, but adds that participants in a debate should have the right to veto an idealization. His solution that debates allow for more vetoes is probably just achievable in an academic workshop. Stepping into the wider arena of the elites that subscribe to academic entrepreneurialism (e.g. the triple helix) it is difficult to find a nail to which his suggestion could be attached. The germ of Agassi’s thesis is found in Popper’s earlier theorizing about the “self-correcting” nature of science. The principle, stated baldly here, is that left to its own devices science will set itself right not because of any inherent superiority in its methods or motives, but because science is fallible. Contrary to presumptions of the UCS analysis cited above, external moral imperatives play no role in righting the ship of science (in keeping with the parlance of the moment “the republic of science”). One does not have to become completely submerged in Popper’s pool of philosophy to ingest the idea that self-correcting science is anathema to entrepreneurial academic science. It is simply incompatible with the science of the triple helix as it requires that two strands of authority, university management and industry, are cast off. Popper has been rightly criticized for idealizing science, but his emphasis on the conjectural nature of scientific research based on its fallibility cuts right to the heart of something important.144 In an interesting twist to criticisms that science is an idealization, Agassi argues that the critics themselves are victims of science idealization. It is not at all obvious, let alone defensible, that science contains its own moral and intellectual autonomy or that these qualities, if they exist, are derived from notions of freedom to pursue truth and unimpeded access to knowledge. Time and again, it is precisely this presentation of science that stands to the fore in public. Rarely is it stressed that autonomy demands a deal of ethical
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Science and Universities: Shilling for a Living? 155
subscription from scientists to standards of truth and honesty. It is not enough simply to apply a method, it must be applied honestly. More than a bare ethical minimum is required. Rubbing this analysis against contemporary imperatives to bind science more closely to technology and industry, introduces a whole dimension of counterautonomy into science. The self-correcting nature of science is therefore, as in clinical trial manipulation and ghost writing, contradicted and the vaunted autonomy of science upon which so much propaganda about “truthful” knowledge depends is exposed as hollow. The analysis can be extended to conclude that the main motivations behind promoting science as autonomous and infallible are precisely to ensure the mobilization of bias, be it among elites or the populace at large. Pursuit of an effective public presentation of science has become a Holy Grail under the banner of the “public understating of science” (PUS).145 Public relations crusades, sponsored by higher education lobbies, supporting science and science policy have produced images of discoveries that are at once taken up and dropped with equal fickleness by the media. Almost every trend in research or new drug development, no matter how ephemeral, is packaged for public consumption. In fairness, it must be conceded that the broad populace is not knowledgeable about a range of entrenched scientific achievements let alone contemporary advances and their implications. Discovering the right “drill” to be practiced on the citizens would alleviate the burden that science faces when asked on rare occasions to justify itself. Educating the public about science is considered to be a “good” necessary for the survival of science, and a tradition in a civilized society. A jaundiced view is that an ignorant populace can become a hostile one – antagonistic to increases in science funding. Reliance on popular media and infrequent depositions on films and the like are often seen as the only conduits for communicating science. Occasionally a scientist becomes a “fleeting media event” due to provocative, even outlandish, claims. A case in point is the story of the physicist Richard Seed, who proclaimed in 1998 that he would soon begin cloning “human babies.” Gerlach and Hamilton’s study of the coverage of Seed’s fortunes reveals a media alternating between fascination and repulsion.146 Partially assisting swings in media sentiment was the transformation of Seed from “mad scientist” to “bad scientist.” This latter process, as the authors present it, was greatly facilitated by scientists who feared that Seed’s opinions would destabilize their own research vessels. Seed was a “risk” to bioscience, particularly human reproductive science, and a program of “containment” was activated. As the “mad scientist” is by convention at odds with convention, and the mores of his peers, Seed was intermittently characterized by journalists and a few scientists, as a Frankenstein, Strangelove or Jekyll. Scientific criticism, possibly alert to the public “disorder” that could befall areas of bioscience, focused on Seed the “bad scientist.” Persisting with monster allusions, Gerlach and Hamilton refer to the internal
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scientific criticism as the “defanging” of Seed. His history of “scientific failures” was mentioned in pejorative proximity to his “rogue” or “maverick” status. No scientist would take his entreaties for funds seriously. The refrain was that he was too undisciplined and bereft of the required mainstream scholarship. A combination of innuendo, scorn and personal abuse ensured that Seed was firmly located outside normal science. In spite of the bald fact that Seed was a science entrepreneur (with mixed success) firmly rooted in private for-profit science, the anxiety he engendered among the public about genetic technology provoked a strong negative reaction from academic scientists and their organizations. Gerlach and Hamilton offer several explanations for the hostile reactions, hinging largely on various facets of public insecurity. One candidate is that Seed represented bioscience risk in public contrary to the official consensus about the same technology cultivated by academe–industry–science alliances. Indirectly, his intentions unfolded the need for greater regulatory scrutiny of a mysterious technology, and not less. This is not the kind of public understanding of science espoused as a desired outcome by bioscience lobby groups. In the face of public and political disquiet about the “Frankenstein” promise to begin reproductive cloning, “the scientific community was effective, on short notice, in complexifying and ultimately forestalling the state-authored [regulatory] response.”147 Bioscientists were only too aware that the controversy exposed to the public a troubling ambiguity at the interface between certain biotechnologies, their application in private hands and unthought-out civic and moral implications. The requirement to transform Seed from a selfpublicizing eccentric into a “loose cannon” must be understood against this background of organized science lobbying. Seed-the-loon was much more containable than Seed-the-serious-scientist. It would be unjust to dismiss the Seed media event as another dustup between a crank and his critics. The episode shows very clearly that science acted to protect itself, its broad public and private interests, and rather than engage in a protracted moral debate, effectively headed it off. Reasons for taking an interest in the Seed caravan are several. Apart from an obvious salaciousness, and the novelty implied by his proposals, the “treatment” of Seed reveals a media preoccupation not always evident to those intent on using the media as an instrument for communicating academic knowledge and policy, i.e. in so-called public understanding of science initiatives. The preoccupation, or fixation, of the media is with controversy. Attempting to impose order on the information released and control its presentation are not tasks with certain outcomes, with predictable effects. In spite of the vast investment in “information” by various biotechnology companies, European resistance to genetically modified crops is stubbornly high. Irrespective of the scientific credibility of Seed’s proposals, the “bad scientist” critiques offered by peers turned on his nonparticipation in their own orthodoxy about science and how it ought to be rolled into privatization. A
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Science and Universities: Shilling for a Living? 157
central dictum was not to frighten the public sphere. Because Seed was deemed outside their “disciplinary narrative,” he was conveniently cast as a rogue element, a bad case of a PhD with a laboratory conduct disorder. The idea that science should conform around moral standards has been hotly contested, but in Seed’s case it was his lack of conformity around the standards of his peers, his unwillingness to reduce his practices to theirs, that heaved him out of the club. The point is not whether Seed’s proposals merited criticism, but that the grounds for criticism were peculiarly at variance with notions about freedom to research – freedom to put forward a hypothesis for debate and testing. Seed’s ideas may indeed have fallen down by scientific standards, but it was the fact that his proposals cut across an implicit moral consensus about the rights of biotechnology to stand in the shade away from scrutiny that caused his “credibility” problems. If Seed was guilty of anything, it was a failure to put forward the “Authorized Version” of scientific discovery in the age of the transformed university. Funding considerations and the perceived need to avoid troubling the public conscience with minutiae of scientific disputes, necessitate that the “battle” to improve the public understanding of science is fought with the full connivance of the universities. Media presentations of science oscillate between implicit plaudits for the infallibility of science, to howls of betrayal when science shows a fallible venal side to its practices. Greenberg, speaking disparagingly of the “contrived optimism” fabricated by the media and academe, offers several examples of “sudden breakthroughs” and “miracle cures” that were eagerly touted by institutions and the press, only to have their halos dimmed and removed from public view awhile later.148 On a similar note, a study of journalistic practices by a team at the University of Cardiff concluded that the media are frequently content to reuse public relations “packs” prepared by universities announcing another wondrous scientific development. Little critical analysis of the claims made is everpresent which may explain the importance that university presidents attach to getting “their” success stories across in the media. The authors comment, “most major quality newspapers rely on a steady stream of ‘new research’ stories, and use university PR accordingly.”149 Guardian journalist Nick Davies drew on the same research in his own analysis of journalistic standards, leading him to conclude that a great deal of “news” is controlled by the public relations industry. Access to a “good” PR firm is considered essential in a modern university. Modern doyens of the “new media” are quick to point out that the public like specialists, and that advertisers like specialists even more.150 The role of the specialist advocate for science is exploited to the hilt in media presentations of academic science success. Scientists have long lionized their subject and each other. Stuffed with recognizable metaphors, the imagery that Sir Richard Gregory conjured up in a presidential address to a meeting of British scientific societies in December 1921 has a familiar ring even today.151 Many scientists and nonscientists
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Science and Universities: Shilling for a Living? 159
would recognize his stereotype of the scientist as an unselfish seeker after truth. Scientists are presented as mariners seeking for nothing more than a few “vessels” to be chartered for them, which will bring them off on “voyages of discovery” to “unknown lands,” from which they will return with bounteous treasures of knowledge. Warming to his mission Gregory solemnly declared that
Reassuringly, the change noted by Gregory was not a covetous nod towards the local entrepreneur profiting from the “fruits” of science, but rather a frown caused by the “grimy” industrial application of science which was destroying the countryside (and producing “weapons of death”). For Gregory, and one assumes, his audience, humankind was in danger of squandering the fruits of science, through neglecting their capacity to edify and improve the living conditions of the populace. Science possessed a “piercing light” that could free man from superstitions and their “baleful consequences.” A striking feature of Gregory’s eulogy is the picture painted of the innate superiority of the scientist in the public arena. Gregory urged local scientific societies to set about demonstrating their “wisdom” in their local communities because [a] scientific enquiry is understood to be one undertaken solely with the view of arriving at the truth, and this disinterested motive will always command public confidence. It is poles apart from the spirit in which social and political subjects are discussed: it is the rock against which waves of emotion and storms of rhetoric lash themselves in vain.152 His presumption seems conspicuously at variance with contemporary science’s agenda of concerns. Tremulous before the change in public respect for science, an article written 80 years later gingerly teases out the influence of public opinion on genetic research funding. A requirement to manage public opinion, and not frighten it, must become a priority. The question, apparently, is how, then, can we best augment public debate in this scientific era? It is crucial to avoid giving a single answer to this question, because the best approach is to pursue several mechanisms, seeking to combine them. We need to understand the potential for both negative and positive outcomes.
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to the man of science discoveries signify extensions of the field of work, and he usually leaves their exploitation to prospectors who follow him. His motives are intellectual advancement, and not the production of something from which financial gain may be secured. For generations he has worked in faith purely for the love of knowledge, and has enriched mankind with the fruits of his labours; but this altruistic attitude is undergoing a change.
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The inference that “storms of rhetoric” in the guise of uncomprehending public opinion could wear down the “rock” of disinterested inquiry is inescapable. Initiatives to improve the public understanding of science risk descending into flagrant exercises in propaganda in the guise of improving “scientific literacy.” As scientists become more determined to gain funding in “topical” and potentially profitable research areas, browbeating an ignorant recalcitrant public almost inevitably enlists the greater gravitas of the university. The idea that the public suffers from an odd form of cognitive deficit regarding science is popular among academic scientists.154 It is trivially true that most people are not scientists and that ignorance of precise scientific methods is widespread, but is that sufficient reason for barring them from participation in science debates? How are deficiencies in knowledge and “attitude” to be balanced since they are clearly not equivalent?155 Wynne argues that “laypeople” are less defensive, risk averse and resistant to scientific progress than institutional science admits.156 On the contrary, often the lack of “reflexivity” is found to be more securely anchored on the institutional side of any debate. In a study of the ignorance of science, Mike Michael using conversational analysis techniques concluded that people often did not possess relevant scientific knowledge, but that neither did they carry around a large of amount of “defective quasi-scientific knowledge.” In many instances, they simply had none at all. Nevertheless, they were aware of their ignorance and did not always lack the capacity to challenge the epistemological status of a scientific claim.157 The beauty of this species of analysis, apart from a persuasive naturalism cutting through tables of statistical data, is the immediate suggestion that if only more money was spent on science and science education, to frame issues in terms intelligible to the public, the spillover into second-level education would ensure greater public receptivity to science research. Absence of language implies an absence of science knowledge. If the public understanding of science is to improve, the policies behind it must be supported. If public opinion shifts, greater investment in science and science teaching is required. Irrespective of the direction steered by public opinion, greater expenditure on academic science is eternally mandated it seems. A plausible reason for the rise in civic squalls over science, and academia’s nervousness, has been the move away from the disinterested ethical standard that Gregory identified as a confidence-building measure. Occasionally the media uncovers instances where scientific results were conditioned more by policy rhetoric and market forces than actual good science. Ethical shortcomings are presented in isolation from the grey canvas of policies that
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We also need to avoid being paralysed by the potential for negative outcomes, and being afraid to face them squarely, because we fear that to do so threatens the promise surrounding new discoveries.153
have worked collectively to undermine the science that seeks to be self-correcting. The media itself is not an innocent bystander in the promotion and maintenance of ignorance of science. A recent Swedish study revealed serious shortcomings in media coverage of a trade association’s criticisms of academic research that ran counter to commercial interests.158 Media reflections on scientific opinions on climate change have been shown to vary greatly and unreliably.159 Regarding stem cell research, which has attracted a great deal of scientific interest, the media has figured prominently in “hosting” public debate. Major questions about human life and its inception contest with arguments based on “therapeutic promise.”160 Where the science is controversial, the introduction of therapeutic promise into public debate distracts attention from the more divisive aspects of the research (and possible underperformance). Patient groups are often assisted by the media to gain a purchase in the debate without querying their motives. The right of audience of such advocacy groups is taken for granted, even though it is open to manipulation by both scientists and media commentators.161 The net effect of a combination of science, media interest and patient advocacy can be a lessening of tolerance for dissenting voices and the combined weight of “informed” opinion assumes dominance. Universities cannot wash their hands of all responsibility for these excesses of zeal. All too often, they prominently press the argument that science is in the Common Good, and the quasi-fiction that scientists should be allowed to set and monitor their own agendas. Any other arrangement of conventional wisdom, so the implication runs, would lead to the hobbling of science with unacceptable impacts on long-term research programs. There is no doubting that some moral consideration must influence the practice of science – one only has to reflect on the “value” of Nazi and Japanese “medical experiments” during WWII to question the wisdom of science adrift from moral moorings. Leaving these profane extremes aside, shunting all ethical obligations onto the individual scientist or groups of scientists obscures the moral responsibility of higher education institutions. This is the real convenience of locating all misconduct in the willful actions of a vain misguided minority or “rogue” individual. In contemporary academia, the role of extrascientific scrutiny of science is frequently limited to the purely regulatory, even arbitrary, operations of “ethics committees.”162 This obscures the tension, as evidenced through patent rates, between acting in the Common Good while pursuing private profit. The public sphere not only funds the institutions and their scientists from its citizens’ resources, but is also persuaded that, having offered a tremendous subsidy to science in the name of the Common Good, it should willingly allow scientists to make private profit, and smother the disclosure of their results through patents, licensing agreements and the what not in commercial invisibility. One must be pessimistic about the universities’ collective enthusiasm for accommodating scrutiny in these areas given their corporate ambitions. A
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Science and Universities: Shilling for a Living? 161
study across three societies, America, Russia and Japan, of the attribution of responsibility for corporate wrongdoing revealed that the position of an “actor” in a corporation was a major determinant in (i) the attribution of responsibility and (ii) the application of any sanctions.163 Procedures were “sensitive” to the “power” of an individual. More powerful individuals, superordinates who frequently were the “bosses,” were least likely to experience severe sanctions than subordinates. These same individuals commonly availed of “causal ambiguity” in the way their instructions were transmitted to avoid responsibility. Subordinates on the other hand, cited “following orders” to justify their own actions. Hence, between the higher and lower echelons of the corporations, effectively moral responsibility was evaporated. It is not too difficult to discern in this study traits that commonly affect university governance and academic life. Accountability for scientific misconduct is always “downwards” and never attributable to executive policies, i.e. accountability is pushed onto subordinates. Official responses to the cases of academic science controversy cited earlier reveal very conflicted and questionable ways in which universities understand their responsibility for institutional shortcomings. Concerns about threats, real and imagined, to funding allied with ever exaggerated governmental respect for science have encouraged a jump away from political infancy among university elites. Cross-legitimization between state and science, wherein the state legitimizes scientific programs through investment, and science gladly in turn legitimizes state policy, calls into doubt any willingness to reform the current science–academia interface. Evidence to date regarding academic science indicates that ethical shortcomings are far from rare. Rather than respond in a manner consistent with their corporate pretensions, scientific misconduct is not regarded by the universities as the equivalent of a “corporate crime.” Selectivity in the application of commercial nomenclature is in vogue. Similar to many corporate bodies the tendency in higher education is to react defensively and deny responsibility for shortcomings of “subordinates.” The net effect is to strengthen the hand of those who are suspicious of science and see within it a trenchant intolerance of external criticism. This is not the place to inquire into whether universities behave badly in certain circumstances due to moral indifference or negligence, but merely to note for now that all decisions are expressions of preferences, and these preferences are the dragon’s teeth of the transformed, but not necessarily morally improved, university. Institutional unwillingness to accept that ethical breaches reflect moral tears in the institutional fabric that supports and benefits from the research is all too common. In order for the entrepreneurial university to be operationally successful, the least desired outcome is any affirmation of a democratic deliberative model of science engagement that would freely circulate in society for comment. From today’s perspective, and with the eerie benefit of hindsight, Sir Richard Gregory’s
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views seem archaic and quaint. The sad reality is that outside of fiction the likelihood of a similar speech in the immediate future not causing a modern audience of academic scientists to convulse in laughter is nearly zero. And who, one asks, would serve as the best exemplar of university education and what it offers civic society, Gregory, or one of the new breed of scientist entrepreneurs?
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5 Firing up the New Alchemy – the Furnace of Innovation
Central to science technology and innovation (STI) initiatives is the assumption that educational attainment has a nonaccidental effect on economic growth.1 Educational attainment roughly equates to “human capital” – the supply of skills and knowledge that an economy can draw upon. Hypothetically, countries that produce more knowledge produce more technological innovation and more innovation leads to increased growth.2 Everyone is better off in this scenario and therein is the rationale for harnessing the universities as centers of knowledge production to the “needs” of the economy. Since higher education produces “new” knowledge, should it not also produce new useful knowledge that will find a profitable niche in market economies? The European Innovation Scoreboard explicitly counts increases in science and engineering graduates as evidence of improving innovation in an economy. Obscured by such impressive data collection exercises is the actual extent to which educational attainment really contributes to economic growth. A source of ambiguity is the tendentious policy that treats education as another commodity – the more of a commodity available in an economy, the better for all. Supportive choruses urging education for export, education for sale and the franchising of academic brands are usually tuned to this melody. Through directing attention to assumed economic benefits deriving from higher education, a culture of quantitative assessment has emerged where productivity and efficiency are measured in terms of amounts of publications, citations and graduates. Questions about the subsisting quality of the educational experience and research outcomes are smothered under tabulations of data. Notional contributions to economic growth hazard being equated with general accounting exercises, the success or failure of which is entirely a matter of “numbers.” Academic policy advisor Alison Wolf, citing evidence for the economic benefits of primary and secondary education, expresses qualified skepticism about the centrality of a linkage between higher education and economic growth. She argues that the links are “more tenuous 164
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Educational attainment and innovation
and complex than most people suppose.”3 By narrowing higher education policy debate to growth economics factors, many important questions about the quality of higher education in an expanding and unevenly funded sector remain marginal. An anomaly entailed by ever-expanding mass higher education has put the universities in the position of attempting to remedy some of the educational shortfalls at primary and second-level education. University credentials will grow in importance, if the standards expressed in lower-level qualifications are perceived to be in decline. But it is ultimately a game of snakes and ladders. If Wolf is worried about university funding sucking the life out of earlier education levels, Hazelkorn is troubled by the potential damage caused by the unintended effects of current policies.4 She observes that a new binary system is arising between “research rich” and “research poor” universities, and more ubiquitously between research and teaching. The concentration of resources in the hands of a few institutions may deprive regions of due access to innovations – an outcome, she notes, running counter to knowledge economy aspirations. Philip Altbach expresses similar concerns about the financial impacts on higher education of the greater variability in student abilities, high dropout rates and the emergence of “open door” institutions with low selectivity standards. His uncomfortable conclusion is that many of these problems (“challenges”) persist because “in many countries, mass higher education has been forced on the universities.”5 A recent report on the UK university sector post-devolution points to widespread anomalies and complexities in funding, student participation, and institutional success.6 Current UK research funding policies maintain an uneven playing pitch. Universities that may have the potential to contribute significantly to regional development cannot, since they are unable to draw on a past legacy of successes to bolster their case – a classic example of the “Matthew effect.” One widely publicized study has come close to discounting the assumption that increasing educational attainment in science and mathematics spurs economic growth.7 It compared educational attainment, particularly in science and mathematics, and economic growth across 38 countries. Taking standardized test scores over two 20-year periods (1970–90 and 1980–2000), and pairing them against GDP figures, revealed that countries with relatively high science and mathematics scores have grown at a faster rate than other countries. An initial correlation between educational attainment and growth seemed promising, but when the four Asian “Tiger” countries (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan) were subtracted the correlation was at best marginal. Several countries with lower rates of enrolment actually grew faster. Taking both results together suggests that educational reform policies directed towards increasing science and mathematics throughput may be much less effective than presumed. Offering support for this view is the work of developmental economist William Easterly. He argues that educational augmentations, particularly in Third World countries, may be much less
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Firing up the New Alchemy – the Furnace of Innovation 165
useful than once thought – although he readily admits that “the finding that education doesn’t matter much to growth is intensely controversial.”8 Growth in educational attainment (schooling for want of a better word) may not be a significant factor in economic growth. African countries, which Easterly describes as having experienced an “educational explosion,” have seen growth rates slip behind. Comparisons between countries with similar rates of human capital growth reveal a distinct unevenness in resulting economic growth. The Soviet Union had high rates of participation in all levels of education (comparable to the US and Western Europe), yet its GDP per head of population was orders of magnitude behind the US, Japan and most EU states. These analyses do not prove that human capital is unimportant to growth but that baseline measures of number of years spent in education do not canonically support a linear model of economic growth. More education is not necessarily more growth. Terry Shinn, in a cross-country study of the interrelationship between education, research and industrial innovation, concluded that the robustness of the human capital assumption was highly dependent upon the type of technical education and training provided – leading to the corollary that education per se is not directly related to industrial performance and ipso facto economic growth.9 Comparing three outstanding industrial nations (US, Germany and Japan) with three less impressive performers (England, France and the USSR), Shinn records that despite each nation having a developed university system, growth rates and industrial performance differed significantly. He concludes that the existence of a linear relationship between research and innovation is doubtful. What may be more telling is exactly how industry and research interact, rather than the raw amount of research available. Spurring the marriage between higher education outputs and industry is the quest for innovation. Although both “invention” and “innovation” share the production of a novelty in common, in practice innovation suggests something new that can be placed in the market. A potential commercial return is crucial to separating what is new and interesting from what is new, interesting and grants a firm a competitive advantage.10 Analysts agree that innovation is a “good” worth pursuing, but differ about the “bottlenecks” that need to be tackled. The required resources, such as the output of science and technology graduates, are often subject to dispute. A bald “more knowledge workers” proposition benefits from a glance in history’s rearview mirror that quickly confirms who the innovators were. The disadvantage is that it has little predictive power. In 2007, the US National Academies produced an influential report concerning science and technological “building blocks” that the US must improve upon to remain a “global leader” in science and technology.11 A noteworthy feature of the report, and there are many, is the employment of investment criteria used by multinational corporations in its evaluation framework. The recommendations of the report imply that it was less inter-
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ested in science per se, and more interested in how science could be turned into technology to ensure future prosperity. Apart from almost perfunctory recommendations to improve “K-12” education, the report was troubled by the output of science and technology graduates. In terms reminiscent of earlier manufactured panics over the shortage of physics graduates, the report concluded that the enrolment and graduation of students in these areas were becoming “critical.” The matter could only be addressed by increasing funding for existing programs and adjusting the high school curriculum. With these conclusions in mind, a contrary report emerged later in 2007.12 It concluded that the recommendations of the National Academies report were inconsistent with the data on science and engineering graduation and employment rates. Contrary to the National Academies report, there was a relatively stable output of US science and technology graduates over the previous 20 years. Far from a graduate crisis existing, “…purported labor market shortages for scientists and engineers are anecdotal and also not supported by the available evidence.” If amended, current policies were likely to create a substantial excess of graduates. Even granting that graduate output should be lifted, the National Academies’ attachment to multinational investment criteria is open to question. Its validity depends upon consensus about the criteria for successful investment. Criteria that are retrospectively reported as successful for some multinationals, do not entail that they were the criteria that made those multinationals successful.13 If they were, one must conclude that many of the corporations that faded from Standard and Poor’s 500 in the last 50 years were unaware of these guides to corporate success. The divergence in analysis and findings between the two reports indicates something greater than one lobby group chasing after an academic pork barrel. It points to a fragmentary grasp by sectoral interests of the bearing of educational attainment on innovation, and, in turn, their often selective presentation and understanding of how innovation arises.
Higher education, innovation and “market failure” A prime example of partiality arises with the patent system sketched earlier. The system of patents and intellectual property rights plays an important role in securing knowledge for productive, and profitable, purposes. Todd Dickinson, once assistant secretary in the US Department of Commerce and, significantly, Commissioner for Patents and Trademarks, praises the system for the savings it makes society.14 Contrary to what might have been expected, he holds that the patent system is there to ensure that new knowledge is not locked up and that unreasonable costs are not imposed on society. Observing that federal R&D funding has been overtaken by private funding, Dickinson concludes that growth in intellectual property initiatives should come as no surprise. His argument is the conventional
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one that the outputs of basic research were not reaching the market quickly enough before Bayh–Dole. Since the passing of the Act, patent applications have increased by quanta, thereby opening paths to market for products that would never see the light of day otherwise. Is it by coincidence that R&D funding in the primary areas of biotechnology and ICT has also increased dramatically over the same period? While all the rhetoric is about reward, the public price to be paid is increased support for basic research. Dickinson replies that the risks and costs of basic research put it beyond the reach of most companies. If the fruits of this research are ever to become products, a degree of government support is necessary and in the public interest. Of course, the essential attraction of these fruits lies in their potential contribution to future prosperity. The “trick” is to balance protection of information with its dissemination. A patent protects information (about a discovery) from being copied, but unlike a trade secret also meets a dissemination requirement through the very act of its publication. In what might pass as a sleight of tongue, Dickinson manages to conflate disclosure of a patent with disclosure. They are not coextensive actions with comparable effects. Disclosing the existence of a patent is very different from disclosing for all to see and use the scientific grounds for the patent. Dickinson drew attention to the Internet repository of US patents, arguing that it in some sense confirmed European Patent Office claims that upwards of $22 billion is wasted annually on research already completed. If everything listed in the patent database was veridical, this criticism of “copycat” research might stand up. Experiments are often explicitly repeated to test the validity of claims or to inform a research agenda. No one disputes the existence of replicated research. If some research was not replicated, a deal of bogus science would filter through. The assertion that patent disclosure helps science avoid wasting resources may unintentionally have the merit of promoting subtle theft over open toil.15 Dickinson’s articulation of the importance of patents as drivers of innovation is the orthodox view, complete with its consensus on the merits of shepherding public funds into patents and private profit. An iconoclastic alternative to orthodoxy is sketched by biochemist Terence Kealey.16 He argues that patents, far from driving innovation, stultify it by locking up knowledge that could be used by the “scientific commons.” The refrain of science locked out is familiar from the last chapter, but what makes Kealey’s analysis different is his focus on industrial developments that prospered in the absence of patents – illustrating the point with a study of Philips’ rise to prominence in nineteenth-century Holland. He disagrees with the orthodoxy that science funding urges on technology and therefore innovation, arguing that precisely the reverse holds, viz. that technology drives science. Directly slicing across conventional wisdom that increases in the public funding of higher education R&D will lift technological progress, he holds that it is the free market that arbitrates on technological
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progress and innovation. Patents can function as anticompetitive instruments. Kealey points to James Watt’s protracted defense of his steam engine patents, concluding that the actions retarded rather than advanced the technology. Patent breaches such as those by Henry Ford, and patent pooling (suspension) as practiced by the American aeronautical industry between 1917 and 1975, are cited as evidence of technological advance that might not have occurred otherwise. In a radical departure from conventional policy tenets, Kealey concludes that government funding of scientific research is in the main unnecessary and even wasteful as it smothers private investment. He looks to the instance of Mrs Thatcher who cut research funding in the 1980s and found that private companies subsequently increased their R&D funding. Undoubtedly, Kealey has positioned his arguments and assembled his evidence to be provocative, but his contribution highlights the sharp differences in assumptions about what drives innovation, and the inconsistencies that undoubtedly feed into policy frameworks. Current global orthodoxy dictates that governments must intervene to fund science and indirectly innovation. Against orthodoxy, is the alternative view that governments should avoid attempting to steer science towards innovation and radically reduce public funding for all R&D policies that espouse patents. Muddying the various streams of analysis is the lack of consensus about the connection between science, technology and innovation. A reinforcement of the fragmentary nature of current understanding about the components of innovation is contributed by Christopher Hill, a professor of public policy and technology. Clashing with the orthodox view, he argues that the US is rapidly moving towards a postscientific society where fewer scientists, less basic science and less wealth will come from conventional scientific toil.17 The result is a rejection of both the orthodox and radical positions in favor of a heterodox one. In contrast to peddlers of the “science, technology and innovation” society, Hill foresees companies buying in basic science as they require it from overseas, but mostly concentrating on developing new networked industries that rely less on conventional industrial innovation models. Hill claims that the US will still need scientists and engineers but ones with different skills. His future innovative industries are successful manipulators of social capital in virtual digital domains. Synergy and synthesis arise from pairing off different and diverse competencies. Skills and knowledge specialisms are the central concepts. One of the problems with this forecast is its reliance on an old-fashioned technological hegemony. Other economies advance in step with US innovation. Hill’s theorizing is undoubtedly flawed but it raises the provocative question of what kinds of values, political and social, are implicitly nurtured by current strands of innovation theorizing. And since much of this theorizing is within higher education the question is not at all insignificant. Lurking in the political breviary of orthodox policy is the nostrum that the state must step in to support higher education R&D because of the
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alleged phenomenon of “market failure” outlined in Chapter 1. If markets operated perfectly, so it goes, there would be a steady supply of innovative products. But for this to happen, a steady stream of profits would have to flow from research and this simply does not happen. Technological innovation stands upon the results of preexisting scientific research, but the profit in this research may be purely hypothetical since its future use cannot be foreseen. Curiously, this is both a fact of little analytical interest, but also a problem of significant dimensions for higher education policy entrepreneurs. As no one can divine in advance exactly what bits of science are likely to end up supporting technological innovation, the number of research initiatives to be supported de facto must exceed the number of innovations produced. The public funding net must be cast wide in order to catch the one or two initiatives that will make the return on investment reasonable. Stepping back several centuries no one could foresee which bits of alchemy would lead to modern chemistry and which would end up as oddities in occult bookshops. The profit “due” to early pioneers is unrealizable by them, confronting the market with another anomaly. George Boole, the creator of Boolean algebra that lies at the heart of the modern computer, can never be adequately rewarded for the innovative contribution of his work. For these reasons, a privately financed market for university research is difficult to sustain. Left to its own devices, according to economist Charles Jones, the market will underprovide for research because as research ideas “spill over” into the work of other researchers, the original ideas remain unrewarded.18 From time to time, a government may require a “lock” on technology to secure an economic, military or political advantage. Early sponsorship of vaccination is a relevant example of the state stepping to fill a gap in the market. An anomaly in trying to “fix” market failure through public funding of research is the likely creation of market inefficiency since it is inevitable that some research will be duplicated, and even redundant research will be duplicated. Jones points out that the spillover from basic inventions is so large that if consumers can obtain a product reliant on the basic science for a price less than they are willing to pay, the effect is a slowing down of innovation. Market engagement will stagnate. The cost of the science involved in immunology is so great that government support may be the only feasible route to innovation. Ideally, interplay between market and government forces would act to strike a balance between maintaining research efficiency, creating conditions for an optimal spillover of ideas while avoiding low productivity through research redundancy. In practice, this is impossible as it is predicated on perfect foresight, and indeed, if even tolerably viable, may be undesirable for competitive reasons. So far, the expounding of market failure as a legitimating factor for securing public funding of higher education R&D seems persuasive. Withhold public funding and the stream of innovations will dry up. This assumes that there is something approaching a linear relationship between generously oiling
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research machinery and the rate and quality of technological innovations that result. It is a neat model, one that higher education lobby groups and international agencies are keen to press, as it suggests that returns on investment are assured.19 How could a government fail to hand over significant funds to the universities in the short term knowing the benefits are just on the horizon? Questions about the limitations of this policy are raised by Paraskevas Caracostas, a self-confessed EU “policy-shaper.”20 Reflecting on more than a decade and a half of innovation policy initiatives in Europe, he opines that innovation policy is often incoherent in terms of its objectives, its recognition of boundaries and its tendency to gloss over regional and sectoral dynamics. Policies advocating national systems of innovation (NSI), which aim to “pull together” government, university and industry, have formidable persuasive power, but often NSIs are incoherent and overly rigid. Consequently, their ability to diagnose problems and offer timely solutions is limited. Caracostas extends his analysis to take account of capability failures in firms due to leadership and “absorptive” inadequacies, networking failures between firms and institutions due to trust breakdown and isolation from social context, and unsurprisingly, institutional failures arising from academic inflexibility and government underinvestment. In highlighting these malfunctions, he does not discredit the influence of “market failure” in shaping policy. He cites at least three reasons for continuing public investment in science and innovation. In the first place, the strength of the linear model is that it provides a simple, easy to understand and communicate, model of the relationship between research and the marketplace for innovations. It can stack up many historical examples to support its case. Both the theory of market failure and the linear model of innovation are two sides of the same coin. Secondly, it is a fact of everyday life that in developed countries the state has stepped in to fill “gaps” in the market with public goods, e.g. health care, education, public transport. If the state did not provide a certain supply of public goods, overall productivity would fall. Extending state largesse to higher education R&D does not appear particularly radical. Thirdly, improving the stock of public goods assists with the achievement of sociopolitical goals. State investment in therapeutic research may never achieve even a marginal return on costs, but it may generate important electoral spillovers. All of these reasons, he concludes, are sound arguments for continuing public funding of university research. Sensible reasons that would in turn support sensible policies. The only problem with this conclusion is that the policies assume what they set out to prove. Namely, the whole course of action assumes that linear model holds up, that economically motivated research will produce the requisite innovations, and finally that the innovation outputs will be sufficient to sustain and increase economic growth. And within this theater of ambiguity, the universities are slated to play a central role. Obtaining a handle on the role innovation policies play in the general research framework of higher education faces the problem that innovation
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itself can support a variety of interpretations. Its meaning may become too general to be useful or else so specific as to rule out much that could be useful. Saying that innovation is at the root of future prosperity is really saying very little, whereas dictating that the source of innovation is in biotechnology may be affirming too much. Societies take for granted that technology has largely improved standards of living. Few people would consider a return to a communal water pump an innovation in a modern city, but in a primitive community, such products could revolutionize life. Therein is the confusion. The context dependence of an innovation is hard to ignore. A primitive community that receives a hand pump is indeed awestruck by the innovation it embodies relative to their own technology, but more importantly relative to their own needs. It is this latter quality, the timeliness of an artifact in a market (among its potential customers), which plays a key role in validating an innovation. University-located innovation centers are deemed important nodes in national systems of innovation in Europe.21 Innovation centers cater for industry through collaboration and support the “incubation” of premarket academic innovations. Progressively innovations are understood as derivable from well-managed science and technology research policies. Far from wagging the tail of the innovation dog, the market is teetering on the edge of secondary status. Many academics, university lobbyists and policy entrepreneurs may indeed savor this sign that the cerebral tent of academia is finally receiving due economic deference, but it is a metaphorical galaxy away from the perceived traditional role of the sector, and not without its ambiguities. In order to tease out several distortions that arise from the attention shift now directed at the universities, a brief look at what economists label “growth theory” is helpful.
Growth theory and the entrepreneurial university The character of the modern world is undeniably materially more sophisticated than at any other period in history. Every new marriage of science and technology appears to promise an unstoppable success story as “older” science and technology is improved upon, or replaced, by newer discoveries, patents and products. Despite the cleverness of industrial artifacts over recent generations, the role of higher education in fostering innovation is a relatively fresh policy initiative. As pointed out previously, there are convenient, if not wholly accurate, historical reasons for dating US policy to the passing of the Bayh–Dole Act, and several exegeses have examined its influence on technology development. The European higher education context differs markedly from that in the US. Science and innovation policies have followed a slower track with a wider array of national interests to consider. Because of the peripatetic development of European policies with their intention to “catch up” on the US, by aping
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such polices as embodied in Bayh–Dole, it is Europe which is of primary interest in the rest of this chapter. In spite of differences, there is no shortage of commonality between the US and Europe on the historical character of innovation – most innovations came about through private initiative, the inventor-genius and so forth. But, regarding current science and innovation theorizing, there are very distinct divergences covering governance, social policies, economic productivity and business investment in R&D (BERD). The landscape for innovation in Europe, as articulated by the OECD and European Commission, involves radical intervention by the state in shaping research environments.22 In these liminal zones between research and its commercial expression, European states are urged to intervene to assist the invisible hand of the market. Direct financial inducements are offered to the universities to pump out more research, coupled with firm-directed incentives to aid commercialization of research. The major influence shaping innovation policy is its assumed connection with economic well-being. It is economics that determines how and why the research carts of the universities should be harnessed to innovation initiatives. The European Commission’s 2003 influential policy statement The Role of Universities in the Europe of Knowledge encapsulates the thinking and objectives of the nexus of academic, industrial and political interests.23 The universities are placed at the center of economic development but they are deemed in need of structural reform to meet the challenges of global competition and innovation. Adopting a hectoring tone, the Commission offers its judgment that the “European university world is not trouble-free, and the European universities are not at present globally competitive with those of our major partners, even though they produce high quality scientific publications.” A pronounced grievance is that European universities have “less to offer” than their US counterparts. Such underperformance is pinned on a lack of administrative reform that would open up the universities to industry. Whether it is taken as underlining the importance of changing attitudes towards innovation or as evidence of policy blindness, the report cites data that only 5 percent of EU “innovative” enterprises considered university research an important source of information for their operations. All of which calls into question the Commission’s less than subtle insistence that the universities live up their new responsibilities by “mobilising brainpower.”24 One can hardly blame the universities because the market actors, the business sector, refuse to improve their “innovative” engagement with higher education. Recent trends in business expenditure on R&D in the EU show little significant improvement in business appreciation of university research.25 Government, in the innovation environment, is to stimulate the necessary reforms, adequately fund the universities to realize their commercial potential and assist them serve the knowledge economy through industry–university supportive actions. A point made previously is worth stating again: this is a fundamental shift in perceptions and expectations about the role of the
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universities. Nonmarket institutions are required to become market actors, firms might be a more familiar term. A peculiar presumption of the Commission’s position noted by economist Paul David (commenting on the university as (a) firm, (b) technology transfer body and (c) center of innovation) is that the universities “possess the potential to be more effective at generating commercially effective technological innovation than are the mass of business firms comprising the economy’s private sector.”26 Why is such a presumption seen as reasonable? If industry is unable to attract consumers with its new products, is it common sense to insist that universities fill this knotty gap in the market? A gap in the market is not the same as a market in the gap. Unlike the US, the global reference model for change and innovation, realization of European higher education innovation objectives is fettered by a variety of economies, cultures, languages, national identities and uneven development. A hint of policy tension has been aired recently with an admission that innovation may entail delicate social costs. A policy review of innovation initiatives on behalf of the EU recommended some tailoring to bed them with Europe’s “core societal values.”27 The report is shy about the implications of this admission. One inference is that university innovation is a thin veil drawn over various semivisible processes reliant on public grants and state tax subsidies for largely private wealth creation. The extent to which the “European project” can accommodate this shift in university and faculty alignments and fidelities is a point of contention. European nations have far from homogenous intellectual and political cultures. EU policies on transforming academic research “into” commercial innovations benefit from a complete lack of public skepticism among university executives. Troubling implications pop out from this pocket of silence for the status and continuity of open science. A host of commentators, including several retired US university presidents, have been vexed by likely negative consequences for open science – and the “knowledge commons” in general. The nub of the issue is not that patenting or intellectual property protection is wrong (perhaps, it is counterinnovative?) but whether a university setting is the best place to accommodate these activities. Bearing “societal values” in mind, the traditional esteem of science and academic research in the public sphere derived from its separation from the commercial sphere. The fundamental transformation winding its way through the European higher education area is the gradual weeding out of impartial research. Innovation policies are insinuating a subtle but profound change in the public valuation of research. Cast in a policy foundry of paradoxical proportions, the burden for economic growth is shifting from the business sector and onto the universities. Rather than question thoroughly why the European business sector is doing less on the innovation front, the European Commission has raised expectations that the (mainly) publicly funded universities will do more. Why this is so is tied up with several kinds of theorizing about
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competition, globalization and economic planning. At the root of all is the notion that economic growth, by which is meant increasing wealth per worker output, pivots around a nexus of science and technology. Theories of economic growth have a powerful catalytic effect on policies directing university transformation.28 The 1997 UK inquiry into higher education under Sir Ron Dearing devoted a whole report to putative relationships between higher education and economic prospects for the UK.29 At the heart of growth thinking is a faith in the development of systems of discovery that will produce vibrant novel technologies underpinned by sound basic science. These new goods, in whatever form they take, are evidence of innovation – and if anything is guaranteed to bring university policy entrepreneurs onto the dance floor, it is the allure of an attractive innovation. This seems to privilege scientific knowledge, as ultimately technology has to stand on the shoulders of scientific discovery, but it also allows room for financial methodologies that support technology, and new educational technologies that support the knowledge that impels technological development. The passage between the growth of knowledge, the making of new discoveries and their eventual synthesis in the crucible of a new technology is the panacea of the new alchemy. At the apex of the practice of innovation would spring new, better and more efficient technologies out of the crib of scientific knowledge. The search for a process that would explain and pattern success has led to an explosion in research on innovation. Almost any discovery or process that contributes to innovation that in turn leads to improvements in competitiveness and productivity is welcomed. The bracelet of science, technology and innovation is officially mandated to be linked in ways that are not arbitrary. Part of the explanation for the rise in influence of economic growth theory in higher education was alluded to in the opening chapter, viz. the fear that technological innovation in the US and the “West” in general was in a terminal decline. It is not the intention here to offer a blow-by-blow account of the “growth theory” wars, but it is useful to understand several central theoretical concepts that were first advanced by the economist Robert Solow and subsequently have attracted the most attention. Solow himself, in a compendium of recent papers, admits that he was not the first to identify the important contribution that technology makes to economic growth.30 He was, however, the first to formalize a theory thereby offering something at once analytical and testable. Tracking growth trends in the US economy over the previous decades, Solow concluded in the mid1950s that increases in investment, machinery and productivity simply could not explain the extraordinary growth of the economy. These increases could account for only a fraction of growth – some other factor accounted for 80 percent of the growth. Output increases per worker needed more by way of an explanation. By way of illustration, consider an economy in the early
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stages of a construction boom. Initially, the supply of excavators is low. Those with excavators and those acquiring more excavators will see handsome returns. Over time, however, more and more excavators are acquired. At a certain moment, the number of available excavators relative to the number of available operators will reach a point of diminishing returns – the output per operator simply falls off. More excavators do not reliably guarantee more profit, more sales or more business. It is a surprising conclusion – investing capital in equipment is not a source of growth in the long term. The factor that accounted for the difference between predicted growth and actual growth became known as the “Solow residual.” It was this concept of the residual that became associated with technological change. If machinery and even savings (because they cut consumption and ended up transferred into the production of machinery for future work) could not explain growth, what did? Solow concluded that labor, in terms of productivity, was the one factor that could be most affected by change and that “change” was one born from technological progress. Improved technology implied improved productivity by each worker. Technological change has the effect that workers can produce more than before. Therefore, since workers can produce more than before using new technology, diminishing returns on investment are not realized and the economy continues to grow. Provided the technology incorporates the latest innovations, productivity per worker will improve and that allows more machines to be added to production. Solow’s work put technological progress at the center of policy debates on growth. He concluded that the US economy had prospered because of the impact of its science research base. Industry could borrow what it wanted from this base, and in so doing produce innovations that bolstered growth. A key point in Solow’s analysis was his conclusion that science research was largely exogenous to the workings of the economy. It was motivated by noneconomic reasons. Research activities proceeded unmindful of economic imperatives or national economic objectives. The very impartiality of the process and its remoteness from firm-level interference conferred purity on the residual, in keeping with traditional valuing of disinterested science. Solow’s conclusions are important, even if they are still fought over today. They highlighted that investment in machinery alone would not lift growth over a long span of time and economies that wished to prosper had to be mindful of technological development. In the Solow model unless the technology of production continually improves, economic growth will taper off. Interest in growth theory tailed off for several decades only to undergo a revival in the 1980s. Solow’s exogenous theory unsettled economists for several reasons, not the least of which was the idea that technological change was subject to research activity estranged from economic sentiments. An additional problem was that Solow’s dismissal of machinery investment led to peculiar cross-country results.31 If income differences were caused by abun-
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dance of machinery, and assuming technology was shared across nations, then some countries (the developed ones) must be utilizing stocks of machinery magnitudes beyond their labor capacity. In theory dropping technology into poor countries, where it would be scarce, should generate staggering returns on investment. History shows that this did not occur, suggesting that the Solow model of growth was at best partial. It seemed clear to the economists promoting “new growth theory” that technology and the environment in which it was situated mattered in accounting for growth.32 Government policies could hugely influence research for instance, and in theory leave permanent effects on growth. Solow’s legacy, pointing to the importance of science and technology research, was not diminished in the new theories, however. It was enhanced, and technological progress moved center stage as “the engine of growth.” Robert Lucas advanced a theory of growth rooted in educational attainment – a human capital model. His theory, an endogenous one which sees research under the management, if loosely, of economic goals, is based on the idea that returns on investment increase in accordance with the increase in human capital – the latter roughly approximates to the available stock of knowledge, skills and even work practices.33 Economic growth is dependent upon increases in these factors. Time spent acquiring knowledge and skills directly leads to increases in growth per worker. An unrealistic dimension of the model is the assumption that workers are either accumulating skills/ knowledge, or else working – leisure is a commodity seemingly not in demand. Human capital models of growth are attractive to those living in advanced developed countries where human capital is “all around” them. In a tautological sense, the human capital thesis convinces in a context already conditioned to value human capital highly. Evidence from Third World experiments with human capital as the basis for growth is less convincing. Scale effects, where investment in education makes a return to growth on a comparable scale, have not been found.34 Human capital policies can influence growth but the effect may be transitory, not permanent. Other endogenous models that emphasize the centrality of technological change to economic growth also allow a role for human capital but stress the advanced R&D component more strongly than general educational effects.35 Jones, looking back over a century of investment in education in the US, is reluctant to conclude that government policies favoring human capital have any lasting significant effects on growth. Despite the massive expansion in researchers in the US over the past 60 years, average growth rates over the period have been just under 2 percent. This figure tallies with growth rates of just less than a century ago when human capital was much less developed according to the criteria of such models. From a higher education innovation perspective, one of the most satisfying, and influential, growth models was developed by economist Paul Romer.36 Dissecting the muscle of technological progress in search of a vital force, Romer
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concluded that ideas were the engine of growth. What caused economies to grow was largely their stock of innovative ideas, which arose from basic science but became established as technologies. Ideas are unlike other economic goods in his model. They can be shared in ways that, for example, a sandwich cannot. If one person is eating a sandwich no one else can eat the same sandwich at the same time. Ideas are very different kinds of good. The use by one person of an idea does not exclude its use by others either contemporaneously or in the future. Once an academic paper is published, the audience is free to make whatever use of it they can. Ideas can be protected from exploitation by intellectual property rights and patents, but even here protection may be only partial in the long term as other companies seek to overcome any advantages gained by competitors. These observations drew Romer into describing ideas as both nonrivalous and only partially excludable goods. In themselves they could give rise to growth at any time in different places. Being partially excludable, they produce spillover effects – the benefit associated with an idea may spill over into other goods, other ideas. Ultimately, economic benefits depend on how the idea is realized in an innovation. To this end, the institutional setting in which ideas blossom into realizable technology becomes central to growth. In Romer’s theory, researchers are positioned as actively interested in profiting from their work. The setting they work in is more than bricks and mortar. It embraces mechanisms for protecting intellectual property and licensing arrangements, the scale of an economy’s research base and, inevitably, government policies. Unlike Solow’s theory where technological progress appears to arise almost casually from serendipity, in Romer’s model knowledge, profit and competition are intentional actors driving innovation. Potentially, an innovation can produce a huge rate of return on investment. Computer software that incurred huge investment costs in its creation can be sold afterwards for many times more than the marginal costs of its replication on CDs – likewise for a new drug or biochemical process. The latest innovations crucially act as a spur to subsequent innovations. For example, the Internet and Web have stimulated many subsequent technology developments. The cycle of innovation discovery and realization is one of “creative destruction” as each innovation gives way to a superior successor, for example the fax giving ground to email. As long as the cycle is maintained and new innovations enter the market, economic growth will avoid diminishing returns. One of the seductive implications of Romer’s work for higher education policies is that it puts advanced R&D center stage as the precursor to technological progress. Advanced R&D is an endogenous process in the economy – consistent with the EU Commission’s thinking about the relationship between research and innovation. Technological progress does not have to be either random or fortuitous. If the appropriate precursor R&D is put in place, technological progress will occur intentionally even if precise pre-
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dictions about specific outcomes cannot be ensured, for example when precisely an AIDS vaccine will be discovered. Along the way, it is assumed that the spillover effects of R&D will contribute greatly to enhancing technological progress and economic growth. This again is acceptable in the Romer model as a researcher, in general, will not be able to trap all the benefits accruing from his idea. The net conclusion is that increased R&D funding produces a long-term win–win outcome. Institutions and researchers profit from licenses, royalties and equity stakes. Firms are made aware of new product potentialities that can improve their competitiveness and profitability. Finally, the economy profits from increasing returns on investment in R&D. Economic growth continues because of innovations that sustain technological development. Of at least equal significance is the conclusion, in both the Lucas and Romer models, that economies grow at different rates because of their differing treatments of ideas. Economies that maintain an advantage in turning ideas into technological innovations will maintain improved growth rates.37 For the entrepreneurial university, the Romer model is manna from heaven. The formula appears extraordinarily simple. Keep the R&D furnaces well stoked and both private and institutional riches will follow. The distinguishing feature of Romer’s model is its treatment of ideas as akin to other goods that can be stocked. It is in this sense that university executives’ emphasis on increased productivity is rendered concrete through more paper, grants and patents. Additionally, the Romer model (like almost all theories of growth, old and new) presupposes that agents in an economy act rationally in that they pursue preferences in accordance with their beliefs – known as rational choice theory. Now a full elaboration of rational choice is well beyond this work but it has to be noted that the theory, implying a strong programmatic theory of reason and satisfaction, is highly consistent with a self-righteous academic ethic that consigns randomness, luck and accomplishments unearned by intellectual ability to a proverbial bin. It is “right” therefore, in the sense of orderly and even ordained, that the intellectually most able in society should profit from their ideas. The Romer model is highly flattering to both academics and higher education policy entrepreneurs precisely because it acknowledges what no other theory does, viz. the “justice” of their case for profit and above-average salaries. In the economy of ideas, the university is a factory that in turning out knowledge creates the stock of ideas that feeds technology. To be effective, a university must develop appropriate technology transfer policies that will protectively house the institution’s interest. Failure to disclose by faculty becomes less a matter of academic indifference and more one of near calamitous industrial sabotage. The line between dissent and disloyalty is thinner and more ambiguous. Commenting approvingly on the rise of a “newer norm” of academic entrepreneur, Bercovitz and Feldmann dismiss moral objections to disclosures of research for commercial gain as “belonging to the older
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norms of academic science.”38 The clear implication is that tradition is at least a stagnant if not a degenerate source of inspiration for academic habits. In the entrepreneurial university committed to increasing the stock of profitable ideas, such failures are seemingly evidence of bad academic citizenship. In turn, this suggests a diminution in respect for moral objections to zones of precommercial activity. Following a parallel orbit, other research warns against academic resistance to university–business relationships because of potential “deleterious” effects on university development.39 Despite the universities’ embrace of entrepreneurship, the connection between entrepreneurs and innovation dates further back than current academic initiatives may suggest. The economist Joseph Schumpeter first paid systematic attention to the relationship between innovation and entrepreneurial activity.40 For him, the entrepreneur was the backbone of economic growth, the risk taker who identified novelty and exploited it. A major difference between what might be termed university-led entrepreneurship and Schumpeter’s scion, is that the latter was defined by responding to market forces.41 The entrepreneur was not required to invent anything or create anything new, but to mobilize the resources and opportunities at his disposal to bring the novel to market. In contrast, the academic entrepreneur makes discoveries that he then attempts to shoehorn into the market. This is not to deny that some of the shoehorning may be market driven, but the locus of innovation is in a nonmarket institutional setting – a research and teaching environment. A significant shift in the operation of markets, in terms of division of roles and spoils between private and public agents, is explicit in policy initiatives supporting academic entrepreneurship. Repositioning largely statefunded institutions, especially in Europe, as engines of market capitalism brings with it an incremental bureaucratization of market dynamics. The ambitious hand of the university committee maneuvers itself to guide the apparently weakening invisible hand of the market. The extent to which such shifts herald an underlying fundamental change in the traditional model of capitalism is a matter of disagreement. Nevertheless, it is a noteworthy coincidence that somewhat similar concerns about the direction capitalism was taking emerged in Schumpeter’s later work – some 40 years before the passing of Bayh–Dole. In his early work, Theory of Economic Development, Schumpeter expounded the view that capitalism was driven by the innovator-entrepreneur. It was he, not bureaucracy, in conjunction with borrowings from commercial banks that created change and propelled growth. Quite explicitly and at times evocative of a mythic dimension, he describes the entrepreneur as “heroic”; a risk taker apart from the “bourgeois management class.” The entrepreneur’s distance from state bureaucracies marked his struggle as heroic and enabled him to succeed. The entrepreneur was not of necessity an inventor but someone who could put innovative “combinations” together. Schumpeter’s characterization is permeated with the idea that the entrepreneur-hero should be antagonistic
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to conventional business mores. Capitalism’s economic dynamic, he argued, contains within it a disruptive force (the entrepreneur-innovator) which is constantly changing and transforming any momentary points of equilibriums between prices, demand and supply. Progress in a capitalist system proceeded in evolutionary steps with constant overturning of earlier technologies by innovations. This latter process Schumpeter deemed the principle of “creative destruction.” These key tenets of Schumpeter did not alter much in his later work, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. It could be disputed that his later work was strongly prescient of current policy developments, but Schumpeter did highlight his fear that increasing prosperity would facilitate a drift towards greater state bureaucratization. An outcome of this drift would be the stifling of entrepreneurship leading to a resurgence of corporate socialism – a kind of quasi-administrative-technolegal culture of giant enterprises would ensue. For Schumpeter the entrepreneurial function “does not essentially consist in either inventing anything or otherwise creating the conditions which the entrepreneur exploits. It consists in getting things done.”42 Warning against complacency in the face of rising bureaucratization, he cautioned that as societies become more prosperous “bureau and committee work tends to replace individual action.”43 Within contemporary higher education the emergence of strata of “multiprofessional groupings” oriented towards bureaucratic project management is a fact of life.44 The triple helix model of the emergent university as a synthesis of interests explicitly appeals in broad tones to Schumpeterian notions about the evolution of firms.45 As industries become more knowledge intensive, they naturally begin to function more like universities. Likewise, as universities become more aware of the economic value of their knowledge, they take on aspects of firms. Each group seeks to elaborate a facet of the other in order to thrive and improve its economic well-being. Just precisely what “well-being” means in these instances is a moot point, but at the very least it has to imply some measure of competitive advantage. Of more than passing significance within this context is an interregional study of several universities in the US that identified bureaucratic inflexibility and managerial practices as fatal to many technology transfer practices.46 In some instances, the very groups set up to oversee the process effectively thwarted it. Arguments that more professional management needs to be introduced to the university–business innovation relationship are not hard to find, however. For every negative, there appears a positive. Debackere and Veuglers make the case that highly qualified professionals must support academic entrepreneurs to ensure they learn how to manage their “knowledge portfolio” properly.47 To effectively link science with industry, universities must consider radical structural rearrangements wherein research groups and individuals are given a free hand to exploit their results. All, of course, occurs within a welldeveloped and professionalized technology transfer environment – which is precisely the point at which the fit between the model and reality begins to
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fracture. Current policy developments support to some degree Schumpeter’s concern that managerialism would place greater value on the “vision” rather than the individual entrepreneur. Evidence that this is already happening is provided by a survey of 128 university technology transfer officers. The analysis of policies, practices and objectives revealed not only an absence of coherence but a documentary focus (described as a “mission focus”) that emphasized royalty income while underemphasizing entrepreneurship.48 Bearing out Schumpeter’s further worries, the EU Commission appears to regard managed research and “vision” very highly:
The bureaucratization of capitalism, in Schumpeter’s view, ultimately will oust the entrepreneur in favor of supporting initiatives by giant corporations, i.e. multinationals. Coincidentally, an increasing number of multinationals have attempted to formalize the process from discovery through to innovation using “rigorous” methodologies designed to chaperone creativity but not at the expense of efficiency. In at least some cases, attempts to impose innovation frameworks on a corporation’s creative forces had the paradoxical effect of arresting, even crippling, innovation. The more effort devoted to applying notionally orderly management processes to innovation, the less of it results.50 There is an uncanny ring of truth about the anxieties of Schumpeter. Since the end of WWII, the rise of sophisticated technolegal regulatory frameworks is an undeniable fact in the developed world, and the trend shows no sign of abatement. The possibility that they could in the future stall technological progress cannot be dismissed out of hand. Beck’s “risk society” demands that ever greater controls be placed on progressive technologies – for example, drug trials using human subjects have declined greatly in Europe. As regulation and decision making by committee are promoted, the greater the likelihood of ideological orthodoxy influencing research programs. The more the state intervenes in shaping research agendas, the greater the risk to intellectual independence. This is one of the central conundrums. Could higher education innovation policies do more harm than good? It is abundantly clear that these policies float on a raft of conflicting, tangled and competing assumptions about what drives technological progress. None of the growth theories possesses a recipe for success without the assumption of simplifications. Even the possession of common technology and knowledge does not guarantee comparable rates of economic growth. Economist Gregory Clark has proposed that more attention be paid to deep
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Accumulating the intellectual capital represented by effective and worldclass teams of researchers, led by the best combination of vision and doggedness, and operated by individuals whose contributions complement each other in the best way, takes a long time and requires that worldwide recruitment to teams be possible.49
historical and cultural differences in explaining growth.51 Attitudes towards management, discipline and even leisure can help explain why economies with similar technologies take very different growth paths. Relying therefore on increasing investment in human capital to guarantee increasing returns may be a chimera. This conclusion is supported by Norman Gemmell’s report to the Dearing Commission mentioned earlier. Even allowing for the passage of time, among his conclusions were that if higher education has a measurable effect on growth it was mainly in terms of lifting wage levels rather than ensuring long-term economic growth. Any additional spillover (“externality”) was tentative evidence that higher education tended in the main to sustain local industries rather than initiate new ones. Within EU higher education, a similar phenomenon to that discussed by Clark is not beyond countenancing given the range of cultures. The Commission seeks to extrude all research and innovation through a complex policy mold, but underlying social and cultural tensions may render the program unrealistic. Even with a superbly educated workforce, European growth rates have been in steady decline while governments’ share of GDP expenditure has steadily increased. Some analysts hold that the addition of a whole range of nonmarket bureaucratic elements may be more of a hindrance than a help to growth.52 Dani Rodrik argues, conversely, that a mature capitalist economy cannot function effectively without a wide range of nonmarket institutions.53 There is no clear or simple delineation between enough and too much in these cases. Certainly, there is no delineation that can stand apart from strong ideological presumptions about the dependencies among markets, social justice and technological progress. Despite official EU enthusiasm for research–innovation initiatives, the actual reality is that the “European project” proceeds at several different speeds.54 Recent policy effectively imposes a linear model of research followed by innovation. As history shows, the universities can rise to the challenge at one level, meeting performance targets by increasing the number of patents and copyrights. Occasionally, these will lead to innovations but no one can forecast what percentage will result in technologies or whether the return on state investment will be justified. The solutions to the university sector’s financial problems are unlikely to be solved through innovation initiatives. Lessons from commercial patenting also indicate that not all patents are put into the service of knowledge. Protective and anticompetitive patenting is frequently deployed to shore up a product, and has little to do with enriching the knowledge economy. Rivette and Klein offer several examples of companies using excessive patenting to create a hedge to deter rivals.55 They report that in certain instances, companies chase only the most commercially viable patents, i.e. pursuing research that looks like producing the most commercially viable patents. All of this forms an interesting foil to university desires to patent and license research simpliciter.
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An additional irony in the European context is the implicit rigidity of the innovation system: undergraduate through to postgraduate and onto to postdoctorate. The presumption is that only at the highest level of academic training will competitive world-class innovations arise. Yet, in technology areas, many of the most innovative entrepreneurs, the Schumpeterian heroes, have been mavericks with mixed relationships to standard academic training. A worry is that current managerialist thinking about innovation could either hinder or suffocate the rise of such individuals in the future. In the biosciences, the need for highly specialized experimental facilities militates against an early entrepreneurial “flash” but at least there is a reasonable explanation why this should be so based on “cost opportunity.” The main danger arising from centering the universities in the innovation process is the subversion of nonacademic innovation initiatives. This could occur through policies directed against entrepreneurs outside the “academic norm” and through increased commitment of scarce financial resources to the university sector. Perhaps the most incongruous part of the policy equation is official acceptance of the questionable situation where academic entrepreneurs in tenured positions engage in innovation speculation at no risk to their own resources. If any policy flies in the face of traditional capitalism, this is among the most glaring. Indeed, it seems that Schumpeter’s anxieties about socialism by bureaucratic stealth are not entirely unfounded.
The allure of postindustrial elitism If Schumpeter fretted over the power accruing to the intellectual-asentrepreneur, the social theorist Daniel Bell positively bathed in it. His famous exercise in social forecasting, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, argued that advanced capitalism would inevitably produce a cadre of scientific elites dedicated to knowledge production, paving the way for an information age.56 These in turn are assisted in fully developing their ideas by cadres of professionals, legal and managerial. Beneath these is the “middle class” of engineers and the “professoriate,” who correspondingly dominate a “proletariat” of technicians and junior academics. Extrapolating from data derived almost exclusively from his American experiences, Bell postulated that these cliques of workers would be freed from the ordinary constraints of shop floor workers and corporation managers by virtue of their dedication to unfettered knowledge production and adherence to a professional ethic. The university as a “liberal” institution would continue to house scientists. Ironically, the very virtue, or ennoblement, that he attributed to these elites licensed the spillover of their ideas beyond the laboratory bench, into corporate boardrooms, and into social policy. The heralded coming of these elites signified, within the US at least, a shift from production modes centered on industrial manufacturing to production centered on services – “trade, finance, transport, health, recreation, research, education, and
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government”.57 In Bell’s forecast, the result would be a “post-industrial society”. Productivity, and therefore economic growth, was directly related to the quality of the available human capital. The essence of postindustrial society is, according to Bell, its deindustrialization and transformation into a society dedicated to producing services dependent upon cerebral rather than manual labor. Having once been an industrial power, America was (and would continue) divesting itself of its old industrial identity. Bell was interested in how this process would affect the social structure. The three interrelated variables he identifies as of interest are employment patterns, economic activity and technological change. A crucial facet to the emergent postindustrial society is the development of an “information economy” reliant upon an “information sector.” Education plays a key role in supporting this economy. Higher education, especially R&D, is affected with an instrumentalist philosophy – a means rather than an end outlook. More akin to endogenous than exogenous ideas of technological change, Bell ascribes deliberateness to education in facilitating the shift from industrial to postindustrial society. The category of activity that is “decisive” in the development of a postindustrial society is “… the expansion of a new intelligentsia – in the universities, research organizations, professions and government.”58 This cadre emerges as a midwife to the “pre-eminence of professional and technical classes” and witness to the “primacy of theoretical knowledge.” Theoretical knowledge becomes an “axial” dimension around which future technological development, economic growth and social structures will evolve. Bell justifies his portrayal of the postindustrial society as a “knowledge society,” in the sense that knowledge and technology are embedded in institutions with social organizations, on two grounds. Firstly, in forging a link between science and technology, theoretical knowledge has a “centrality,” since without it innovations will not flourish. Secondly, with the shift to a service economy, the “weight” of the postindustrial society, in terms of employment and wealth creation, is in the “knowledge field.”59 Knowledge is not just a happenstance of education but a “fundamental resource” and the new intelligentsia are its venerated high priesthood. Terms such as knowledge and information are liberally used in Bell’s magnum opus often interchangeably and sometimes ambiguously. A strong theoretical bias affects his definition of knowledge as “a set of organized statements of facts or ideas, presenting a reasoned judgment or an experimental result.” Knowledge is thereby distinguished from “news” and “entertainment.”60 A more restricted definition also used by Bell limits knowledge to being an intellectual property that has to be paid for, costs time, and is “subject to judgment by the market.” Knowledge is reduced to what is quantifiable by way of copyrights, patents and publication output. In the light of higher education policy since Bayh–Dole, his ideas are consistent with the commercial sculpting of scientific research. On the other hand, a definition of information is not offered by Bell in his 1973 work. Problematically any definition must be
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inferred from what does not qualify, for example news, entertainment and much of the conventional wisdom of daily life.61 Bell’s underlying sentiments are by no means historically novel. Plato in his Republic was quick to recommend government by the enlightened as a means of distributing approved knowledge and engineering social and political control. Time after time, thinkers have fallen back on the cherished belief that society would be better (in often unspecified ways) if only elites were given due recognition. Rule and Besen touch on the implicit vanity of such thinking with their comment that an exalted role for the intelligentsia in the information society “obviously ascribes to this group a special and flattering role in realization of key values, as interpreters of the requirements of reason in human affairs.”62 Tracing an arc of influence from the French philosophes’ focus on Reason as a force for emancipation, they argue that several times in the past variants of an information society “vision” have arisen tailored to the prevailing economic and social circumstances. A persistent trait is that proper exercise of power should be gifted by authoritative information. One concern with all of such theories is that the formation of elites rarely allows room for genuine dialogue with the masses. The scenario of the highly educated ruling over the less educated has a cachet within academia from time immemorial nevertheless. In Bell’s forecast, the inexorable shift of labor from sectors dominated by manual labor, resulting from the automation and rationalization of work on the farm and in the factory, to service sectors has the added effect of abolishing the proletariat and by implication the whole basis of class (Marxist) politics. Technological change, in the guise of technical innovation, hypothetically has the competence to put an end to radical politics. While the implications of this position are beyond examination here, nevertheless they form an influential backdrop in policy thinking (and a source of friction among political theorists). The elite have their hands on the levers of epistemic power, in that they control and license the generation and production of knowledge. One of the peculiar aspects of Bell’s work is his failure to consider that such elites could evolve into something sinister. Far from acting in the interest of society, they could resort to acting in their own interests entirely. The fact that an elite group may reach a consensus does not entail that the consensus is in the best interests of those outside it. Bell went so far as to surmise that science policy could remain “unresponsive to business demand.”63 In the light of history, it seems strikingly naïve. One of the most noticeable ambiguities in Bell’s theorizing is the subordinate position assigned to engineers. Elements of Laputian thinking suggest themselves. It seems at least incoherent to assume a relationship of subordination between “engineering” and theoretical knowledge, and at the worst it implies a lamentable ignorance of the intersections between science and engineering. A number of trends identified by Bell have to greater or lesser degrees come to pass. The alloying of scientific and technical elites with professional admin-
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istrators echoes with developments in higher education. Bell’s forecast that such developments, pivoting on highly technical theoretical knowledge, would inevitably bring more complexity to managerial and regulatory functions seems borne out by the welter of bureaucracy involved in higher education R&D and its commercialization. Other assumptions of his are less transparent. For instance, in Bell’s version of the knowledge society, the bonding of the elites with their supporting underclasses of engineers and technicians is sufficient to move technological change forward linearly and largely unproblematically. Just as industrial society was goods producing, the postindustrial society is largely information producing. With the benefit of history, it is clear that increasing the membership of elites does not necessarily guarantee unending technological change. Ironically, as Bell was finishing his own work, the decade of the “war on cancer” was drawing to a close with much chastened ambitions for the future. Quite a number of scientific and technological initiatives have faltered across areas as diverse as the biosciences, information technology and physics. A burgeoning academic cadre cannot intrinsically guarantee change whose social value outweighs its commercial and political appeal. Bell had only to reflect on the contemporary weapons programs of the period to allow himself room to qualify this assumption. Leaving aside the fit between Bell’s speculations and his projected future society, the internal consistency of Bell’s analysis has also been called into question. Reviewing common strands developed in Bell’s works over a 20-year period, information society theorist Alistair Duff argues that both the knowledge economy and information society components are ambiguous and only weakly supported by Bell’s own analysis.64 Sharp distinctions between information society and knowledge society are either not drawn clearly or are conflated. Duff wonders if an information society could exist that was not a knowledge society. Perhaps one based on popular entertainment but “short” of theoretical knowledge might fit the bill. He refers to a thin “pillar” of empirical evidence, relied on by Bell, supporting a “superstructure of opinion” about the alleged shift from industrial society to a postindustrial one reliant on information-derived services. It seems that Bell effectively gilds the role of theoretical knowledge to ground the rise of a knowledge society. Despite doubts about the synthesis of ideas in his work, the undoubted popular appeal of Bell lies in his endorsement of information technology and scientific knowledge as the combustion chambers of technological advancement. Primarily, Bell applauds enough of what is happening in the present to ground traditional Enlightenment faith in human progress. Secondly, the singling out of the products of higher education as the primary levers for progress firmly puts traditional rationality in the driving seat. Kumar aptly observes, the concept of the information society fits in well with the liberal, progressivist tradition of western thought. It maintains the Enlightenment
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faith in rationality and progress. Its current exponents belong generally to the centre of the ideological spectrum. To the extent that knowledge and its growth are associated with greater efficacy and greater freedom, this view, despite its pronouncement of a radical shift in societal arrangements, continues the line of thought inaugurated by Saint-Simon, Comte and the positivists.65
the determinist view that changes in the technological infrastructure and in the division of labour are inherently transformative, liberating and presumed to lead to a significant reduction in material “scarcity” or needs. The growth of jobs defined as information or knowledge-intensive is deemed to lead to much greater individual autonomy and power in the workplace.66 Such views are noticeably concordant with transformation policies being rolled out in higher education. At a benign remove, Bell’s cast on the conditions for innovation, using higher education as an engine, is unrealistic and utopian. His formulation of the knowledge society fails to appreciate that it may be an extension of, rather than a departure from, traditional industrial society. Without an industrial society, it is not possible to sustain the superstructure of a postindustrial society. There may be exceptions to this general rule, such as commodity-rich societies that manufacture little, and prolong mass consumerism through commodity sales. In general, it is difficult to imagine an advanced capitalist society that has totally decoupled industrial activity from its service-oriented postindustrial superstructure. One reason why these observations are important, if not damning, boil down to the locus of relevance in a society of citizens rather than an economy of ideas. Bell explicitly rejects Marxist stratifications of society, and, to an extent, this damages his projection of the form of the postindustrial society. A rejection of Marx does not automatically entail the rejection of a suspicion that the state may wish to shape higher education, for example, to maintain a docile population and cultivate technical elites soaked in appropriate corporate values. Bell’s analysis is naïve about the likely remit that the state may wish to grant to postindustrial institutions. Postindustrialism under Bell cannot exclude the possibility that the state may form education, including university education, to meet authoritarian ends. Jürgen Habermas, also preoccupied with the decline of modern industrial society and the possibility of fragmentation, offers a counterargument that in the emergent society (in advanced capitalist countries) the emphasis
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For educated elites there is a prophetic self-satisfaction in subscribing to Bell’s major theses, irrespective of internal or external inconsistencies. Bell’s influence on policy is neither quaint nor abstract. Commenting on presumptions within the European expression of an information society, Paschal Preston notes that a prime example of Bell’s influence is
must shift onto knowledge acquisition as a mode of understanding, and not merely as means to a commercial end. Resolving and overcoming social and political fragmentation is his primary concern, and he rejects a resigned capitulation before the self-assumed authority present in an elitist stratification of interests. Contra Bell, what people, scientists included, do with knowledge becomes as important as how they acquire it. Higher education is primarily about truth, rather than serving economic imperatives.67 In this respect, a reexamination of the Kantian ideal of the worth of transcendental truth shapes his work.68 Habermas foresees within the transition from industrial to postindustrial society, a vacuum of norms and values that must be plugged by a communicative rationality – one that accommodates reason, intersubjectivity and reciprocity. The highest form of transcendence that can emerge is one that facilitates rational discourse.69 Crucially, decisions are made not just on the basis of the opinions and experiences of technical elites but involve a broader deliberative input. However, even within Habermas’ communicatively rational society the influence of conflict and self-interest cannot be ruled out as subversive factors.70 The Habermasian ideal of a public sphere informed and suffused with deliberation has proved attractive to those whose presentation of the university within the knowledge society differs widely from Bell’s template. Its plausibility as a concrete something-or-other is debatable.71 Delanty, for example, after a tour de force through the sociology of knowledge, argues that the knowledge society with its emphasis on higher education offers many avenues of opportunity for the university to engage in public debate and inform culture.72 Having run various historical molds of the university through several sociological models, Delanty explains the “crisis” in the university as largely due to globalization and the rise of more fluid “knowledge production” modalities. However, cometh the crisis, cometh the opportunity. The university, with its creative expertise and technological resources, can become a platform for understanding and reflecting the concerns of culturally marginalized and disempowered groups. Echoing the optimistic expectations of information society prophets, new technology and new modes of distributing knowledge make the university eminently suitable for realizing the “cosmopolitan project.”73 Renewed, the university produces more inclusive and reflective schemata for organizing and understanding current knowledge.74 As a “discursive community,” the knowledge society provides more in-depth engagement with a great range of interests than ever before. In contrast to Bell’s obsessive focus on the university as a center of technological innovation and theoretical research, Delanty, like Habermas, highlights democratization opportunities that mass education and high-level research can offer society at large. The innovation brought about by the knowledge economy includes a potentially more informed democracy where the profit lies in the quality of the public debate supported by the university. Whether the university ideal Delanty sketches can ever be brought center stage is debatable, but he does argue the case that tension between citizenship
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concerns and the technological hubris of the knowledge economy are in principle reconcilable. Novelty does not have to stifle tradition, nor tradition smother novelty. In spite of this buoyancy, the empirical weight of his conclusions is hard to ascertain partly because Delanty’s analyses are largely normative exhortations, and partly because the evidence for any university adopting a Habermasian disposition is slight to say the least. Hypothesized migrations of people from industrial to postindustrial sectors throw up many questions about how knowledge is valued and used in the new setting. Is the difference between the new knowledge-driven society and the “old” industrial society one of kind, as Bell contends, or one of degree? The social theorist Frank Webster, a stern critic of Bell, has leaned towards the latter in his analysis of the alleged intersection of the information age with postindustrial society. Postindustrial capitalism is simply managerially more sophisticated capitalism aided by information technology.75 Information systems, networks, and advanced R&D are necessary for globalized capitalism to function anyway effectively. The mistake that Bell (and his fellow travelers) make is to see discontinuity where in reality at most a branching movement has occurred conditioned by deeprooted trends. The historical perspective of theorists like Bell is both too short and too shallow. Webster does not deny that change occurs but denies that it is of such abruptness as to render the before and after almost incommensurable. Bell’s forecast makes the abrupt seem plausible only if the underlying contribution of the preceding 50 years of “scientific management” theory (Taylorism) is ignored. Webster reduces Bell’s contributions to an exercise in punditry inspired by Bell’s fascination with technology and his determination not to miss the information technology bandwagon. Webster’s two main criticisms are that whether looked at as abstract construct or an ideal aspiration Bell’s postindustrial society is not tenable in the face of real social trends. It is also methodologically flawed when its internal dynamics are examined. For instance, Bell’s focus on a hierarchy of professional elites and a tripartite division of society begs many questions not just about how these fractionations arise but how they are interconnected, questions which Bell sidesteps by assuming an emergent harmony coextensive with the postindustrial society. Bell’s reliance on technological determinism to justify the rise of the postindustrial society supports the idea of continuity rather than discontinuity between epochs. Bell falls for an erroneous artificial conceptualization of “services” as neatly distinct from “industry” and “agriculture.” In the real economy, the intersection between service sector activities and the other sectors is stickier than Bell’s reification admits. The division of labor is less sharp, less well defined, than postindustrial occupational matrices would prefer. For Bell’s quantum leap into postindustrial future to be credible, service provision has to be understood as the antithesis of manufacturing goods production, an unrealistic position. Webster cites evidence showing that the postWWII expansion of industry was often due to demand for services and that
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in turn industry incorporated more service occupations (accountants, marketers, personnel officers) into its operations to improve its productivity. Far from society being “disjuncted” in Bell’s terms, the real economy in a society is much more integrated. Blunt stratifications that cast service sector occupations as consumptive and the industrial sector ones as productive are incorrect. Nico Stehr, a firm proponent of the knowledge society, criticizes Bell for failing to acknowledge the importance of pragmatic knowledge found in many manufacturing industries.76 Bell’s emphasis on the importance of theoretical knowledge for economic growth ignores the importance of knowledge that can deliver, i.e. knowledge in action. Stehr points out that many societies, from ancient Israel onwards, have been mini-knowledge societies. He grounds the current fascination with a knowledge society less in Bellian clashes between the old and new, tradition and modernity, and more in rapidly changing economic conditions, which affect employment opportunities and global market trends. Stehr also opens up a vista on the capacity of knowledge to foster and maintain inequality within a knowledge society through elitist domination – a concern that Bell treats benignly. Gibbons et al. argue that sharp boundaries are melting in the emergent knowledge society.77 The rise of “Mode 2” transdisciplinary research has forced knowledge production to flow over traditional subject and departmental boundaries – the latter being traditional rigid academic “Mode 1” knowledge production practices. Stratification of expertise is becoming anomalous. The new culture of knowledge production and innovation exhibits greater ambiguity as higher education struggles to embrace the “values” of industry in cultivating academic entrepreneurs. A value exchange is taking place as corporations grant their employees sabbaticals, study leave and benefits usually associated with academic mores. The growth of intellectual property and attendant professionals (legal, scientific, technology transfer, etc.) completely blurs rigid distinctions between service and manufacturing interests. Bell can be interpreted as endorsing a theory of developmental convergence that assumes what it sets out to demonstrate, i.e. technological rationalism is bringing about greater social and technical convergence. There is a certain incongruity in the fact that greater sophistication in information technology has contributed in some respects to deskilling the very professional elites lauded by Bell, for example architects reliant upon computer-aided design software.78 Sophisticated software allows many to do more using less traditional knowledge. Even in those corporations at the leading edge of technological change, the ramifications of their own work may be overlooked. A 1998 study of US corporations concluded that nearly 70 percent failed to appreciate their “technology assets” resulting in wasteful underutilization of patents.79 The expectations of Bell’s forecasted knowledge society that both the quality of knowledge and the efficacy of knowledge deployment would improve in some deterministic fashion seem optimistic.
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Bell’s attribution of undoubtedly exaggerated importance to both theoretical knowledge and technical elites suggests that it is wise to retain in mind that change, particularly social change, is a process within the political sphere and not immune to economic buffeting. The idea that discontinuities arise because of “natural” trends in society implies that change is something outside the political sphere, and something to which society must submit. Change is therefore always radical and always in opposition to the past. The persuasiveness of this belief is present in many economic manias and financial disasters. Prior to the relatively recent “dot.com” crash in 2000, many commentators lauded the arrival of purportedly new business models that were sustaining the “new” electronic commerce (e-commerce). The new economy hinted at a generation previously by a variety of futurologists (including Bell) had arrived fully armed with computer technology and increasingly globalized. Experimental “proof” of a postindustrial information economy was displayed on every desktop, in every Internet transaction. During the period, business logic was dominated by building market share at enormous cost, often coupled with negligible sales, and basing long-term solidity on keeping a brand visible. It was tantamount to assuming that a rail network would eventually become profitable while passengers were getting free rides as long as advertisers would cover the running costs. Unfortunately, the animus of the old economy, with its allegedly jaded business models, resisted interment. When the jigsaw which connected costs, turnover and profit, fell apart, the new e-commerce models were revealed as financially vacant.80 An important inference to be drawn, by the broad church that admires Bell, is that an elitist conception of how an economy should function does not guarantee its viability. Many policy entrepreneurs may be willing to overlook flaws in Bell’s projected characterization of the social and political domains, while still flying the flag for information-saturated postindustrialism. Few would be willing to surrender the putative importance of theoretical knowledge to this development. Despite Bell’s focus on the axial importance of theoretical knowledge, he did not map out its scope beyond a “restricted” version bounded by bibliometrics. At one level, this is understandable given the scale of the task. Drilling down into scientific research output in order to grade the theoretical nature of work is very different from grading its theoretical worth vis-à-vis productivity improvements. Herein is the crux of a problem. Is theoretical worth coextensive with market worth? Under Bell’s restrictive definition of knowledge, the answer would tend to the affirmative. Given his description of the university as a liberal institution whose research policies are substantially separate from business agendas, a negative answer is also possible. Bell’s ambiguity about the value of knowledge pulls up short his anticipation of a postindustrial knowledge economy. If all that counts as knowledge is only what feeds into the market, then his
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definition of knowledge is either too broad or too narrow. In fact, The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society is very much taken with a narrow valuation of knowledge, namely that which emerges through the endeavors of academic elites. Since no one can know in advance which theoretical endeavors will have more relevance, all that remains is a reactive principle of knowledge valuation, i.e. whatever can be fed into the market today or in the near future is a good candidate. There is also no transparent method for feeding theoretical knowledge into the market. It has been argued previously that research elites coordinate their actions to protect and bolster their research programs, and to create the expectation of a market through patenting. Ambiguities surrounding the status of theoretical knowledge are indications of serious flaws in Bell’s technological determinism and inter alia in policies that assume them. In the above precis, the varieties of postindustrialism are differentiated from each other in terms of the role they ascribe to higher learning and public democracy, which may be loosely translated as public opinion. While Bell’s vision contains a pronounced thread of economic determinism, shaky in the light of dissent over what really matters in economic growth, Habermas has arguably a deeper appreciation of the complexities surrounding consensus formation. His work emphasizes the metaphysical status of deliberation as a teleological process with a requirement to engage with broad interest groups. Bell’s vision does not rule out a similar process, but his Huxley-like stratification of the social world according to intelligence raises doubts about the intended shape of society. If anything, the resulting social structure might be more sympathetic to command economies and authoritarian politics than a transparent democracy. Scholarly comment on higher education policies priorities has long noted the centrality awarded to information technology, telecommunications, electronics and biotechnology. The commercial promotion of these activities is deemed pivotal to securing a competitive advantage over global competitors and enhancing national self-esteem.81 Exploitation of research potential has become less part of the cut and thrust of academic life and more part of commercial “cut-throat” market tactics. From a higher education perspective, there is little doubt that contemporary transformation and innovation policies are much closer in outline to Bell’s brushstrokes of an instrumentalist knowledge society influenced by academic elites than to Habermas’ deliberative democracy. Sheila Slaughter and Gary Rhoades, two of the most significant commentators on the development of higher education policies in recent decades, affirm a common perception within academe that professionals, including faculty, are building new networks that connect them with the new economy, spanning boundaries between public, nonprofit, and market organizations. In so doing, they are restructuring the
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universities to accommodate an academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime.82
reflect the growing importance of knowledge in our contemporary world. They underscore that whether we speak of the economy, or indeed society as a whole, the knowledge component is so crucial that it can be used to characterize both concepts. Most people, not least academics, usually take satisfaction in this general statement. After all, knowledge is almost universally considered to be a public good, and something that must be supported. However, in almost the same breath the authors underline the lack of consensus on just what is knowledge, admitting that the arguments may vary from the emancipatory Hegelian or Habermasian to the normative Mertonian, the pragmatic state-centered Weberian, or Vannevar Bushian – and all the way through to the downright economicalinstrumentalist Bernalian or even corporate focused or Etzkowitzian – which have been articulated in science and education policy documents after World War II, and increasingly since the 1980s. Indeed, so cherished is knowledge that several combinations of these arguments can be used by the same government, organization, or individual. Knowledge rarely seems to be a problem, and it is almost always a good.83 Perhaps the more unsettling question is whether the process of realizing a knowledge economy via higher education entails a democratic deficit. Sorlin and Vessuri answer that the promotion of the benefits of a knowledge economy may come at the price of diminishing the quality of political debate in the society – many of the contributors to their volume are at pains to tease out this point with respect to developing countries’ experiences. What a citizen might expect from an economy may be different than
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Not only are university elites being positioned by other interests to develop and serve the knowledge economy, but they are positioning themselves to gain a purchase on its benefits. Is this really surprising? One of the abiding legacies of the Bellian version of postindustrialism is a widespread acceptance of the importance of knowledge and information in everyday culture. Any archival search of newspapers will return literally thousands of references to “knowledge economy,” “knowledge society” and “information society.” The terms are treated (or mistreated) as simple cognates of each other. The theory-laden nature of the underlying concepts (ideological or philosophical) is rarely thrashed out in these publications. Sorlin and Vessuri note complacent consensus in higher education that the terms “knowledge economy” and “knowledge society” simply
her expectations of a society. The concepts are not equivalent. Often they are in conflict. Different interests and different communities (elites even) both supply and take away different interpretations depending on their weighting of various desired outcomes. Much depends on whether the economy is accepted as a subsection, subcategory, of society or vice versa. Academic elites may experience a tension between their agendas and that of public opinion in terms of a liturgical heresy. In these instances, each group views the other’s stake in the economy of knowledge in disequilibrium. The “Public” is interpreted as having too great an influence in decision making given its relative ignorance. Academics are seen, due to an alignment of research and economic interests, as having too great an influence on curbing and dismissing the Public. The tension between knowledge as a source of emancipation and knowledge as a source of power and profit is not new. It can be tracked through history. A different model of the knowledge economy will pop out depending on the weightings given to deliberation and collaboration. It is perfectly possible to subscribe to a vision of a knowledge economy without embracing a fully entailed democratic knowledge society. Picking up the “collaborative” baton, Richard Ennals worries that Europe in its pursuit of a knowledge society is not paying sufficient attention to the communication and integration of its knowledge production programs.84 Emphasis on producing empirical and scientific knowledge is so labored that it has created distortions, and overlooked the important role of tacit knowledge in organizational management, particularly in the case of multistate collaborative research. Without well-integrated organizations possessing an understanding of collaboration, such as universities, with open and mature communication channels, the capacity of European industries to support a knowledge society is doubtful. Bell’s vision sees the trends towards postindustrial society and a knowledge economy as inexorable, boundless and, perhaps, ruthlessly instrumental – lost assembly line jobs are replaced by higher-paying ones in financial and information service sectors. The trends slip the leash of political control, and benefits “trickle down” to those less fortunate, less gifted. The anomaly, also noted by Kumar, is that Bell’s faith in an expanding service sector (full of knowledge workers presumably) relies upon an expanding economy. Still, this economy must produce something marketable to maintain itself. Therefore, “old” industrialism cannot wither away conveniently. Webster concurs with the opinion that as long as agriculture and industry (in their automated guises) maintain increased productivity, theoretically the service sector of professional elites and fellow travelers can be kept afloat. In reality, the sectors do not conveniently decouple. Professions are part of industrial production, spliced into it in ways that are not, contrary to Bell, parasitical. Many tools, especially software, are developed both for and within notional service sectors. This inconvenient fact drives a coach and horses through Bell’s characterization of postindustrial organizations as qualitatively different from their
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predecessors with settled boundaries between productive occupations and consumptive ones. It also fatally weakens the case for sifting out a goodsbased society from an information-based one. As an influence on higher education policy, Bell’s importance lies less in what he “got right” and more in the coincidence of his view with those of economists and policy entrepreneurs who subscribe to endogenous theories of growth. It was the Geist that went with these theories, so well drawn in his work, which made his theorizing about postindustrialism influential. What pushes a society from preindustrial, to industrial into postindustrial is productivity. For Bell, and certain growth theorists, this reduces to deployed theoretical knowledge. In modern complex societies, such knowledge can only arise in the minds of academically privileged elites, around whom society must self-organize to enhance its economic well-being. What this means for the university has been made steadily more apparent over the past 30 years in the US and over the past 20 or so in Europe. There remain doubts about whether an academic technocracy dedicated to innovation can prevent the marginalization of academic citizens that fall outside the core vision.85 If the academic elite cannot reach a state of harmony with other academics outside the information society fold, what hope for the rest of society? In Bell’s world, “structural changes” set the context for economic opportunity and social advancement. The moral consequences of economic growth, market competition and technological change are assumed to result in utilitarian benefits for all.86 Improvements in material conditions and attitudes towards freedoms and liberties are assumed to flow accordingly. Information explosions are seen as boundless public goods – the most pious hope of Enlightenment thinkers was that knowledge and the proper exercise of Reason would dissolve conflict. Information and the society that it enfolds frees man from the risk of slipping into a baser form of life. Digital man wards off feral man. Could an information tyranny arise, a cabal of interests suturing experts into every debate to control the outcome and outlaw dissent? The possible alignment of growth and social advancement with authoritarianism and repression remains leprously out of deliberative bounds in Bell’s forecast. From a policy entrepreneur’s perspective, this may be an optimal outcome. R&D policy can now be presented as politically benign, rooted in superficially objective meritocratic measures. There is no better candidate for persuading the public of the faux neutrality of innovation policy than the icon of advanced technology. Just how reliable a companion to knowledge is technology?
Fallibility of technology and the reliability of knowledge On aligning a technology with an unmet need, innovation theorist Vijay Jolly wrote over the heading “Creating Pull without Hype” that [a]ttracting attention to a new technology is in the end a competitive endeavour, more so today than at any time in the past. Apart from tar-
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Any substitution for the word “technology” by either “university” or “research program” in the above passage illuminates the path to market down which many academies have taken themselves. A feverish expansion in the numbers of universities and institutes of higher learning has been witnessed throughout the world within the past few decades. Academia’s authority as both certifier of knowledge and licensor of various specialist professions has lent it social and political influence.88 The attitudes adopted in academia towards an artifact, a process or a theory may not entirely determine public debate, but they will not be ignored either. It is the very fact that academia is often at the forefront of novelty in advance of other interests that has swayed faith in it as a source of innovation. Consequently, the benediction of the university on a science and its commercial expropriation are not to be lightly dismissed. Those bits of science that find their way into technology become not just practically useful, but ideologically useful, by validating prior research efforts. In view of the fact that a research effort cannot be validated in advance, in the sense that an outcome cannot be known in advance, the argument for constraining research trends is grandiosely weakened. It is with this in mind that extraordinary deference to technology has become a linchpin, perhaps the major one, in higher education transformation policies. Modern information and communication technology (ICT) has become the new philosopher’s stone not just in research, but in administration and teaching as well. It is next to impossible to conceive of any scientific research that does not require the use of information technology. Indeed, the transformative power of ICT is not simply limited to faster numerical calculations but even affects the formation of the identity of researchers. Drawing on an empirical study of marine biologists, Lamb and Davidson report development and use of ICT-enabled core scientific technologies are identity enhancing for many scientists, facilitating their development of unique areas of scientific knowledge. At the same time, ICT-related changes in data collection, collaborative coordination, and scientific interaction challenge their perceived control over scientific expertise and professional identity.89 New areas of “specialization” and “expertise” have been opened up in burgeoning transdisciplinary collaboration. Computer-based communication
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geting scarce resources, mobilizing interest in a technology is a bit like what companies do by way of competitive signalling – announcing halfbaked products or partnerships and staking out a market arena. The purpose is partly to pre-empt the moves of others. But it is equally a verbal battle for stakeholders’ attention, in hopes of mobilizing their support early on. The excitement created, however, has to be great enough to overcome the many hurdles that lie ahead and to assemble as many resources upfront as possible.87
is not only adding “variety and heterogeneity” but facilitates the recombination of “elements” and players in flexible and rapid ways which in turn can lead to science “politicking” having more immediate impact.90 The possibilities of new perspectives, ones grounded in an ICT-dominant algorithmic, are immediately evident in even the usage of the new technologies. A number of researchers have recorded a growing convergence in the treatment and sharing of “information” between genetics research and ICT.91 The tendency to talk in terms of “genetic information” opens a door to many information-theoretic metaphors and models. The same computer that runs off the semester timetable might also monitor the ambient conditions in a campus laboratory. Closing the gap between science and its realization in technology, “technologization” is a major determinant of the esteem attached to science-driven innovation programs. Tendencies to overestimate the ability of new technology to solve relatively old problems are entrenched in history. Researchers frequently feel obliged to overstate their expectations when competing for grants and awards. The promise of artificial intelligence in the 1960s to provide “humanoid” robots and incorporate human cognitive abilities in everyday artifacts is still grossly unrealized. Bioscience promises of organs, harvested from animals such as pigs, fit for human transplantation have come and gone. Doubtless, promising research has and is being done in the meantime, but all too often hubris interferes with the scientific message and the promise of technological outcomes. Technological fetishism has decided that the “business” of a university is, literally, the conversion of scientific inquiry into something of commercial value. In response, university transformation policies portray the efficient university, the entrepreneurial university, as ultimately a mechanism for circulating new technologies. Reminiscent of Poincaré’s famous enthusiasm for a factory in Chicago where pigs went in one end and sausages came out the other, in the enterprise university theoretical knowledge is pushed in one door, and products (including patents and licensing agreements) come out another.92 Many of the points and concerns about the development of science commercialization apply equally here, and there is no requirement to reiterate them. The blurring of the delineation between science and its technologization has partially vitiated attempts to make hard distinctions between “pure” and “applied” science. Transdisciplinary research in the broad savannah containing biological, psychological and information sciences has challenged ideas that sharp distinctions are possible to maintain or even helpful. Does it really help a geneticist do better, if she says she is not interested in commercialization? Does a signal-processing expert do lesser science because his brainwave interpretation algorithm might be used by a corporation in their next generation imaging device? The issue is not whether one activity is right or wrong, but whether the university as traditionally constituted is still appropriate for this type of work. If it is not, what should replace it? Higher
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education in general has not helped field answers to these thorny questions largely because within the theorizing about university transformation, technology is identified as contributing to the substantive teaching and research missions of the sector. Until a few decades ago, the prospect that technology would play a major role within an institution would have been treated as at the very least unclear. The ensuing accelerated insertion of information technology, improved communications systems and obvious organizational advantages (data analysis) radically placed what had been peripheral, untested and expensive at the heart of the modern university. These changes occurred in tandem with the increasing colonization of science by technology. An inevitable, perhaps fateful, outcome of higher education’s seduction by technology was the possibility of converting teaching into a product, one that could be sold across frontiers in the emerging world of “borderless” education. The potential of educational technology, e-learning technology, as both an income stream and a measure of innovation could not be missed by policy entrepreneurs.93 Ben Shneiderman, a well-known computer usability expert, likens the boons of the new technology allegorically to a “Leonardo’s laptop.” Central to the new technology is its implied capacity to improve learning outcomes – to move students along “the curve.” Shneiderman calls for a “rethink” of education based on the computer’s ability to collect efficiently traditional classroom information, relate students more meaningfully to each other through collaborative project work, create “ambitious projects” and donate useful results to stakeholders “outside the classroom.”94 In tones familiar to higher education policy entrepreneurs, Shneiderman is less concerned about the erosion of teaching traditions, as much as the likelihood that such traditions will prove reactionary, and stand in conflict with the technological promise of increased “creativity.” An assumed conflict between tradition and creativity is also discussed by Janet Murray, a strong proponent of the use of computational discoveries to enhance storytelling. Speaking of a project to put the works of Shakespeare plus commentaries on a CD, she interprets objections as a sign that the new technologies are extending our powers faster than we can assimilate the change. Even when we are already engaged in enterprises that cry out for the help of a computer, many of us still see the machine as a threat rather than an ally. We cling to books as if we believed that coherent human thought is only possible on bound, numbered pages.95 Her main point is that narratives provided in an emerging medium, in a digital or “virtual” environment, are not intrinsically inferior compared to a traditional medium. There may be greater challenges in bringing “meaning” to these new environments, or making meaning within them, but that in itself is the story of all innovation in media. Tension is eternal,
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in the sense of conflict, between innovation and the desire to control change at organizational and individual levels. The adoption of technology in education is not new. History is replete with examples as old as education itself, from wax tablets down to the modern computer. What distinguishes the growth of e-learning from other developments is its promotion as a revolutionary learning technology uniquely suited to modern mass access higher education. It is a technology with a definite utilitarian sweep. The possibility that e-learning could remedy problems in the knowledge economy, meaning shortages of skills, is always in the background.96 De Freitas and Oliver detect a strategic and complex relationship “between e-learning policy, organisational change and e-learning implementation.”97 Their observations on the significance attached to e-learning as an agent of change and innovation, though drawn from a UK experience, arguably generalize to other states where governments and supranational bodies are mandating the use of e-learning in higher education. They conclude that e-learning redevelops an organization likely to favor greater specializations of roles and finer divisions of labor. Power, they indicate, occupies an ambiguous position as a source of drive and coercion in guaranteeing e-learning. Resistance to the exercise of power is a normal response from individuals and communities within an organization. The more marginalized any of these feel, the more resistance is cultivated. Successful practices affecting e-learning therefore are rooted in collaboration. De Freitas and Oliver could be criticized for trying to do “too much” along too many dimensions, but the lesson to be drawn is not that encouraging collaboration is better than encouraging either active or passive resistance. Rather that e-learning is an authorized instrument of university change. Within such a context, e-learning is no longer accidental to government policy regarding higher education and globalization, but intrinsic to it. Given these forces, it is impossible for universities to ignore e-learning. They have not of course, and e-learning in some shape or form as a manifestation of the information society has become a permanent adjunct to traditional faculty teaching on many campuses. The attraction and significance of e-learning to governments, Bates argues, are multidimensional. It lies in its economic consequences, its likely adoption by lifelong learners, its importance to workers in industries whose need to organize and analyze knowledge is the essence of their employment, its possible contribution to effective reorganization of teaching at third level and its social influences.98 For all these reasons and more, a modern state cannot ignore the technology. In this climate of urgency, perhaps hysteria is more accurate, debates about whether e-learning is complementing or supplanting traditional practices become more difficult to sustain. One of the anomalies in e-learning promotion is its promotion as a learning experience, rather than an exposure to a certain instance of (semi-)automated teaching. This produces an anxiety that faculty is being reduced to an advi-
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sory rather than pedagogical role. In the modern “networked” society, where music, films and other materials are downloadable and where social networks free users from the requirement of physical proximity in the making and maintenance of friendships, the autonomy of users in the usage of information technology is palpable. It is no surprise that the studentconsumer is attracted by the touted autonomy of the “learning subject” freed from physical topography by information technology. The “right” of the student to access his or her learning when it suits is paramount. Emphasis on the autonomy of the learner is a peculiarity of the technology and a new development in education made possible by modern communication networks. It also troubles many critics of Bell’s postindustrialism, viz. that information technology may lead to the atomization of society. However, due to the sheer volume of textual material generated annually some recourse to information technology in pedagogy is necessary. Writing as far back as 1999, Salomon referenced research showing that “the accumulation of the first million abstracts in chemistry took 30 years (1907 to 1937), the most recent one required only one and a half years.”99 The physical challenge of keeping all of this information in conventional libraries and the logistical burden of managing, retrieving and updating such collections make electronic storage a necessity. Once information is stored electronically, the possibility of using it as a teaching resource is attractive, and (at least since 1999) has become technologically practical. One recent study concluded tentatively that increased “use of the internet” was positively correlated with research productivity.100 There are differences between traditional distance learning and e-learning, and many of these were blurred in early e-learning initiatives. Distance learning is a combination of correspondence courses, audiovisual materials and campus outreach initiatives. On the other hand, e-learning was largely intended as “computer desk learning” with little requirement for campus outreach. It was assumed that a reduction in outreach could be compensated for by use of electronic mail, bulletin boards and websites. Investment in campus physical infrastructure could be offset by investment in computer-supported “virtual campuses.”101 The aims were noble, but expectations proved too high in early initiatives. Several well-resourced US colleges developed e-learning programs that held out great promise, e.g. Columbia University. Many of these initiatives failed completely and were wound up or else were much reduced in ambition, content, format and scale.102 Those that have survived have either adapted the traditional distance educational model to meet their needs (such as the University of Phoenix) or offer focused short-term courses. The Open University, notably, offers a bare handful of its courses online but has invested time in carefully crafting its e-learning technology.103 In the light of the transformation policy’s faith in educational technology, a recent review of the paradoxes affecting e-learning deployment in higher education makes unwelcome reading.104 Among the conclusions reached is that
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those institutions that might benefit most (through increased student numbers) from offering online courses are least able to do so due to staff and infrastructural resource constraints. Oddly enough, the institutions that could most afford to offer such courses are those least interested in doing so – they simply have no need to move beyond their traditional campus-residency setting. The paradoxes resulted not from any insurmountable technical problem, but from combinations of logistical and resource clashes. Additional conflicts resulted from the lack of uniformity in standards and terminology across and within institutions, the ill-preparedness of “second chance learners” to use ICT, and the increased burden placed on staff attempting to shoehorn course materials into specific formats. Lack of clarity about what is expected from faculty and students has also produced significant hurdles. Faculty commitments relating to online courses are often underestimated. In many instances, due to student demands for greater interaction frequency, workloads have increased substantially beyond preparation and delivery.105 Ambiguities and misperceptions around the provision of information, expected learning “outcomes” and the type of knowledge required are highlighted in a UK review.106 Similar problems recurred in an extensive Dutch study.107 Staffrelated problems with content creation, input, response and training times were picked up by a range of studies reported by Collis and van der Wende.108 Even the provision of very high quality information does not guarantee an audience. MIT’s Open Courseware initiative is not an e-learning platform, but one study of its efficacy revealed that only a small percentage of users accessed the online materials regularly.109 In a study on a Californian campus, which included examining the social effects of computer-mediated learning, almost 35 percent of students using e-learning technologies shunned interpersonal contacts tied to classwork.110 It seems that the comfort of ready access to materials must be measured against the side effect of social splintering. The likelihood that online courses are short changing students cannot be discounted despite institutional enthusiasm for e-learning technologies. A survey of 160 graduate deans, associate deans and program directors in the US showed a clear “culture of preference” for graduates from traditional physical institutions.111 The authors conclude that in spite of official enthusiasm for educational innovations, the results indicate a “lack of confidence” in online undergraduate education. A variant of the survey conducted among employers revealed similar lukewarm attitudes towards online bachelors’ degrees.112 These results are not definitive, but they signal a need for caution by undergraduates committed to online degrees and the transnational value of such degrees postqualification. Other studies have suggested that as more deferential policies are adopted towards educational technologies, the number of managerial grades may increase.113 When technological innovations fail, and there have been failures, explanations often rely on plausible appeals to unexpected costs, Luddite resistance and tensions between the early adopters and the laggards. After
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Confronting complexity The extreme version of technological dread states that the marriage of technology and science results in an illusion of an objective rationality, presented as an autonomous historical process.117 Extrapolating to higher education, one might argue that a process of acculturation has led academics to perceive themselves as subject to a technological rationality that has the force of political dominion over their activities – an environment in which Fritz Lang would feel at home. Continuing with the theme of technology phobia, another perspective is that the presence of e-learning and e-learning providers marks the end of “valid knowledge.”118 In this instance, valid knowledge is defined as a type of propositional knowledge traditionally codified and confirmed within a university setting. Since ICT is intrinsic to innovation and change, an inevitable submission to new policies is occurring which includes a dilution of traditional university course content. Essentially, this is an admonition against any form of educational technology that fosters vocational training. In contemporary mass education where qualifications are offered by a range of institutions in anything from golf course management to undersea diving, and sought by a large mixed ability student population, the practical relevance of such jeremiads is debatable. Nevertheless, the fact that the technology is there does not entail that it is there benignly. Hubert Dreyfus, a philosopher known for his skeptical stance towards artificial intelligence, has dusted off Kierkegaard’s admonitions against the press, substituting the “Internet” as the dreaded foe.119 The anonymity of Internet interaction allows users and educators to disguise their engagement,
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examining a number of e-learning “stalls,” Pollock and Cornford surmised that the most plausible explanation, contrary to conventional prejudice, related to “the sheer volume and complexity of the work required to configure people, machines, objects, texts, and money.”114 Shadowing this opinion, Connolly and colleagues having reviewed several e-learning initiatives in the UK, concluded that the overall experience of satisfaction was, at its most generous, uneven.115 They consider their judgment well-founded in the light of a shift away from “pure” e-learning to “blended” models which incorporate traditional practices (the sage being halfway back on to the stage rather than fully in the wings). Even when governments have thrown their considerable resources behind e-learning initiatives, the results can be economically abysmal. A House of Commons report into the failure of the UK e-University project, deemed at the time a significant national project, determined that approximately £50 million had recruited merely 900 students.116 A myriad of human factors difficulties, overly ambitious planning and technological problems contributed to the collapse of the project. In spite of many benefits, all is not rosy in the e-learning garden.
with the attendant risk to the development of a whole person. Dreyfus interprets Kierkegaard as holding the view that to become a whole person (a person living a meaningful life), a person had to the pass through aesthetic, ethical and religious phases in their education. Dreyfus argues that the Internet may deliver the first two phases but not the all-important latter one. Just as Kierkegaard saw the press as an endless stream of chatter with little effort to distinguish the trivial from the important, so does Dreyfus view the Internet with its endless interest groups, chatrooms and the implied confusion between information and knowledge. The essence of Dreyfus’ worries is that the Internet very effectively protects users from a commitment to action, from engagement. It permits the illusion of a mastery of an area of knowledge. Because the Internet is not a zone of action the consequences of choices and decisions are often not made known, not experienced, by the users and this distance fuels disengagement and the erosion of respect for “practical wisdom.” Prosser and Ward elaborate the Dreyfus–Kierkegaard concerns slightly differently, focusing instead on the “attenuation of interpersonal connectivity.”120 One of their main concerns is with the growth of digital personae that users create to participate in online communities, games, and so forth. The ease with which these personae can support fantasies and their capacity to mask real problems of isolation and depression influence their judgment that interpersonal rather than computer-mediated education is best for students. Concerns with the quality and experience of education offered to youth, the dilution of criteria separating the incidental from the significant, and fears of a reduced definition of humanity are recurrent themes in critiques of changing times throughout history – that is not to diminish their philosophical interest. But questions about existential angst, the value of life and the purpose in choosing one course of action over another go way beyond current policy debates. A counterargument to Dreyfus’ anxieties is his failure to appreciate the multilayered interactions using ICT. Not every online user is engaged in deception. There have always been people willing to dissemble, and simulate characters other than their own (recall the trickery aimed at Shylock in The Merchant of Venice for example).121 There is no justification for assuming that interpersonal education is desirable in all cases. In order to joint a chicken a professional video is likely to be as useful as a demonstration by a local butcher. Users, both students and educators, can be flexible in their choice of technology and applications.122 Insisting on a reification of the “Internet” implies a failure to comprehend it as a fluid environment, supporting individual creativity and agility. Perhaps a more useful perspective from which to view current ICT challenges can be found in the history of art, at the beginning of the early Renaissance. The widespread use of ICT in the universities is somewhat akin in impact to the discovery of the laws of perspective by Giotto (also Cimabue and Piero Della Francesca) in the thirteenth century. Initial resistance to the profound changes implied by Giotto’s conceptualization of art
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centered on the threat to traditional modes of expression of “information” – in this case visual information conforming to a two-dimensional religious iconography. The effect of Giotto’s work was to relocate the viewer in a different visual landscape, a plane with greater depth, and situate him or her as a participating witness to some great event. The essential success of the endeavor lay in “changing the viewer’s dimensional perspective,” which in turn resulted in a changed and more satisfying emotional experience.123 Knowledge and technology share complex dependencies in a modern “information society” as represented microcosmically in the university. The relationship between science and technology influences perceptions about which knowledge is important and which modes of knowing, knowledge acquisition, are worthwhile. Yet it cannot be that significant as there is no evidence of an undergraduate surge in either science or technology degree courses. The use of ICT in various modes on campus is not evidence of a dark conspiracy to “do down” academic values.124 A not unreasonable concern, nonetheless, is the challenge this poses to teaching standards. The changing status of teaching, the status of the content of what is being taught, and the transformed status of a student as a user of an information system, are evident in several studies cited earlier. Blatant commercialization of the teaching–learning dyad is possible. For example, a student is unlikely to be interested in the brand of chalk used in class, but the same student may be very attracted to the brand of technology deployed. A lecture course could favor one manufacturer over another (not uncommon for graphic design courses). In e-learning, the content of a course and the technology delivering it “arrive together,” and it would be naïve to declare that conflicts of interest cannot be ruled out.125 Because curricula favorable to a technology can always be promoted, technological neutrality is a fiction. On a daily basis, one search engine may be favored over another, one email program over another and one document preparation system over another. Set against this, faculty frequently recommend preferred authors and publishers (the latter may have supported their wise choices with inspection copies). Laboratory supplies are procured from one source rather than another, likewise office furniture, carpets and even the tarmac in the car parks. Resisting information technology, whether in teaching or learning contexts, because it may import a subtle commercial bias is neither practical nor a mark of good sense. Faculty resistance to seeing teaching marginalized or even hived off into a technology is understandable since both imply diminution of an established role. Even so, change in higher education is increasingly supported by information technology. In the light of the convergence of many aspects of education around information technology, perhaps “it is not unreasonable to entertain the idea that teaching, as we know it, will not be a necessary component in instruction in the very near future.” 126 As a corollary, rather than carp about technological changes in teaching, faculty should prepare for them and ensure that the student learning experience is adequately served.
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In spite of problems, “crashes,” “glitches” and a plethora of malicious viruses, the process of digitization continues apace. What seemed infeasible in one decade arrives in the next. Websites regularly host videos, online gaming among thousands is immensely popular, voice-over Internet services are changing the face of conventional telephony, and all of this is without mentioning the backbone of email. Appeals to slow down, halt and reassess the deployment of information technology in teaching and knowledge distribution have the ring of the antediluvian about them. Modern organizations are bound to assume more risk as they experiment and innovate with borderline science and immature technologies according to Beck. One cannot argue against technological change and associated human factors complications simply on the grounds that some undemonstrated risk is involved. Some risk attaches to all technology development and usage in a modern society. Generally, the fears that groups have about software relate to spiraling costs of production or the implications of its “failure,” for example a stock exchange crash.127 Only in (higher) education is the fear rooted not in the likely failure of software to meet its task, but in the strong likelihood of success. If success in e-learning becomes the norm, and more courses and coursework are shifted online, the impact on traditional staffing levels should be significant. As yet, there is no evidence that institutional “downsizing” is occurring. So what exactly are academics afraid of here? At least one answer is suggested by Tiffin and Rajasingham’s model of a “global virtual university” where all learning is predicted to transfer to “hyperreality” (also called “cyberspace”) by 2025.128 In their scenario, grounded entirely in technological innovations, artificial intelligence advances, sophisticated digital animations and high bandwidth global networks provide the campus of the “virtual university.” The state of play in a global market apparently determines the worth of the university’s offerings. Classes are recorded for viewing and the faculty are paid according to the popularity of their courses, which in raw terms translates into number of downloads of a lecture course. In the opinion of the authors, a commercial bonanza awaits those that can blend traditional academic values with global demand for quality credentials. In turn this will require a changed model of university governance, one with a balance of academic and business interests. As a technology project and as a marketing exercise the model is plausible, but since “traditional” student experiences cannot be “blended” harmoniously or congruously with remote access, the authors are compelled to fly the flag of past academic values to lend heritage to the project. An implicit assumption of such models is that the conventional university with its physical campus is dead. More to the point, the idea that a physical space is necessary to scholarly teaching and inquiry is cast into doubt. Laboratory subjects will still require laboratories, but even here the long-term aspiration is that much of this can be achieved by clever
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Conclusions
computer simulations. Only at postgraduate or advanced postgraduate level, will students run their hands and eyes over physical “stuff.” A speculative glance into the far distance might even see faculty lectures replaced by animated avatars whose lectures are a synthesis of a variety of technologies reliant upon advanced data mining. The role of a teacher qua teacher may be rapidly approaching obsolescence in some scenarios and with it the traditional values associated with interpersonal instruction. Where Tiffin and Rajasingham praise the coming of the virtual university and the opportunities for borderless globalized education as inevitable and welcome consequences of technological advances, Carl Rashke adopts a different attitude although arriving at roughly similar conclusions.129 A postmodern university is inevitable according to Rashke because the traditional physical university has not responded to global needs, and its physical localization damns it to near irrelevancy. In contrast to the technology-inspired campus, Rashke roots the desire for a hyperreal campus in his conclusion that its conventional counterpart is a failed political and social entity. Here then are two very different motivations for globally networking higher education. On the one hand technology and commerce influence the agenda. While on the other, the alleged moral and political bankruptcy of the conventional model, its promotion of “social hierarchies,” its inability to respond to demands within the global society, commands that it be supplanted with a virtual campus. The university serves global society best by diffusing itself into the electronic ether. Though Rashke shares a similar faith in the social ends of education and their noncommercialization, his hyperuniversity is in sharp contrast to Delanty’s expectation that technology will help the university reinvigorate itself through promoting cosmopolitanism. The issues raised above are not so cut and dried as to be entirely beyond further scrutiny. By passing off policies as grounded in postindustrialism and an all-improving technological rationality, vested interests and elite cadres can disguise their political aims and simultaneously legitimate their intentions. Knowledge economy policies grounded in Bellian postindustrialism are very attractive to nations that have never experienced significant industrialization, such as Ireland. The promise of a mighty profitable alchemical synergy among academic, managerial and political elites is simply too alluring to set aside. Internal inconsistencies and ambiguities in the foundational theorizing are insufficient to suppress the multiplication of economic growth desires experienced in policy circles. Promotion of endogenous factors’ assumed influence on technological change practically assures at least in the short term a dominant academic influence on the proper route to innovation. Inevitable contests for scarce resources in higher education are likely to see the prosperous prosper. Exponents of academic entrepreneurialism may wish to see the liberal arts operate with fewer resources. Academic areas in which technology is neither readily nor welcomingly applied may find themselves deprived of
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legitimacy. It may happen that debate becomes so biased towards technological modes of investigation, teaching and innovation that speculative inquiry and its pedagogy will disappear from higher learning over time.130 Attempts to restore balance may be difficult. In devising a blended curriculum to include computer science in a liberal arts undergraduate program, the Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium (LACS) proposed,
A laudable objective, but the explicit teaching of social and ethical issues was assigned a time allowance of just over 4 percent of the total curriculum. The ambition seems optimistic – at its kindest. In a discerning comment on all things computational, Seymour Pappert, one of the founding fathers of artificial intelligence, fearing that novel educational methods were stagnating due to a lack of appropriate technology, counseled that rapid advances in technology should not be confused with revolutionary advances in education. Without an educational pedagogy fit to exploit the technology, radical aspirations would not come to pass.132 Despite the spread of information technologies in everyday life, technical problems and their implications rarely surface in policy discussions. Innovation theorizing rarely appears to focus on risk. As computer code becomes more complex, is assembled more by teams than individuals and admits greater degrees of nonlinearity, the likelihood of significant problems arising cannot be dismissed lightly. For example, it was estimated that the demand for computer software patches exceeded 4000 in 2003.133 Apart from the labor costs in producing and installing the patches, the effect on an organization’s daily business is substantial. But even these difficulties become insignificant when one reflects on a study by the US military’s Chiefs of Staff that identified problems with automated target identification systems as the main cause of 75 percent of “friendly-fire” causalities.134 In practice computer technology has been affected with considerable unreliability – admittedly malicious security attacks on systems play their role – with many problems probably due to carelessness.135 The “millennium bug” or Y2K problem was hysterically trumpeted as a digital Armageddon. In the end, its impact was unnoticeable, though the funds spent by governments and industry on “precautionary” measures were enough to eliminate Third World debt.136 Companies that
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social and ethical concerns should be a theme woven through courses at all levels. The 2007 Model Curriculum recommends that specific social/ethical issues be discussed in connection with related technical issues, to show students that the two are not separable. For example, units on testing or proof should discuss the professional’s responsibility to produce correct code; topics such as the Internet or cryptography will be presented as applications of course concepts, and those presentations include discussions of the social impact of the applications on areas such as privacy, accuracy, and security.131
responded to its “threat” did so due to financial benefits arising from upgrades, or fear of never-ending litigation by clients.137 Even more extraordinary, given official corporate enthusiasm for computerbased “everything” and higher education’s adulation for the information society, has been the reluctance of information technology suppliers to accept responsibility for defective systems. Only recently has the balance begun to shift slightly in favor of the purchaser.138 Software projects are increasingly complex, a situation compounded by the need for many organizations to maintain older “legacy” systems. The likelihood that all errors can be identified in the testing phase of an implementation is fanciful. Assigning moral responsibility, arising from negligence or recklessness, to developers for subsequent failures is problematical given the intricacy of a complex computer system and the probability of nonlinear side effects.139 The point here is not that one should be wary of technology in general, but that being wary of technological fetishism is no bad thing. In societies with universities itching for commercial successes, risk assessment of innovation policies along many dimensions, not just material but including the noneconomic, is a luxury unlikely to be granted.
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6 Secrets – the Future of the Future University
There is growing risk of a “new fundamentalism” settling into higher education policy, one which views the transition from high school to undergraduate “experience” as mandatory – just as national service programs once were throughout Europe. This leads to two concerns. Are current innovation policies causing overeducation? And if so, what is the likely impact? On the face of things, there is consensus across the political spectrum in Europe and the wider umbrella body of the OECD that education, especially higher education, is the key to competitiveness and economic growth. Qualifications are increasingly associated with the offset of risk – risk of unemployment, risk of disease, risk of diminished social mobility. Future economic prosperity is presumed to rest on the attainment of higher levels of education. More diplomas, degrees and higher specialist qualifications are recommended in official reports, policy documents and even in the broader media. Is this breathless enthusiasm little more than, and equally as threatening as, a cerebral manifestation of tulip mania? It seems appropriate to metaphorically introduce comparisons with those tulips that brought the Dutch economy to its knees three centuries ago. Lured by their beauty, rarity and the singular covetous pleasure of owning a few, even at ruinous expense, the demand for tulips defied all reason. The two-a-penny common tulips, which were easier to grow and more robust, were ignored as ever more examples of tulip exotica were pursued. If tulips were academics, or vice versa, then the possibility that higher education is cultivating a tulip mania must be dug over. The blunt question is whether the labor market can accommodate the increasing production of academically qualified entrants. Are technological and economic changes of such an order that the skills higher education provides are actually in demand in the market? Or is it all a fiction hiding a financial disaster, and a potential unemployment mountain of graduates 210
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A new fundamentalism in higher education?
and postgraduates?1 From a credentialist point of view, the presence of graduates in occupations traditionally held by lower qualified employees is taken as evidence that overqualification is now a fact of life.2 The “push” for qualifications occurs independently of demands in the labor market. A downside to this trend is the prospect of highly qualified graduates adrift from market forces, and underemployed. The upside, hypothetically, from an employer’s perspective, is that graduates may bring a lot more “for free” to a job than a traditional operative. An alternative perspective, the human capital one, holds that the higher level of qualifications reflects market demands for highly qualified employees and in turn stimulates the creation of more positions for graduates.3 There is no a priori settlement of these debates. The criterion of overeducation is not measured in absolute terms. Is the worth of an education measured by the job one obtains? If so, Wendy Russell and colleagues’ study of “double degrees” in Australia is worth reflecting upon.4 A double or joint degree (e.g. engineering and law) on the face of it seems to nail all the various interdisciplinary values that policy entrepreneurs have been favoring. The double degree recipe implies synergy, a zest of hybrid vigor between not normally complementary areas. If any “soft” educational innovation is guaranteed to be disruptive and turn out the entrepreneurs, surely this is it? Unfortunately, it is not. The study showed that the double degree was misunderstood internally within the university and externally by employers. Few students had a clear sense of a career path that could use the special qualities of the double degree. And few employers were cognizant of specific advantages that a double degree graduate could bring to their operations. The extra year spent earning a double degree seems to have left few satisfied with the outcome, and the majority overeducated relative to career opportunities. Russell points out that despite the results the paucity of research on double degrees suggests caution before drawing hard and fast conclusions. Nonetheless, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that the “rhetorical support” for interdisciplinary degrees is not matched by market demand. If the number of graduates entering the labor market increases rapidly, it is inevitable that certain occupations, once requiring lower levels of skill and training, will attract de facto new qualifying standards. It is a reasonable hypothesis, and supported by at least one UK study, that the average qualification level of all staff will rise across all industries. 5 If the majority of graduates from high-cost courses were without commensurate work, the matter would be grave – medical graduates working in call centers. As long as the majority of graduates obtain paid employment, probing whether they are they getting work commensurate with their training may find little support. Faced with rising costs, credence must be given to the claim that increasingly governments are less interested in education as a means to fix disadvantage or improve culture, and much keener to ensure that the right kind of education is being offered – the kind that presumes a close relationship with economic growth.6 This opens an entirely different angle on
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overeducation worries through inviting comment on the quality of credentials on offer. In the past, it was indeed the case that individual merit did not necessarily coincide with the means to obtain higher education. A very great number of people remained without credentials due to bad fortune. The massification of higher education was intended to solve that problem. Access would be broadened and the able no longer excluded due to financial restrictions. But the broadening of access became a process in itself, with governments demanding that ever-greater numbers of school-leavers obtain a third-level qualification.7 It may be a laudable aim, but it entails adjustments to traditional meritocratic values. In any population of school-leavers, not all of them can be above average ability – obviously. Contemporary universities cater for a wider mix of abilities than a generation ago. Enquiring into whether standards have dropped to enable the credentialing of greater numbers is an unpopular undertaking. Jo Rizen, president of Maastricht University, in a 2007 address to the Royal Irish Academy despaired that “Europe is a mediocracy – a system where the mediocre prevails – and the intellectual elite has not been a party in changing that.”8 European higher education, Rizen continued, provides “excellent education” to the “mediocre” bulk of students, but the very able and the very weak lose out in the process. The evidence and arguments presented in earlier chapters indicate that adjustments have occurred to boost graduation rates. Whether these adjustments are moderately damaging, or worse, is a troubling point – Rizen suggests that focusing on the “emancipation” of the mass of mediocre students has been bought at a cost of underdeveloping higher education for the brightest. The trend towards greater participation is here to stay, and for as long as universities are required to maintain high retention rates questions about “dumbed down” degrees will continue to surface. Counterarguments that a little of something is better than nothing at all are hopelessly misguided. Samuel Johnson once unfavorably compared learning in Scotland to bread in a siege town. Everyone got a little, but none got enough to constitute a full meal. Anxieties about overeducation swing the debate around to the reflections of Martha Nussbaum and others mentioned in the opening chapters, but with no greater clarity about an optimal solution. A modern economy needs highly skilled graduates, but society also needs graduates with some cultivated sense of moral and cultural values. As long as policy entrepreneurs are wedded to prioritizing growth, it is hard to see how a balance can be struck. Poking through the ideological undergrowth are fears that policies licensing overeducation are a disguised form of social engineering.9 Encouraging more higher education, more credential collection, is from this perspective creating a class of experts increasingly in tune with the axial policies of government and industry regarding economic development. Higher education results in a passive hierarchy of graduates reliant upon a superficially benign corporatism for their daily bread. The more specialized
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the qualifications, the more dependent one becomes on the gears meshing with just enough tolerance to accommodate the extra layers of specialization. There is, of course, a distinction between higher education dictating opportunities and providing for them. Higher education along some dimension has always implied a form of social molding, but the current situation is effectively an enforcement of higher education on society. The institutions of command economies were once separated from those in Western democracies by the former’s participation in planned social adjustments to large sections of the population. Western institutions, on the other hand, especially those pursuing a liberal tradition, viewed sociopolitical adjustments as happenstance. Recourse to piecemeal improvement measures was preferable to dictated ones. With its power to dissolve and reshape human freedoms, the state was too strong an actor and therefore its influence needed taming. The idea that the state would engineer the good for potentially every citizen through specialized mass higher education marks not a difference in degree of involvement but a profound difference in the kind of involvement. A fear is that the state will always prefer that the end justify the means. Striking a balance between the good that is intrinsic to higher education versus the subtle propaganda abuses of that good that governments may avail of while promoting a social engineering agenda is a complex issue. One that is becoming weightier as overeducation becomes more visible. Current higher education policies are in danger of suggesting that those outside higher education, the uncredentialed, are disposable, a lesser quality of citizen. Many researchers have agreed that changes in the social dynamics within higher education would be an inevitable consequence of mass access to the point that it has become conventional wisdom.10 Criticizing mass higher education policies because they lead to overeducation may be something of a red herring. Academic focus on structured research programs and postgraduate formation risks overemphasizing formal codified forms of knowledge at the expense of respect for tacit knowledge that is often at the core of good judgment.11 Decreeing what knowledge is per se, is unlikely to decide the debate on overqualification and its merits for the knowledge society. A relevant side note is the estimation that the “half-life” of technical knowledge ranges from 2.5 years in the case of computer science to 7.5 years in the case of other technical disciplines.12 Assuming its validity, the rationale for some form of overeducation and continuing education (lifelong learning) seems not entirely amiss. In truth, with the emergence of the “multiversity” it is more difficult for the university to legitimatize its claim to authoritative knowledge. Continual interactions between satellites of the multiversity, individual academics, nonmarket institutions and commercial entities make claims for locating knowledge in a university seem rather empty. At the same time, universities request more resources to consolidate their identity. Yet, their identity is increasingly splintered and diffused among satellite research centers. This type of change
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Secrets – the Future of the Future University 213
brings about professional tensions and dilutes accountability. Brennan perspicaciously advises that higher education research spend more time addressing the tensions that arise in the interactions between “external demands and internal goal-setting.”13 Otherwise something, some important facets, of the daily life of the university may slip out of view. With the growing importance of market thinking, the internal professional and social dynamics of the universities are changing, and not subtly. Researchers, especially those more successful at generating revenue streams and consequently the most “sought after,” are contributing to a growing culture of individualism.14 A sense that successful academics are treating the university as a convenience, a place to hang their hats aside from the home office, is fostered by entrepreneurial policies – the price of encouraging researchers to take their research to market.15 Collegiality is in a state of steady decline, reduced to a quaint idea, but regarded perfidiously if it hinders research commercialization.16 It is difficult to avoid cynicism in the light of Glenys Patterson’s review of university mission statements and goal lists.17 In many instances, she concludes, these are mere window dressings, hung out to please major stakeholders. If the university executive is not taking the university role seriously, faculty is likely to follow suit. The much vaunted “accountability” of the sector was examined by Huisman and Currie in a study of four universities drawn from the Netherlands, France, the US and Norway. Among the attitudes they referenced was one tinged with traditional elitism: “some analysts think that governments and other stakeholders do not have the right to make academics formally accountable for their performance. To support their view most of these analysts refer to the concepts of academic freedom and professional autonomy.”18 Despite official demands for concrete measures of accountability to be implemented, the study found that staff had developed a measured cynicism towards compliance. Huisman and Currie concluded that universities were able to exploit the shift from traditional professional accountability measures of expenditure to more political forms of accountability. This step permitted them to engage in “window dressing” exercises (political accountability implying explicit deference to extra-university stakeholders, professional accountability referencing the internal academic core of the institution). Strong internal controls on teaching and research practices allowed universities to dilute the impact of accountability measures as it suited, since by its nature the government is a distant actor in the process. Other factors influencing lip service to accountability measures included a history of policy rhetoric, where governments talked about sanctions but shied away from their application, and in the European arena, a relatively new development of professional university management. Huisman and Currie intimate that university leaders may choose “soft” accountability measures to ensure their own high approval ratings with staff. There is little doubting that traditional attitudes among academics towards university autonomy makes the task of applying accountability measures more difficult than in commercial firms. However, if measures
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of accountability are not implemented transparently, governments, industry and the taxpayer will not pay much heed to the contributions of university managers in policy debates. The twin tendencies to privatize and commoditize higher education, particularly its research output, are often cited as examples of the dispossession of the historical knowledge Commons.19 Without any unease, the universities appear ever more complicit in sustaining a political vision that sets the accumulation of capital and economic growth above all other desirable ends. What separates transformation models one from the other is simply not the emphasis they place on education as a means, rather than education as an end. It is naïve to believe otherwise. The relationship between education and research is like that between a handle and brush-head. What matters to sweeping up is the brush-head, the range and quality of handle are less important. Again, confirming evidence is often inferential – such as grade inflation, plagiarism overlooked, and retention rates boosted by dropping examination standards – never so gauche as to haul a practice into immediate ridicule. An unavoidable conclusion from the studies of higher education trends presented throughout this work, is that the universities have been drawn, willing or not, into promoting the principle that human freedom can only be achieved in a market-focused neoliberal setting. This is a not a trivial judgment. Since the heyday of the Enlightenment an association between Freedom and Learning (especially among the “Learned”) has been absolutely fundamental to expressions of human fulfillment. Few, if any, current “models” of future higher education pay much attention to this aspiration, however.
New modes for new times: Mode 1 and Mode 2 research In a postmodern world, the promotion of scientific knowledge has been greeted with increased skepticism and suspicion. The loss of objectivity that once shadowed Big Science, as the latter became more entangled with commerce, plus the leakiness of peer review, has left the public wary of the motives of scientists, policy makers and educators. Accompanying these attitudes has been a gradual shift over the past 30 years in “knowledge production and distribution modes.” Michael Gibbons and his colleagues introduced the terms “Mode 1” and “Mode 2” as nominators for these alleged changing patterns of research. 20 Traditionally, Mode 1 enterprises organized the production and transmission of mainly scientific knowledge through hierarchical academic channels that promised homogeneity and control over the unfolding of research. For instance, a specific department was the center of expertise in a particular area enquiring into “first principles” and “basic science.” In addition, changing economic imperatives and the consumerism implicit in mass education threatened to topple conventional academic norms – legacy values. Applying the lens of history, Mode 1 (leaving aside its epistemological status as a “logic of discovery”) signifies the mindset that an
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audience listening to Gregory in 1921, as he extolled “the message of science,” would have readily recognized as the proper scientific attitude of the period.21 If Mode 1 research favored a stratified hierarchy of experts overseeing knowledge production, “Mode 2” emphasizes “transdisciplinary” interactions. Transdisciplinarity implies heterogeneity in collaboration and “boundary” fluidity between disciplines and within groups – possibly it can be taken as another cipher for disruptive technoscience.22 Transdisciplinary research, it is argued, is more than interdisciplinary, since the latter preserves boundaries, conserves identities, and merely passes packets of knowledge over existing fences. Knowledge distribution and production are networked and controls are less easy to impose in transdisciplinary modes. Participation by a range of nontraditional actors (largely nonuniversity interest groups – the diversity is vast, e.g. “think tanks,” industry specialists, advocacy groups, community associations) is increased. A kind of agile transience dominates the construction of new research groups. They come and go as problems emerge and are solved. New funding streams via the state and industry are cutting fast-moving channels through traditional subject boundaries. Gibbons and Nowotny relate Mode 2 to knowledge produced and desired in an application context. It is purposeful knowledge that is situated, pragmatically directed and socially useful – not remote from the market in simple words. The diversity of actors ensures multiple points of view, and enhanced reflexivity. It appears that Mode 2 knowledge differs from Mode 1 knowledge in that its validity rests on extrascientific criteria – Nowotny refers to “socially robust knowledge,” implying that reliable knowledge is grounded in wider “public” participation in knowledge production processes. Uncertainty about the impact of future science, what science has in store for the planet in other words, fuels public anxiety about notional accountability gaps. The rationale for participative breadth lies in the suspicion that Mode 1 science has not always been sufficiently mindful of the implications of its research. Endorsement by traditional Mode 1 science, therefore, is no longer sufficient for research projects to clear the hurdles of public suspicion and skepticism. The “engagement” of communities is a legitimate expectation of Mode 2 research practices. Put crudely, if Mode 1 is about the questions of Big Science, Mode 2 is about the realization of science in technology, applied science. As the old distinction between basic and applied research becomes more opaque in this new knowledge production context and as government increasingly demands more from a scientific crucible that may be transnational in complexion, the need for transformative management policies and professionalized tiers of R&D managers grows correspondingly. The issue is less about the absolute value of one mode over another and more one of acknowledging that a deal of knowledge emerges from outside the traditional scientific canon in the universities – examples being industrial laboratories, software companies, consultancy firms. The rise of the biosciences, such as
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bioinformatics, bioengineering and biopharmaceuticals, are relatively clear markers of patterns of Mode 2 knowledge production – whether they are evidence of a two-tier scientific system is an entirely different matter. Universities have witnessed a mushrooming of multidisciplinary “centers” that harvest the crops of several once separate disciplines. In many cases, centers function with access only to a virtual space. Traditional science curricula featuring biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics are being reconfigured to placate a viral fever for “reflexive” expressions of scientific knowledge in an information society. It is with these shifts in mind that Mode 2 can be interpreted as a symptom of change, a project for change, and if not quite a model for the future, certainly as evidence that transdisciplinary interactions have a significant role in the future evolution of institutions. Transdisciplinary trends are cited as positive examples of “comingling” and “coevolution,” associated with enervating entrepreneurship, innovation and technology transfer.23 Traditional fascinations with truth and objectivity, identified by Jasanoff as the “speaking truth to power” inheritance of academe, are being outmaneuvered by new Mode 2 fixations on the quality and reliability of research.24 By turns, this leads to a redefinition of research accountability, one tied to the context of the solution and admitting a wider audience of critics. Building on their earlier Mode 2 work, Nowotny and colleagues argue that it is no longer practical, meaning socially feasible, to conduct detached “blue sky” scientific research. With so many citizens better educated than ever before science that directs itself to a problem arising in a specific context will stand out as more robust, useful and valued.25 On the other hand, there is some doubt that Mode 1 ever existed in as pristine a state as Gibbons and colleagues have claimed. Working from a palette of historical examples, Pestre paints an alternative landscape, one in which Mode 1 science has always been close to economic imperatives and power.26 He argues that Gibbons and colleagues are mistaken in championing new modes of knowledge production as radically different from anything in the past. The inference Pestre draws is that Mode 2 has been extant for as long as historians have recorded science in action. He inquires into the patronage enjoyed by several science notables, noting that the commercial importance, cachet even, of their work to their patrons and political masters was both known and known to them. Additionally, he questions the political integrity of some of the theorizing. Pestre argues that approval of Mode 2 implies permissiveness, a recommendation of neoliberal economics at the expense of alternative systems and even alternative moral standards.27 What Pestre appears to have in mind here, though he does not articulate it as such, is that growth in applied science is increasingly coterminous with the expansion of science commodification. Therefore, endorsements of Mode 2 are not cost-free endorsements of new modes of producing knowledge. However, Pestre overlooks an undeniable fact that transdisciplinary research is a departure from traditional academic science practices. Its significance may be contested, but not its existence.
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Over the past 20 years, transdisciplinary research projects have seeped into diverse and traditionally disparate areas, such as art, business, video, computer studies, music, film, writing and so forth. The communication network provided by the Internet has proved a godsend for Mode 2 aspirations. But the expansion of information technology solutions to these areas of applied science and “culture work” is not driven entirely by disinterested curiosity. The mass appeal of sophisticated “cultural artifacts” is reflected in the enormous valuations placed on the relevant owner-developer corporations. For example, the growth of “consultancy” services in all areas from policy to business to baby “management” sometimes suggests a very low bottom drawer for Mode 2 standards. Significantly, Gibbons and Nowotny are at pains to argue that the new fluid knowledge distribution networks have made “experts” out of everyone. This results in a disconcerting overstatement of Mode 2 effects. There is even something subversive about this bald affirmation. Someone using the Internet to diagnose a condition in livestock and subsequently obtaining an effective treatment may plainly have been lucky that time. Access to information does not entail access to knowledge, as the information may be false. There is an overlap between information distribution and knowledge dissemination, but that does not license claims that access to that intersection confers expertise. A sentence can be understood irrespective of its truth or falsity, but by convention expertise entails a judgment about its status. Extending the yardstick further, there must be some doubt about Mode 2 “experts” ever becoming public intellectuals, rather than mere “arrogant bluffers.”28 There is an uneasy absence of careful delineation between calculated dissembling, information and knowledge in the Mode 2 framework. An irony is the “certainty” that Mode 1 is composed of hermetically enclosed enclaves, though it is doubtful if any process of continuous knowledge production can be so characterized – splintering and spillovers are bound to occur. The Achilles heel of Mode 2 science is the opposite. It approves a multitude of bounties at the risk of licensing a multitude of sins. By replacing standards of intradisciplinary truth and objectivity with quasi-elusive transdisciplinary standards of quality and reliability more avenues are opened up to plausibility norms, and the accelerated politicization of knowledge criteria.29 Just exactly what science is, what it is about, becomes itself uncertain. All that matters in Mode 2 is that enough people come together to agree the plausibility of what is reported – a strong version of the thesis that knowledge is socially constructed. Now if an aspect of this implicit social contract is that one researcher’s claims are connected in fluid but unambivalent ways to another researcher’s claims for the plausibility of her work, then a potential chain reaction of biases can be triggered. Some politically correct hand waving in the direction of quality control becomes enough to lift tawdry research above a socially consecrated bar. A follower of Kuhn, or Lakatos at a pinch, might argue that this is precisely how research is done, is “constructed.” But Mode 2
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is not a paradigm per se. It is an amalgam of borrowings from various disciplines, academe’s trousseau for the entrepreneurial university. Mode 2 practices dissolve paradigms in a cauldron of “best” practices, “reliable” knowledge, “reflexivity” and assorted extraacademic interests, including “market relevance.” At the same time, to accommodate the ambitions of a growing baggage train of stakeholders, a managerial reconfiguration occurs at the high table of administrative, governmental, industrial and entrepreneurial interests. How competing interests and ambitions are to be accommodated is something of a puzzle. More harm than good could be caused, in the long term, by definitional ambiguities about disciplinary boundaries, achievable goals and the roles of various interests. Continued funding of any R&D stream requires some measure of definitional consensus amongst the major stakeholders on these issues. Earnest exhortations by Gibbons and colleagues to improve the quality of communications at the “boundaries” between disciplines as a means of checking friction is of doubtful merit as usually all the actors “do not move in synchrony.”30 Once the epistemological authority of Mode 1 is taken off the decision makers’ table, the line between participation and interference becomes gradually more blurred.31 The central forecast of Mode 2 theorists is that as universities “modernize,” Mode 2 activities will become the primary research and “discovery” dynamic. Irrespective of any protestations to the contrary, as Mode 2 attracts more funding, Mode 1 activities will fall away over time. In mitigation, Nowotny submits that as the foundations of a subject become established, scientists will work around the foundations, exploring outwards to create novelty.32 From a policy perspective, this is an arresting feature of Mode 2 – transdisciplinary activities are transforming the identity of the university (on the grand assumption that an organization’s identity stems from what it does rather than what it believes it does). Retracing the Mode 2 framework, a cynic might arrive at a different starting point. He could counter that lack of employment opportunities in Mode 1 disciplines compels innovative research collaborations. Scarcity, the stock cube of economics, is what flavors innovative knowledge production still. The reason why graduates from diverse areas, from physics to philosophy, end up in other disciplines may be related to employment prospects rather than to any soulful reflexive modernizing proclivity. Industry is attracted to Mode 2 collaborations because it can obtain a free ride on the public goods production train. Furthermore, the rise of Mode 2 transdisciplinary research is unlikely to rest on either a supposed public uncertainty about science, public anxiety over the lack of reflexivity in academic research, or a drive for “engagement” among local advocacy groups. If anything these are consequences of Mode 2, rather than antecedents. By an intriguing coincidence, the expansion of cheap and powerful information technologies has accompanied transdisciplinary initiatives handon-keyboard, so to speak. Research into artificial intelligence (AI) from almost the earliest days saw Mode 1 types, physicists, mathematicians and engineers,
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working together. In the late 1970s in the US and from the 1980s in the EU, research programs in broad AI areas with access to cheap computing contained less of the usual suspects and more trained computer scientists, psychologists, linguists and management theorists. The methods of computer science, involving simulations and models, became familiar to a much wider circle of disciplines. Hybrid research programs and hybrid disciplines built on the accumulated computational heuristics, for example the extraordinary growth in “cognitive science,” a psychology–computer science tryst at heart. As information technology innovation was increasingly associated with economic growth, transdisciplinary projects were viewed benignly in the universities – additional funding for eradicating graduate “skills gaps” in ICT also must have played a role in shaping respectful attitudes. An understanding emerged that not all the answers were available within a single discipline or even within a single institution. Scientists might have to look outside their own specialty for help with problems. The superstring theorist could still theorize, but if a computer model was required other skills came on stage. Arguably, with this disciplinary distension also went a shift in standards. The computationalist is interested primarily in modeling or “engineering” a solution.33 If a program does not “work” first time, keep adjusting it until it does, even if this means adding something clumsy and theoretically inelegant to the code. This does imply that all code is produced like this, but the iterative cycle of design– code–test is standard practice. It is too early, and distant from present concerns, to conclude that in supporting transdisciplinary research ICT imported an epistemic relativism into academia that lies at the heart of Mode 2 commentary.34 However, the diminution in status of Mode 1 science highlighted by Gibbons and colleagues is also coincident with shifting interest in a priori standards (knowledge as justified true belief) to natural or actually used criteria for acquiring knowledge (for constructing knowledge) – “does it work rather than is it true” is a crass reductionist slogan but not entirely devoid of verisimilitude. Among the major criticisms that can be leveled at the Mode 2 framework, and which question its role as platform for the University of the Future, is the uncertain status of bias. There is always some bias, be it in the choice of research question, the hypotheses advanced, the methodology chosen, and even in the points of emphasis in a critique. These include biases towards truth, objectivity, replicability of results and measurements. “Cold” cognitive biases such as these can be contrasted with “hot” cognitive biases which smack of the motivational, ideological and plain emotional.35 Traditionally universities like to affirm, at least publicly, that their research is free from “hot” biases. Textbook science and, to a lesser extent now, narrative reconstructions of science, have tended to elide hot biases in favor of images of cool rational agency at work. Pristine Mode 1 material at first glance, it seems. There is no doubt that the cold cognitive portrayal of science is in error, peer review is not perfect, but it does not follow that
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scientific research with a greater dollop of hot cognitive bias added in would be better science. Put differently, hot biases need to be kept under control and pinned back against the ideal of the cold model. But this is precisely what the Mode 2 framework frowns upon. If faithful transdisciplinary research means bringing in actors outside the traditional scientific canon, how can hot biases be minimized, preferably avoided, particularly since Mode 1 as a role model is marked for extinction? It is difficult to avoid concluding that Mode 2 entails a permissive and potentially ruinous research “ethic,” one that would only strengthen public suspicion of science. Secondly, the control of Mode 2 research in practice seems to depend on the creation of a public space for discussion, the agora. Presumably, the intention is not to haul a city’s inhabitants into a public square to debate the merits of every grant proposal. Although not elaborated, something along the lines of a communicative consensus approach based on representative groups of actors and stakeholders seems consistent with Nowotny especially. It seems churlish to be against consensus but there are good reasons for not drinking too great a draught of it. Mill in On Liberty put forward three useful objections to being persuaded by appeals to consensus in general.36 First and foremost, humans err and a discordant opinion, a Jeremiah at the door, may be the right one. Secondly, when two opposing views are brought together, both may have elements of truth and falsity with them. Agreeing to promote only one view could lead to a loss of truth. Finally, if one theory is chosen by consensus as the correct theory, and assuming that the rejection of alternatives does not lead to a loss of truth, then the correct theory loses some epistemic authority by not having the opportunity to demonstrate its superiority over its erroneous challengers. These views are incompatible with Mode 2 practices (certainly with the later version presented in Nowotny), where consensual networks, the new modes, are critically important for the social validation of knowledge production. Picking a purely hypothetical example, if a Mode 1 piece of science should find itself in disagreement with a Mode 2 result, how is dissent to be handled? By favoring the majority Mode 2 framework with its fluid and reflexive “scientific” canon over minority Mode 1, there is greater scope for populism to oppress truth. It is not inevitable, but it exists. On occasion, as was noted in earlier chapters, universities have not been slow to protect the interests of industrial Mode 2 stakeholders in the face of Mode 1 academic science results. Likewise, academics in commercial transdisciplinary research have not always refused inducements or the offer of ghost authorship. Some ethical standard supervening on Mode 1 and Mode 2 is necessary. Extrapolating from Olson’s work on groups and decision making, an argument can be advanced that the more Mode 2 initiatives are directed towards private goods (rewards for its members), the greater the hostility to Mode 1 research because of its primary emphasis on public goods and its absorption of resources that could be better put to the private profit of Mode 2 teams.37
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The contribution of Mode 2 thinking lies in annotating research trends in higher education that are altering its complexion. Stating the obvious is an important exercise in itself, since with it the presumptions of tomorrow cannot pass unchallenged. Mode 2 theorizing is probably best understood as the equivalent of a text highlighter run across current activities in higher education. It is descriptive, not prescriptive. The arguable absence of a prescriptive dimension renders it of dubious value to policy makers. An exact specification of the role of higher education in Mode 2, as it evolves, is lacking, leaving an uneasy sectoral ambiguity in its stead. Adopting the language of Mode 1 and Mode 2 in an attempt to “sound serious” about change, is not the same as having a clear vision of what the academic world would be like postchange. Critically, the case for accepting a dualism between Mode 1 and Mode 2 is not supported by historical evidence. The least that can be said is that the thesis is overstated. At its most banal Mode 2 may be another means for categorizing mundane collaborative activities. As another modality in policy debates it rejects the inertial authority of the divide between traditional science and its consumer-sculpted expression in mass culture, yet leaves the status of science ambiguous and uncertain. As an abstraction too far, it is a faddish prism that refracts relatively predictable changes in funding requirements, commercial needs, mass education strains and societal anxieties about research. If it is not clear that Mode 2 is something important per se, talk of Mode 2 has none the less let in some light on the growth of transdisciplinary research, and the importance of society and the university coming to grips with it as a new space for knowledge, shared between each if not equally at least not less equally than before.38
The triple helix: the genetic future of higher education An additional problem in assessing various theories of the university as an innovation source is how best to separate normative from descriptive components. For instance, the study by Slaughter and Leslie (and Slaughter and Rhoades) on academic capitalism is largely descriptive with a few political judgments thrown into the mix. Work by Clark on the entrepreneurial university has followed a highly normative trajectory only to return to a phenomenological, more path-dependent one. Gibbons’ division of institutional identities into Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge production modes is both abstract and banal. Unavoidable simplifications in the characterization of the dynamics of both modes render them so general as to be trivial or so flawed as to be inapplicable to higher education. Becher and Trowler attempt to salvage Mode 2 from complete immersion in industrial imperatives by relating it to another model, one with a role for academics.39 Developed by Henry Etzkowitz and Loet Leydesdorff, this model, the triple helix, has been given a great deal of consideration in the literature because of its close association with North
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American innovation success stories.40 It recommends a highly normative reconfiguration of the university, involving scant tolerance of ambiguity and alignment with the needs and interests of industry and government. The triple helix, its ambitions and identity, recognized in “the growth of industrial conurbations around universities, supported by government research funding, has become the hallmark of an entrepreneurial region, exemplified by Silicon Valley’s electronics and semiconductor industry.”41 In a deferential allusion to the double helix of DNA fame, these three strands of activity interleave to produce a new productive dynamic, vitality for the future. It is, perhaps, not a surprise in an age that has granted unearned prominence to social Darwinism, that the metaphor for transformation should be not only profoundly sociobiological but also specialized to a genetic imaginary. Whereas Gibbons argues for science dissolving itself and the university following suit, the triple helix asserts a new institutional framework possessing reconstituted science – a science whose ties to economic imperatives confer on it an even more important role. Within this new network of relationships the university, while meeting its first and second missions of education and research, undertakes its “third mission” as a seat of entrepreneurialism and innovation. Most significant of all, is the triple helix expectation that each helix will become “the other” through a process of convergence of attitudes, ambitions and objectives. At some level convergence also implies an overlap of methods, objectives and managerial procedures. The symmetry between the triple helix model of “institutionalized” innovation and emerging industries would appear quite pronounced in certain domains. Following a comparison of biotechnology clustering in the US and UK, Cooke is struck by how “inter-woven” are the academic, industry and government actors.42 Relative to European firms, which derive much of their innovative drive from knowledge of their own supply chains and other sources, biotechnology-driven innovation is a remarkable contrast. The triple helix model has also been linked to Mode 2 knowledge production in so far as the latter is understood as applied science or research with a market focus.43 In both cases, forward-looking research is that which reaches an intimate and productive accommodation with commerce and industry. In an ideal triple helix, the boundaries between the knowledge producers, the government and industry would remain firm and complementary. The integration that occurs sometimes in practice blurs these divisions and treats the triple helix as an end in itself, rather than a means to scientific and technological innovation. One conception of the triple helix is as an ideal type, a perfect network of innovation with relevant actors.44 Again, several objections to the discontinuity thesis of the Mode 2 framework hold water here – triple helix arrangements have occurred historically. Describing the nineteenthcentury development of German research networks, Timothy Lenoir without the triple helix in mind, refers to significant university–industry and state
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collusions.45 The “mercantilist concerns” of state ministries were never far from the surface. Research independence and academic prestige, much valued throughout the first half of the century, increasingly came to be balanced against regional states’ interests in maintaining an economic stimulus. As the century wore on, especially in the last quarter, industry encountered a number of financial crises, several related to the search for more aniline dyes, and turned to university laboratories to meet their research needs – providing funding and materials in return for results. The linkages were approved and overseen by several scientific luminaries of the time, including Erlich whose own initiatives led to the creation of a model multidisciplinary biomedical research institute. Lenoir reports that while industry did not explicitly direct research, nonetheless sponsors got first refusal on all marketable patents. The triple helix may therefore be seen as a refinement of these policies, one that accords greater significance to infrastructural interrelationships and assigns commercial intentionality to all actors. Laxity along the policy–performance axis is disallowed. Technological change as the engine of economic growth, a quasi-ethereal concept outside economic models, is refashioned as innovation.46 However, it is also no longer an exogenous activity in the hands and minds of geniuses remote from formal commercial and societal frameworks. Instead, it is institutionalized in a sophisticated, but deliberately intended, codified system of productive creativity. Fittingly, in the age of genetic engineering, the cultivation of innovation is tended by a new breed of policy Sherpas less acquainted with the porterage of traditional products, more comfortable with creels of intellectual property, patents and license agreements. Just as the arrangements amongst the actors are presumed to be innovative, even the rhetoric has cast about for a flourish or two. Cooperation and competition between helices and firms are absorbed under a new rubric of “copetition” – on the surface a type of consensus capitalism that seems at odds with Schumpeterian principles. Not only can one have one’s cake and eat it but also the rivals’ recipes and equipment are seemingly up for consumption too. The new tribes of university–government– industry policy entrepreneurs strive to master mountains of intellectual property, the riches of academia, with the convenient funicular of technology transfer. The university is the entrepreneur in economic development. In the past, some entrepreneurs may have been produced within the university, but now the organization will itself do away with the inconvenience of personalizing entrepreneurial success and reorganize itself as an entrepreneurial organization – though in keeping with the biological motif, this should probably read “organism.” Etzkowitz characterizes the traditional entrepreneurial path as a case of laissez-faire triple helix. In this “old” laissez-faire framework that maintained separate interests and spheres of influence, individuals were expected to start, found and oversee the growth of companies. That model has become outmoded over the past 30 years due to increased global competition, the
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expanded role of government in overseeing higher education funding and the increasingly complex industrial resources required for product development. Within the new triple helix, the result of old models being reformed, traditional sureties about the linear path of economic growth slopes are cast down in favor of nonlinearity in research, “knowledge management” and product development. Systems of innovation, local, national and global, are presented as novel genetic variants of Russian dolls, sufficiently malleable for complex recombination. In fact, the true genius of the triple helix is its promotion of a recursive process of “innovation within innovation.” Not alone can there never be enough innovation, but neither can there be enough thought, effort and resources devoted to discovering new means and improving on old ways of facilitating innovation. A whole innovation industry, a metainnovation milieu, is spawned and legitimized once the heuristic of the triple helix is adopted. The triple helix innovation framework encourages government and industry to be reflexive about research, to discourse about the fundamental principles, aims and methods of the experts. It marks a significant shift in the public positioning of science. Disinterested science is replaced by the “capitalization of knowledge.” Interactions among the three “helices” are extensive, power-related and ultimately commercial. These include even some swapping of roles and subsumed cross-funding of research, researchers working in industry on academic style projects and vice versa, networking of problem solving and product development, especially as one firm or university spinout may not have the resources to develop a product from scratch, for example a new medicine or computer chip. Some have argued that the triple helix is an ideal model for national systems of innovation.47 The aims and objectives of “research” are distributable across a range of interests that can choose to exercise greater control over the realization of facets of the same activity. Conflicts between conventional identities and obligations, such as between teaching, research and entrepreneurship, are welcomed in the triple helix. Indeed, the conflicts are a key indicator that a potential transformation in triple helix relations is at hand, even that one is in the process of creating new interfaces. Social change that challenges existing norms rarely takes place without resistance. Typically there is at least a rearguard action to defend existing normative structures such as for example the notion of the university as an “ivory tower” far removed from the productive sector.48 Destruction of past attitudes, practices and values is therefore crucial for successful transformation. The University of the Future can only realize its potential by thrashing past conventions, ones that by their very existence in the past are suspect in the innovating present. Conflict is creative, good and to be sought out lest anyone doubt that appropriate “expectations and
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interactions” are not occurring. Strangely enough, “disputes” seem to be a subspecies of conflict related to property rights that can be pacified through committee meetings and discussions about ownership. Institutions should again welcome disputes as further evidence of change, and develop “methods” for resolving such using a variety of discursive techniques.49 The extent to which power relationships can shape these techniques and bend them towards the will of the more powerful is skated over. As was evidenced in earlier chapters, there have been many occasions when academics wished to dispute certain corporate-friendly research results, only to find themselves deprived of the right of audience. One cannot be overly confident that discussion alone will settle certain types of dispute, usually those with a commercial tang. In the shape-shifting landscape of the triple helix where one can become the other, much as in any piece of fiction, not all actors have equal powers. Where convergence occurs, or is argued to have occurred, it is much more likely that it will be asymmetrical, favoring industrial agendas, and replete with tensions and contradictions that make academic life uncomfortable for those on the fringes of the reorganized organization.50 One effect is that university executives avoid speaking against the panoply of triple helix imperatives entertained in contemporary science and technology policies. It is not an unexpected effect. If rewards accrue to universities that adopt a biddable and more proximate interface to industry stakeholders, it cannot be a wonder that a reflexive mapping, transference, of values and practices occurs between industry and academia. Where firms adopt academic practices, the likelihood is that they do so firstly selectively and secondly because they believe that competitive advantages follow on. In cases where “leading edge” research is required, it might be more difficult to exploit the human capital unless suitable transitional mappings between academia and industry are in place.51 The allegiance of the university to the current political order (whatever that might be) is implied in the principle that the new helical university is to underpin innovation by putting “knowledge to use,” be it through local, regional or even global development initiatives. Once the university is reconceptualized as a firm this is a logical outcome.52 Historically, the university has always played second fiddle to industry and government, but not any longer. The new knowledge-based economy requires that it be raised to an “equivalent status” with these other actors.53 No one strand of the triple helix has a monopoly on innovation it seems. New organizational, social and financial relationships among the networked helices will generate new innovations. Apprehending an innovation as an epiphenomenon separate from some planned and sanctioned network initiative is almost inconceivable. An inevitable consequence of the helices “pulling together” is the diminished likelihood of incidental discoveries. Creativity, in some bastard form, is plumbed into the institutionalized
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innovation centers. A persistent bias in the model is a tendency to associate “new” ideas with innovations that somewhere down the track of history work their way into products and economic growth. Now this bias is either so general as to be irrelevant, since it does not discriminate between good and bad ideas, or else so narrow as to exclude any idea that cannot be played out on some commercial stage – judged only by market criteria. To embrace the triple helix model is to accept that innovation can be systematized, at least within the boundaries of the three helices, and this is by no means guaranteed when the history of technological breakthroughs is consulted. A recent study by Meyer of the utilization of academic patents in Finland, either through collaborations with large firms or through university spinouts, uncovered wide differences among universities, prompting the question: was entrepreneurial drive “genuine” or a “necessity” forced due to “lack of industrial demand”?54 Noting that the level of spinouts is relatively “modest,” Meyer opines that such discrepancies call into doubt triple helix assumptions that universities can be drivers of regional innovation. For small countries, he questions whether the pursuit of regional innovation clusters is a viable aim. Regarding the political implications of the triple helix, at least two interrelated questions are suggested. Firstly, is the triple helix anti-individualist? Part of the mission of the triple helix, as an organized collective, is the identification of innovation gaps and the impression of some kind of cognitively textured gap filler at an organizational level. None of this seems remotely in sympathy with the occasion of maverick genius. Rather, the failure of mavericks to conform to expectations by failing to complete the academic cycle puts them at odds with organized innovation. Secondly, what does the bureaucratization of innovation mean for individual academics and inter alia society? This perhaps is the bigger question, since it implies taking into joint corporate–state ownership huge swathes of human creativity, codifying them and sorting them into categories of innovative utility. Obtaining definitive answers, or at least ones that minimize ambiguity, is made more difficult by the somewhat conflicted desires of Etzkowitz and Leyesdorff to knit almost every aspect of the conventional university mission into its institutionalized innovative identity. For example, the university in the triple helix retains its core mission of preserving and transmitting knowledge, and socializing the young.55 Curiously, the government sets the “societal rules of the game,” while industry is the locus of “productive activities.” It is not immediately certain that tensions between these three actors will be automatically creative. Ostensibly, the promotion of academic agendas unconnected with or even antipathical to economic and commercial objectives may be entirely destructive, impelling the state to impose “order” through some form of financial coercion. Even when Etzkowitz toys with the notion of adding the “public” as a “fourth helix,” it is only to dismiss the prospect as likely to cause more confusion. Yet, paradoxically, in almost the
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same breath it is asserted that the “basis” for the triple helix is the public’s ability to organize freely and discourse independently of state priorities. Effectively, the University of the Future in the triple helix can be whatever one wants it to be as long as there is sufficient “paper” to show an organization amicably disposed to government and industry objectives.56 It can be both “functionally specific” by following its traditional mission and differentiated along new innovative dimensions. One can speculate that as the other actors push and shove against this malleable ideas engine, especially in the cases of publicly funded institutions, identity dissolution is inevitable. A university becomes all things to all people, and causes the least amount of offence to the most important stakeholders, particularly the sponsors of commercially focused research.57 The mission of the new institution is reflected back onto it through the agendas of the two other helices. Since governments in the West are unlikely to promote policies inimical to industry, the strategic direction favored by the university will be increasingly influenced by industrial planning policies. In essence, the triple helix only comes together through the creation of crucibles that fuse the interests of the various actors, such as the “innovation center” and the science-technology park with its complement of business “incubators.”58 A true piece of alchemy. A slightly diverse insight into triple helix thinking in practice is provided by a largely student-led global initiative to educate society about science.59 The aims of this work, disseminated in workshops and a periodical, include informing students about the dynamic relationships between science, industry and society. Enterprise and innovation are recurrent themes. Perhaps more pertinently than anticipated, the organization self-consciously draws attention to its membership (relatively narrow at 800) among the “most prestigious universities.” At this level of triple helix innovation the whole framework reduces to something approaching consciousness-raising, another example of policy proselytizing via the Internet. In a similar vein, though with a more professional audience in mind, another triple helix inspired multidisciplinary group is engaged in promoting innovation and the “leveraging” of technologies discovered in academia to create innovative products.60 Again the emphasis is on communicating the aims and objectives of the triple helix model. Both the theory and its popularizations on the Internet suffer from a similar deficit, namely, the confusion of inputs with outputs. Logically, the triple helix is the outcome of organizational (re)configuration. Research is an output from, say, a university laboratory but may be used as an input to some transformative innovation. However, the triple helix cannot be input to anything, at least it is not meaningful to talk about the triple helix in this way no more than it is meaningful to talk about a health service as an input to patient care. The triple helix is simply a terminological device to enable talk about contemporary shifting relationships between different societal actors that have an interest in exploiting research. That economic growth may arise is
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not necessarily the result of organized innovation as opposed to spontaneous entrepreneurship, i.e. the element of luck. Kivinen and Varelius in their study of BioCity, a Finnish biotechnology center initiative based on a government policy that embraced the triple helix, point to a gap between the rhetoric of “Silicon Valley” science-industry park aspirations and commercially useful R&D yield.61 BioCity is situated in Turku among a cluster of food and pharmaceutical companies. In theory, it is an ideal location to exploit spillovers from the commercial actors. At the time of the study, the food industry was uninterested in, even skeptical about, the promise of biotechnology. Interactions with local pharmaceutical industries had mixed outcomes. Most were committed to exploiting foreign licenses with minimal investment in R&D activities, and all were mindful that time to market was in reality a long time, and not something that could be easily fixed by government policy. Within BioCity collaborations were often frustrated by competition for funding and students, compounded by an “inflexible” university bureaucracy. The least problematic areas, revealingly, were funding for basic research and new bioenterprises largely as a result of the active policy role of the state. However, the lack of collaborative cohesion between academic groups, groups and enterprises and enterprises with enterprises implied that the dynamics presumed in Silicon Valley (and presumed by the triple helix) were not active. The infrastructure may be in place but the overall enterprise may still not deliver. If “innovating” is an activity, it seems reasonable to accept that like any other economic activity, the supply and demand side will vary across and within countries. Hence fitting out each university equally to meet the “innovation demand” may lead to unnecessary waste. On this point, a study of European regional innovation systems sympathetic to the triple helix reported wide variations in success, which is to be expected, but noted that regions with the greatest measure of “success” were those that also happened to attract the greatest level of public funds for innovation.62 At a time when industry expenditure on R&D is weak, confidence in matching industry funds arriving anytime soon may be misplaced. Another explanation is that corporations are only keen on involvement with the universities insofar as they can exploit the results with minimum cost and risk to themselves. It is far from certain that corporations are willing to support academic research that might give rise to an independent competitor. Within the triple helix industry–university collaboration could become as much about the control of competitive innovation as its exploitation. Furthermore, Etzkowitz’s faith in the mobility of people among the spheres is questionable. Societies with historically low levels of risk taking relative to high levels of public service employment are less likely to have movement out of secure tenured academic employment into industry. There is no necessarily causal relationship between the number of “innovation centers” in the thirdlevel sector and the amount of innovation (if such a measure makes sense) being produced in the economy. Academics are notoriously preoccupied with
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academic measures of success and may not understand, or be willing to understand, that the agenda of a company turning to them for innovation assistance is very different from theirs. The more funding made available to the academic sphere, paradoxically the less likely it is to significantly affect innovation in the industrial sphere.63 A lesser impact on economic growth and employment than presumed occurs. Preventing one strand of the helix becoming so sluggish as to weaken the growth of the others, is largely unaddressed. In practice, not all conflicts between the helices will generate desired outcomes. Historically, governments have been either partially absent or have played weak supporting roles in establishing and sustaining regional innovation initiatives.64 For sustainable innovation to occur, much depends on the willingness of the state to compel the university to be more like a private firm. A central requirement here entails a reduction in tenure, since in contrast the terms and conditions of employment in industry are directly tied to its economic fortunes. An additional concern about the triple helix, and academic capitalism more broadly, is that those academic actors that develop an “inside track” in the maze of helical relations may profit unfairly and disproportionally compared to other colleagues. The likely emergence of elites (notionally on a par with Huxley’s Alpha groups in Brave New World) has the capacity to fracture and destabilize the inner dynamic of a university.65 In theory the triple helix is constituted to improve collaboration and coordination across interest groups. On the assumption that knowledge is inherently politicized within the type of corporatism implied by the triple helix, it would be easier to coordinate the exclusion of opinions and research trends that run counter to the ambitions and ethos of the prevailing research elite. There is some evidence that at the moment in technology transfer, all actors have settled upon a “blurring of boundaries,” and if ambiguity brings anything to policy it certainly is not clarity about ethical responsibilities.66 Once again the question of how far down the corporate path the university is willing to go is primarily, and quintessentially, a moral question. Within an academic milieu aligned to the triple helix, and where vestiges of feudalism still reign self-evidently, arranging a effective means to reverse this trend appears the counsel of desperation – regrettably.
Reciprocity in neoliberal liturgy Even within a policy arena where specific national data are laid side by side with government imperatives, it may be impossible to impose one model across an entire system. Well-established institutions, “confident” with their identity, may be less susceptible to pronounced neoliberal models. Less surefooted institutions may rush blindly at the most normative model available, partly to curry official favor, but also to save time spent on that all-important activity – thinking. Countries with a long history of state direction in matters
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educational, such as Ireland, have rushed their universities towards normative neoliberal aspirations with noticeable haste. The liturgy of neoliberalism thunders unhindered in their corridors, jangling its jargon of management, the market, league tables, learning outcomes, and student access rates. In the universities, the drive for innovation with a commercial spillover has yet to be matched by results (it was noted earlier how the Irish government rewarded UCD and TCD for their achievements). Each year sees more research results and greater quantities of research papers in circulation. The abundance of available research raises questions about why this embarrassment of riches is not producing shoals of new products. As was noted in the beginning of this work, there are enormous regional variations in patenting, exploitation of research and business investment in R&D. The unevenness persists in Europe despite networks of researchers, increased interinstitutional cooperation and transnational collaborative academic programs. Europe has had a policy on the knowledge economy for more than a generation, pursued through various collaborative research programs, national enterprise agencies and curricular changes. Science and technology parks, campus business incubator units, innovation partnerships, business mentoring, and a host of other supports continue to be supplied in the expectations of greater returns than in the past. If the rhetoric of innovation were matched by commercial deliverables, Europe in particular would be a technology furnace, a Promethean workshop for the world. North American higher education success and failures in the field of innovation, if not quite studied to death, have received enormous attention because of its universities’ reference model status. There is little point in recapitulating the lessons and insights scattered throughout the earlier parts of this text. Instead, this is a moment to consider, within a European context, reflections of a thoughtful witness to American innovation, Hans Weiler.67 Once a Stanford University Professor of Education, in 1993 he was appointed president of Viadrina European University in Frankfurt/Oder. In 1965 as a young assistant professor he found himself carrying a letter of appointment from Fredrick Terman, the provost of Stanford University. Within a few years Terman together with the founders of Hewlett-Packard would oversee the development of what was then Stanford Industrial Park, but would become known worldwide as Silicon Valley – this at least is the standard historical fare. In assessing the successes (and failures) of Silicon Valley, Weiler agrees with the consensus that spatial proximity between the higher education institution and “high tech” companies was a necessity. However, he goes on to argue that without a shared culture of “traits” between the university and the corporation milieus proximity alone would have been insufficient to guarantee success. Proximity and affinity are required for a fruitful symbiotic relationship. Weiler draws out six features from various reviews of Silicon Valley that contributed to its success. These include (a) programs of continuing education for scientists and engineering, (b) university donation of land banks,
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(c) tight coupling between the start-up technology and initial company staffing, both coming from Stanford, (d) growth in licensing and patenting providing income to university and crossover opportunities for academic staff, (e) development of hybrid institutional bodies promoting and overseeing university–industry linkages, (f) consent to scientists and engineers having dual roles as academic and corporate executives. The conclusions converge on Brown and Duguid’s judgment that the glue that binds innovation factors together is a shared cultural reciprocity between the university and the (proximate) corporate bodies.68 Additionally Weiler alludes to mores specific to the Silicon Valley environment, such as tolerance of entrepreneurial failure, willingness to embrace risk, strong commitment to change and experimentation, reinvestment of profits, and finally, recognition of success and achievement.69 As a result of this cultural resonance the “divide” between the corporate sector and the academic sector is not as wide as in other locations in the US where high-tech clusters have a different developmental history. Equally at home here are Saxenian’s praise for the Valley’s openness of communication, the free sharing of ideas and the light bureaucratic obligations of high technology enterprises.70 Compared to their European counterparts, Weiler claims that American universities, especially the established ones, are more willing to embrace risk, less troubled by possible undue donor influence, possess more defined “professional schools” (such as Business), are more differentiated and selective vis-à-vis student intake, have possessed leaders with a particular gift for developing university–corporate linkages, encourage critical reflexive discourse about new developments and technologies, encourage foreign graduates to enter postgraduate courses, and increasingly incorporate ICT into their own daily activities. An illuminating contrast to this “orthodox” view is offered in a recollection by Gordon Moore, cofounder of Intel and a contemporary of Weiler. The narrative of Silicon Valley has been affected by “timeline distortion” and the favoring of creation “myths” favoring one contingency over another according to Moore. He is wary of the twin tendencies to use “snapshots” of Silicon Valley as the basis for constructing causal explanation of events and supporting architectures for future technology success. Moore stresses that he is retelling his own experiences at Fairchild Semiconductor and later at Intel, and does not suggest that these hold for all Silicon Valley spinouts. It is striking nonetheless, that he does not accord significance to “university advocacy” consonant with innovation theorizing or policy rhetoric. Instead, he declares that for all its current importance as a participating member of the Silicon Valley economic community, we do not hold Stanford University to have been essential to the formation of Silicon Valley … the defining characteristics of Silicon Valley business modes and models, and the sustained, rapid
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Instead, he emphasizes the relative uniqueness of their technology and the “profound technological opportunity” that was there for commercial exploitation. With respect to duplicating success, Moore argues that clusters of small start-ups, as envisioned in many technology parks, will miss a key feature of Silicon Valley dynamics, viz. the presence of a mix of large and small firms. The capacity of a large firm in a new technology to generate more ideas and technology opportunities than it can exploit puts small start-ups in a highly favorable position. It is not because of any munificent collaboration that the interlopers prosper, but because the large firms, who would like to “squelch” them, cannot. At the heart of the innovation dynamic are the old Schumpeterian notions of conflict and disruption. It is moot whether these are adequately captured in current higher education commercialization policies. If Weiler’s assumed symbiosis was outside of Moore’s experience, the existence of a real cultural reciprocity, as opposed to something conjured up by policy theorists or one reversed into the data, was acknowledged in a briefing to European journalists in 1984 given by Ken Olsen, founder of the once legendary Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC).72 Amidst his recollections of his days in MIT, Olsen pronounced that he was so impressed with the MIT “operations manual” that he adopted it for DEC, stating, “there was an attitude and an environment at MIT that we wanted to duplicate.” Olsen’s successful transfer of organizational knowledge present in MIT to his computer corporation brings to mind Japanese industrial success, where again the emphasis was on discovering and distributing organizational knowledge (not between university and company, more intercompany in the Japanese case). In each instance, success is predicated on the application of a success formula, which begs the question: why are there not more successes if the formula is available to so many? Can Europe reproduce this type of system, which Weiler (following Brown and Duguid) describes as a “knowledge ecosystem,” a situationspecific ecology? Weiler is skeptical of any such outcome in the immediate future. He points not merely to cultural diversity across European nations, but to a general aversion in European higher education to risk, low toleration of failure, reluctance to embrace “face to face” corporate collaboration, partly resulting from underdeveloped professional schools and restrictive practices in overseas postgraduate recruitment.73 At first glance, Weiler’s comparative analysis is persuasive. Europe in most instances historically could not create the cultural reciprocity of Silicon Valley type clusters or with notable exceptions DEC-style duplications of organizational knowledge. The nature of European debates over biotechnological developments provides one example of the fractious politics surrounding university–industry collaboration.74 Hypothetically, European higher education
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technology-based growth were neither started nor made fundamentally possible through the presence of this university.71
must undergo a radical reconfiguration to produce commercial spinouts. For at least two reasons a caveat must be entered here in order not to conflate Weiler’s analysis with a prescription. In the first place, the complementarities between Silicon Valley firms and Stanford University were specific to that environment of academic, social and economic networks. The oft-cited grandfathers of Silicon Valley, David Packard and William Hewlett, actually began operations in 1939, in a Palo Alto garage. The onset of war saw a surge in interest in electronics, and the placing of the nuclear program in the vicinity of Los Alamos in northern New Mexico drew in academics from California. The preconditions therefore for advanced electronic research were already established for a generation before the spurt of growth that signaled the start of the maturation of Silicon Valley in the 1960s. Despite the emergence of Dutch, German and Italian electronics and “white goods” firms, post-WWII Europe had little cultural reciprocity to build upon. The slow development of the early Common Market is not comparable to the consolidation of federalism in the US. Even within the US great unevenness has followed attempts to recreate Silicon Valley in other locations.75 In the second instance, European universities and research institutes have interacted and collaborated with corporations, must noticeably during WWII and most notoriously in the development of science-led industrialization under the Nazis. A study of R&D among corporations in Britain prior to the 1970s revealed a surprisingly healthy state of play. During the interwar years, many industrial R&D laboratories managed to integrate themselves into networks of international excellence.76 Undoubtedly, European states have allowed opportunities to slip through their fingers, but that does not entail that they are condemned to drink soup with a comb.77 Perhaps more unsettlingly, Weiler fails to appreciate that entrepreneurialism may be too big a risk to European universities, threatening subversion of hard-earned profiles. The aspiration to convergence signaled under the Bologna process could be wounded fatally if a completely feral entrepreneurialism is encouraged. A risk, intrinsic to entrepreneurialism, is always the loss of capital. In higher education, this is an obvious risk, but smaller in scale than the risk of cultural collapse, the erosion of a familiar face in the public sphere. The erosion of truth telling to the public has occurred several damaging times in the commercial sphere of the biosciences. Deciding which “bit” of the university to put at risk carries profound reputational implications. The less financial risk carried by the entrepreneurs, the more reckless they may be with public risk, the taxpayer or whoever else that sponsors their work. Each time an agency funds research, the agency assumes a financial risk, whereas the researcher assumes scholarly or “social capital” risk. Failure to respect risk is an encouragement to be reckless. Upon reflection it seems trite indeed to protest that reputational risk should be of strategic concern to institutions engaged in the knowledge
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economy, pushing the agenda of virtual campuses, and recruiting students and faculty from across the globe.78 Once an institution’s standing is damaged, however, relationships based on trust and other aspects of social capital, which have been accumulated over time, are seriously wounded. Loss of standing as a trustworthy authority may entail loss of funding and investment (or else attracts the type of funding that seeks only to “rubber stamp” extant policies and research). A recent disagreement over the results of a policy study on a proposed biometric identity card scheme in the UK provides a window on how “reputation risk” can unfold in public. Whitley and colleagues, at the behest of the UK government, analyzed the policy implications of a national identity card proposal, including costs that various government departments would incur.79 Their engagement through the London School of Economics was entirely consistent with government policy that expected informational, social and political theorists to contribute to policy debate and formation. Relations with the government soured abruptly once the group’s conclusions questioned the premises, methodology and financial costing of the scheme. An aggravating factor was the emergence of the results in the public sphere, and their immediate adoption by a particular chorus of public opinion. The integrity of certain researchers was not only questioned in the media, but even on the floor of the House of Commons. If this is the result of an academically responsible disagreement with government policy, an alarm sounds as to the preparedness of institutions less mature than the LSE, those with more meager heritages, to withstand government criticism. To expect the universities to produce renaissance male and female graduates in this climate and resist a move, say, to progressively greater digital teaching, is simply to adopt a fantasy in the face of coarser realities. Interviews with three European corporate CEOs suggest that European business and universities are aware of demands for labor mobility changes and a greater need for sectoral intersection to boost innovation. The CEOs were asked how they would define a “high potential,” interpreted as a leading researcher with commercial acumen that would prove a substantial talent in a company. Their responses emphasized that universities have responsibility for exposing the students to broad multidisciplinary courses. Larger companies could set up small subsidiaries to permit experiment and innovation. However, the “three CEOS stress that freedom to experiment and academic freedom should not be confused with free rides on hobby horses.”80 Universities need to change their “mind-set” and academics must “leave their private kingdoms.” From now on, the university will be in “the service of society.” If the universities of the European Research Area thought they were doing a good job, they were in for a jolt. The combined judgment of the CEOs was that universities do not grasp that the crucial point is the transfer of knowledge into innovation (valorization). What we actually see today is an overproduction of just knowledge.
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A lot of research articles consist to a large extent of reproduction of what other people have said before and offer only a few new insights. Instead, research should focus on the creation of applications and transformation of knowledge – maybe by combining knowledge – into solutions.81
the selection of priorities in the research areas should be jointly decided with business and industry. On the other hand, the way in which research is conducted is the decision of the researcher or the research group, even when funded by business or industry. In some research areas, cooperation with business or industry is undesirable. For instance, research into cost efficiency or comparing effectiveness of various medical treatments can best be done completely independently, funded by the government.83 If in doubt, the safest strategy is to have the government foot the bill. The biopharmaceutical industry’s volatile attachment to research neutrality in clinical trials was acknowledged earlier. Without any hint of irony the author/interviewer notes, the scenario constructed by the three CEOs contains many interesting and attractive elements that are relevant for identifying new roles and new ways of functioning of higher education. The scenario raises two key questions that deserve more attention. First, what is the future for the classical university? Second, will high potentials actually develop the lifestyle that is envisioned by the CEOs?84 In this scenario, any lingering fondness for curiosity-driven research could be deemed reactionary, obstructing change. Caricaturing the response is too easy and unhelpful. The views could equally have arisen in the US.85 What comes across from the reported interviews is a risk-averse, conservative corporate culture, less interested in sharing and more focused on receiving. It is the antithesis of the Stanford model examined by both
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Too much replication of courses and research is obstructing differentiation between universities and impeding the development of selective networks of specialties. Employees in the global economy must be prepared for a work–life balance of lifelong learning. Leadership, predictably, is the key to effective change. Accordingly, the CEOs recommend, “new leadership invests in the process of change with patience and trust and formulates and communicates a clear vision and direction, inviting people to make a clear choice for the new direction of the university or otherwise leave.”82 Images of heavily laden hobbyhorses galloping off campus spring into mind. On the theme of university–industry collaboration, the CEOs opine,
Brown and Duguid. Although to some extent anecdotal, both Weiler’s reflections and the European CEOs’ opinions about the universities and innovation are almost polar opposites. They offer a glimpse into the distance that Europe has to travel collectively to reach even the minimum standard of innovative success set by Silicon Valley. Moreover, they underline the reality of networks of triple helix influence. Whatever the “University of the Past” was about, the University of the Future will be about something very different. Europe’s emphasis on lifelong learning, knowledge economy development and intensive advanced research has as its goal a “renaissance of the university.”86 Proponents and opponents may disagree on means and ends, motivations for change may be subject to dispute, but there is an acceptance on all sides that some type of reconstruction of the university is in play. The main point of contention, in the larger debate, concerns the public role of the university, and whether it is being strengthened to the benefit of society or weakened to its detriment. Implicit in the Humboldtian model is the idea that the interests of academia and those of the state converge. Disinterested research and self-reflection directed towards personal fulfillment were the dual poles of academic harmony. The relationship between a tolerant state guaranteeing university autonomy and an academe committed to disinterested research guaranteed the highest standards of integrity and research scruple. Not all agree with such idealizations. Regarding the German university system, Nybom argues that its deliberate studied distance from the state disengaged its critical capacities and contributed to the rise of extremist politics.87 The mandated centrality of the university system to the revival and consolidation of specifically “German” culture made the universities both blacksmith and anvil for government policies.88 Fuller sums up contemporary opposing viewpoints on the future of the university as divided between those that hold the university as an impossible, sometimes insidious, ideal that never was and those that consider it archaic and outmoded. Both views he rejects as pessimistic, opting to reflate the university as a manufacturer of universal knowledge.89 Universalizable knowledge he treats as a public good, one that the state underwrites, brought into being through the creative destruction (Schumpeter) of social capital. Apart from researchers having to surrender part of their interest in whatever they produce, the destructive component of the process is unclear. In an interesting twist on current policy priorities, Fuller locates teaching at the heart of the innovative mission of the university because it can eliminate ignorance, remove the grounds for unjustified bias and help build new social capital. A liberal arts curriculum separate from professional training regimes, he deems essential to this process. This is again though a reworking of the Humboldtian ideal with greater emphasis on democratic accountability and deliberation. It seems that almost all initiatives seeking to conjoin science and the liberal arts lead back at least to Kant and swing around to Habermas. Thus, it is easy to find differing positions on the public role of the university – descriptive versus
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in a very real sense the institutions and practices of the collegial university are becoming “hollowed out.” In other words, while the vestiges of the traditional system of university governance and management may remain in place – with the privileged place they give the academic community in decision making and leadership – their real influence on how the university evolves is eroded and that of a more professionalised and permanent management stratum increases. Frequently the by now increasingly symbolic institutions of the collegial university are required to do no more than endorse changes initiated elsewhere and can only fall back on strategies of resistance when change is not to their liking. Power shifts away from academically constructed and defined hierarchies to managerially defined ones.90 They call for a “rethinking” of the university to revive collegiality and restore faculty commitment to the best of academic practices. It is a call not to arms but for a renewal of faith. All of this is sterling stuff but contemporary higher education policy cloaks the sharper reality of state economic imperatives. A UK study by Pilbeam suggested that variations in disciplinary revenue-earning potential produced collegial tension rather than harmony.91 In her study of academic commercialization in US institutions, Jennifer Washburn recorded faculty opinions that collegiality was being replaced by a culture of secrecy designed to protect potentially profitable discoveries.92 These views find an echo in a report by Irish Times journalist Louise Holden on the changes wrought in Trinity College, Dublin.93 Having interviewed both the provost and other faculty, she notes that critics of the changes concluded that collegiality had been undermined in the process. If collegiality is valued in only casual and even cynical ways, the likelihood that the university will respond to the anxieties of faculty, let alone grasp its responsibility to serve the Common Good, seems optimistic.
The unconscious university … finally So far the idea of a university and its relationship to the wider civic society has been perused from administrative, disciplinary, economic, philosophical and
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normative, collaborative versus subversive, conservative versus radical. Perhaps the question is not whether a consensus can be achieved, but what would count as falling outside a consensus? With plurality and factionalism in abundance, any situating of the university within a public role as a contributor to the Common Good is bound to attract disagreement and sharp political critique. For example, Harloe and Perry are concerned that the university is being progressively delegitimated and “hollowed out” by the very managerial bureaucracies that have arisen to serve academic entrepreneurialism. They conclude that
even political perspectives. These are often highly agitated perspectives depending on who owns the higher ground and who is battling to (re)possess it. Of all the points of view under consideration, rarely is the actual human one, the one that embraces the psychological presence of the university as a group of minds, given due weight. Arguably it is this dimension, which may be called the unconscious university, that has most to offer in both understanding and resolving several, though not all, of the tensions encountered throughout this work.94 Assumptions and expectations that current commercialization policies will autoreverse are impractical. Partly this is because what would count as empirical evidence of failure is vague. The global political weight behind current initiatives has subtly turned questions about the saliency of evidence into questions about the saliency of policy. And if the policy aspirations are bold enough reasons can always be found for mitigating the absence or thinness of empirical evidence. Critics of change and transformation in many instances reflect a fear that higher education institutions are experiencing an “emotional blindness” to their concerns. Enough is known about leadership challenges and contemporary organizations to conclude that change and transformation are more present now than at any time in the past. Daniel Bell’s forecast of the transformational impact of information technology was prescient in these respects. In the “runaway” world described by Anthony Giddens, the idea of runaway universities is not that far-fetched. Likewise, the contiguous concern is how to judge when to put a foot on the brake. The radical organizational transformation that technology has wrought in the last 20 years has come at the price of stability. Equally, it should be clear from the early chapters that globalization and the attendant focus on competition have increased pressure on faculty in all institutions. Changes in the expectations of the stakeholders external to higher education are doubtful occurrences in the light of current global policy trends. University executives are unlikely to reject commercial and economic imperatives emanating from government circles. Certainly, it is difficult to imagine publicly funded institutions resisting such requests. Therefore, the question that arises is whether anything can be done to shore up academic and public faith in transformed higher education. There can be little doubt that as higher education accelerates commercial academic trends, its capacity to be independent, neutral and objective is greatly diminished. Its status as an objective “expert” on the side of the Common Good is undermined. There is sufficient evidence of official deference to corporate sponsors and commercial agendas to state this point forcefully. It is fitting that in a postindustrial university, the University of the Future, a refocusing on the “mind,” the raw material of the innovation age should occur. The rise of the multiversity with the identity diffusion of the “old” university has brought with it an anxiety for the future. In the case of Clark’s
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entrepreneurial university and Etzkowitz’s triple helix, traditional “central” activities such as teaching have been pushed to the periphery and once “peripheral” activities, such as research commercialization, have been brought into the center. The once marginal has become most important. Within this culture of change and shape-shifting the future of the university appears unclear. For those faculties not being heaved into the center, the direction in which change will take the university is not clear. If anything, as the university embraces more dispersed ambitions, its identity is in a state of continuous negotiation with a range of diverse interests – student consumers, competing institutions, funding sources, governmental agencies, and so forth. The traditional university of Newman and Humboldt can no longer be relied upon to contain the mission of the new University of the Future. Coupling uncertainty about the future with a process of continuous change forces university executives and policy entrepreneurs to devise new narratives, new stories with implicit happy endings, to reassure wavering faculty. As more compliance with change is demanded of faculty, more transdisciplinary networks (Mode 2) are arising to facilitate innovation objectives. Consequently, researchers in transdisciplinary teams are required to exercise more autonomy and authority over themselves than foreseen a generation past, draining off a good deal of feudalism in the process. But as more individual academics are required to accept more personal authority, assuming “success” in the transformed institution is predicated on this act, the role of traditional authority becomes opaque. The new personal authority is derived not from traditional respect for academic freedom, but from embracing the new commercial objectives of higher education. As not everyone is equally gifted with sufficient psychological resources to manage their new status equally, a university in a state of transformation is bound to be a place of anxiety. Within such contexts some measure of ambivalence will be found among faculty towards “new” policies. The success enjoyed by one discipline in raising funds may be felt at the expense of another discipline. If “money” becomes the key measure of success, understandably, the less “successful” will become anxious about their future existence. In catering for mass access to higher education, the phenomena of grade inflation, e-learning and curriculum “dumbing down” have resulted in faculty reducing their psychological presence in undergraduate teaching. For students, this results in an impoverished educational experience to some degree. On the other hand, individual academics are required to accept that alienation is a normal condition of working in a transformed innovation-aware university. Lest this be seen as fanciful, Jo Rizen, mentioned earlier, asked Irish higher education executives to rank in importance priorities for their institutions. In all cases, the university presidents ranked teaching as a lower priority than research. The teaching-focused institutes of technology valued teaching at least as much and more than research.95
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Leaving aside the raft of external challenges, the main internal challenges facing the University of the Future are largely psychodynamic in nature. If innovation is truly to succeed in European higher education, greater openness to risk and the acceptance of failure must be demonstrated. Academic fears, especially in science, of seeming inept must be processed institutionally as anxieties about status loss, undervaluation and marginalization. As was seen in the chapter on science, experts are generally not open to accepting the “shame of failure,” even though failure is part and parcel of everyday life. There is a pernicious risk that because of public funding, innovation policies in the University of the Future will dissuade an institution from openness to risk, nudging it instead along safer paths. In fact, the policy attempt to “bottle” innovation processes in higher education is itself an instance of a fantasy process, an attempt to prove that risk has retreated. Hirschhorn points out that in traditional organizations, employees experienced dependencies in either role or class terms.96 As organizations have assumed more diffuse identities, hierarchies have been relaxed and employees can find themselves negotiating their roles, which also allows them more freedom to demonstrate their talents. The downside, he argues, is that people no longer experience their work through their role (which had the advantage of depersonalizing negative feelings). Instead, the personal self is brought more to the fore in managing feelings. The risk is that the self reacts primitively rather than filtering reactions through the (now disappeared) role. Innovators, in true Schumpeterian fashion, are only too willing to step out of their roles. However, this comes at the price of ambivalence among others. The traditional view of the innovator as someone willing to dispense with the organization, the rogue genius, is in conflict with higher education policies. There is no obvious mechanism for resolving the conflict. If the innovator is cast as a demiurge of chaos, she poses a major containment challenge within academia. As more academics attempt innovation, ambivalence and resentment towards those who succeed are likely to increase. In order to manage resentment, it is essential that the University of the Future operate with a moral vision. Without such, the attribution of tawdry rather than moral significance to the plans of its faculty will be unavoidable. This is, perhaps, the dark and paradoxical side of the triple helix. The more energy the triple helix university puts into fomenting tensions and fragmentation the less able it is to appreciate the needs of the Common Good. Currently, higher education is a cauldron of unconscious tensions. The success of one department reflects the failure of others. The success of science, for example, in the past 50 years has been met with an intense welter of criticism and skepticism from nonscience sources. The need to “spoil” the success of science seems in certain cases not to be driven by rational analysis, but deep psychological resentments. The feelings harbored towards a discipline, one regarded as irrelevant, can be projected onto another. Science and technology success with funding has produced painful feelings in other
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disciplines. And while not everyone has rushed to abuse science and technology, the feelings of disciplinary inadequacy their success engenders from time to time in turn produces a drive to return the painful feelings through the mechanism of blame. A deal of social constructivist criticism of science and technology is rooted in this transference mechanism, one speculates. Evidence of faculty factions suggests that a degree of polarization and antagonism is widely experienced on campus. One of the oddest lacunae in current policies is their seeming unawareness of the complex relations that arise among humans in a university workplace. In the midst of transformation, anxiety about one’s professional and inter alia psychological survival is bound to arise. The main mission of a university is to change people through education. Failure to appreciate that this is the primary task is due in no small part to the emergence of numerous commercial tasks. Again, the effect of identity dilution is not fully appreciated as a psychological effect in policy initiatives. As the primary task becomes more diffuse, the survival of an institution comes under scrutiny. If an institution is to last as an organization, communicating the primary task is crucial. Yet, as has been seen, universities are divided on what is their primary task. The “hollowed out” institution is living proof of the absence of a primary task and its impact on faculty. With some conviction, it can be argued that current polices present the abnormal task of commercialization, a tangential task, as the primary task. This objective simply allows internal splintering of the faculty as some are rewarded for pursuing the tangential task with more vigor than the traditional primary task. In psychoanalytic terms, the innovation process is tantamount to an antitask. The traditional metaphor of the “ivory tower” had the strength that it could contain projections of bad feelings from sundry disciplines, since ultimately “work” was in the hands of the disinterested and conducted in the Common Good. Today, the idea of a university is no longer a dependable container for myriad academic anxieties. The “psychological task” of the university as a public organization is deeply affected by commercialization demands and efficiency expectations. Society, traditionally, has projected onto the university ideas and feelings about scholarship and authority. The embrace of consumer values means that the university is no longer available to society, the public, to process these projections in any neutral mode. It was noticed that when institutions are confronted by dilemmas rooted in self-interest, they tend to react defensively. Institutional leadership interprets criticism as evidence of faculty resistance to change. As a result, executives may not understand that policy expectations are unrealistic. The University of the Future, to be a place of psychologically secure service, must ensure that overt public aims are communicated and that covert, unconscious, aims are discovered and processed. As universities have been positioned globally to take greater responsibility for economic well-being, so are they obliged to contain anxieties about the future. Credentialing is already a
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widespread defense against anxieties about the future. Concepts such as the “knowledge economy,” the “information society” and even the “smart economy” are also containers for anxieties about the economic future. Should they rupture when in the hands of academia, the result for higher education funding could be disastrous. To acquit themselves adequately requires an examination of where “old” university management went wrong. Without such, it seems inevitable that current transformation policy risks being at least as unsuccessful as past reorganizations.
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1 Neave (2006a). The “Bologna process” covers EU policies for a European Higher Education Area, particularly compatibility amongst higher education standards, http://www.ond.vlaanderen.be/hogeronderwijs/bologna/.
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Prolegomenon
1 Europe’s purported entrepreneurial “gaps” (European Commission, 2003a). The Commission (2005b) speaks in terms of “mobilising brainpower” and “unleashing universities’ potential within the national context.” Academic entrepreneurship is the process by which academics found and actively develop technology firms based on research. Allowing that “entrepreneurialism” is contested, the range of studies factoring in higher education is too vast to review in detail (e.g. Audretsch, 2002; Clark, 1998; Slaughter and Leslie, 1997). 2 Malerba and Brusoni (2007), Solow (2000) and Warsh (2006). 3 Hall (2002). 4 OECD/World Bank (2007). Jane Knight (2003) credits the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) with insinuating “trade creep” language into the sector – the “unconscious adoption of trade jargon and its values” (p. 16). Rather than incoming and outgoing students and programs, the tendency is to refer to “the import and export of education services.” 5 European Commission (2005a) and OECD (2005). 6 Cooke’s report (2008). 7 Wistfulness for an “ivory tower” existence is still found in academic life; see DeNeef and Goodwin (2007, p. 387). 8 Avery (2004, p. 7). 9 Evans, M. (2004), Furedi (2007), Lewis (2007) and Nussbaum (1997). 10 Agasisti and Catalano (2006), Stilwell (2003) and Yielder and Codling (2004). 11 Deem and Brehony (2005). 12 Readings (1996). 13 Kotter (1996). 14 Binney et al. (2009, p. 258). 15 Giddens (1999). 16 See earlier perspectives on “late” modernity (Giddens, 1990). 17 Beck (1992). Contemporary, “late” modernity reveals a society preoccupied with risk management – a reaction to perceptions of a “self-endangering civilisation.” Risk societies exhibit critique processes that he calls “reflexive modernisation” – the same idea recurs in Giddens’ work – progress is related to reexaminations and reevaluations of existing science and technology. The principle implies that some form of dynamic symbiosis operates between the public and the “expertise” sectors. The growth of multidisciplinarity in higher education (so-called Mode 2 knowledge) is arguably evidence of reflexivity. Beck (2009) “upgrades” his analysis to take account of recent scientific and technological developments. 244
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From a policy perspective, one of the most significant points of agreement, in the works of Beck and Giddens, is their identification of a crisis of “trust” – be it in government, industry, science, experts or traditional institutions – affecting contemporary post-Enlightenment societies. Fazackerley and Chant (2009). Judt (2007, pp. 391–3). Mary Evans’ (2004) revisiting of Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim makes interesting reading. Trow (1974). De Grazia (2005) and Neave (2003). Department of Education (1967) and Robbins (1963). Friedman and Friedman (1980). Kennedy (1988). The book was a little less than prescient about the future up to the year 2000. Among the major developments not foreseen were the collapse of communism, the opening of China and the development of the Internet. Krugman (1994b). The phrase “policy entrepreneur” is borrowed from Krugman – someone marketing an environment-transforming policy. Nelson, R. R. (2005). Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995, p. 5). Path dependence originated within evolutionary economic theory to explain why certain technologies triumph over others at a time of rapid innovative change and in the presence of viable alternatives, e.g. the triumph of the QWERTY (David, 1986). See also Mahoney (2000) and Page (2006). Gerschenkron (1962) rejected the “permanence” of backwardness, arguing that with appropriate management an economy could capitalize on its weaknesses by leapfrogging over existing production conventions. Maier et al. (2003, p. xxi). Ginsborg (1990) and Halligan (2004). Harvey (2007, p. 2). Adam Smith’s theory of the “invisible hand” proposes that the pursuit of selfinterest is the surest way to secure the general public interest. The state cannot be trusted to deliver the same quality of common good as that delivered by the invisible hand of the market. The phrase is best understood as a metaphor for economic efficiency in markets; see Smith (1776, Bk. IV, Ch. 2). Joseph Stiglitz has countered that the “invisible hand” is frequently missing from free markets. Left to their own devices, they will not provide appropriate levels of education, health care and regulation. Markets need governments in other words (Stiglitz, 2006, p. xiv). Suggested by Amaral and Magalhaes (2003). OECD statistics, however, show a persistent rise in academic employment over the past five years (see “personnel” tables under “education and training”, http://stats.oecd.org/WBOS/default.aspx). Carnoy (1998). Deem (2003). The concept suggests “a set of ideologies about organizational practices and values related to attempts by Western governments to bring about radical shifts in the organization, nuances and cultures of public services such as local government, health and education” (p. 55). For diversity see Kennedy (2003), Navarro and Gallardo (2003) and Santiago et al. (2006). A metareview of 250 research papers on university “spinouts” concluded that current spinout research is just about moving away from phenomenological analysis and onto exploring theoretical issues (Djokovic and Souitaris, 2008). Simons et al. (2007). The quotation is from Drucker (1969, pp. 312–13).
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Handy (1991, Ch. 8). Ibid., p. 170. Peters and Waterman’s (1982) work earned “rave” reviews. Gjerding et al. (2006) “compressed” Clark’s five heuristics into “twenty practices.” Patents are not equivalent to scholarly research papers (Meyer and Bhattacharya, 2004). Mowery et al. (2004). Harman (2005, p. 84). Geiger (2006, p. 413). See also Table 2.1 in Slaughter and Leslie (1997, p. 45) highlighting a sample of 10 separate pieces of legislation and executive directives between 1980 and 1993 promoting profit, innovation and private–public partnerships. Douglass (2007, p. 2). Kitigawa (2005) and Mowery and Sampat (2005). Washburn (2005, p. 8). Also Chapter 3 “Organisational Turbulence and Resource Dependence” in Slaughter and Leslie (1997) shows a downward trend in government support in the US, UK and Australia. Their study showed that funding for basic research suffered as commercially directed research prospered. Douglass (2007) bemoans “high-tech” universities’ underinvestment in local skills and education. Thursby and Thursby (2002). Stephan et al. (2007). Lowe and Gonzalez-Brambila (2007). Slaughter and Leslie (1997, p. 38). Krugman (1994a). Heise (2009) in a report for the Lisbon Council places Ireland second from the bottom above Italy – a fall in one year from fourth position to thirteenth. Ireland is in the odd position of promoting its knowledge economy, while investment in equipment and machinery places it bottom of the EU15 (pp. 21–2). This deficit in enterprise investment activity is at odds with state investment in human capital, suggesting that the capacity of the economy to absorb the human outputs from higher education is extremely limited. European Commission (2003b, p. 15). Mowery et al. (2001, 2004). The gap between research grants received and income generated from intellectual property is typically immense; for example, the Trinity College, Dublin Annual Report for 2008 shows €71 million received in research grants, as against €130,000 generated from intellectual property. Brown and Duguid (2000, p. 214). Despite the touted “hard headedness” of many prophets of higher education transformation, there is a formidable amount of quasi-Hegelian Idealism in their pronouncements, i.e. history as the march of Reason. Bruner (2003, Ch. 4, “So Why Narrative?”). European Commission website (http://ec.europa.eu/education/policies/2010) on education and training policy. The Times Higher Education Supplement “league table” in 2007 placed Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale and Princeton in the top 10. The “top” 25 places are dominated by US universities. Barnett (1999). Barnett (2005) ponders whether academic entrepreneurialism can affect a university so much that it no longer retains the identity of a university.
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65 European Commission (2005b, 2006d, 2008), OECD (2004b) and World Bank 2002). 66 For example, “[a] common response to this dynamics of capitalism is to emphasize education and particularly higher education as a premier tool for management of the future” (Forstorp, 2008, p. 231). 67 Jonas Salk refused to patent his polio vaccine. 68 Lisbon European Council (2000). 69 European University Association (2007). 70 Ginsborg (2003), Halligan (2004) and Central Statistics Office, Dublin – Employment tables (www.cso.ie.). 71 OECD (2007a); also OECD (1998) for a 10-country review of tertiary education. 72 Lay (2004). 73 Godin (2006) discusses the gestation of the “knowledge economy” concept in OECD policy initiatives and its implantation into theorizing about the relationship between “knowledge distribution” and “national systems of innovation” (NSI) (e.g. Lundvall, 1992). He argues that policy-wise the “knowledge economy” is deployed as a legitimating “umbrella concept” for a range of science and technology policies. Both the EU and OECD maintain “scoreboards” of innovation indicator measures which in turn influence policy. The objectivity and value of these indicators are a matter of debate in some instances. Domestic expenditure of R&D, for example, may cloak a tax convenience rather than measure genuine R&D investment. 74 Foray and Lundvall have been OECD policy advisors on the knowledge economy, innovation systems and knowledge distribution improvement (e.g. Foray and Lundvall, 1998). 75 Skilbeck (2006, p. 90). 76 European University Association (2001, 2007). 77 Birnbaum (2001). 78 Salmi (2007). 79 Moses (2007). 80 Henkel (2004). 81 Desai et al. (2006, p. 22). 82 Beesley (2008). The profits contrast strikingly with the annual Irish government commitment of €170 million to Science Foundation Ireland. The Bureau of Economic Analysis’ data for year ending 2007 reveal Ireland to be a staggeringly profitable location for US FDI (http://bea.gov/international/datatables/usdctry/usdctry.htm accessed 17/11/08). 83 Christian Aid (2008, p. 21). Baker (2005), a “tough as nails capitalist,” analyzes the ethics of transfer pricing and its effect on maintaining poverty. 84 Smith and O’Connell (2008). 85 OECD (2007b). 86 O’Brien (1983). 87 Ruane and Ugur (2005). 88 Glass and Saggi (2002). 89 Barry and Bradley (1997). 90 Barry (2007). 91 Ferreira and Vanhoudt (2004). 92 Moses (2007, p. 273). 93 Robbins (2005) teases apart the accounting standards adopted by the OECD and US towards R&D expenditure. 94 OECD (2004a).
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Shopping in the Aula Maxima Mandelson (2007). Bolen (2001). Neave (2003, p. 386). Kirp (2003) chronicles efforts by colleges to attract more and better students. Neave (2003). Henry et al. (2001) present the OECD as a “persuader” of Australian national policies. There is no shortage of reports referencing global agency analyses (e.g. Australian Government International Education Network, 2003; OECD, 2004a; Skilbeck, 2001). Barbian (2002) warns universities off GATS, arguing that it runs counter to the cooperative “common will” deliberative model favored by UNESCO in implementing educational initiatives. Rinne and Koivula (2005) chart the myriad ways, mainly hierarchical, in which innovation policies are pushed down from the WTO through the OECD and into the EU family, pointing out that many of the change concepts (enterprise, entrepreneur, innovation, development, market, etc.) are contested, and admit plural interpretations. Becher and Trowler (2001, p. 2). Mortimer (1997, p. 236). Bourke (1997). Ramsden (2007). Non-EU students are 10 percent of the student population, but account for 50 percent of the tuition fees. The total fee income from this category of student is understated as the report does not collect data from private colleges. Forbes and Hamilton (2004) describe a highly integrated overseas student service. Students are adepts too (Underwood, 2006). International Institute for Educational Planning (Hallak and Poisson, 2007). Universities exposed to mass access on all fronts are reluctant to question standards with the frequency that they should. Presently only retired university presidents and contrarians have flagged concerns. Townley and Parsell (2004, p. 277). International Education Board of Ireland (2007). Chart C3.3, Education at a Glance 2007 (OECD, 2007a). Approximately, the US (22 percent), the UK (12 percent) and Germany (10 percent). Ibid., p. 306. The Higher Education Authority (Dublin) reported a 170 percent rise in foreign enrolments in ten years (Flynn, 2007a). A common official refrain echoed by Ramsden (2007) is a concern that universities are insufficiently attuned to the demands of overseas students. Faller (2007). United Nations (2007, p. xxvii). Salmi (2007, p. 224) mentions in passing that aging is a factor in encouraging global education trade.
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95 Heffernan and Jöns (2007, p. 400). 96 The “public sphere” in Habermas (1991) – German original 1962 – and expresses the notion (hotly debated, e.g. Crossley and Roberts, 2004) that in relatively recent history zones of deliberation arose, monopolized by the middle classes, grounded in reasoned argument about political and moral norms in public and private life. These zones, spheres of interests, mediate between the state and the private citizen, manifesting a public appetite for deliberative debate. The Common Good is extemporized here as a utilitarian good, the greatest good for the greatest number.
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The British Council (2008). Bourke (1997). OECD Education at a Glance regularly analyzes enrolment trends. Stilwell (2003). Delucchi and Korgen (2002), Lomas (2007), McNay (2007), Naidoo and Jamieson (2005) and Riesman (1998). De Grazia (2005). Ginsborg (2005). Lewis (2007, p. 14). Johnson (2003). Readings (1996) and Lewis (2007) express unease about undergraduate assessment. Bloom (1988) and Riesman (1998). Controversy over the appointment of Dr Jane Fernandes as president of Gallaudet University in Washington, DC, a university for deaf students, might bear out their concerns. Students objected to her appointment primarily on the grounds that she was “not deaf enough.” Although Dr Fernandes was deaf and could lip read, she was not used to “signing” and therefore fell outside the students’ unwritten criterion of authentic deafness – see Trachtenberg (2008) for additional comment. O’Grady and Guilfoyle (2007). Part of a study of grade inflation across the sector in Ireland (www.stopgradeinflation.ie). The authors concluded that the rise in grades in the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, was consistent with grade inflation. One potential source of inflation was a “preponderance rule” that allowed examiners to discard a student’s lowest marks in one-sixth of the modules in a subject (cf. http://academiccouncil.nuim.ie/documents/Minutes_of_Teaching_ and_Learning_Committee_14-02-06.pdf – accessed 27 November 2007). Germain and Scandura (2005). Mary Evans (2004, p. ix) argues that teaching has been reduced to “painting-bynumbers.” Delucchi and Korgen (2002). Russell (2005, pp. 19–20). The Epilogue “Three Decades of Art History in the United States” in Panofsky (1955). Nussbaum (1997, p. 31). Parsons (2005, p. 140). Cahoone (1996). Gross and Levitt (1998). The “Sokal Affair” began when the editors of Social Text, a leading postmodern journal, accepted a paper from physicist Alan Sokal inveighing against quantum gravity. His arguments were entirely bogus, laden with the jargon of postmodern critique. On the day the paper was published, Sokal had a piece in another publication denouncing the event as evidence of failures in academic standards in postmodernism. The hoax confirmed by experiment what many suspected. One of those who fumed over the affair was Stanley Aronowitz. See The Editors of Lingua Franca (2000). Neave (2005).
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Harris (2005, p. 25). Government of Ireland (2007, p. 157).
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Department of Education and Science (2004b, p. 35). OECD (2004a, p. 7). Ibid., p. 8. Government of Ireland (2007, p. 200). Coolahan (1981). Barr (2003). Anonymous (1870). Paseta (2000, pp. 268–9). Coolahan (1981). Briscoe (1959). Lee (1969). See Girvin (1997) and Lee (1989, pp. 303–6). Known as the “Irish Free State” the 1937 Constitution replaced the phrase with “Éire.” In 1948 the country declared itself formally the Republic of Ireland. Wills (2007, p. 24). Ibid. Cooney (1998) states that McQuaid controlled many NUI departments through the appointment of clerics and deferential Catholic lay people. Dunn (1994) observes that the hierarchy was always more attracted to orthodoxy than innovation. Garvin (2004) observes wryly, “Catholicism in Ireland was the site of an intellectual tragedy, or, perhaps, more accurately, an unintellectual tragedy” (p. 267). Ferriter (2004, p. 30). The Board was chaired by a Professor Maginnis. An unrelenting preoccupation of the Board was with “sexual immorality” which in practice meant most anything avant-garde. Ferriter (2004, p. 758). The tale is recalled in a television documentary in the Arts Lives series on McGahern’s work – rebroadcast on 28/12/2008 on RTE2 at 7.00 pm as “John McGahern – a memoir.” McGahern’s shabby treatment illustrates the intellectual aridness of a period, suspicious of creativity that did not rest in a “safe pair of hands.” See Lee (1989) and Ferriter (2004). For the politics of family planning, see Fuller, L. (2005). Lee (1989, p. 159). Russell (2000, p. 202) tilts against scholasticism. Garvin (1996). Lee (1989, p. 636). De Grazia (2005). Ibid., pp. 346–7. Daly (2002). Adas (2006, p. 240). Neave (2003). Adas (2006, p. 245). O’Sullivan (1992, p. 446) and Titley, E. B. (1983) “Rejecting the modern world: the educational ideas of Timothy Corcoran”, Oxford Review of Education, 9 (2), 137–45. The intellectual isolation of the country and its higher education elites is a common theme in Garvin (2004) and Lee (1989). White (2001). Lynch and OECD (1965). Cannon et al. (1965/66).
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White (2001, pp. 33–6). The Irish Times, March 22, 1967, p. 12, gave prominence to Archbishop Philbin’s views. Winder (1960). Official science policy was incoherent (Ó hEocha, 1969/70). The Irish Times (1968). Minister for Education (1956). The Irish Times ("Lack of Dialogue in Education,” 1968). The proposal to merge TCD and UCD took on a tortuous quality if coverage in The Irish Times for the period is to be credited. The proposal was abandoned after seven years of flagging “debate.” Heney (1970). Inglis (1998). McCarthy (1971). Lee (1989, p. 634). Ireland’s perceived “intellectual mediocrity” raised the hackles of several European politicians (Oakley, 2008). See O’Hagan (2000). The US was the most significant industrial actor with 474 companies employing 95,000 people. Germany and the UK rank second and third, employing 10,000 people in 113 companies, and 7000 in 108 companies respectively. (From the IDA Annual 2007 Report – accessed March 3, 2009 http://www.idaireland.com/home/sitetool.aspx?id=3&content_id=1e). Ken Olsen, founder of DEC, emphasized that it was important that DEC keep its agenda separate from government. He stressed that “…the significant thing is commercial demand” (Wren, 1984). Ironically, within ten years DEC would be no more. Setting the scene for his analysis of the “flexible” mindset and “network development” policies followed in Ireland, O’Riain (2004, p. 4) observes that “when we look beneath the neoliberal veneer [of the Celtic Tiger], however, we find a much richer story of state–society alliances, state involvement in industrial development, and the emergence of new organizational and institutional capacities that both adjust to neoliberalism and seek to protect themselves from it.” Irish financial institutions were notoriously reluctant to make loans to indigenous technology companies. Hence, cash on hand was precious. The annual Enterprise Statistics (Table 4.4, Forfás, 2008) revealed that at the end of 2006, the stock of inward FDI was valued at just over 80 percent of GDP, higher than Japan, the US and any advanced EU nation. Power (1980/81, p. 84). Almost 30 years on, a confidential report revealed that Irish adults had the poorest grasp of foreign languages in the EU (Walshe, 2008). Curiously, European universities are committed to “linguistic diversity” (European University Association, 2003, p. 1). Power (1980/81, p. 86). Ibid., p. 88. Lee (1989, p. 641). The “Telesis” report was completed in 1980 but political wrangling delayed its official publication until 1982. Chapter 8 (White, 2001). Industrial Policy Review Group (1992). The Culliton Report made clear that direct support to industry was unsustainable – it was the second highest in Europe, see O’Hearn (2000).
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The National Software Center became the National Software Directorate which was absorbed into another R&D support body, Forbairt, and in turn this body was reconstructed as Enterprise Ireland – all of which occurred more or less between 1988 and 2001. The currently named National Informatics Directorate operates under Enterprise Ireland. Breznitz (2007). In an unflattering comparison with Israel (see Chs 4 and 5), he draws attention to Ireland’s relatively recent conversion to indigenous R&D. Breznitz compared Dell and Microsoft’s contribution to GDP (around 10 percent) with their almost total lack of strategic investment in Irish-based R&D. The “impressive showmanship” of Ireland’s economic miracle, the Celtic Tiger, he concludes, is due to transfer pricing rather than anything else, such as high value R&D (p. 147). O’Riain (2004, Chs 4–7) in contrast, explains the Celtic Tiger in terms of government support for an “associational infrastructure” that tied universities, industry, innovation centers and state agencies together, simultaneously aligning local, state and global corporate aims. Debate on the role of the state in industrial support is outside the scope of this work; see e.g. O’Hearn (1998) and O’Riain (2004). Guiomard (1995). Breznitz (2007) comments on the scale of multinational contributions to GDP set against their minimal interest in high-value domestic R&D. See also Christian Aid (2008). Costello (2007). Barry and Bradley (1997). Even by 2003, BERD, at 0.7 percent of output, was just slightly over one third of the EU average and just above one quarter that of the OECD average; see Table 4.1 (Interdepartmental Committee on Science, 2006). See Tables 2.3 and 2.4, p. 7 in Evaltec (2004). In Ahead of the Curve: Ireland’s Place in the Global Economy, development of “services” and “knowledge” were deemed crucial to continued economic success (Enterprise Strategy Group, 2004). BERD was still 57 percent of the OECD average as a percentage of GDP. European Commission (2006b, p. 155). Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., p. 74. Jim O’Hara, Intel (Ireland) CEO (McCall, 2007). See www.amcham.ie for policy documents. OECD (2007b). OECD (2004a, p. 16). Stiekema (2005) concludes that few EU countries are likely to meet the Lisbon target of 3 percent, especially as European businesses do not invest in R&D near the same levels of their US and Japanese counterparts. She exhorts the EU to change from a “milk union to a knowledge union.” Interdepartmental Committee on Science (2006, p. 44). Another report unabashedly restated priorities along strictly academic lines: “the need to ensure that Ireland’s research community remains actively engaged in international networks and that Ireland adopts a strategic approach to the wide range of international research programmes, organisations and other opportunities that are of potential benefit to the research community in the public and private sectors in Ireland” (Advisory Council for Science, 2008, p. iii). Irish Council for Science (2001, p. 4). Enterprise Strategy Group (2004, p. xvi). European Commission (2006c).
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“Currently, the business system of R&D in Ireland might be described as an Egyptian pyramid with a large number of small or non-performers at the base; approximately 1,000 companies performing R&D of various degrees of scale and sophistication, but nearly all close to market development work in the middle; and a small number doing research at the top. The objective of any support by the State to the business sector in R&D should be to try over time, e.g. 10–15 years, to change the shape of this pyramid to that of an Aztec pyramid with more companies doing more R&D and more of these doing more sophisticated R&D by introducing an integrated system of supported progression”(Evaltec, 2004, p. 52). Forfás (2009), data is from Tables 1–7. The possibility that large non-R&D firms “dressed up” their operating base to avail of tax credits cannot be ruled out. “Only a proportion of R&D projects can be expected to provide results suitable for progressing down the road to commercialization …This [research] increase can be expected to give rise to a proportionate increase in the opportunities for commercialization. Institutions should continue to return the benefits of commercialization of research, firstly to Ireland and secondly to Europe, where possible” (Irish Council for Science, 2001, p. 2). Central Statistics Office and Forfás (2008). Gorg and Strobl (2007). European Commission (2006b, pp. 1–3). Lenihan and Hart (2004). Gorg and Strobl (2003) and Ruane and Ugur (2005). Gorg and Strobl (2007, p. 228). Irish universities had the highest proportion of patenting for reference years 2002–4 (OECD, 2007c). Neave (2006a). Department of Education (1995), Forfás (1996) and Higher Education Authority (1995). Forfás (1999). Science Foundation Ireland (www.sfi.ie), modelled after the US NSF, has been the most significantly funded research support in the history of the state. Between 2000 and 2006 SFI was scheduled to spend €646 million on academic research. Six years later the Information Society Commission urged the embedding of the Technology Foresight report in government policy (Information Society Commission, 2005). Ironically, the Commission was also urging the government to improve access to broadband to realize the knowledge society. Broadband coverage in Ireland was well below the EU average (European Commission, 2006c, Table 16). See http://www.forfas.ie/icsti/statements/tforesight/overview/tforeire.htm. E.g. McBrierty and Kinsella (1998) and Preston (1997). Early CSET instances are the Centre for Telecommunications Value-Chain-Driven Research (CTVR) at Trinity College Dublin involving collaboration with Bell Labs and Lucent Technologies; the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) at NUI Galway involving Hewlett Packard; the Regenerative Medicine Institute (REMEDI) at NUI Galway involving Medtronic in Galway; the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre (APC) at University College Cork involving Proctor & Gamble, Alimentary Health, and Teagasc; and the CRANN Trinity Nanoscience Laboratory, TCD involving Intel Ireland. Broadly welcomed, its recommendation to create “standalone” ICT institutes was rejected as “divisive and damaging” (Conference of Heads of Irish Universities,
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2000; Higher Education Authority, 2002). The reaction of university presidents to the establishment of SFI was “sheer joy” (Ahlstrom, 2000). Skilbeck (2001, p. 134) noted somewhat ambiguously that “the university presidents have staked out very prominent positions on the high ground.” The Irish Research Scientists’ Association, at least in the first years of SFI’s existence, considered the chosen research base(s) too narrow, resulting in unbalanced funding commitments to bioscience and technology at the expense of broad science (Duignan, 2003). The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions handbook (2003, p. 153) counsels that “there is an obvious threat that so-called technology push strategies are adopted in different knowledge societies and the technology pull approach is neglected. Critical technology foresight means that scientific results and the implementation of technology as well as its impact and implications for an entire society are systematically analysed.” “Technology push models, reminiscent of the failed policies of the ’60s in Ireland (and elsewhere), without the gain from education and training, will fail again. Proximity matters. Close proximity between research and teaching – this seamless process offered by research universities – will embed the results of research, education and training in high quality manpower and carry it into the enterprise sector”(Conference of Heads of Irish Universities, 2000, p. 20). OECD (2002). White (2001, Ch. 11). Comparing Greece and Ireland, Collins and Pontikakis (2006) conclude that the Irish government’s support for an educated workforce delivered a crucial advantage. See www.unige.ch/cre. Breznitz (2007) notes that major commercial Irish software successes happened prior to the research funding increases at the turn of the century. Department of Education and Science (2007, p. 11). O’Clery (2007). Inter Departmental Committee on Science (2004) and OECD (2004a). The White Paper on Science, Technology and Innovation (1996) contributed to Technology Foresight Ireland in 1998. Diverse funding agencies were administrating over €400 million annually. Barrett (2006). OECD (2006a). “Access and participation” and “investment in the sector” were the others. The terms “scholar” and “scholarship” are not mentioned even once in the 2004 report. One inference is that “scholarship” and “research” are deemed coextensive. Sterlacchini (2008) concludes that linkages are relatively poor in Europe (Ireland, Denmark and Luxembourg are not included in his study). Kitigawa (2005). Acosta and Coronado (2003). The idea that the “low tech” remains “low tech” is also supported by a study of firm-level innovation in Ireland (Roper and Hewitt-Dundas, 2008). OECD (2004a, p. 18). Department of Education and Science (2004a, p. 31). Department of Education and Science (2005, p. 13). Department of Education and Science (2005, p. 37). A.T. Kearney (2006, p. 245). OECD (2007b). Irish Universities Association (2004). Between 2002/3 and 2006/7 university postgraduate full-time enrolments increased by 22 percent (43 percent increase
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in PhD enrolments). The institutes of technology rate increased by 50 percent – admittedly from a very small base. Not all enrolments were on PhD programmes, but even still the latter was seeing growth of 28 percent in PhD enrolments between 2005/6 and 2006/7. The development of “professional” doctoral programs is likely to increase IoT rates in future. Cryan (2007). OECD (2006b, p. 8). Sheehan (2005, p. 74). Tol (2008). Conference of Heads of Irish Universities (2004, p. 6). Regular reviews of the university presidents’ labors scrupulously list media coverage of their agenda (www.iua.ie). From p. 16 CHIUReviewJanuary2005.pdf at the archive www.iua.ie. Wrixon (2004). Walsh (2004b). White (2001, p. 276) sums up the common opinion that Walsh “…pioneered the process of fund-raising for Irish universities in North America.” Walsh (2004a) – “Ireland’s growth strategy: research the key”. Hughes (2005). O’Hare (2005). Brady (2005). Hegarty (2006). Irish Times (2007b). Rhodes and Healy (2006). Irish philanthropic support for science has not gone unnoticed (Rodrigues et al., 2007). Bok (2003, p. 10). Keohane (2006, p. 113). Trachtenberg (2008), also Shapiro (2005). Newby (2003, p. 19). Review Body on Higher Remuneration in the Public Sector (2007, p. 127). The impact of globalization on organizations from different perspectives is explored in Giddens (1999) and Binney et al. (2009) among others. Flynn (2006). Poaching academics is more humane than grilling or roasting them as one wag put it. The Irish Times was suitably responsive (Flynn, 2007b).The THES 2008 ranked TCD 49th and UCD 108th (http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/hybrid.asp? typeCode=243&pubCode=1). Shanghai University (2007). The rankings for 2008 and several years previously are available at http://www.arwu.org/. Gurdgiev (2008). Under the UNESCO European Centre for Higher Education, the “Berlin Principles” are an attempt to standardise rankings, http://www.che.de/downloads/ Berlin_Principles_IREG_534.pdf. Ioannidis et al. (2007). Holmes (2006) notes, “Asia universities and education authorities are quite clearly changing policies and reassessing priorities with the objective of getting into or staying on the THES list.” Hazelkorn (2009) reiterates the criticism that the ranking exercises measure what is easily measured and ignore soft areas, trailing in their wake questions about their general validity and potential to cause confusion. Van der Wende (2008). Gibbons (2005). If dynamic competition is a major factor in future institutional innovation efforts, will institutions support two innovations in the same
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area, if they have arisen from different, collaborative or internal, streams? Christensen (2000) argues that firms cannot support two rival innovations simultaneously. Dill and Soo (2005, p. 499). They argue that output measures, such as graduation grades and numbers, may be damaged by grade and degree inflation (p. 509): “while the number of students who graduate from university is certainly a socially valued outcome, the fact that graduation rate can be independently controlled by each university poses a problem. That is, graduation rates can be increased both by more effective teaching and student learning and by lowering academic standards. The issue of university grade inflation and inflation in honors degree awards recently has been raised in both the US and UK.” Van Dyke (2005). Marginson and van der Wende (2007). The government-backed “Innovation Alliance” announced in March 2009 between TCD and UCD confirms many of the points made here, viz. unequal allocation of resources based on league table performance. White (2001, pp. 277–8). Lee (1989, p. 641). The Irish Times (1994, p. 13). Bizarrely, on the few occasions that diverse Irish academics have put collective pen to paper, it has been to launch truculent denunciations of Israel, e.g. “Academics Call for Ban on Israel,” Irish Times, September 16, 2006 and again, Irish Times, January 23, 2009. Schmitt (2000, p. 787). The Skilbeck report was completed without any serious engagement with the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT). Ironically, Education at a Glance 2008 (OECD, 2008) identified Ireland as among the lowest spenders on education as a whole, with the second level being particularly badly affected. Irish expenditure overall was 27th – out of 29 countries surveyed. The percentage of GDP spent on education fell from 5.2 percent in 1995 to 4.6 percent in 2005. The OECD average is 5.8 percent. In The Role of Universities in the Europe of Knowledge (European Commission, 2003b) much is made of the fact that graduate unemployment in 2001 was one third that of nongraduates. International experience indicates that mature graduates (age > 30) have much greater difficulty obtaining employment than equivalently qualified younger graduates (Purcell et al., 2007). OECD (2007c) shows that graduate employment “shot ahead” of average employment rates but the Irish economy was almost at full employment at the time. The capacity of the system to churn out low-cost degree and diploma holders in a tax-friendly environment rather than the quality of the system is argued by several researchers, e.g. Barry (2007), O’Hearn (1998) and Wickham and Boucher (2004). Harris (2005). Department of the Taoiseach (2008). Science Foundation Ireland (2009, p. 28). Department of the Taoiseach (2009). The ambitions of the alliance and the future health of the economy were emphasized by the two universities’ respective heads (Hegarty and Brady, 2009). Faced with this “unpleasant surprise,” the Taoiseach assured the IUA that funding would be open to all (Flynn, 2009b; Holden, 2009). Kelly (2009) expressed thoughtful skepticism about employment ambitions. Hirschhorn (1988).
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Bradley (2007). Lambert et al. (2007). One Irish university refused to renew the teaching contracts of two staff that the previous year had been awarded the institution’s excellence in teaching award. Meyer and Evans (2005, p. 243). Higher Education Authority (1995). Higher Education Authority (2008). While enrolments to the universities increased by 9.3 percent between 2002/3 and 2006/7, the institutes of technology suffered a decrease of 6.5 percent. A not unreasonable conclusion is that as the universities expanded course places, they did so at the expense of the other leg of the binary system. The greatest expansion in university enrolments (up 28 percent) occurred in the non-S&E disciplines of business, humanities, law and social science. However, the onset of the recent recession seems to have triggered a resurgent interest in science. Provisional figures from the Central Applications Office indicated that among the school-leavers in 2009, the number choosing science was up by 20 percent (Flynn, 2009a). The figures were confirmed with the official results at the end of August 2009 (cf. www.cao.ie). It is too early to judge if a new trend is emerging. Task Force on the Physical Sciences (2002). Thornhill (2004). Dáil Éireann (2000). Electricity Supply Board (2005). Eivers and Kennedy (2006). PISA is the acronym for Program in International Student Assessment. Underwritten by the OECD, it provides periodic snapshots (three-year cycles) of cognitive abilities among 15-year-olds in the areas of mathematics, literacy, reading and science. Skilbeck (2006, p. 99) comments that “PISA has become a constituent of mainstream globalization, in that it is perceived to be a key element in global competitiveness.” The claim was aired on public radio by Dave O’Meara, CEO of Havok (www. havok.com), the firm behind the physics engine for many leading video games, on September 4, 2008 (Morning Ireland, 2008a). A disturbing corollary is the likelihood that current policies are subverting industrial development by paradoxically encouraging the more able to remain in academic R&D rather than risk employment in the market. RTE Business News (2009). On December 21, 2008, Mark Paul of The Sunday Times carried an interview with John Herlihy, head of Google’s Dublin-based headquarters, under the headline “Ireland misses out on new Google jobs” (Paul, 2008). Cathal Brugha, a decision science professor in UCD’s Smurfit Business School, confirmed the concerns raised by O’Meara in a radio interview the following morning (Morning Ireland, 2008b). Boland (2009). He also conjectured that “predatory points dropping” by the universities facilitated poaching of prospective students from the institutes of technology, which was inefficient as the latter were better geared to address the needs of weaker students; whereas the universities reinvented the wheel. Slevin (2008). The risk that state policy would overlook the importance of teaching and teaching to a particular standard was highlighted in a Royal Irish Academy submission to government (Royal Irish Academy, 2007). OECD Global Science Forum (2006). OECD (2006b, p. 6).
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Smolin (2006). Madden (2006). The Irish Times, October 4 (Coyle, 2007). Barrett (2006). The “points” are from Barrett’s 2004 figures. CEO of Havok, Dave O’Meara, bemoaned the quality of Irish technical graduates and questioned whether a student with 350 points had the cognitive ability to complete a high quality technical degree (Collins, 2009a). Central Applications Office 2006 Report: http://www2.cao.ie/dir_report/pdf/ caoreport2006.pdf Department of Education and Science (2004c). A RAND survey showed that among the Netherlands, Australia, the UK, US, Ireland fared quite well on retention rates (Van Stolk et al., 2007). Kelly (2008). Education at a Glance 2008, OECD Indicators shows both Iceland and Ireland with above average graduate output – clearly no guarantee of economic prosperity or protection from unemployment. Collins (2008). Jordan and O’Leary (2007). Barrett (2006). OECD (2004a, p. 16). Barrett (2006, p. 56). Rule and Besen (2008). The downward investment trend between 2008 and 2009 also reflected the worsening global recession (Collins, 2009b; Who42, 2009).
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Levere (2001, p. 5). Geiger (2004, 2006). Taylor, reviewing six research universities, examines the “conundrum” in trying to apply centralized planning to research that by its nature “does not lend itself to control and management” (2006, p. 2). Levere (2001). Gamow (1988, p. v). Popper (2002) is the seminal work. Any primer in the philosophy of science describes falsificationism, e.g. Chalmers (1999). Polanyi (1974) offers a contrasting naturalistic account of the scientist as passionately committed, autonomous, preoccupied with his dignity and standing in his field. Agassi (1986, p. 38). Bloom (1988, pp. 293–8). Nybom (2003). Klemperer (1994). He was a convert from Judaism to Protestantism. Nussbaum (1997, p. 40). Bok (2003, pp. 60–7). Shapiro (2005). Aronowitz (1988, 2000), Aronowitz and DiFazio (1994) and Shapiro (2005). Monbiot (2001), though not explicitly attacking academic science, makes similar points about corporate influence in UK politics. Allen (2007) offers a cameo version of these concerns applied to Irish universities. Mills (1956).
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Aronowitz and DiFazio (1994, p. 162). Lyotard (1983). Latour (1988, p. 34). Postmodernist speculations about a “social” component in scientific affirmation are predated by conventional philosophers of science, most famously Thomas Kuhn (1962) and Imre Lakatos (1976), who attempted to bridge Popper and Kuhn. Postmodernism contributes an extralogical skepticism about the epistemological foundations of scientific methodologies. Latour (2004). Koertge (1998). Latour (1987) appears to argue that the validity of a scientific theory stands on the social networks it can generate. Brown (2000). Harvey (2007, p. 160). Delanty (2001) points out that many more “social actors” are willing to contest the claims of authoritative knowledge than before, concluding that the current age is dominated by the politics of the application of knowledge. Gross and Levitt (1998). Cohen (1985, pp. 11, 32–5). Haack (2003). Tudge (2004). House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology (2000). Baskaran and Boden (2004, p. 22). Hagendijk (2004). A set of 29 case studies can be downloaded from www.stageresearch.net. McGrayne (2001). Levere (2001, pp. 71–2). Kornberg (2002). Geiger (2004). Geiger (2004, p. 215). Ibid. Etzkowitz (2003, 2008), Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (1999) and Etzkowitz et al. (2000). Barnett (1999). European Commission (2003b). Keohane (2006, p. 79). Ibid. Vannevar Bush emphasized science as “one essential key to the security of our nation” (Bush, 1990, p. 2). Keohane (2006, p. 80). Ibid. Ibid., pp. 80–1. Shattock (2005) notes, “entrepreneurialism in a university context draws on concepts of entrepreneurialism from the world of economics and business but is not precisely coterminous with them” (p. 23). Rowbottom and Aiston (2006). An exception is Spain which, after a period of credential inflation, following the injection spoils from the “New World,” went into a period of decline. For example, the European University Association (2006). Also “Letters to Congress and the Administration: 2007” on the American Council for Education site (www.acenet.edu). The website of the Association of American Universities (www.aau.edu) describes “funding for research” as among its main activities.
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Boesz and Schneider (2005). The University and College Lecturers Union claim that 70 science departments have closed since 1999 (Smith, A., 2006). Mirowski and Van Horn (2005, p. 511). PhRMA (2005, 2007). This is total money spent between corporate and university laboratories. Greenberg (2001, p. 468 and Appendix Table 1 “Support for Academic R&D 1953–1998”). Greenberg (2001) provides a set of perspectives on the event, contrasting the views of Congress, affected physicists and disgruntled scientists appalled by the “wastage.” In December 2007 the British government reduced science funding by £80 million, cancelling several high-profile physics projects (http://physicsworld. com/cws/article/news/32809 of February 8, 2008). Create Change (2003). In January 2008 President Bush announced that NIH grantees would have their research made available on an “open access” policy. Abbott (2000). Moore (2000). Nelson, L. (2005). Finance Committee University of Dublin Trinity College (2007a, b). The college newspaper also published the story (Molloy, 2007). The situation was complicated by the HEA’s “discovery” that it had overfunded Trinity by 7 percent in the previous year, and was consequently adjusting its funding for the following year. There was no question of wrongdoing by any person. GSK committed €14.6 million to collaboration involving it, TCIN and NUI Galway on Alzheimer therapies (http://www.tcd.ie/Communications/news.php? headerID=722&vs_date=2007-10-1). American Association for Advancement of Science (2008) www.aaas.org/spp/ rd/upd1207.pdf. Irons (2008) www.scienceprogress.org/2008/01/science-and-the-2009-budget/. Eurostat data retrieved February 3, 2008 http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu. http://www.uis.unesco.org/TEMPLATE/pdf/S&T/WdScienceRepTable1.pdf (retrieved February 3, 2008). Frank (2006). Directorate General Joint Research Centre (2007). Sarewitz (1996). Sarewitz (1996, p. 49). Dinges et al. (2007). Advisory Council for Science Technology and Innovation (2007). Pilat (2007). Ehrenberg et al. (2003). Brown (2000). Henkel (2004). BBC (2007, 2008). Angell (2000) and Nightingale and Martin (2004). Kirsch et al. (2008). The results are disputed by the pharmaceutical companies. Jasanoff (2005). Flanagin et al. (2002). Kwok (2005). Louis et al. (2008). Bhopal et al. (1997). Lynöe et al. (1999).
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Angell (2000) and Smith, R. (2006). Flanagin et al. (1998). Mowatt et al. (2002). Healy and Cattell (2003). Bekelman et al. (2003). Lexchin et al. (2003). Baier and Dupraz (2007). Samelson (1997). Coggins (2000). Brumfiel (2007) and Smith, R. (2006). Office of Research Integrity (2007). Kelley and Chang (2007). Smith, R. (2006). Investigation Commission (2006). New Scientist (2006). Justice et al. (1998) and McNutt et al. (1990). Farthing (2006). Biomedical journals have banded together to promote higher standards in authorship and disclosure (e.g. the Vancouver guidelines). Carrió (2006) and Teaf and Johnson (2006). Illingworth (2004). Surgical Neurology editorial (2001). McComas et al. (2005). Eastern Research Group (2007). Gibbs (1996). Greenberg (2001) and Washburn (2005) report the affair, including the disputed findings of an FDA investigation. Edwards et al. (2004) focus on informed consent, arguing the competency needs to be reconsidered. Kong (2005) discusses the “societal benefit” of such trials. Kalichman (2006). Wade (1994). Shenk (1999) and Washburn (2005). Oliveri Symposium (2004), Olivieri (2003) and Harman and Sherwell (2002). Shuchman (1998) possibly offers the best summation of the conflict of interest issues. Healy (2002, 2003). Blumsohn (2006), Harpur (2006) and Moffatt and Elliott (2007). For contrasting views, see Baumslag (1998) and Forster (2002). DiCarlo (2006). See McNay (2000) on the insertion of “conservative” and corporate values into Canadian science education. Mirowski (2004). Harding (2003). A more fitting, though provocative, phrase is “knowledge fundamentalism.” Griffiths (1993). Scull (2005). Smolin (2004, 2006). Almost a pure expression of Lakatos’ concerns about the power of research groups. Freyfogle and Newton (2002). Many fundamental terms such as “nature” and “land” are capable of supporting disputed meanings. Angell (2000) and Smith, R. (2006); also David Healy (2003, passim). Enserink (1996). McHenry (2006).
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Stone (2003). Savage (1993, 1999). Chapter 2 in Grief and Metz (2007). Evans, G. R. (2004). See “Background” on page 1 (Committee of Public Accounts, 2007). A consultant described the scientific output of MLE as “dismal” (p. 14). Peters and Ceci (1982). Hottois (2006). Resnik (2007). The Economist (2004). Halbfinger (2005). Federal Science in the Public Good: Securing the Integrity of Science in Policy Making (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2008) where the UCS assembles its evidence for “an epidemic of political interference.” In 2005, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) “concurred” with the UCS analysis: http:// www.aaup.org/AAUP/comm/rep/GR/ScienceforFreeSociety.htm Wainwright et al. (2006). Proctor (2000). The Special Issue of Minerva on “Science in the Nazi regime” (Walker, 2006). Agassi (1986, 1996). For Popper the relationship between science and society is complex. Scientists have an epistemic obligation to do science truthfully and a moral obligation to democratic values. Because science is inherently fallible, it cannot be autonomous. Science in tyrannies or under the control of vested interests is only propagandistically autonomous. It is worth remembering that Popper framed most of his ideas prior to the rise of massive private R&D funding and biotechnology. For a contrary interpretation of Popper see Krige (1978). Popper’s own work does not produce an easy passage from methodological conjectures about science to the moral and social duty of the scientist. Compelled late in the day to accept some of Kuhn’s arguments about the “politics of scientists,” Popper (1971) advanced a kind of professional code of science ethics as a prophylactic. For comment on the unfinished nature of Popper’s work in this area see Shearmur (1996). Current trends focus on “deliberative” consensus and engagement through public conferences, e.g. Blok (2007). Gerlach and Hamilton (2005). Later, Seed professed himself satisfied to clone his wife. Gerlach and Hamilton (2005, p. 93). Greenberg (2001, Ch. 13). Lewis et al. (2007, p. 23). Reeves and Nass (1996, Ch. 12). Gregory (1921). Quotation from p. 533. Gregory (1921, p. 536). Condit (2001, p. 814). Brockman (1996) assembles a series of essays by a new “scientific intelligentsia,” including Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, Lynn Margulis among others – these prominent scientists, Brockman argues, are creating a “Third Culture” through their “popular science” works. Sturgis and Allum (2004). Pardo and Calvo (2002, 2004) allude to methodological and quantitative shortcomings in PUS studies. A meta-analysis of 193 national surveys of PUS revealed a low correlation between public attitudes towards science and public knowledge of science (Allum et al., 2008). For certain technologies, knowledge actually cor-
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related negatively with attitudes. To know science is not sufficient to kindle affection. Wynne (1993). Durant (2008) ponders whether analysis exalts the public in conferring a “reflexive autonomy” on it while denying the same largesse to experts. Michael (1997). Few participants tried to make up for a lack of knowledge by filling the “absence” with naïve folk “science” explanations. Most could admit the limits of their knowledge and some could indicate where the expertise could be obtained. One caveat is the lack of certainty that conversations are replicable over even reasonably close intervals of time. A limitation of this study is the lack of scale of ignorance. Stocking and Holstein (2009). Wilson (2000). Rubin (2008). Campaigning by autism groups against the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination program on subsequently discredited scientific grounds is an example. Baron (2006). Sanders et al. (1996).
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Bils and Klenow (1998). World Bank (2002). Wolf (2002, p. 254). Hazelkorn (2004) draws on a study of policies across ten OECD states. Altbach (1999, p. 123). Trench (2008) drew attention to the relatively better faring of English universities in obtaining research funding than their peers. England is gaining in research funding while in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales it is shrinking (pp. 31–2). It appears that patterns of historical advantage and disadvantage are persistent. Ramirez et al. (2006). Easterly (2001, p. 78); also Benhabib and Spiegel (1994) and Pritchett (1997). Shinn (1998). Christensen (2000) examines the innovative qualities of “disruptive technologies.” Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century (2007). Lowell and Salzman (2007). Quote from p. 43. Saltzman was called to testify before Congress on the findings. Rosenzweig (2007). Dickinson (2000). Swanson (2007). Kealey (2008). Hill (2007). Jones (2002, Ch. 5). OECD (1995, 2004b). Caracostas (2007). Malerba and Brusoni (2007). European Commission (2006d) and OECD (1995, 2004b). European Commission (2003b) – tinged with fatalism about competition. European Commission (2005b).
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European Commission (2006b). David (2007, p. 253). European Commission (2006a, p. 3). Peters (2003). Gemmell (1997); see http://www.leeds.ac.uk/educol/ncihe/. Solow (1956, 1957, 2000). Easterly (2001, Ch. 3). Warsh (2006). Lucas (1988). Bils and Klenow (1998). Aghion and Howitt (1992). See Romer (1990) for a less technical treatment. Romer (1986, 1990). Gwartney et al. (1998, p. 5). The report has concerns about the impact of expansionary government on growth. Bercovitz and Feldmann (2007, p. 384). Horowitz Gassol (2007). Schumpeter (1980, 1994). The 1911 work raised the important role played by innovation in economic development. Schumpeter acknowledges building on previous probes by Walras (1877) into entrepreneurship. His later 1943 work, a reflective essay, addressed the possible demise of the capitalist system under the weight of its own bureaucracy. In Schumpeter’s mind, self-sustaining and self-aggrandizing bureaucracies were associated with socialism. Ironically, reflections by Fuller (2006) and Furedi (2007) on the demise of the intellectual are not discordant with Schumpeter’s respect for entrepreneurial independence. Against the modern heralds of Schumpeter, Harvey (2007, p. 176) warns that “neoliberal concern for the individual trumps any social democratic concern for equality, democracy, and social solidarities.” For contrast, see Hansson and Mønsted (2008) praising of the leadership skills of the internal academic entrepreneur. Schumpeter (1994, p. 132). Ibid., p. 133. Whitchurch (2006). Etzkowitz (2008). Siegel et al. (2003). Debackere and Veugelers (2005). An Australian study by Harman and Stone (2006) revealed that technology transfer officers were highly critical of their university management’s understanding of the commercialization process. Markman et al. (2005). European Commission (2003b, p. 16). Hindo (2007). Clark (2007) recapitulates a comparative study of British and Indian textiles mills. Despite comparative technologies, efficiency and productivity in Indian mills lagged behind those in British mills. Friedman and Friedman (1980) and Gwartney et al. (1998). Rodrik (2000). Habermas (2006) vents his frustrations and anxieties with the slow pace of European unification, and the paralysing inabilities of European nations to subordinate national interests to the European interest. Rivette and Kline (2000). Despite Bell’s association with information society theorizing, he had little to say about information per se in his (1973) work. He insisted that change
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wrought by postindustrialism would affect only the technoeconomic sphere. Spillovers into the fabric of “daily life” were ruled out – somewhat implausibly as witnessed by the extent to which technology, such as the mobile phone and email, have impacted on social life. A recurrent weakness in Bell’s analysis is his underestimation of the social impact of information technology and its likely adoption by a larger population outside the scientific and professional elites. Bell (1973, p. 15). Fritz Machlup (1962) had predicted the rise of a service economy heavily invested in “knowledge industries.” Machlup (1962, pp. 396–9) claimed that “expenditure for knowledge-production were almost 29% of GNP” in 1958, concluding that “knowledge workers” fared better overall in remuneration. Bell (1973, p. 15). Ibid., p. 212) – the “new clerisy” (p. 213). Ibid., p. 136. Hesse et al. (2008) argue that not only is “information” multiheaded but within European higher education circles there is a lack of consensus over the remit of “informatics”, “information science” and “computer science,” for example http:// ec.europa.eu/information_society/index_en.htm is the Commission’s “information society portal.” Rule and Besen (2008, p. 320) link themes in Saint-Simon, such as the importance of an educated elite, with those later developed by Fritz Machlup, Daniel Bell and Peter Drucker. An issue not touched upon is: under what conditions does moral judgment trump authoritative knowledge? Bell (1973, p. 232). Duff (1998) highlights Bell’s “tendentious new gloss on routine statistical sources” (p. 376) as the means by which an assumption is transformed into a conclusion. Kumar (1995, p. 3). Lyotard (1983, p. 162), a postmodernist skeptic about Enlightenment faith in reason, reaches a different conclusion: “Our working hypothesis is that the status of knowledge is altered as societies enter what is known as the postindustrial age and cultures what is known as the postmodern age.” The fluid interstices between science, technology and information systems have shifted emphasis away from truth towards use. The question is “what use is it” rather than “what truth does it express.” Preston (2003, p. 50). To admit that higher education entertains more than one modality, be it Bell’s information economy, Habermas’ truth or even Derrida’s justice, is to overlook the enormous implications that follow from choosing one plane to dominate the others – the resulting Weltanshauung. How policy entrepreneurs perceive the ends of education shape how that education is valued; for parallel comment see Simons (2006). He places understanding the “knowing subject” center stage with philosophizing about language used by the subject in a subordinate role (Habermas, 2003, Ch. 1). Habermas (1984a, b). Habermas’ long-standing project to both halt and accommodate various streams running through postmodernism is beyond examination here. Commenting on Habermas’ deliberative democracy, Jane Mansbridge (2006, pp. 118–20) points out that institutions and procedures designed to achieve consensus often suppress dissent, and those aimed at engaging people in conflict can smother their awareness of a Common Good. He fears the depoliticizing effects of the rise of technical elites (Habermas, 1970). A skeptical Chantal Mouffe (2000)
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derides the viability of a Western “deliberative democracy,” damning the whole project as hopelessly naïve, reliant for its credibility on at least a millennium of European internecine tensions being put down to something such as a lack of gossipy salons. The democratic dynamic is the constant contestation of consensus, not its consolidation. The 2004 Finnish Universities Act assigned a “third role,” an explicit civic mission, to the universities. Superficially Habermasian in intent, it is limited to regional development initiatives and promoting awareness among local publics of the usefulness of university research (Kantanen, 2005). Delanty (2001). Despite utopian intentions to synthesize the public sphere with the knowledge economy, a concept left rather undefined in the book, no specific algorithm for factoring in the university is laid down. Hamelink (1999). Delanty refers to cultural models. This implies a limited perspective on the legitimacy of cultural expressions external to the university. The phrase “cosmopolitan project” is a variant on Habermas’ notion that the modern world (especially the “West”) must develop a “constitutional patriotism,” an expression of commitment and solidarity with like-minded groups. Like many philosophical concepts it bears several interpretations (Brock and Atkinson, 2008; Calhoun, 2005). Webster (1995, Ch. 3). May (2002) advances similar arguments against discontinuity. Stehr (1994). Gibbons et al. (1994) and Nowotny et al. (2001). A precursor deskilling argument can be inferred from Kumar (1995, Ch. 2). Rivette and Kline (2000). Are patents a measure of productivity or just a measure of patent productivity? With a wry “Internet bubble” timing, 2000 also saw global political commitment to the Okinawa Charter on the Global Information Society, which laid the basis for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) (Sarkisyan, 2007). Along a different dimension, Schiller (2006) delves into the financial miasma most companies suspended themselves above and the unwillingness of investors to apply standard “old” economy measures of a firm’s viability in assessing risk. Drucker (1969) was an early promoter of a knowledge economy. Slaughter and Leslie (1997, p. 38) accept an association between the information economy and technoscience based on a common technological and scientific core. In Slaughter and Rhoades (2004, p. 1) the terms information economy, knowledge society and new economy are used equivalently. Without mass education, the even partial realization of these ideas would be impossible. Slaughter and Rhoades (2004, p. 38). Sorlin and Vessuri (2006, p. 1). Ennals (2004). Against this, “Bologna” could be said to typify an example of transnational convergence in higher education. However Bleiklie (2005) thinks that integration will be handicapped by entrenched path dependencies in national systems. Stoer (2006). Stiglitz (2006, p. 56) argues that while misapplied policy thinking in the Third World has undermined democracy, “economic success is fully consistent with democracy.” Benjamin Friedman (2005, p. 326) writes similarly that “[d]emocracy is on the rise,…, And with the progress of the last two decades, uneven as
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it has been in both the economic and political dimensions, the idea of economic growth as a force for human freedom has gained renewed force.” Jolly (1997, p. 79). Goddard (2005, pp. 27–8) proclaims grandiosely that “the university has a key role in local civil society, joining up separate strands of national policy relating to learning and skills, research and innovation, culture and social inclusion.” The university is assigned roles as community “boundary maker,” financial engine and locus of wisdom as it draws together the “strands of developmental policy.” Is anything left over to trouble a government, apart from providing funding? Lamb and Davidson (2005, p. 1). Heimeriks and Vasileiadou (2008). Marturano and Chadwick (2004). It would be difficult to find a university not advertising “technology to license” (e.g. http://commercialization.nuim.ie/). Santiago et al. (2008) noted that the institutionalization of entrepreneurial elements is progressively creeping into university websites. International Education Board of Ireland (2007, p. 70) warns that “E-Learning as a method of attracting international students has been slow to develop in Ireland in comparison to other countries.” In practice, e-learning refers to a range of approaches of varying sophistication, including simple online course notes, intelligent tutoring systems, sophisticated knowledge representation schema and computer-mediated collaboration. Assessment and evaluation of progress are less developed for aspects of traditional “written” subjects, for example automatic essay correction is long way off. Unlike efforts of a few decades ago, recent developments attempt to ground their dynamics in emerging cognitive science research (Alessi and Trollip, 2001; Forbus and Feltovich, 2001; Mayer, 2005). If policy entrepreneurs overestimate its efficacy and sophistication, critics underestimate them. Shneiderman (2002, pp. 112–31). Murray (1997, p. 8). Smith (2004) hints that e-learning could play a role in fixing “problems” in mathematics education. Shneiderman (2002) makes a similar point. De Freitas and Oliver (2005). Restricted to one institution’s experience, their study scrutinizes the experience of change from five organization theory perspectives: (1) Fordist, (2) evolutionary, (3) ecological, (4) community of practice, and (5) discourse-oriented. Bates (2001) notes (pp. 116–17) that poorer countries will need to devote more resources to e-learning support. Whether such disproportionate support can return a disproportionate benefit is debatable, but unlikely. Salomon (1999, p. 44). Barjak (2006). The results should be treated cautiously. It remains a major plank in EU policy (European Commission, 2005a). The Irish government requires schools “to prepare and implement an elearning strategy” (Government of Ireland, 2007, p. 200). A symposium in Dublin City University, November 4, 2004, was devoted to “elearning as a strategic imperative” for Irish universities. A recurrent theme was the association of e-learning initiatives with organizational change. Irish university heads emphasized the importance they attached to e-learning in a submission to the OECD (Conference of Heads of Irish Universities, 2004). The Head of Policy and Planning of the HEA connected e-learning explicitly with the Skilbeck reforms (Costello, 2002). Similar points
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have been made for the UK (Department of Education and Skills, 2003) and in surveys of international systems (Collis and van der Wende, 2002). A review of early US casualties is found in NEA Higher Education Research Center (2002). Douglass (2005) judges that many casualties rushed into an “untapped market,” developed costly course materials, attracted few students, and miscalculated the venture capital required. Slater (2005). Guri-Rosenblit (2005). Reeves (2003) refers to a “24 hour professor.” Ryan (2002). The collapse of the UKeU (the UK’s “eUniversity” initiative) was examined by the House of Commons Education and Skills Committee (2005). Wopereis et al. (2005). Collis and van der Wende (2002). Carson (2005). Flacks et al. (2004). Fear of a “classroom of one” is raised in Maeroff (2003). DeFleur and Adams (2007). Adams and Defleur (2006). Jones and O’Shea (2004). Debreceny and Ellis (2000) found in a dated Australian study, that provision of web-based information for external stakeholders did not significantly bloat staff. Pollock and Cornford (2002, p. 371). Connolly et al. (2006). House of Commons Education and Skills Committee (2005). Tambiah (1990). Williams (2007). Dreyfus (1999). The educator can never be a “machine” as a machine could not replicate the moral dimension (“practical wisdom”) implied in a master– apprentice relationship. Prosser and Ward (2000). Conditions for establishing “trust” on the Internet are teased out in a Special Issue of Ethics and Information Technology (Ess and Thorseth, 2008). Henderson et al. (2004) in one of the few longitudinal studies on campus-wide wireless networks (WLAN) report “dramatic” changes in usage patterns and choices of applications over a two- to three-year period. Meadows (2003, p. 7). The crucial affective demand is that change produce emotional satisfaction, something rarely dwelt upon in higher education policies. Technology creates dehumanizing knowledge factories (Aronowitz, 2000). Readings’ (1996) forecast for the future technological university (it has none) is bleak. A therapeutic contrast is Kirp (2003) who detects in technology immense opportunities for material gain. Delanty (2001) sees in technology an opportunity for citizenship renewal. Microsoft Research has been examining the technological challenges in providing automated end-to-end lecture capture and broadcasting (Zhang et al., 2007). Eventually, the researchers conclude, “making a presentation available on-line will be as easy as turning on a light switch.” The potential for such a system to challenge the rationale for maintaining physical universities is not hard to imagine. Butson (2005, p. 9). Bieman (2006). For software “risks,” visit www.risks.org. Tiffin and Rajasingham (2003).
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Rashke (2003). Only “mossbacks” deny the postmodern world, and the overthrow of the “medieval” mindset (p. 75). Just as the logical positivists embraced a scientific bias, a number of subdisciplines in sociology and philosophy have carved out respectable relations with computer studies. Worshipful commentary ranging over any area from computer games through to Internet ethics is considered acceptable evidence of ideological soundness. Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium (LACS) (2007, p. 7). Papert (1980, pp. 186–9). Heiser (2003). BBC (2007). Hecht (1999, 2000) and Mullins (2004). Phillimore and Davison (2002) and Shockwave Writer (2000). Chorafas (1999). Callaghan and O’Sullivan (2005) and Landeryou (2003). Birsch (2004) draws on Nissenbaum’s (1994) essay on obstacles to moral responsibility attribution in computer system design. Her four obstacles included the reality of “many hands” in software design, the presence of software “bugs,” a tendency to locate culpability in the “machine,” and the rise of a “disclaimer” and “no warranty” legal mentality. Birsch suggests that the obstacles can be overcome by a quality control manager assuming responsibility. It is not clear, however, that the manager can realistically escape the legacy of the “many hands.”
Secrets – the Future of the Future University
1 Buechel et al. (2003), De Weert (1999) and Teichler (1997). The obvious measure of overeducation is based on a classification of occupations by required educational attainment – this is not an entirely value-free exercise. When the “bin man” is renamed “urban hygiene specialist” should educational attainment change accordingly? 2 Randall Collins (1979) argued that employers used credentials as a “screening” procedure – over and above what the position required. 3 At the height of the “dot.com” bubble graduate unemployment in the EU was under 4 percent, a third less than the rate of nongraduates (European Commission, 2003b). 4 Russell et al. (2008). 5 Dolton and Vignoles (1998). 6 Skilbeck (2006, pp. 91–2). 7 Eastman (2007) concludes, pessimistically, that reductions in public relative to private funding in Canada are propelling universities into “mass production” to generate revenue. Paradoxically, mass higher education could become the cause of university impoverishment rather than enrichment. See also Hazelkorn (2004) quoting research indicating that cheaper mass access may lead to class divisions being shored up, with the offspring of manual workers drifting towards lowertier institutions with less advanced programs. 8 Rizen (2007). 9 Duff (2005) jousts with the suggestion, not with reference to higher education, that the information society provides an opportunity for a democratic gradualist social engineering, one shorn of the bitter fruits of despotism. The idea is interesting given the ubiquity of data collection devices, but the eternal problem is
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how to limit the state’s tendency to operate in its interests and not against the interests of dissenters. Nevertheless, the debate is approaching. Becher and Trowler (2001), Clark (1995), Delucchi and Korgen (2002), Etzkowitz et al. (2000), Neave (2006b), Stehr (1994), Välimaa and Hoffman (2008) and Wolf (2002). Another factor is that after a certain point spending more money to raise standards was less predictive of economic growth than once assumed. Polanyi (1974). Cited in Wulf’s (2002) keynote speech when he was president of the American National Academy of Engineering. Brennan (2008, p. 384). See Pilbeam’s (2006) survey of 16 UK institutions. Becher and Trowler (2001), Bok (2003) and Henkel (2002). Henkel (2004, 2007). Patterson (2001, pp. 167–9). Huisman and Currie (2004, p. 529), speak of academics stripping “intended accountability mechanisms of their thorns” (p. 548). Their study draws on Romzek’s (2000) four basic accountability relationships: hierarchical, legal, professional and political. Some observations appear to endorse Trow’s (1996) cautious hypothesis that increasingly accountability measures are supplanting relationships based on trust in the universities. For a survey of several opposing points of view see Tavani (2005). The “knowledge Commons” is a metaphorical leap from “the Commons” which were fenced in the seventeenth century for the benefit of a few wealthy landowners and to the ruin of many technically landless users of the Commons. Gibbons et al. (1994, pp. 2–10). They have a form of practitioner’s knowledge in mind with Mode 2 – a transdisciplinary knowledge cutting across boundaries between science, medicine, business, culture, art, literature, history, and politics involving areas where human judgment is not automatically subordinated to scientific norms. The “context of application” is further refined in Nowotny et al. (2001) where knowledge and “power,” set against the relations of uncertainty and distrust between science and society, are moved center stage. Examples of Mode 2 diffusion could include ethicists brought in to advise on a bioscience project, nurse practitioners “working outside” the subordination of medical science, and financial firms packaging tacit knowledge for sale globally. Corporate universities that engage in “action learning” to impart company culture and mission are, arguably, other instances of Mode 2 institutional developments. Tichy (2001, p. 11) comments about Trilogy University, an outgrowth of the Trilogy Corporation, that “the leaders of the organization are learning from the recruits as the recruits are learning from the leaders. Each element in place here – new-hire training, product innovation, leadership development, and the rest – fuels the others. It’s not just that all these things get done at Trilogy University. It’s that all of them get done better than they would otherwise.” A contestable way to appreciate Mode 1 is as the scientific equivalent of religious devotion. At other times there is sense of a clear confusion between de re and de dicto references to Mode(s) 1 and 2. Mode 2 transdisciplinary initiatives connote something over and above collaboration among specialists from separate disciplines. Interdisciplinary research, contrarily, preserves the authority of each discipline in a circle of academic equivalences. Eric Raymond, the well-known software designer, likens Open Source software initiatives as a conflict between the “cathedral” of established corporations and the “bazaar” of scattered Open Source contributors (Raymond, 2001). A reinterpret-
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ation of the “cathedral” as the university of disciplines and the “bazaar” as the arena of transdisciplinary expertise and experience, seems to come closest to the distinction between inter- and transdisciplinary dynamics. Murray (2002) and Stephan et al. (2007). Jasanoff (2003). Nowotny et al. (2001, 2003). Pestre (2003). Whether the concept of Mode 1 is a philosophical economy is of little relevance here. From discussions in the literature of Mode 1 and Mode 2 it is clear that their primary internal roles in sociological debate is to enable sociologists to talk about changing interrelationships between science and society. Pestre (2000). In a curious turn, Edqvist (2003) agrees that Mode 2 has always existed as the primary modality of science, but argues that Mode 1 is in fact the newcomer, given greater impetus by the exigencies of WWII. Etzkowitz (2008, pp. 141–2) echoes the view that Mode 1 is an ideological invention to cloak science with an autonomy necessary for its independence and arrest skepticism about its neutrality. Shinn (1999) also finds the historical evidence in France loaded against the “discontinuity” thesis implicit in Mode 1 and Mode 2 differentiation. The history of chemistry, replete with oscillations between pure and applied science, would seem to support these criticisms (e.g. Levere, 2001; McGrayne, 2001). Fuller (2006). The most notorious politicizations of knowledge took place under the Nazi and Soviet regimes. In contrast, disputes between “feminist,” “lesbian” and “male chauvinist” versions of science are harmless. In a reply to Pestre (2000), Nowotny (2000, p. 184) admits that “the issue of quality control, so vital for science, is still largely unresolved in the Mode 2 framework.” Suggesting confusion about its completion, she affirms that they “have remained largely silent” on how additional criteria, external to science, can “provide viable and assessable results.” Nowotny et al. (2001) in Re-Thinking Science introduce the agora as a space for contextualizing knowledge production and problem solving, occupied by science experts and competing publics. It is unclear how the agora would resolve competing ambitions and interests, though something like a “consensus conference” might fit the bill. Vessuri (2000, p. 198) refers to Gibbons et al. as a report on the “disestablishment” of traditional science. Vessuri is pessimistic about developing world institutions being able to compete adequately against a Mode 2 dominated developed world. The reconstrual of North–South developmental partnerships within a Mode 2 framework is pondered by Velho (2004) who similarly concludes it would be “messy” and “uncertain” due to myriad difficulties in agreeing even basic relevant issues for inclusion. Fujigaki and Leydesdorff (2000, p. 650) attempt to reconcile the tensions between Mode 1 and Mode 2 quality standards by invoking the social “usefulness” of knowledge, arguing that the “universities are seeking a way to play a role in problemsolving for public purposes.” This claim may be true, but it simply reinforces the conclusion that academic knowledge production is increasingly politicized, i.e. tuned to political agendas. Hemlin and Rasmussen (2006) agree that quality control can no longer be reduced to purely cognitive and epistemological criteria. In their strong social constructivist view, science is a social institution and the organizational characteristics of science must be factored into quality assessments. Again, the question is prompted: what happens when scientific rigor (Mode 1) clashes with public sentiment?
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32 Nowotny (2000, p. 194) treats this scenario seriously, declaring “if this holds for physics – and given the enormous significance which the foundations of physics have held for most of the other sciences – we may indeed have entered a new era.” Smolin (2006) suggests that compulsion rather than choice pushes graduates away from foundational work. 33 The presentation of software as “engineering” is famously presented in Brooks (1995), highlighting the importance of early development of throwaway prototypes on the road to building a system. Quite a different process of discovery is emphasized in traditional science where communication primacy revolves around “getting at truths” rather than “how to do” something or other. 34 This is not the same as saying that models of the mind or reasoning favored in computational research are widespread. Likewise, it is not possible to cover the ground wars between various schools of epistemology. Epistemology “naturalizers” include W.V.Quine, Thomas Kuhn and Philip Kitcher. For a quick summation see Feldman (2008). 35 The arguments here are adapted from Solomon (2001). 36 Solomon (2001, Ch. 6). 37 Olson (1971). 38 Hagendijk (2004) dismisses a plea by Gibbons (published in Nature) for a new “social contract” to meet the arrival of Mode 2 as not “realistic” in a global world of actors: “The very diversity of forms, parties, and interest, at play in contemporary science and in the surrounding world, makes the idea of such a contract an insoluble thought-experiment” (p. 54). Reviewing several models of higher education, Tuunainen (2005) concluded that Mode 2 was among the more abstract characterizations of current research patterns. 39 Becher and Trowler (2001, p. 7). 40 Outside of the US, there are several national studies of the triple helix in practice (though “in practice” varies considerably), e.g. Baber (2001), Goktepe (2003), Kaukonen and Nieminen (1999), Klofsten et al. (1999) and Sardana and Krishna (2006). Etzkowitz (2002b, Ch. 7) gives an insight into MIT’s specific contributions to economic development in New England from the late nineteenth century onwards. The New England Council of the period is cited as an early prototype of a trilateral helical network. Interestingly, Baber (2001), in an approving study of knowledge commoditization in Japan and Singapore, explicitly aligns the triple helix with postindustrial theorizing on the “knowledge economy” in the work of Daniel Bell and Nico Stehr. Compared with EU and Anglophone regions, the relative lack of institutional autonomy in both states (with Singapore having the least) is noted as having aided negotiations involving the two other helices. However, post-WWII arrangements forbade Japanese institutions collaborating with domestic industry. Negotiating the triple helix is fraught with historical ambivalence. 41 Etzkowitz (2003, p. 298). A thorough summation of triple helix theorizing is found in Etzkowitz (2008). 42 Cooke (2002). The litmus test of biotechnology successes is whether they can attract a second round of venture capital funding. 43 Leydesdorff (2003, 2006) suggests that innovation indicators drawn from assessments of either “national systems of innovation” or the presence of Mode 2 research arrangements, the spread of the triple helix of university–industry–government relations is a useful measure of innovation. 44 Goktepe (2003) recommends a fourth helix in the form of customer or market feedback, http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/upd1207.pdf. 45 Lenoir (1998); also Shinn (1999).
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46 A special issue of the Journal of Technology Transfer was devoted to the triple helix (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 1999). Bayh–Dole features with the prominence of a pinch of alchemical elixir. To be fair, their extolling of the virtues of the US system is tempered by observations that statist collaborative models as found throughout the old Warsaw Pact nations bear more than a passing resemblance to the triple helix. Among the wider differences (social, economic and political), the key ones are “Western” emphasis on quality in innovation and production derived from competition. The “Eastern bloc” focused more on quantitative measures of success – a stagnant policy in the absence of competition and a market economy, it is argued. The central premise is that globalization has introduced additional competitive pressures and corporations are responding by merging and looking outside themselves for more ideas. Herein the motivation for triple helical interactions. 47 Lundvall et al. (2003). 48 Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (1999, p. 114). 49 One method is based on the committee structures developed at MIT to resolve tensions between private consultancy time and academic obligations, patent income and university expectations (Etzkowitz, 2002b). 50 Kleinman and Vallas (2001) use the phrase “asymmetrical convergence” to refer to the skewing of priorities in institutions to satisfy industry stakeholders. Arguing that proximity to industry results in diminished institutional autonomy, they consider an anomaly in several studies of academics, “knowledge workers,” in industry that seem to reveal greater professional autonomy. This shape-shifting, or role-shifting, they suggest, is indicative of an intertwining of traditionally separate actors. Certainly, many companies maintain research labs and encourage publication of research, but it is debatable if publication alone is sufficient evidence of greater conventional academic autonomy in industry – for example, freedom to publish commercially sensitive information is restricted in many cases by Big Pharma. The least that can be is that the evidence for “knowledge worker autonomy” is not conclusive. 51 Chapter 7 in McGrayne (2001) contains insights into the recreation of academic priorities by one of DuPont’s most famous chemists Wallace Hume Carothers and why management was supportive. 52 Etzkowitz (2003, and other papers) denies that the triple helix results in the university as a firm. A later Etzkowitz (2008, p. 49) qualifies this position, stating that the university (through its firm incubation units) is involved in “firmformation.” Despite such protests, a firm-level interpretation of the university is entirely consistent with the business model implicit in the triple helix reorganization of university responsibilities. 53 Etzkowitz (2003) advances “ten propositions” of the triple helix. For readability, these are woven – helically one hopes – into the current narrative. A corollary of the “allegiance” is accepting that the university is a status quo institution. The place for knowledge that cannot be put to use remains problematical in the triple helix. One option is to “expertise” it wherein the practical political commitment is forsworn for a comfortable living. Similar thoughts are advanced by Richard Posner (2001) in his study of the “decline” of public intellectuals. 54 Meyer (2006). He wonders whether some spinouts are merely “shell” companies for additional research endeavors. 55 Etzkowitz (2003, p. 310). 56 The value placed on teaching in the triple helix is ambiguous. Etzkowitz (2003, p. 320) declares that the “classical teaching college still exists in the US and
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Ireland” but is peripheral to the development of the entrepreneurial university. Prior to Bayh–Dole could one make the case that teaching was peripheral to entrepreneurial inspiration? The main institutional alteration in the intervening period has been in technology transfer offices, begging the question: how central are these to entrepreneurial successes (and failures)? Shinn (2002) notes “the novelty of the Triple Helix metaphor discreetly recedes” due to the emphasis on “endless transition” in triple helix theorizing. Etzkowitz (2002a). http://www.thetriplehelix.org/ – accessed 08/01/09. http://www.triplehelixinstitute.org/ – accessed 08/01/09. Kivinen and Varelius (2003). Oughton et al. (2002). The authors admit that “success” here is not easily measured by the “traditional” indicators of job creation, and so forth. They suggest using a “soft” measure derived from institutional linkages, contacts and so on. In Ireland one arm of the government helix is Enterprise Ireland whose mission is the “development and promotion” of indigenous businesses through grants, and R&D assistance. It experienced a relatively low level of industry interest in its R&D “ticket” promotion. An eligible company received a “ticket,” effectively a small subsidy, which admitted it to third-level R&D collaboration. In fact, the agency finds its traditional innovation mission shifting into the third-level sector. In tones noticeably close to triple helix policies, one Enterprise Ireland study recommended more university-located “competence centers” to address the putative R&D needs of industry (Irish Times, 2007a). Every Irish campus would have at least one innovation center. Confidence in the strategy is at odds with other studies that question the contribution of the third level to economic growth, arguing that tax incentives have been much more significant (Barry, 2007; Jordan and O’Leary, 2007). A recent German economic study indicated that much of Ireland’s innovation was effectively “bought in” by multinationals from their subsidiaries and not indigenously stimulated (Werwatz et al., 2008). Therefore assuming that academics can grasp, let alone meet, the R&D needs of industry may be little more rewarding than a lucky dip. A more general question thrown up is whether small countries are overly concerned to be seen to act on a certain scale, rather than in a certain manner where, say, scale is less valued over quality. Castells and Hall (1994). For comment on the impact of an unequally “shared vision” of an entrepreneurial university see Horowitz Gassol (2007). In a historical review of technology transfer practices in the US and Germany respectively, Krücken and colleagues (2007) note that the processes seems to have converged into a relatively settled “blurring of boundaries” between actors and individuals. Weiler (2003). Brown and Duguid (2000, pp. 161–7). Christensen (2000) wondered why large organizations failed to confront external innovations that eventually overwhelmed their markets. To contrast the upstarts with the established, he distinguished Schumpeterian-like between “disruptive” and “sustaining” technologies. An entity of the latter type entity lives a gradualist, incrementally improving existence; while the former is radical, dynamic and subversive. One of the lessons drawn was that larger organizations paid a great deal of attention to their assessments of customers’ demands. If customers did not look for something, the corporations did not produce it. Christensen gave out the impor-
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tant insight that engagement with disruptive technologies must accommodate failure, and large organizations tend to frown on failure. Saxenian (1994). Moore and Davis (2004, p. 16). Wren (1984). Rizen (2007). Jasanoff’s (2005) analysis has been cited. Equally of interest is Owen’s (1997) study of the development of Concorde. Having encouraged British scientists and engineers to pursue supersonic transport “collaboratively,” the US pulled back when the “threat” of British aviation superiority became apparent. Far from crippling Concorde, Britain liaised with France, and the Anglo-French collaboration, itself a study in distrust and fractiousness, completed the project. Link and Scott (2003) found US university administrators’ interests in their associated business parks dominated by the prospect of increased extramural funding. Horrocks (2007). The British government’s “failure” to ensure local exploitation of penicillin is often cited (Bud, 2000). Scott and Walsham (2005) – also cited in Whitley et al. (2007). A disquieting corollary is that the greater the reward, relative to the positioning of an institution among its peers, the more likely a lower-tier institution is to “bet the house” (adopt high-risk policies) and encourage greater risk taking by staff in teaching, research and persuasive interactions with external stakeholders. Whitley et al. (2007). Hermans (2007, p. 514).The sample is too small for statistical significance but the views are illuminating. Ibid., p. 515. Ibid., p. 516. Ibid., p. 517. Ibid., p. 518. Lohmann (2004). Simons (2007). In explaining the German state’s supporting of institutional autonomy, Simons overlooks the roles of thinkers such as Schiller and Schopenhauer (among others) and their contribution to the revival of German romanticism, race imperialism and overidentification with the alleged perfections of classical antiquity. Nybom (2003). Friedlander’s (2008, pp. 32–4) account of the influence of “German” academic historians and sociologists through their professional associations in facilitating the “racial hygiene” policies of the Nazis. Fuller, S. (2005). Harloe and Perry (2005, p. 38). Not to be confused with Habermas’ notion of a “legitimation crisis.” Pilbeam (2006). Washburn (2005). Holden (2008). The phrase is a play on the The Unconscious at Work by Obholzer and Zagier Roberts (1994). See Hirschhorn (1988) for background theory. Rizen (2007). Hirschhorn (1997).
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306 References
Abercrombie and Fitch, 36 academic capitalism, 18: and Ireland, 82 academic entrepreneurship, 1: narrative of, 21 academic pork barrel, 150f., 167 academic science, 125: and professionalization, 126; myths of, 130 academic standards, 43 Adas, Michael, 63 Advisory Council on Science, Technology and Innovation, 130f. Agassi, Joseph, 113, 155 alchemy, 24: and technology, 95; and science 110ff., 134, 170; and information technology, 207; and the triple helix, 228 Altbach, Philip, 165 Amgen, 102–3 American Association for the Advancement of Science, 128 American Chamber of Commerce in Ireland, 73 Angell, Marcia, 137 Aronowitz, Stanley, 115 Asian Tiger economies, 9f. Association of American Research Libraries, 127 “backward” countries, and advantages, 10 Barnett, Ronald, 24, 123 Barrett, Sean, 103f. Bayh–Dole Act, 16f.: and competitiveness, 19; and European Commission, 19; limitations, 20 Beck, Ulrich, 6, 117, 182 Bell, Daniel, and The Coming of the PostIndustrial Society, 184 Binney, George, 5 BioCity, 229 biopharmaceutical industry, 127f.: and positive results, 137 biotechnology, 122: and Europe, 134
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Index
308 Index
Easterly, William, 165f. economic growth, 79: and R&D assumptions, 81 educational attainment, 164f.: see also economic growth e-learning, 199ff. entrepreneurial university, 15, 172ff., 179, 214: see also triple helix Etzkowitz, Henry, 123, 222 European University Association, 25 Ferriter, Dermot, 60 foreign direct investment (FDI), 28ff., 67ff.: and higher education, 30; see also Celtic Tiger Friedman, Milton, 8f. Fuller, Steve, 237 fundamentalism in higher education, 210 Garvin, Tom, 61, 100 Geiger, Roger, 111, 122 Gemmell, Norman, 183 ghost authorship in bioscience, 137 Gibbons, Michael, 93, 215 Giddens, Anthony, 5, 239 Giotto, 204 globalization, 2f.: and brain circulation, 3; and 1984, 31 Google, see Herlihy, John grade inflation, 44ff., 100, 104 Gregory, Sir Richard, 158f. gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD), 129 Guiomard, Cathal, 71 Gurdgiev, Constantin, 92 Haack, Susan, 119 Habermas, Jürgen, 188, 193, 237 Handy, Charles, 13f.
Harris, William, 95 Harvard, 44, 90 Havok, see O’Meara, Dave Hazelkorn, Ellen, 165 Healy, David, 137 Henkel, Mary, 28, 133 Herlihy, John, 100f. higher education: as public good, 1; and Robbins report, 8; and Commission on Higher Education, 8 Higher Education Authority (HEA), 52, 100, 104 Hirschhorn, Larry, 241 Huisman, Jeroen, 214 human capital, 164, 177f. human freedom, 215 Iceland, 128 information society, 186, 187 Inglis, Tom, 67 innovation and American spirit, 11 innovation: assumptions of, 24–5; deficit in US, 9; regional factors, 84; and economic growth, 164ff.; Kealey on, 169; linear model, 171; unlikely risk assessment of, 209; and metainnovation, 225; rhetoric, 231; as psychoanalytic antitask, 242 In Search of Excellence, 14ff. institutes of technology, vii intellectual property, 20f.: see also patents Ireland, 52, 231: as tax haven, 29; middling educational performance, 30; economic agenda for higher education, 52, National Development Plan, 52f.; OECD 2004 Review, 54, 80ff.; intellectual milieu, 59ff.; censorship, 60f.; Lynch/OECD report, 64f.; higher education and Catholic requirements, 65; Enterprise Strategy Group, 74 Irish Universities Association, 72, 86: and lobbying, 88f.; and Innovation Alliance, 97; managing funding cornucopia, 128 Israel, 71, 191 Japanese industry, 9ff. Jasanoff, Sheila, 134, 217 Jones, Charles, 170 Judt, Tony, 8
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De Grazia, Victoria, 62 Delanty, Gerald, 189 Delors, Jacques, and competitiveness, 18f. Dickinson, Todd, 167 Dreyfus, Herbert, 203–4 Drucker, Peter, 13 Dublin City University, 89 Duff, Alistair, 187 Dulles, Alan, 63
Index 309 Kealey, Terence, 168 Kelly, Michael, 104 Kennedy, Paul, 9 Keohane, Nannerl, 90, 123–4 Keynesianism: rejection of, 11; alleged failure of, 18 King Solomon’s Mines and innovation, 7 Kitigawa, Fumi, 83–4 Klemperer, Viktor, 114 knowledge society, 78, 85, 185, 187 Kornberg, Arthur, 121f. Kotter, John, 5 Krugman, Paul, 9, 19 Kumar, Krishan, 187
Newby, Howard, 90 Newman, Cardinal John Henry, 55 Nowotny, Helga, 216, 221 NUI Maynooth, 89 Nussbaum, Martha, 114 Nybom, Thorsten, 114
Latour, Bruno, 116ff. leadership, 5ff., 91, 236 league tables, 91ff. Lee, Joe, 61ff. Lenoir, Timothy, 223 Leydesdorff, Loet, 222 Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium, 208 London School of Economics (LSE), 235 Lucas, Robert, 177
Panofsky, Erwin, 47–8 Pappert, Seymour, 208 patents, 4, 7, 18, 52, 106, 183: and conflicts of interests, 142, 167f.; underutilization of, 191 peer review, 140 postindustrialism, 184ff.; and managerialism, 190 postmodernism, 48ff., 116: and university, 207 Preston, Paschal, 188 Public Understanding of Science (PUS), 156ff. public services, 11
National University of Ireland (NUI), 56 Nazi science, 154 Neave, Guy, vii Nelson, Richard, 9 neoliberalism, defined, 12
relevance, 125: and goals of science, 147f. reputational risk, 234 Resnik, David, 152 Richard Seed, and “Frankenstein”, 156ff. Riesman, David, 44 risk society, 6 Rizen, Jo, 212, 240 Roemer, Paul, 177f. Royal Irish Academy (RIA), 100, 212 Russell, Bertrand, 47, 61 Russell, Wendy, 211 Sarewitz, Daniel, 130 Schumpeter, Joseph, 180 science: and the humanities, 48; and postmodernism, 49ff.; critiques of, 112f.; and falsification, fabrication and plagiarism, 135ff. Science Foundation Ireland, 52, 79, 96 science policy debate, 120f.
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managerialism, 4: “new managerialism”, 12ff.; and customer charters, 46; and university presidents, 90f.; and technology transfer, 181f.; and Mode 2, 216 Mandelson, Peter, 35 market failure, 2, 121, 168, 170 Marshall Aid, 57, 62 McCarthy, Charles, 67 MediaLab Europe, 151 Milan Furniture Fair, 33 MIT, 123, 151, 233: see also MediaLab Europe “Mode 1” and “Mode 2”, 215ff. Moore, Gordon, 232 Moses, Ingrid, 31 multinationals in Ireland: and profits, 29; and weak spillover effect, 30 Murray, Janet, 199
OECD policies, 25–6: and university governance, 27 Office of Research Integrity, 139 oil crisis, 8 Olsen, Ken, 233 O’Meara, Dave, 100 O’Sullivan, Dennis, 63
310 Index
technological determinism, 46 technologization, 198 Technology Foresight Report, 77ff. Teitlebaum, Michael, 102 Terman, Fred, 123, 231 Tol, Richard, 88 Trachtenberg, Stephen, 90 Trinity College Dublin (TCD), 55, 89, 92, 238 Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience (TCIN), 128 triple helix, 123, 222ff.
Trow, Martin, 8 Tudge, Colin, 119 unconscious university, the, 238ff. Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), 152–3, 155 universities: and marketing, 38; and population aging, 41; and technological innovation anomaly, 174; psychodynamic, 241f. University College Cork (UCC), 92 University College Dublin (UCD), 89, 92 university ethics, 1, 22–3; conflicts of interest, 38–9; malpractices, 39 University of California and the “Betty Dong” case, 145 University of Cardiff, 158 University of Limerick, 89 University of Sheffield, and Aubrey Blumsohn, 146 University of the Future, 225f. University of Toronto: and Nancy Olivieri, 145; and David Healy, 146 university ranking, and benefits, 12 “useless” knowledge, its attraction, 47 Utopian seed, 26 Van der Wende, Maijk, 93 Vessuri, Hebe, 194 Walsh, Edward, 89, 90 Webster, Frank, 190 Weiler, Hans, 231 White, Tony, 64, 94 Wolf, Alison, 164
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Shapiro, Harold, 114 Sheehan, John, 87 Shinn, Terry, 98 Shneiderman, Ben, 199 Skilbeck, Malcolm, 27 Slaughter (Sheila) and Leslie (Larry), and academic capitalism, 18f. Slaughter (Sheila) and Rhoades (Gary), 193 Slevin, Jim, 100 “smart economy”, 96ff.: as anxiety container, 243 Smith, Adam, and “invisible hand”, 12 Smith, Robert, 137 Smolin, Lee, 102, 148 Solow, Robert, 175ff. Sorlin, Sverker, 194 Sputnik, 3, 8, 63 Standard & Poor’s, 31 Stanford University, 123, 231 “Stanford Prison” experiments, 154 Stehr, Nico, 191
