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Title
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Higher Education and the Exponential Rise of Science: Competition and Collaboration
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Author
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Powell, Justin J.W.
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Research Area
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Social Institutions
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Topic
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Educational Institutions
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Abstract
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How we collaborate and compete to find solutions to the problems and challenges of our age vastly impacts our individual and group success and well‐being. Interdependent, the institutions of education and science have dramatically expanded. Today, scientists in nearly all countries contribute to our shared stores of knowledge, with research universities the driving force behind unexpected pure exponential growth in scientific production. Competition—regional, national, organizational, and individual—has become more potent—with performance measures, comparative indicators, and formal evaluations continuously generated and used in decision‐making. Simultaneously, collaboration across institutional, disciplinary, organizational, and cultural boundaries expands the possibilities of discovery and produces the most influential science. Competition and collaboration at the nexus of higher education and science demand enhanced attention as they shape the future of scientific innovation and production, with its understudied yet increasingly incontrovertible effects on individuals and societies.
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Identifier
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etrds0464
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extracted text
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Higher Education and the
Exponential Rise of Science:
Competition and Collaboration
JUSTIN J.W. POWELL
Abstract
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How we collaborate and compete to find solutions to the problems and challenges
of our age vastly impacts our individual and group success and well-being.
Interdependent, the institutions of education and science have dramatically
expanded. Today, scientists in nearly all countries contribute to our shared stores
of knowledge, with research universities the driving force behind unexpected
pure exponential growth in scientific production. Competition—regional, national,
organizational, and individual—has become more potent—with performance
measures, comparative indicators, and formal evaluations continuously generated
and used in decision-making. Simultaneously, collaboration across institutional,
disciplinary, organizational, and cultural boundaries expands the possibilities of
discovery and produces the most influential science. Competition and collaboration
at the nexus of higher education and science demand enhanced attention as they
shape the future of scientific innovation and production, with its understudied yet
increasingly incontrovertible effects on individuals and societies.
k
INTRODUCTION
Whether between regions, nations, social groups, or individuals, how we collaborate and compete to find solutions to the problems and challenges of our
age vastly impacts our individual and group success and well-being. More
than ever before, we seek answers to the critical questions of survival, health,
and flourishing in the twin panaceas of (higher) education and science. These
interdependent institutions have dramatically expanded. What just a century ago was the province of a tiny elite is now accessible to the majority.
Indeed, today we live in “schooled societies” (Baker, 2014) in which most valued positions and life chances of individuals are increasingly decided by the
level and quality of their educational experiences. Yet stratification patterns
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert A. Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
reflect persistent disparities in group educational attainment and access to
science-producing resources.
The phenomenal rise in organized learning has had unforeseen and extraordinary consequences also in the realm of science, such as exponential growth
in scientific production. Science more than ever determines how we (attempt
to) solve global social and environmental problems as well as the scale and
scope of growth in economies increasingly based on information, knowledge, and technology. Thus, the demand for higher education and science
in countries around the world has never been greater. Steadily increasing
educational achievement and attainment levels worldwide and expanded
scientific capacity have generated many benefits to society, including more
knowledgeable citizens, productive economies, and enhanced longevity, but
complex challenges abound.
Throughout the world, the demand for higher education led to unprecedented investments, which improved science capacity. Indeed, universities
provide robust infrastructure and innovation-oriented networks, educate
scientists across the disciplines, and sustain scientific output. Among other
organizational forms that produce most research—extra-university research
institutes, government agencies, private companies, and hospitals—research
universities have remained the driving force behind the global growth
of scientific productivity. They connect all types of knowledge-producing
organizations and contribute the majority of scientific publications (Powell
& Dusdal, 2017; Powell, Fernandez et al., 2017; Dusdal, 2018).
Countries invest heavily into scientific output and technological innovation, as advanced knowledge is applied in ever more fields, themselves
reshaped by that knowledge, for example, in computing and robotics.
Specialization in higher education and science reshapes labor markets,
increasingly defined by academic distinctions and occupational boundaries
(Baker, 2014). This self-reinforcing evolution of employment segments
develops higher education and science through the demand for credentials
and expertise. Yet innovative science also calls for enhanced and targeted
investments, from diverse sources. In the inexorable race for breakthroughs,
difficult choices are necessary. Competition on multiple levels has become
more potent. Formal evaluations, performance measures, and comparative
indicators are continuously generated. Although imperfect proxies, they
become the basis for decision-making, in policy arenas, organizations,
research teams, and individual careers.
Simultaneously, collaboration across institutional, disciplinary, organizational, and cultural boundaries expands the possibilities of discovery.
Indeed, if competition in this context reflects a learning race to achieve
new knowledge, then participation in networks, and interorganizational
linkages, with continuous communication and collaborations of different
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sorts, will be crucial to success (Powell, 1998). Scientific collaborations, with
the goal to achieve new scientific knowledge (Katz & Martin, 1997), often
begin informally, the result of conversation between researchers meeting
in face-to-face situations (Jeong, Choi, & Kim, 2014). Depending on the
field and constellations of scientists in the team, collaborations may be
driven by ideas and theories, equipment, resources, or data (Wagner, 2005).
Collaboration leads to more influential, often-cited research, especially
among scholars in different countries (Katz & Hicks, 1997; Fortunato et al.,
2018)—a key argument for further globalizing the scientific enterprise and
recognizing the brain circulation and intercultural teamwork that facilitates
recognition and impact across scientific communities (Sugimoto et al.,
2017).
As scientists increasingly work in teams, extend their understanding, and
compete to discover important ideas, they need to meet, understand, cooperate, and collaborate, doing so for myriad reasons (see Beaver, 2001; Leahey,
2016). In fact, in some fields today, there is no choice, as work becomes
so complex that individual scientists cannot achieve meaningful results
without collaborating—called the “collaboration imperative” (Bozeman &
Boardman, 2014). A century ago most research papers published in diverse
disciplines were written by single authors. Today, the modal paper in the
natural and social sciences represents the work of multiple authors, often
from different organizational and national contexts. The collective shift
toward teamwork in research and the implied specialization extends from
fundamental research in the natural and social sciences to the applied world
of patents (Mosbah-Natanson & Gingras, 2013; Wuchty, Jones, & Uzzi, 2007).
Thus, competition and collaboration at the intersection of higher education
and science are research topics requiring attention if we hope to understand
the present and future of scientific discovery and production, with its
understudied yet increasingly incontrovertible effects on individuals and
societies.
GLOBALIZING HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENCE
Exponential growth in science production around the world has resulted
from rising investments in human capability and especially the worldwide
triumph of the research university. Unexpected by founders of bibliometrics (de Solla Price, 1986), who rather thought expansion would reach a
saturation level and taper off within decades of the advent of “big science”
in the 1960s, we instead find that increased global and local competition, as well as boundary-spanning collaborations of various types, have
driven unprecedented scientific advancement and technological innovation
(Powell, Fernandez et al., 2017). Systematic estimates of the number of
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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
peer-reviewed articles cataloged in the Science Citation Index Expanded
from 1900 onward show science transformed by unprecedented production
(Powell, Baker et al., 2017). Growth in scientific production shows no decline
or slowing, with “pure exponential growth” up to today: “Big science”
has been replaced by what could be called “global mega-science” as well
over a million new peer-reviewed articles—the gold standard of scientific
output—are published each year just in the leading journals of the natural
sciences and health.
Focusing on articles published in the world-leading journals provides
insights into the cutting-edge of fundamental research. Charting global
shifts in the scientific “center of gravity” shows changing regional scientific
output (Powell, Fernandez et al., 2017). Along with the North American,
European countries remain essential players in the scientific arena, with
their centuries-old research universities being emulated worldwide. Over
the past few decades in East Asia, massive government support in Japan,
China, South Korea, and Taiwan, for example, have triggered explosive
growth of science capacity and the ensuing production. Researchers have
only just begun to explain how and why certain countries have succeeded
differentially in expanding their higher education and science capacity and
which organizational forms and funding instruments do most to facilitate
scientific serendipity as well as long-term impact (Powell & Dusdal, 2017;
Powell, Fernandez et al., 2017).
If competition is now fully global, so too is collaboration, as scientists in
nearly all countries contribute to our shared stores of legitimated knowledge. Most often, scientists and scholars conduct their work in increasingly
research-oriented universities, which have proliferated around the world,
especially since WWII. Indeed, university-based research has risen to
become the driving force of science production globally. Despite universities
operating successfully in all societies, substantial regional differences in
contributing to cutting-edge scientific communication and disciplinary
debates continue to exist. This further emphasizes the need for intercultural
research collaborations, in particular, across the hemispheres; beyond the
extensive links that exist across the global North. Currently, the shifting
“center of gravity” away from North America emphasizes the relative
decline of the United States as European and Asian countries invest heavily
in their national higher education and research capacity. At the same
time, cutting-edge knowledge production increasingly relies on building
international, intercultural, and interorganizational bridges to facilitate
joint learning processes and scholarship recognized by diverse scientific
communities. Research and development demands investments not only
in individuals within organizations and infrastructures but also—more
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than ever—in the networks, connections, and exchanges that facilitate
discoveries.
TRENDS IN AND DRIVERS OF COMPETITION AND COLLABORATION
The potential of contemporary science cannot be understood and the pathways to its further development charted without examining two contrasting
concurrent trends—rising competition and collaboration across and within
nations: If countries continue to fund most scientific research, (international)
collaborations among scientists across levels and teamwork in diverse types
of research organizations have facilitated remarkable growth in knowledge
production (Adams, 2013; Powell, Baker et al., 2017). The future of (higher)
education and science that must grapple with complex environmental and
social problems now depends on how we (re)organize these fields to become
more collaborative in the face of globalized competition between teams, organizations, and countries.
TRANSNATIONALIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENCE VIA “BRAIN CIRCULATION”
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Transnationalization (and regionalization) of higher education and science
challenge traditional nation-based studies. The diffusion of worldwide
ideas and norms in science is a powerful driver of global similarities, as no
country can resist global standards (Drori, Meyer, Ramirez, & Schofer, 2003).
Higher education participation rates continue to climb, now reaching large
proportions of each cohort in societies everywhere (Schofer & Meyer, 2005).
Scientization is significantly driven by the research universities that increasingly influence the design of reforms of schooling, policymaking activities,
and economic development—by producing expertise via professionals and,
ultimately, the occupations of the future (Baker, 2014). Despite convergence
pressures, directed by international organizations, such as UNESCO and
the OECD, comparative institutional analyses show persistent differences in
the structuring and capacity for innovation of higher education and science
systems. We find sustained, even increasing, significance of the research
university in scientific production across countries (Powell & Dusdal,
2017).
While industry and science-producing organizational forms such as
independent research institutes, hospitals, government agencies, academics,
and museums, among others, contribute to advancing knowledge, we know
too little about the conditions these forms, and organizational hybrids,
provide (Dusdal, 2018). Institutionally, university, industry, and government
form the “triple helix” of science production, with specific developments
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of these interinstitutional, boundary-spanning networks leading to different innovation dynamics (Leydesdorff & Etzkowitz, 1998). If the key
organizational form remains the university, with its tremendous capacity
for transferring knowledge intergenerationally, between disciplines, and
across cultural boundaries, then research must delve deeper into the
learning opportunities, networks, and types of collaboration this central
organizational form enables. The main driver of scientific capacity is the
education and training of each generation of scientists poised to push the
cutting edge.
Factors, from research policy and funding instruments and system development to scientific communication, have also transformed the ways science
is conducted and the scope and speed of knowledge diffusion around the
world. If markets for scientific talent have always been wide, today they
are nearly boundless, at least at the peaks and given fluency in the dominant English as the contemporary lingua franca. Elaborate migratory flows,
massive government and philanthropic programs, and everyday mobility
enormously facilitate the exchange that leads to scientific networks, “brain
circulation”, and the potential for collaboration on a vast scale (Sugimoto
et al., 2017). For example, the European Union’s Erasmus program or the US
Fulbright Fellowships have enabled millions of students and faculty to visit
other universities to broaden their horizons and explicitly collaborate interculturally. Yet the social sciences remain stubbornly parochial in the face of
cultural diversity and massive global challenges, with the university’s contribution to knowledge unquestionable, but underspecified and underappreciated (Stevens, Miller-Idriss, & Shami, 2018).
Throughout history, large-scale migration flows, especially of elites, have
led to the transfer of ideas across cultural, linguistic, and geographical
borders. States, foundations, and international organizations have systematically increased educational exchange and mobility of scientists and
students. These trends are more than symbolically significant, as border
crossings transform individual careers and epistemic networks. Yet such
opportunities remain highly stratified along such lines as class and gender,
despite transnational higher education and mobility having witnessed
tremendous growth (Zippel, 2017). This globalization manifests itself in
joint, dual, or franchised programs, online and distance education, and international branch campuses, with research developing apace (Kosmützky &
Putty, 2016). What will be the consequence of these elite border-crossings in
the face of humanitarian crises of restricted migration and mobility, such as
waves of refugees and newly constructed walls between countries? Indeed,
those responsible for governance of global, regional, and national systems
face a crisis of legitimation that challenges higher education and science
in their traditional means of generating expertise (Kennedy, 2015). Thus,
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amid calls for more “relevance” and “impact,” the governance by and of
science must address the age-old inequalities, new subjectivities, and the
gaps between research, policies, and practices. Not only for scientists in
countries experiencing rising nationalism, mobility is far from luxury, but
rather sustains academic life. Fundamentally, in complex globe-spanning
higher education and science systems, the diffusion of ideas and mobility
of scholars is necessary for innovation and influence. The strongest science systems are open: those with most international co-authorship and
highest mobility of the research workforce, with smaller countries, such as
Switzerland and Singapore, excelling (Wagner & Jonkers, 2017).
INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
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Yet even without the growth of spatial mobility, the revolution spurred by
information and communication technology (ICT) has quickened learning
processes and scientific work. Networked computers (and big data) have
significantly increased the power of diverse methodologies to explore and
explain. They reduce barriers to collaboration across boundaries, cultural and
hierarchical (Leahey, 2016). Applications of ICT have raised productivity and
made peer review and publication faster and less costly. However, networked
computers are not solely a technological intervention, but rather a developmental task requiring social learning to ideally combine both technological
and social capabilities (Hanna, 2010). Many disciplines are in the midst of
paradigm shifts in their processes of peer review and publication.
LANGUAGES, ACADEMIC CULTURES, AND MACHINE LEARNING
Albeit with large field-specific differences, language remains a barrier to
understanding and the sharing of research problems and findings. Whereas
humanities scholars and social scientists remain more-or-less dedicated
to their national languages, the natural sciences now publish their crucial
findings in English-language journals. The scientific lingua franca has shifted
from French to German to English over the past two centuries. Translation
devices applying the tools of computational linguistics and artificial intelligence are poised to radically facilitate the transfer of ideas. Machine learning
may reduce the advantages that Anglophone scientists have long enjoyed.
As scholarship becomes increasingly accessible, also to those outside the
academy and in diverse cultural contexts, further transformations are
likely.
Yet not only the languages of science pose a barrier to universal collaboration. Academic, intellectual styles go far beyond language itself to affect
relative foci on paradigm-development, on description or explanation,
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and on commentary; all with varying modes of interaction (Galtung,
1981). Among the determinants for successful (international) collaboration
are team characteristics, worldviews and motivations, and collaboration
processes. Long-term collaborations that combine formal and informal
interactions between researchers may remain creative and productive for
decades. The basis for productive collaborative networks are the preexisting relationships of the involved researchers and organizations, repeated
interactions, and intellectual affinities (Ulnicane, 2015). Policymakers could
bolster organizations to support such networks. Researchers could analyze
collaboration in multicultural teams and the conditions for an optimal
sharing of expertise—minimizing misunderstandings and conflicts—since
compositional diversity in research teams has positive and negative effects
on teamwork.
SCIENTIFIC PEER REVIEW AND PUBLICATION
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A further driver of change that reshapes both competition and collaboration
is innovation in forms of peer review and scientific publication formats,
especially open access digital publication. The standards and processes of
scientific exchange and publishing are challenged by the rapid diffusion
of knowledge through networks using ICT. This stands in contrast to the
incremental and time-consuming process of writing grant applications, peer
review, and official publication as standards of scientific practice (Lamont,
2009). Changing publication strategies at individual and organizational level
also reflect the rise of research evaluation, excellence initiatives, thematic
programs, and ratings and rankings.
POLICY LEARNING, COMPARISONS, AND SUPRANATIONAL COORDINATION
The influence of internationally acknowledged ideas, norms, and standards
(best practices) manifests itself at various levels. Once change is acknowledged as desirable, policies are mediated by the politics of borrowing
practices. Systematic international exchange enhances policy learning, in
turn increasingly affected by global competition in education and labor
markets. In some regions, supranational coordination further strengthens
such diffusion.
At the forefront of social and economic change and nation-state development, education, and science systems foster and reflect major societal
shifts even as they exhibit persistent cultural particularities. Learning from
leaders has always been significant as countries compete for cultural and
economic power. Yet global transformations in higher education and science
have made the supranational level and cross-national comparisons even
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more significant, with regional embeddedness also substantial. Ambitious
targets for R&D spending (3% of GDP for EU countries by 2020) exist
simultaneously with rampant privatization and marketization of (higher)
education. Part of what has been called the “competition fetish” (Naidoo,
2016) at various levels reflects competition between individual scholars for
scarce resources, from research funding to reputation; competition between
corporations, many of which rush to enter the burgeoning private market
for educational services; and competition between states for dominance via
global university brands. This occurs even as universities increasingly seek
to distinguish themselves through sophisticated identity campaigns, competing for students, and research funds via market placement in stratified
higher education systems (Drori, Delmestri, & Oberg, 2013).
Today, competitiveness is continuously monitored by comparative indicators used by policymakers, scholars, and administrators to generate reform
goals, to identify standards and best practices, and to empirically verify
policies and programs. Increasingly, countries have enacted policies that
emulate—or are legitimated by reference to—successful foreign models.
Mechanisms of such cross-cultural transfer include “continuous competitive
comparison” in such forms as rankings, benchmarking, and best practices;
policy learning and networks; and intergovernmental negotiation and
supranational coordination. All of these unfold their positive and negative
effects at the nexus of collaboration and competition.
For centuries, only a few regional centers of learning were highly influential, depending on economic and cultural power, as on linguistic dominance.
Today, based on quantitative and qualitative indicators, universities in many
countries compete worldwide for talent, funding, and prestige. If most universities have little chance of succeeding to become preeminent, overall the
academic drift in higher education that combines teaching and research missions has resulted in rising credential levels and broadened science capacity.
Two hundred countries now contribute to scientific knowledge production
in leading peer-reviewed journals. If “continuous competitive comparison”
both within and between countries creates winners and losers, more than
ever universities and scientific communities are linked globally, via communication networks, conferences, and exchanges, answering competitive
pressures with collaboration.
In the policy arena, international organizations, such as UNESCO, the
OECD, or the World Bank, have become actively engaged in producing
and utilizing academic outputs to facilitate policy transfer and spur development, identifying the most difficult problems humanity faces. With
differences in influence depending on past colonial relationships, languages,
and politics, leading countries in education and science worldwide, including Germany, the United States, and China, have differentially developed
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their higher education and science systems. Policymakers continue to
look across borders for inspiration, guidance, or practices as they reform
education and science to sustain or increase their competitiveness.
Recently, supranational coordination facilitates the definition of standards,
extends cross-border mobility, and enables collaboration. In education and
training, the open method of coordination now stretches far beyond the
European Union in engaging countries in reform initiatives, such as the
Bologna process in higher education, and funding instruments, such as the
EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (currently: Horizon
2020; nearly €80 billion of funding, 2014–2020). Through standardization,
mobility, and transparency, supranational coordination relies on a range of
instruments to strengthen European competitiveness.
GOVERNANCE: FROM R&D INVESTMENTS TO EVALUATION
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In an era in which accountability and evaluation are ubiquitous, the governance of higher education and science is based on explicitly measured
and evaluated outputs, mainly research articles. The effects and changed
behavior of individuals and organizations in such regimes has garnered
attention, yet few longitudinal studies show the long-term impact thereof
on universities and research. Worldwide, research evaluation systems
share the rationale of financial accounting that spreads and entrenches
certain values and techniques aiming to foster enhanced performance and
achieve efficiency in science (Whitley & Gläser, 2007). Such attempts to
transform qualities into numeric forms to measure, to compare, and to
inform decision-making reduce the quality of information and threaten
to narrow the recognition and impact of knowledge generated in diverse
systems.
Many countries aim to improve the quality of higher education through
research evaluation. The first such system, the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) from 1986, now the Research Excellence Framework
(REF), has become increasingly formalized and standardized over time,
with attempts to make it transparent and react to critiques of its myriad
(un)intended consequences, including selective submission behavior of
departments (Marques, et al., 2017): In the multidisciplinary field of educational research, for example, there have been decreases in the number of
academic staff whose research was submitted for peer review assessment;
the research article has become the preferred publication format; quantitative analyses have been bolstered; and stable concentration of funding
among top departments maintains stratification and exacerbates departmental disparities. Such discipline-specific studies emphasize how research
evaluation impacts the structural organization and cognitive development
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of disciplinary research, reinforcing stratification, and standardization (see
Hamann, 2016 on history). Such systems reflect the changing relationships
between states and universities and other research organizations. The
consequences of such new forms of governance are often intentional, yet
many unanticipated or unintentional results also follow. Analysis is needed
to chart these effects in various disciplines and on different levels.
Hardly escapable mechanisms in efforts to account for the quality of higher
education systems, ratings and rankings increasingly shape the status and
reputation of national systems, of organizations, and of researchers affiliated
with particular organizations and units within them. Research shows myriad
effects of these evaluations of “quality” for organizations and individuals
as research outputs are quantified (Espeland & Sauder, 2016). Often framed
in terms of New Public Management, higher education organizations are
forced to become more accountable through such mechanisms, whatever
such measurements’ shortcomings. Studies could address the interconnections and conversions and chart the consequences. How do research
organizations actively construct and apply such competitive measures in
their attempts to secure achieved status or strive for higher reputation
within regionally, nationally, and globally stratified higher education and
science systems?
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GOVERNANCE THROUGH PROGRAMMIFICATION
In many countries, governance has evolved within differentiating systems
and through increasing R&D investments. Ministries and other government agencies increase their influence on research agendas through the
proliferation of specifically defined thematic programs (Zapp, et al., 2018).
Such “programmification” symbolizes more educated policymakers and
administrators with the aspiration to guide scientific development and
target resources in the hopes of facilitating innovation. On the other hand,
especially when such funding lines question or substitute for infrastructure,
subvert peer review or reduce scientific autonomy, such programs may
counter necessary long-term commitments to fundamental research and
scientifically driven priorities. Viewed globally, these programs also lead
to interpretation and adoption of global and regional ideas and norms,
a force for enhanced exchange and isomorphism. Yet such narrowing of
research focus also poses risks of overinvestment in fashionable topics
or commitment to certain research questions with policy relevance to the
detriment of a diverse scientific agenda or guarantees of autonomy needed
for blue sky or high-risk research that promises pioneering insights.
Along with unprecedented structural expansion of higher education to facilitate the “knowledge society,” the perceived importance of
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evidence-based policymaking and notions of quality, excellence, relevance,
and impact has risen (Zapp et al., 2018). Government-funded R&D and
research councils’ substantial growth in both funding and large-scale,
long-term planning, including thematic choices, are evidence of such “programmification”. If the importance of external models has grown in an era of
transnationalization, translation occurs at every governance level, resulting
in specific research models and priorities across societies. Researchers study
such diffusion of ideas, norms, and policies in an era of stark competition and
rising collaboration. While the potential for collaborations may indeed grow
with proliferation of such thematic research programs, the tools required to
coordinate such complex research projects worldwide thus far exist more
in certain fields, often those requiring enormously costly facilities, such as
quantum physics or astronomy. Indeed, the Internet was devised to facilitate
exactly such globe-spanning scientific collaboration (Berners-Lee, 2018).
Science and policymaking have become increasingly intertwined, resulting
in new challenges of authority and conflicts over research priorities and output measurements. For science studies, this increases the necessity to attend
to the complexities of a dynamic relationship in which boundary-spanning
managers gain influence as they translate across this divide. Not only
are different conceptualizations of disciplinary research and development
across countries and regions crucial to analyze, but also the distinct legacies
thereof. For example, the distinct, expansive role of the EU in constructing
a European Research Area, in establishing cross-border networks, and in
shaping research agendas shows how supranational governance simultaneously offers incentives and puts pressure on national and local actors to align
their research to overarching priorities and themes—and collaborate interculturally. Over the past several decades, political interest in evidence-based
policy-making, quality assessment, and research evaluation, and direct
involvement of various decision-makers has led to the establishment of
new organizations, funding instruments, programs, and training programs.
Often, such developments challenge old paradigms, disciplinary divisions
of labor, and boundaries between science and policy.
FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
Higher education and scientific production have been analyzed by various
established fields, including bibliometrics, sociology of higher education,
and science studies. Challenges include disciplinary divisions of labor;
data selectivity and methodological nationalism; lack of synthesis; and few
longitudinal analyses. In-depth comparative research is needed to extend
our knowledge beyond dominant science-producing regions and countries
and improve our understanding of cultural and disciplinary diversity.
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Yet science viewed as a complex and continuously evolving network of
individuals, teams, projects, ideas, and publications demands innovative
research (see Leahey, 2016).
In terms of data and methods, the science of science uses more and better
data (and calculation capacity) to explore developments in scholarly inputs
and outputs, from funding and collaborations to production and evaluation
(Fortunato et al., 2018). Together with big data, multi-level and mixed
methods approaches extend the possibilities for analysis and explanation.
For example, network analysis and shifts away from linear causality toward
complexity promise innovation, yet here too the overreliance on a few
global databases (quantitative) and a few countries (qualitative) produces
a selective and culturally biased picture of global scientific capacity and
output. This also reproduces stratification—detrimental to the diffusion of
ideas.
The evolution of journal publications since 1900 shows major shifts in the
global, regional, and national development of higher education and science
systems. The remarkable expansion of science reflects contrasting and simultaneous trends: rising competition at all levels matched by diverse forms
of collaboration among scientists working in different disciplinary contexts,
countries, and organizational forms. The future of science is indeed global,
but much research remains parochial and particularistic. Thus, more internationally and interculturally comparative research is warranted, especially on
the global flows of researchers and ideas. Governance via international organizations, supranational coordination, and evaluation systems are increasingly studied, but risk reifying stratification patterns within higher education
and science.
Transdisciplinary collaborations among individual scientists, research
teams, and organizations—across national and linguistic borders—demand
enhanced attention, epecially to understand conditions and consequences
(Lee & Bozeman, 2005). Analyses of interactions between institutions (economy, politics, and society) and organizational forms and their respective
networks promise insights into contemporary competition and collaboration
patterns. Opportunities for mobility (brain circulation) and collaboration
as well as ICT and open access publication formats are among the key
drivers of pure exponential growth scientific output globally. Yet forms of
peer review, research evaluation, and publication lag behind in representing
fully the complexity of scientific exchange or the diversity among research
outputs and their impacts.
The establishment and maintenance of truly global scientific networks
responsible for addressing many of the most crucial scientific puzzles
will be an increasingly crucial topic. Given their ascendant importance,
international, transdisciplinary, and intersectoral collaborations deserve
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encompassing studies. If higher education and research policies are to
optimally promote scientific productivity and innovation, such interventions should be developed upon deeper understanding of the drivers and
dynamics of types of research collaboration. Future research will explore
the organizational and network conditions that facilitate collaborations and
thus the science with most influence and impact.
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Justin J.W. Powell is Professor of Sociology of Education at the University
of Luxembourg. His comparative institutional analyses chart persistence and
change in special and inclusive education, in vocational training and higher
education, and in science systems and research policy. His award-winning
books include Barriers to Inclusion: Special Education in the US and Germany
(Routledge, 2011/2016), Comparing Special Education: Origins to Contemporary
Paradoxes (Stanford University Press, 2011), and The Century of Science: The
Global Triumph of the Research University (Emerald, 2017).
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Higher Education and the
Exponential Rise of Science:
Competition and Collaboration
JUSTIN J.W. POWELL
Abstract
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How we collaborate and compete to find solutions to the problems and challenges
of our age vastly impacts our individual and group success and well-being.
Interdependent, the institutions of education and science have dramatically
expanded. Today, scientists in nearly all countries contribute to our shared stores
of knowledge, with research universities the driving force behind unexpected
pure exponential growth in scientific production. Competition—regional, national,
organizational, and individual—has become more potent—with performance
measures, comparative indicators, and formal evaluations continuously generated
and used in decision-making. Simultaneously, collaboration across institutional,
disciplinary, organizational, and cultural boundaries expands the possibilities of
discovery and produces the most influential science. Competition and collaboration
at the nexus of higher education and science demand enhanced attention as they
shape the future of scientific innovation and production, with its understudied yet
increasingly incontrovertible effects on individuals and societies.
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INTRODUCTION
Whether between regions, nations, social groups, or individuals, how we collaborate and compete to find solutions to the problems and challenges of our
age vastly impacts our individual and group success and well-being. More
than ever before, we seek answers to the critical questions of survival, health,
and flourishing in the twin panaceas of (higher) education and science. These
interdependent institutions have dramatically expanded. What just a century ago was the province of a tiny elite is now accessible to the majority.
Indeed, today we live in “schooled societies” (Baker, 2014) in which most valued positions and life chances of individuals are increasingly decided by the
level and quality of their educational experiences. Yet stratification patterns
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert A. Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
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reflect persistent disparities in group educational attainment and access to
science-producing resources.
The phenomenal rise in organized learning has had unforeseen and extraordinary consequences also in the realm of science, such as exponential growth
in scientific production. Science more than ever determines how we (attempt
to) solve global social and environmental problems as well as the scale and
scope of growth in economies increasingly based on information, knowledge, and technology. Thus, the demand for higher education and science
in countries around the world has never been greater. Steadily increasing
educational achievement and attainment levels worldwide and expanded
scientific capacity have generated many benefits to society, including more
knowledgeable citizens, productive economies, and enhanced longevity, but
complex challenges abound.
Throughout the world, the demand for higher education led to unprecedented investments, which improved science capacity. Indeed, universities
provide robust infrastructure and innovation-oriented networks, educate
scientists across the disciplines, and sustain scientific output. Among other
organizational forms that produce most research—extra-university research
institutes, government agencies, private companies, and hospitals—research
universities have remained the driving force behind the global growth
of scientific productivity. They connect all types of knowledge-producing
organizations and contribute the majority of scientific publications (Powell
& Dusdal, 2017; Powell, Fernandez et al., 2017; Dusdal, 2018).
Countries invest heavily into scientific output and technological innovation, as advanced knowledge is applied in ever more fields, themselves
reshaped by that knowledge, for example, in computing and robotics.
Specialization in higher education and science reshapes labor markets,
increasingly defined by academic distinctions and occupational boundaries
(Baker, 2014). This self-reinforcing evolution of employment segments
develops higher education and science through the demand for credentials
and expertise. Yet innovative science also calls for enhanced and targeted
investments, from diverse sources. In the inexorable race for breakthroughs,
difficult choices are necessary. Competition on multiple levels has become
more potent. Formal evaluations, performance measures, and comparative
indicators are continuously generated. Although imperfect proxies, they
become the basis for decision-making, in policy arenas, organizations,
research teams, and individual careers.
Simultaneously, collaboration across institutional, disciplinary, organizational, and cultural boundaries expands the possibilities of discovery.
Indeed, if competition in this context reflects a learning race to achieve
new knowledge, then participation in networks, and interorganizational
linkages, with continuous communication and collaborations of different
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sorts, will be crucial to success (Powell, 1998). Scientific collaborations, with
the goal to achieve new scientific knowledge (Katz & Martin, 1997), often
begin informally, the result of conversation between researchers meeting
in face-to-face situations (Jeong, Choi, & Kim, 2014). Depending on the
field and constellations of scientists in the team, collaborations may be
driven by ideas and theories, equipment, resources, or data (Wagner, 2005).
Collaboration leads to more influential, often-cited research, especially
among scholars in different countries (Katz & Hicks, 1997; Fortunato et al.,
2018)—a key argument for further globalizing the scientific enterprise and
recognizing the brain circulation and intercultural teamwork that facilitates
recognition and impact across scientific communities (Sugimoto et al.,
2017).
As scientists increasingly work in teams, extend their understanding, and
compete to discover important ideas, they need to meet, understand, cooperate, and collaborate, doing so for myriad reasons (see Beaver, 2001; Leahey,
2016). In fact, in some fields today, there is no choice, as work becomes
so complex that individual scientists cannot achieve meaningful results
without collaborating—called the “collaboration imperative” (Bozeman &
Boardman, 2014). A century ago most research papers published in diverse
disciplines were written by single authors. Today, the modal paper in the
natural and social sciences represents the work of multiple authors, often
from different organizational and national contexts. The collective shift
toward teamwork in research and the implied specialization extends from
fundamental research in the natural and social sciences to the applied world
of patents (Mosbah-Natanson & Gingras, 2013; Wuchty, Jones, & Uzzi, 2007).
Thus, competition and collaboration at the intersection of higher education
and science are research topics requiring attention if we hope to understand
the present and future of scientific discovery and production, with its
understudied yet increasingly incontrovertible effects on individuals and
societies.
GLOBALIZING HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENCE
Exponential growth in science production around the world has resulted
from rising investments in human capability and especially the worldwide
triumph of the research university. Unexpected by founders of bibliometrics (de Solla Price, 1986), who rather thought expansion would reach a
saturation level and taper off within decades of the advent of “big science”
in the 1960s, we instead find that increased global and local competition, as well as boundary-spanning collaborations of various types, have
driven unprecedented scientific advancement and technological innovation
(Powell, Fernandez et al., 2017). Systematic estimates of the number of
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peer-reviewed articles cataloged in the Science Citation Index Expanded
from 1900 onward show science transformed by unprecedented production
(Powell, Baker et al., 2017). Growth in scientific production shows no decline
or slowing, with “pure exponential growth” up to today: “Big science”
has been replaced by what could be called “global mega-science” as well
over a million new peer-reviewed articles—the gold standard of scientific
output—are published each year just in the leading journals of the natural
sciences and health.
Focusing on articles published in the world-leading journals provides
insights into the cutting-edge of fundamental research. Charting global
shifts in the scientific “center of gravity” shows changing regional scientific
output (Powell, Fernandez et al., 2017). Along with the North American,
European countries remain essential players in the scientific arena, with
their centuries-old research universities being emulated worldwide. Over
the past few decades in East Asia, massive government support in Japan,
China, South Korea, and Taiwan, for example, have triggered explosive
growth of science capacity and the ensuing production. Researchers have
only just begun to explain how and why certain countries have succeeded
differentially in expanding their higher education and science capacity and
which organizational forms and funding instruments do most to facilitate
scientific serendipity as well as long-term impact (Powell & Dusdal, 2017;
Powell, Fernandez et al., 2017).
If competition is now fully global, so too is collaboration, as scientists in
nearly all countries contribute to our shared stores of legitimated knowledge. Most often, scientists and scholars conduct their work in increasingly
research-oriented universities, which have proliferated around the world,
especially since WWII. Indeed, university-based research has risen to
become the driving force of science production globally. Despite universities
operating successfully in all societies, substantial regional differences in
contributing to cutting-edge scientific communication and disciplinary
debates continue to exist. This further emphasizes the need for intercultural
research collaborations, in particular, across the hemispheres; beyond the
extensive links that exist across the global North. Currently, the shifting
“center of gravity” away from North America emphasizes the relative
decline of the United States as European and Asian countries invest heavily
in their national higher education and research capacity. At the same
time, cutting-edge knowledge production increasingly relies on building
international, intercultural, and interorganizational bridges to facilitate
joint learning processes and scholarship recognized by diverse scientific
communities. Research and development demands investments not only
in individuals within organizations and infrastructures but also—more
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than ever—in the networks, connections, and exchanges that facilitate
discoveries.
TRENDS IN AND DRIVERS OF COMPETITION AND COLLABORATION
The potential of contemporary science cannot be understood and the pathways to its further development charted without examining two contrasting
concurrent trends—rising competition and collaboration across and within
nations: If countries continue to fund most scientific research, (international)
collaborations among scientists across levels and teamwork in diverse types
of research organizations have facilitated remarkable growth in knowledge
production (Adams, 2013; Powell, Baker et al., 2017). The future of (higher)
education and science that must grapple with complex environmental and
social problems now depends on how we (re)organize these fields to become
more collaborative in the face of globalized competition between teams, organizations, and countries.
TRANSNATIONALIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENCE VIA “BRAIN CIRCULATION”
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Transnationalization (and regionalization) of higher education and science
challenge traditional nation-based studies. The diffusion of worldwide
ideas and norms in science is a powerful driver of global similarities, as no
country can resist global standards (Drori, Meyer, Ramirez, & Schofer, 2003).
Higher education participation rates continue to climb, now reaching large
proportions of each cohort in societies everywhere (Schofer & Meyer, 2005).
Scientization is significantly driven by the research universities that increasingly influence the design of reforms of schooling, policymaking activities,
and economic development—by producing expertise via professionals and,
ultimately, the occupations of the future (Baker, 2014). Despite convergence
pressures, directed by international organizations, such as UNESCO and
the OECD, comparative institutional analyses show persistent differences in
the structuring and capacity for innovation of higher education and science
systems. We find sustained, even increasing, significance of the research
university in scientific production across countries (Powell & Dusdal,
2017).
While industry and science-producing organizational forms such as
independent research institutes, hospitals, government agencies, academics,
and museums, among others, contribute to advancing knowledge, we know
too little about the conditions these forms, and organizational hybrids,
provide (Dusdal, 2018). Institutionally, university, industry, and government
form the “triple helix” of science production, with specific developments
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of these interinstitutional, boundary-spanning networks leading to different innovation dynamics (Leydesdorff & Etzkowitz, 1998). If the key
organizational form remains the university, with its tremendous capacity
for transferring knowledge intergenerationally, between disciplines, and
across cultural boundaries, then research must delve deeper into the
learning opportunities, networks, and types of collaboration this central
organizational form enables. The main driver of scientific capacity is the
education and training of each generation of scientists poised to push the
cutting edge.
Factors, from research policy and funding instruments and system development to scientific communication, have also transformed the ways science
is conducted and the scope and speed of knowledge diffusion around the
world. If markets for scientific talent have always been wide, today they
are nearly boundless, at least at the peaks and given fluency in the dominant English as the contemporary lingua franca. Elaborate migratory flows,
massive government and philanthropic programs, and everyday mobility
enormously facilitate the exchange that leads to scientific networks, “brain
circulation”, and the potential for collaboration on a vast scale (Sugimoto
et al., 2017). For example, the European Union’s Erasmus program or the US
Fulbright Fellowships have enabled millions of students and faculty to visit
other universities to broaden their horizons and explicitly collaborate interculturally. Yet the social sciences remain stubbornly parochial in the face of
cultural diversity and massive global challenges, with the university’s contribution to knowledge unquestionable, but underspecified and underappreciated (Stevens, Miller-Idriss, & Shami, 2018).
Throughout history, large-scale migration flows, especially of elites, have
led to the transfer of ideas across cultural, linguistic, and geographical
borders. States, foundations, and international organizations have systematically increased educational exchange and mobility of scientists and
students. These trends are more than symbolically significant, as border
crossings transform individual careers and epistemic networks. Yet such
opportunities remain highly stratified along such lines as class and gender,
despite transnational higher education and mobility having witnessed
tremendous growth (Zippel, 2017). This globalization manifests itself in
joint, dual, or franchised programs, online and distance education, and international branch campuses, with research developing apace (Kosmützky &
Putty, 2016). What will be the consequence of these elite border-crossings in
the face of humanitarian crises of restricted migration and mobility, such as
waves of refugees and newly constructed walls between countries? Indeed,
those responsible for governance of global, regional, and national systems
face a crisis of legitimation that challenges higher education and science
in their traditional means of generating expertise (Kennedy, 2015). Thus,
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amid calls for more “relevance” and “impact,” the governance by and of
science must address the age-old inequalities, new subjectivities, and the
gaps between research, policies, and practices. Not only for scientists in
countries experiencing rising nationalism, mobility is far from luxury, but
rather sustains academic life. Fundamentally, in complex globe-spanning
higher education and science systems, the diffusion of ideas and mobility
of scholars is necessary for innovation and influence. The strongest science systems are open: those with most international co-authorship and
highest mobility of the research workforce, with smaller countries, such as
Switzerland and Singapore, excelling (Wagner & Jonkers, 2017).
INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
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Yet even without the growth of spatial mobility, the revolution spurred by
information and communication technology (ICT) has quickened learning
processes and scientific work. Networked computers (and big data) have
significantly increased the power of diverse methodologies to explore and
explain. They reduce barriers to collaboration across boundaries, cultural and
hierarchical (Leahey, 2016). Applications of ICT have raised productivity and
made peer review and publication faster and less costly. However, networked
computers are not solely a technological intervention, but rather a developmental task requiring social learning to ideally combine both technological
and social capabilities (Hanna, 2010). Many disciplines are in the midst of
paradigm shifts in their processes of peer review and publication.
LANGUAGES, ACADEMIC CULTURES, AND MACHINE LEARNING
Albeit with large field-specific differences, language remains a barrier to
understanding and the sharing of research problems and findings. Whereas
humanities scholars and social scientists remain more-or-less dedicated
to their national languages, the natural sciences now publish their crucial
findings in English-language journals. The scientific lingua franca has shifted
from French to German to English over the past two centuries. Translation
devices applying the tools of computational linguistics and artificial intelligence are poised to radically facilitate the transfer of ideas. Machine learning
may reduce the advantages that Anglophone scientists have long enjoyed.
As scholarship becomes increasingly accessible, also to those outside the
academy and in diverse cultural contexts, further transformations are
likely.
Yet not only the languages of science pose a barrier to universal collaboration. Academic, intellectual styles go far beyond language itself to affect
relative foci on paradigm-development, on description or explanation,
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and on commentary; all with varying modes of interaction (Galtung,
1981). Among the determinants for successful (international) collaboration
are team characteristics, worldviews and motivations, and collaboration
processes. Long-term collaborations that combine formal and informal
interactions between researchers may remain creative and productive for
decades. The basis for productive collaborative networks are the preexisting relationships of the involved researchers and organizations, repeated
interactions, and intellectual affinities (Ulnicane, 2015). Policymakers could
bolster organizations to support such networks. Researchers could analyze
collaboration in multicultural teams and the conditions for an optimal
sharing of expertise—minimizing misunderstandings and conflicts—since
compositional diversity in research teams has positive and negative effects
on teamwork.
SCIENTIFIC PEER REVIEW AND PUBLICATION
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A further driver of change that reshapes both competition and collaboration
is innovation in forms of peer review and scientific publication formats,
especially open access digital publication. The standards and processes of
scientific exchange and publishing are challenged by the rapid diffusion
of knowledge through networks using ICT. This stands in contrast to the
incremental and time-consuming process of writing grant applications, peer
review, and official publication as standards of scientific practice (Lamont,
2009). Changing publication strategies at individual and organizational level
also reflect the rise of research evaluation, excellence initiatives, thematic
programs, and ratings and rankings.
POLICY LEARNING, COMPARISONS, AND SUPRANATIONAL COORDINATION
The influence of internationally acknowledged ideas, norms, and standards
(best practices) manifests itself at various levels. Once change is acknowledged as desirable, policies are mediated by the politics of borrowing
practices. Systematic international exchange enhances policy learning, in
turn increasingly affected by global competition in education and labor
markets. In some regions, supranational coordination further strengthens
such diffusion.
At the forefront of social and economic change and nation-state development, education, and science systems foster and reflect major societal
shifts even as they exhibit persistent cultural particularities. Learning from
leaders has always been significant as countries compete for cultural and
economic power. Yet global transformations in higher education and science
have made the supranational level and cross-national comparisons even
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more significant, with regional embeddedness also substantial. Ambitious
targets for R&D spending (3% of GDP for EU countries by 2020) exist
simultaneously with rampant privatization and marketization of (higher)
education. Part of what has been called the “competition fetish” (Naidoo,
2016) at various levels reflects competition between individual scholars for
scarce resources, from research funding to reputation; competition between
corporations, many of which rush to enter the burgeoning private market
for educational services; and competition between states for dominance via
global university brands. This occurs even as universities increasingly seek
to distinguish themselves through sophisticated identity campaigns, competing for students, and research funds via market placement in stratified
higher education systems (Drori, Delmestri, & Oberg, 2013).
Today, competitiveness is continuously monitored by comparative indicators used by policymakers, scholars, and administrators to generate reform
goals, to identify standards and best practices, and to empirically verify
policies and programs. Increasingly, countries have enacted policies that
emulate—or are legitimated by reference to—successful foreign models.
Mechanisms of such cross-cultural transfer include “continuous competitive
comparison” in such forms as rankings, benchmarking, and best practices;
policy learning and networks; and intergovernmental negotiation and
supranational coordination. All of these unfold their positive and negative
effects at the nexus of collaboration and competition.
For centuries, only a few regional centers of learning were highly influential, depending on economic and cultural power, as on linguistic dominance.
Today, based on quantitative and qualitative indicators, universities in many
countries compete worldwide for talent, funding, and prestige. If most universities have little chance of succeeding to become preeminent, overall the
academic drift in higher education that combines teaching and research missions has resulted in rising credential levels and broadened science capacity.
Two hundred countries now contribute to scientific knowledge production
in leading peer-reviewed journals. If “continuous competitive comparison”
both within and between countries creates winners and losers, more than
ever universities and scientific communities are linked globally, via communication networks, conferences, and exchanges, answering competitive
pressures with collaboration.
In the policy arena, international organizations, such as UNESCO, the
OECD, or the World Bank, have become actively engaged in producing
and utilizing academic outputs to facilitate policy transfer and spur development, identifying the most difficult problems humanity faces. With
differences in influence depending on past colonial relationships, languages,
and politics, leading countries in education and science worldwide, including Germany, the United States, and China, have differentially developed
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their higher education and science systems. Policymakers continue to
look across borders for inspiration, guidance, or practices as they reform
education and science to sustain or increase their competitiveness.
Recently, supranational coordination facilitates the definition of standards,
extends cross-border mobility, and enables collaboration. In education and
training, the open method of coordination now stretches far beyond the
European Union in engaging countries in reform initiatives, such as the
Bologna process in higher education, and funding instruments, such as the
EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (currently: Horizon
2020; nearly €80 billion of funding, 2014–2020). Through standardization,
mobility, and transparency, supranational coordination relies on a range of
instruments to strengthen European competitiveness.
GOVERNANCE: FROM R&D INVESTMENTS TO EVALUATION
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In an era in which accountability and evaluation are ubiquitous, the governance of higher education and science is based on explicitly measured
and evaluated outputs, mainly research articles. The effects and changed
behavior of individuals and organizations in such regimes has garnered
attention, yet few longitudinal studies show the long-term impact thereof
on universities and research. Worldwide, research evaluation systems
share the rationale of financial accounting that spreads and entrenches
certain values and techniques aiming to foster enhanced performance and
achieve efficiency in science (Whitley & Gläser, 2007). Such attempts to
transform qualities into numeric forms to measure, to compare, and to
inform decision-making reduce the quality of information and threaten
to narrow the recognition and impact of knowledge generated in diverse
systems.
Many countries aim to improve the quality of higher education through
research evaluation. The first such system, the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) from 1986, now the Research Excellence Framework
(REF), has become increasingly formalized and standardized over time,
with attempts to make it transparent and react to critiques of its myriad
(un)intended consequences, including selective submission behavior of
departments (Marques, et al., 2017): In the multidisciplinary field of educational research, for example, there have been decreases in the number of
academic staff whose research was submitted for peer review assessment;
the research article has become the preferred publication format; quantitative analyses have been bolstered; and stable concentration of funding
among top departments maintains stratification and exacerbates departmental disparities. Such discipline-specific studies emphasize how research
evaluation impacts the structural organization and cognitive development
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of disciplinary research, reinforcing stratification, and standardization (see
Hamann, 2016 on history). Such systems reflect the changing relationships
between states and universities and other research organizations. The
consequences of such new forms of governance are often intentional, yet
many unanticipated or unintentional results also follow. Analysis is needed
to chart these effects in various disciplines and on different levels.
Hardly escapable mechanisms in efforts to account for the quality of higher
education systems, ratings and rankings increasingly shape the status and
reputation of national systems, of organizations, and of researchers affiliated
with particular organizations and units within them. Research shows myriad
effects of these evaluations of “quality” for organizations and individuals
as research outputs are quantified (Espeland & Sauder, 2016). Often framed
in terms of New Public Management, higher education organizations are
forced to become more accountable through such mechanisms, whatever
such measurements’ shortcomings. Studies could address the interconnections and conversions and chart the consequences. How do research
organizations actively construct and apply such competitive measures in
their attempts to secure achieved status or strive for higher reputation
within regionally, nationally, and globally stratified higher education and
science systems?
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GOVERNANCE THROUGH PROGRAMMIFICATION
In many countries, governance has evolved within differentiating systems
and through increasing R&D investments. Ministries and other government agencies increase their influence on research agendas through the
proliferation of specifically defined thematic programs (Zapp, et al., 2018).
Such “programmification” symbolizes more educated policymakers and
administrators with the aspiration to guide scientific development and
target resources in the hopes of facilitating innovation. On the other hand,
especially when such funding lines question or substitute for infrastructure,
subvert peer review or reduce scientific autonomy, such programs may
counter necessary long-term commitments to fundamental research and
scientifically driven priorities. Viewed globally, these programs also lead
to interpretation and adoption of global and regional ideas and norms,
a force for enhanced exchange and isomorphism. Yet such narrowing of
research focus also poses risks of overinvestment in fashionable topics
or commitment to certain research questions with policy relevance to the
detriment of a diverse scientific agenda or guarantees of autonomy needed
for blue sky or high-risk research that promises pioneering insights.
Along with unprecedented structural expansion of higher education to facilitate the “knowledge society,” the perceived importance of
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evidence-based policymaking and notions of quality, excellence, relevance,
and impact has risen (Zapp et al., 2018). Government-funded R&D and
research councils’ substantial growth in both funding and large-scale,
long-term planning, including thematic choices, are evidence of such “programmification”. If the importance of external models has grown in an era of
transnationalization, translation occurs at every governance level, resulting
in specific research models and priorities across societies. Researchers study
such diffusion of ideas, norms, and policies in an era of stark competition and
rising collaboration. While the potential for collaborations may indeed grow
with proliferation of such thematic research programs, the tools required to
coordinate such complex research projects worldwide thus far exist more
in certain fields, often those requiring enormously costly facilities, such as
quantum physics or astronomy. Indeed, the Internet was devised to facilitate
exactly such globe-spanning scientific collaboration (Berners-Lee, 2018).
Science and policymaking have become increasingly intertwined, resulting
in new challenges of authority and conflicts over research priorities and output measurements. For science studies, this increases the necessity to attend
to the complexities of a dynamic relationship in which boundary-spanning
managers gain influence as they translate across this divide. Not only
are different conceptualizations of disciplinary research and development
across countries and regions crucial to analyze, but also the distinct legacies
thereof. For example, the distinct, expansive role of the EU in constructing
a European Research Area, in establishing cross-border networks, and in
shaping research agendas shows how supranational governance simultaneously offers incentives and puts pressure on national and local actors to align
their research to overarching priorities and themes—and collaborate interculturally. Over the past several decades, political interest in evidence-based
policy-making, quality assessment, and research evaluation, and direct
involvement of various decision-makers has led to the establishment of
new organizations, funding instruments, programs, and training programs.
Often, such developments challenge old paradigms, disciplinary divisions
of labor, and boundaries between science and policy.
FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
Higher education and scientific production have been analyzed by various
established fields, including bibliometrics, sociology of higher education,
and science studies. Challenges include disciplinary divisions of labor;
data selectivity and methodological nationalism; lack of synthesis; and few
longitudinal analyses. In-depth comparative research is needed to extend
our knowledge beyond dominant science-producing regions and countries
and improve our understanding of cultural and disciplinary diversity.
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Yet science viewed as a complex and continuously evolving network of
individuals, teams, projects, ideas, and publications demands innovative
research (see Leahey, 2016).
In terms of data and methods, the science of science uses more and better
data (and calculation capacity) to explore developments in scholarly inputs
and outputs, from funding and collaborations to production and evaluation
(Fortunato et al., 2018). Together with big data, multi-level and mixed
methods approaches extend the possibilities for analysis and explanation.
For example, network analysis and shifts away from linear causality toward
complexity promise innovation, yet here too the overreliance on a few
global databases (quantitative) and a few countries (qualitative) produces
a selective and culturally biased picture of global scientific capacity and
output. This also reproduces stratification—detrimental to the diffusion of
ideas.
The evolution of journal publications since 1900 shows major shifts in the
global, regional, and national development of higher education and science
systems. The remarkable expansion of science reflects contrasting and simultaneous trends: rising competition at all levels matched by diverse forms
of collaboration among scientists working in different disciplinary contexts,
countries, and organizational forms. The future of science is indeed global,
but much research remains parochial and particularistic. Thus, more internationally and interculturally comparative research is warranted, especially on
the global flows of researchers and ideas. Governance via international organizations, supranational coordination, and evaluation systems are increasingly studied, but risk reifying stratification patterns within higher education
and science.
Transdisciplinary collaborations among individual scientists, research
teams, and organizations—across national and linguistic borders—demand
enhanced attention, epecially to understand conditions and consequences
(Lee & Bozeman, 2005). Analyses of interactions between institutions (economy, politics, and society) and organizational forms and their respective
networks promise insights into contemporary competition and collaboration
patterns. Opportunities for mobility (brain circulation) and collaboration
as well as ICT and open access publication formats are among the key
drivers of pure exponential growth scientific output globally. Yet forms of
peer review, research evaluation, and publication lag behind in representing
fully the complexity of scientific exchange or the diversity among research
outputs and their impacts.
The establishment and maintenance of truly global scientific networks
responsible for addressing many of the most crucial scientific puzzles
will be an increasingly crucial topic. Given their ascendant importance,
international, transdisciplinary, and intersectoral collaborations deserve
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encompassing studies. If higher education and research policies are to
optimally promote scientific productivity and innovation, such interventions should be developed upon deeper understanding of the drivers and
dynamics of types of research collaboration. Future research will explore
the organizational and network conditions that facilitate collaborations and
thus the science with most influence and impact.
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Justin J.W. Powell is Professor of Sociology of Education at the University
of Luxembourg. His comparative institutional analyses chart persistence and
change in special and inclusive education, in vocational training and higher
education, and in science systems and research policy. His award-winning
books include Barriers to Inclusion: Special Education in the US and Germany
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Paradoxes (Stanford University Press, 2011), and The Century of Science: The
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Higher Education and the
Exponential Rise of Science:
Competition and Collaboration
JUSTIN J.W. POWELL
Abstract
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How we collaborate and compete to find solutions to the problems and challenges
of our age vastly impacts our individual and group success and well-being.
Interdependent, the institutions of education and science have dramatically
expanded. Today, scientists in nearly all countries contribute to our shared stores
of knowledge, with research universities the driving force behind unexpected
pure exponential growth in scientific production. Competition—regional, national,
organizational, and individual—has become more potent—with performance
measures, comparative indicators, and formal evaluations continuously generated
and used in decision-making. Simultaneously, collaboration across institutional,
disciplinary, organizational, and cultural boundaries expands the possibilities of
discovery and produces the most influential science. Competition and collaboration
at the nexus of higher education and science demand enhanced attention as they
shape the future of scientific innovation and production, with its understudied yet
increasingly incontrovertible effects on individuals and societies.
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INTRODUCTION
Whether between regions, nations, social groups, or individuals, how we collaborate and compete to find solutions to the problems and challenges of our
age vastly impacts our individual and group success and well-being. More
than ever before, we seek answers to the critical questions of survival, health,
and flourishing in the twin panaceas of (higher) education and science. These
interdependent institutions have dramatically expanded. What just a century ago was the province of a tiny elite is now accessible to the majority.
Indeed, today we live in “schooled societies” (Baker, 2014) in which most valued positions and life chances of individuals are increasingly decided by the
level and quality of their educational experiences. Yet stratification patterns
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
Robert A. Scott and Marlis Buchmann (General Editors) with Stephen Kosslyn (Consulting Editor).
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.
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reflect persistent disparities in group educational attainment and access to
science-producing resources.
The phenomenal rise in organized learning has had unforeseen and extraordinary consequences also in the realm of science, such as exponential growth
in scientific production. Science more than ever determines how we (attempt
to) solve global social and environmental problems as well as the scale and
scope of growth in economies increasingly based on information, knowledge, and technology. Thus, the demand for higher education and science
in countries around the world has never been greater. Steadily increasing
educational achievement and attainment levels worldwide and expanded
scientific capacity have generated many benefits to society, including more
knowledgeable citizens, productive economies, and enhanced longevity, but
complex challenges abound.
Throughout the world, the demand for higher education led to unprecedented investments, which improved science capacity. Indeed, universities
provide robust infrastructure and innovation-oriented networks, educate
scientists across the disciplines, and sustain scientific output. Among other
organizational forms that produce most research—extra-university research
institutes, government agencies, private companies, and hospitals—research
universities have remained the driving force behind the global growth
of scientific productivity. They connect all types of knowledge-producing
organizations and contribute the majority of scientific publications (Powell
& Dusdal, 2017; Powell, Fernandez et al., 2017; Dusdal, 2018).
Countries invest heavily into scientific output and technological innovation, as advanced knowledge is applied in ever more fields, themselves
reshaped by that knowledge, for example, in computing and robotics.
Specialization in higher education and science reshapes labor markets,
increasingly defined by academic distinctions and occupational boundaries
(Baker, 2014). This self-reinforcing evolution of employment segments
develops higher education and science through the demand for credentials
and expertise. Yet innovative science also calls for enhanced and targeted
investments, from diverse sources. In the inexorable race for breakthroughs,
difficult choices are necessary. Competition on multiple levels has become
more potent. Formal evaluations, performance measures, and comparative
indicators are continuously generated. Although imperfect proxies, they
become the basis for decision-making, in policy arenas, organizations,
research teams, and individual careers.
Simultaneously, collaboration across institutional, disciplinary, organizational, and cultural boundaries expands the possibilities of discovery.
Indeed, if competition in this context reflects a learning race to achieve
new knowledge, then participation in networks, and interorganizational
linkages, with continuous communication and collaborations of different
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sorts, will be crucial to success (Powell, 1998). Scientific collaborations, with
the goal to achieve new scientific knowledge (Katz & Martin, 1997), often
begin informally, the result of conversation between researchers meeting
in face-to-face situations (Jeong, Choi, & Kim, 2014). Depending on the
field and constellations of scientists in the team, collaborations may be
driven by ideas and theories, equipment, resources, or data (Wagner, 2005).
Collaboration leads to more influential, often-cited research, especially
among scholars in different countries (Katz & Hicks, 1997; Fortunato et al.,
2018)—a key argument for further globalizing the scientific enterprise and
recognizing the brain circulation and intercultural teamwork that facilitates
recognition and impact across scientific communities (Sugimoto et al.,
2017).
As scientists increasingly work in teams, extend their understanding, and
compete to discover important ideas, they need to meet, understand, cooperate, and collaborate, doing so for myriad reasons (see Beaver, 2001; Leahey,
2016). In fact, in some fields today, there is no choice, as work becomes
so complex that individual scientists cannot achieve meaningful results
without collaborating—called the “collaboration imperative” (Bozeman &
Boardman, 2014). A century ago most research papers published in diverse
disciplines were written by single authors. Today, the modal paper in the
natural and social sciences represents the work of multiple authors, often
from different organizational and national contexts. The collective shift
toward teamwork in research and the implied specialization extends from
fundamental research in the natural and social sciences to the applied world
of patents (Mosbah-Natanson & Gingras, 2013; Wuchty, Jones, & Uzzi, 2007).
Thus, competition and collaboration at the intersection of higher education
and science are research topics requiring attention if we hope to understand
the present and future of scientific discovery and production, with its
understudied yet increasingly incontrovertible effects on individuals and
societies.
GLOBALIZING HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENCE
Exponential growth in science production around the world has resulted
from rising investments in human capability and especially the worldwide
triumph of the research university. Unexpected by founders of bibliometrics (de Solla Price, 1986), who rather thought expansion would reach a
saturation level and taper off within decades of the advent of “big science”
in the 1960s, we instead find that increased global and local competition, as well as boundary-spanning collaborations of various types, have
driven unprecedented scientific advancement and technological innovation
(Powell, Fernandez et al., 2017). Systematic estimates of the number of
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peer-reviewed articles cataloged in the Science Citation Index Expanded
from 1900 onward show science transformed by unprecedented production
(Powell, Baker et al., 2017). Growth in scientific production shows no decline
or slowing, with “pure exponential growth” up to today: “Big science”
has been replaced by what could be called “global mega-science” as well
over a million new peer-reviewed articles—the gold standard of scientific
output—are published each year just in the leading journals of the natural
sciences and health.
Focusing on articles published in the world-leading journals provides
insights into the cutting-edge of fundamental research. Charting global
shifts in the scientific “center of gravity” shows changing regional scientific
output (Powell, Fernandez et al., 2017). Along with the North American,
European countries remain essential players in the scientific arena, with
their centuries-old research universities being emulated worldwide. Over
the past few decades in East Asia, massive government support in Japan,
China, South Korea, and Taiwan, for example, have triggered explosive
growth of science capacity and the ensuing production. Researchers have
only just begun to explain how and why certain countries have succeeded
differentially in expanding their higher education and science capacity and
which organizational forms and funding instruments do most to facilitate
scientific serendipity as well as long-term impact (Powell & Dusdal, 2017;
Powell, Fernandez et al., 2017).
If competition is now fully global, so too is collaboration, as scientists in
nearly all countries contribute to our shared stores of legitimated knowledge. Most often, scientists and scholars conduct their work in increasingly
research-oriented universities, which have proliferated around the world,
especially since WWII. Indeed, university-based research has risen to
become the driving force of science production globally. Despite universities
operating successfully in all societies, substantial regional differences in
contributing to cutting-edge scientific communication and disciplinary
debates continue to exist. This further emphasizes the need for intercultural
research collaborations, in particular, across the hemispheres; beyond the
extensive links that exist across the global North. Currently, the shifting
“center of gravity” away from North America emphasizes the relative
decline of the United States as European and Asian countries invest heavily
in their national higher education and research capacity. At the same
time, cutting-edge knowledge production increasingly relies on building
international, intercultural, and interorganizational bridges to facilitate
joint learning processes and scholarship recognized by diverse scientific
communities. Research and development demands investments not only
in individuals within organizations and infrastructures but also—more
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than ever—in the networks, connections, and exchanges that facilitate
discoveries.
TRENDS IN AND DRIVERS OF COMPETITION AND COLLABORATION
The potential of contemporary science cannot be understood and the pathways to its further development charted without examining two contrasting
concurrent trends—rising competition and collaboration across and within
nations: If countries continue to fund most scientific research, (international)
collaborations among scientists across levels and teamwork in diverse types
of research organizations have facilitated remarkable growth in knowledge
production (Adams, 2013; Powell, Baker et al., 2017). The future of (higher)
education and science that must grapple with complex environmental and
social problems now depends on how we (re)organize these fields to become
more collaborative in the face of globalized competition between teams, organizations, and countries.
TRANSNATIONALIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION AND SCIENCE VIA “BRAIN CIRCULATION”
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Transnationalization (and regionalization) of higher education and science
challenge traditional nation-based studies. The diffusion of worldwide
ideas and norms in science is a powerful driver of global similarities, as no
country can resist global standards (Drori, Meyer, Ramirez, & Schofer, 2003).
Higher education participation rates continue to climb, now reaching large
proportions of each cohort in societies everywhere (Schofer & Meyer, 2005).
Scientization is significantly driven by the research universities that increasingly influence the design of reforms of schooling, policymaking activities,
and economic development—by producing expertise via professionals and,
ultimately, the occupations of the future (Baker, 2014). Despite convergence
pressures, directed by international organizations, such as UNESCO and
the OECD, comparative institutional analyses show persistent differences in
the structuring and capacity for innovation of higher education and science
systems. We find sustained, even increasing, significance of the research
university in scientific production across countries (Powell & Dusdal,
2017).
While industry and science-producing organizational forms such as
independent research institutes, hospitals, government agencies, academics,
and museums, among others, contribute to advancing knowledge, we know
too little about the conditions these forms, and organizational hybrids,
provide (Dusdal, 2018). Institutionally, university, industry, and government
form the “triple helix” of science production, with specific developments
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of these interinstitutional, boundary-spanning networks leading to different innovation dynamics (Leydesdorff & Etzkowitz, 1998). If the key
organizational form remains the university, with its tremendous capacity
for transferring knowledge intergenerationally, between disciplines, and
across cultural boundaries, then research must delve deeper into the
learning opportunities, networks, and types of collaboration this central
organizational form enables. The main driver of scientific capacity is the
education and training of each generation of scientists poised to push the
cutting edge.
Factors, from research policy and funding instruments and system development to scientific communication, have also transformed the ways science
is conducted and the scope and speed of knowledge diffusion around the
world. If markets for scientific talent have always been wide, today they
are nearly boundless, at least at the peaks and given fluency in the dominant English as the contemporary lingua franca. Elaborate migratory flows,
massive government and philanthropic programs, and everyday mobility
enormously facilitate the exchange that leads to scientific networks, “brain
circulation”, and the potential for collaboration on a vast scale (Sugimoto
et al., 2017). For example, the European Union’s Erasmus program or the US
Fulbright Fellowships have enabled millions of students and faculty to visit
other universities to broaden their horizons and explicitly collaborate interculturally. Yet the social sciences remain stubbornly parochial in the face of
cultural diversity and massive global challenges, with the university’s contribution to knowledge unquestionable, but underspecified and underappreciated (Stevens, Miller-Idriss, & Shami, 2018).
Throughout history, large-scale migration flows, especially of elites, have
led to the transfer of ideas across cultural, linguistic, and geographical
borders. States, foundations, and international organizations have systematically increased educational exchange and mobility of scientists and
students. These trends are more than symbolically significant, as border
crossings transform individual careers and epistemic networks. Yet such
opportunities remain highly stratified along such lines as class and gender,
despite transnational higher education and mobility having witnessed
tremendous growth (Zippel, 2017). This globalization manifests itself in
joint, dual, or franchised programs, online and distance education, and international branch campuses, with research developing apace (Kosmützky &
Putty, 2016). What will be the consequence of these elite border-crossings in
the face of humanitarian crises of restricted migration and mobility, such as
waves of refugees and newly constructed walls between countries? Indeed,
those responsible for governance of global, regional, and national systems
face a crisis of legitimation that challenges higher education and science
in their traditional means of generating expertise (Kennedy, 2015). Thus,
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amid calls for more “relevance” and “impact,” the governance by and of
science must address the age-old inequalities, new subjectivities, and the
gaps between research, policies, and practices. Not only for scientists in
countries experiencing rising nationalism, mobility is far from luxury, but
rather sustains academic life. Fundamentally, in complex globe-spanning
higher education and science systems, the diffusion of ideas and mobility
of scholars is necessary for innovation and influence. The strongest science systems are open: those with most international co-authorship and
highest mobility of the research workforce, with smaller countries, such as
Switzerland and Singapore, excelling (Wagner & Jonkers, 2017).
INFORMATION & COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY
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Yet even without the growth of spatial mobility, the revolution spurred by
information and communication technology (ICT) has quickened learning
processes and scientific work. Networked computers (and big data) have
significantly increased the power of diverse methodologies to explore and
explain. They reduce barriers to collaboration across boundaries, cultural and
hierarchical (Leahey, 2016). Applications of ICT have raised productivity and
made peer review and publication faster and less costly. However, networked
computers are not solely a technological intervention, but rather a developmental task requiring social learning to ideally combine both technological
and social capabilities (Hanna, 2010). Many disciplines are in the midst of
paradigm shifts in their processes of peer review and publication.
LANGUAGES, ACADEMIC CULTURES, AND MACHINE LEARNING
Albeit with large field-specific differences, language remains a barrier to
understanding and the sharing of research problems and findings. Whereas
humanities scholars and social scientists remain more-or-less dedicated
to their national languages, the natural sciences now publish their crucial
findings in English-language journals. The scientific lingua franca has shifted
from French to German to English over the past two centuries. Translation
devices applying the tools of computational linguistics and artificial intelligence are poised to radically facilitate the transfer of ideas. Machine learning
may reduce the advantages that Anglophone scientists have long enjoyed.
As scholarship becomes increasingly accessible, also to those outside the
academy and in diverse cultural contexts, further transformations are
likely.
Yet not only the languages of science pose a barrier to universal collaboration. Academic, intellectual styles go far beyond language itself to affect
relative foci on paradigm-development, on description or explanation,
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and on commentary; all with varying modes of interaction (Galtung,
1981). Among the determinants for successful (international) collaboration
are team characteristics, worldviews and motivations, and collaboration
processes. Long-term collaborations that combine formal and informal
interactions between researchers may remain creative and productive for
decades. The basis for productive collaborative networks are the preexisting relationships of the involved researchers and organizations, repeated
interactions, and intellectual affinities (Ulnicane, 2015). Policymakers could
bolster organizations to support such networks. Researchers could analyze
collaboration in multicultural teams and the conditions for an optimal
sharing of expertise—minimizing misunderstandings and conflicts—since
compositional diversity in research teams has positive and negative effects
on teamwork.
SCIENTIFIC PEER REVIEW AND PUBLICATION
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A further driver of change that reshapes both competition and collaboration
is innovation in forms of peer review and scientific publication formats,
especially open access digital publication. The standards and processes of
scientific exchange and publishing are challenged by the rapid diffusion
of knowledge through networks using ICT. This stands in contrast to the
incremental and time-consuming process of writing grant applications, peer
review, and official publication as standards of scientific practice (Lamont,
2009). Changing publication strategies at individual and organizational level
also reflect the rise of research evaluation, excellence initiatives, thematic
programs, and ratings and rankings.
POLICY LEARNING, COMPARISONS, AND SUPRANATIONAL COORDINATION
The influence of internationally acknowledged ideas, norms, and standards
(best practices) manifests itself at various levels. Once change is acknowledged as desirable, policies are mediated by the politics of borrowing
practices. Systematic international exchange enhances policy learning, in
turn increasingly affected by global competition in education and labor
markets. In some regions, supranational coordination further strengthens
such diffusion.
At the forefront of social and economic change and nation-state development, education, and science systems foster and reflect major societal
shifts even as they exhibit persistent cultural particularities. Learning from
leaders has always been significant as countries compete for cultural and
economic power. Yet global transformations in higher education and science
have made the supranational level and cross-national comparisons even
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more significant, with regional embeddedness also substantial. Ambitious
targets for R&D spending (3% of GDP for EU countries by 2020) exist
simultaneously with rampant privatization and marketization of (higher)
education. Part of what has been called the “competition fetish” (Naidoo,
2016) at various levels reflects competition between individual scholars for
scarce resources, from research funding to reputation; competition between
corporations, many of which rush to enter the burgeoning private market
for educational services; and competition between states for dominance via
global university brands. This occurs even as universities increasingly seek
to distinguish themselves through sophisticated identity campaigns, competing for students, and research funds via market placement in stratified
higher education systems (Drori, Delmestri, & Oberg, 2013).
Today, competitiveness is continuously monitored by comparative indicators used by policymakers, scholars, and administrators to generate reform
goals, to identify standards and best practices, and to empirically verify
policies and programs. Increasingly, countries have enacted policies that
emulate—or are legitimated by reference to—successful foreign models.
Mechanisms of such cross-cultural transfer include “continuous competitive
comparison” in such forms as rankings, benchmarking, and best practices;
policy learning and networks; and intergovernmental negotiation and
supranational coordination. All of these unfold their positive and negative
effects at the nexus of collaboration and competition.
For centuries, only a few regional centers of learning were highly influential, depending on economic and cultural power, as on linguistic dominance.
Today, based on quantitative and qualitative indicators, universities in many
countries compete worldwide for talent, funding, and prestige. If most universities have little chance of succeeding to become preeminent, overall the
academic drift in higher education that combines teaching and research missions has resulted in rising credential levels and broadened science capacity.
Two hundred countries now contribute to scientific knowledge production
in leading peer-reviewed journals. If “continuous competitive comparison”
both within and between countries creates winners and losers, more than
ever universities and scientific communities are linked globally, via communication networks, conferences, and exchanges, answering competitive
pressures with collaboration.
In the policy arena, international organizations, such as UNESCO, the
OECD, or the World Bank, have become actively engaged in producing
and utilizing academic outputs to facilitate policy transfer and spur development, identifying the most difficult problems humanity faces. With
differences in influence depending on past colonial relationships, languages,
and politics, leading countries in education and science worldwide, including Germany, the United States, and China, have differentially developed
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their higher education and science systems. Policymakers continue to
look across borders for inspiration, guidance, or practices as they reform
education and science to sustain or increase their competitiveness.
Recently, supranational coordination facilitates the definition of standards,
extends cross-border mobility, and enables collaboration. In education and
training, the open method of coordination now stretches far beyond the
European Union in engaging countries in reform initiatives, such as the
Bologna process in higher education, and funding instruments, such as the
EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (currently: Horizon
2020; nearly €80 billion of funding, 2014–2020). Through standardization,
mobility, and transparency, supranational coordination relies on a range of
instruments to strengthen European competitiveness.
GOVERNANCE: FROM R&D INVESTMENTS TO EVALUATION
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In an era in which accountability and evaluation are ubiquitous, the governance of higher education and science is based on explicitly measured
and evaluated outputs, mainly research articles. The effects and changed
behavior of individuals and organizations in such regimes has garnered
attention, yet few longitudinal studies show the long-term impact thereof
on universities and research. Worldwide, research evaluation systems
share the rationale of financial accounting that spreads and entrenches
certain values and techniques aiming to foster enhanced performance and
achieve efficiency in science (Whitley & Gläser, 2007). Such attempts to
transform qualities into numeric forms to measure, to compare, and to
inform decision-making reduce the quality of information and threaten
to narrow the recognition and impact of knowledge generated in diverse
systems.
Many countries aim to improve the quality of higher education through
research evaluation. The first such system, the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) from 1986, now the Research Excellence Framework
(REF), has become increasingly formalized and standardized over time,
with attempts to make it transparent and react to critiques of its myriad
(un)intended consequences, including selective submission behavior of
departments (Marques, et al., 2017): In the multidisciplinary field of educational research, for example, there have been decreases in the number of
academic staff whose research was submitted for peer review assessment;
the research article has become the preferred publication format; quantitative analyses have been bolstered; and stable concentration of funding
among top departments maintains stratification and exacerbates departmental disparities. Such discipline-specific studies emphasize how research
evaluation impacts the structural organization and cognitive development
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of disciplinary research, reinforcing stratification, and standardization (see
Hamann, 2016 on history). Such systems reflect the changing relationships
between states and universities and other research organizations. The
consequences of such new forms of governance are often intentional, yet
many unanticipated or unintentional results also follow. Analysis is needed
to chart these effects in various disciplines and on different levels.
Hardly escapable mechanisms in efforts to account for the quality of higher
education systems, ratings and rankings increasingly shape the status and
reputation of national systems, of organizations, and of researchers affiliated
with particular organizations and units within them. Research shows myriad
effects of these evaluations of “quality” for organizations and individuals
as research outputs are quantified (Espeland & Sauder, 2016). Often framed
in terms of New Public Management, higher education organizations are
forced to become more accountable through such mechanisms, whatever
such measurements’ shortcomings. Studies could address the interconnections and conversions and chart the consequences. How do research
organizations actively construct and apply such competitive measures in
their attempts to secure achieved status or strive for higher reputation
within regionally, nationally, and globally stratified higher education and
science systems?
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GOVERNANCE THROUGH PROGRAMMIFICATION
In many countries, governance has evolved within differentiating systems
and through increasing R&D investments. Ministries and other government agencies increase their influence on research agendas through the
proliferation of specifically defined thematic programs (Zapp, et al., 2018).
Such “programmification” symbolizes more educated policymakers and
administrators with the aspiration to guide scientific development and
target resources in the hopes of facilitating innovation. On the other hand,
especially when such funding lines question or substitute for infrastructure,
subvert peer review or reduce scientific autonomy, such programs may
counter necessary long-term commitments to fundamental research and
scientifically driven priorities. Viewed globally, these programs also lead
to interpretation and adoption of global and regional ideas and norms,
a force for enhanced exchange and isomorphism. Yet such narrowing of
research focus also poses risks of overinvestment in fashionable topics
or commitment to certain research questions with policy relevance to the
detriment of a diverse scientific agenda or guarantees of autonomy needed
for blue sky or high-risk research that promises pioneering insights.
Along with unprecedented structural expansion of higher education to facilitate the “knowledge society,” the perceived importance of
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evidence-based policymaking and notions of quality, excellence, relevance,
and impact has risen (Zapp et al., 2018). Government-funded R&D and
research councils’ substantial growth in both funding and large-scale,
long-term planning, including thematic choices, are evidence of such “programmification”. If the importance of external models has grown in an era of
transnationalization, translation occurs at every governance level, resulting
in specific research models and priorities across societies. Researchers study
such diffusion of ideas, norms, and policies in an era of stark competition and
rising collaboration. While the potential for collaborations may indeed grow
with proliferation of such thematic research programs, the tools required to
coordinate such complex research projects worldwide thus far exist more
in certain fields, often those requiring enormously costly facilities, such as
quantum physics or astronomy. Indeed, the Internet was devised to facilitate
exactly such globe-spanning scientific collaboration (Berners-Lee, 2018).
Science and policymaking have become increasingly intertwined, resulting
in new challenges of authority and conflicts over research priorities and output measurements. For science studies, this increases the necessity to attend
to the complexities of a dynamic relationship in which boundary-spanning
managers gain influence as they translate across this divide. Not only
are different conceptualizations of disciplinary research and development
across countries and regions crucial to analyze, but also the distinct legacies
thereof. For example, the distinct, expansive role of the EU in constructing
a European Research Area, in establishing cross-border networks, and in
shaping research agendas shows how supranational governance simultaneously offers incentives and puts pressure on national and local actors to align
their research to overarching priorities and themes—and collaborate interculturally. Over the past several decades, political interest in evidence-based
policy-making, quality assessment, and research evaluation, and direct
involvement of various decision-makers has led to the establishment of
new organizations, funding instruments, programs, and training programs.
Often, such developments challenge old paradigms, disciplinary divisions
of labor, and boundaries between science and policy.
FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS
Higher education and scientific production have been analyzed by various
established fields, including bibliometrics, sociology of higher education,
and science studies. Challenges include disciplinary divisions of labor;
data selectivity and methodological nationalism; lack of synthesis; and few
longitudinal analyses. In-depth comparative research is needed to extend
our knowledge beyond dominant science-producing regions and countries
and improve our understanding of cultural and disciplinary diversity.
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Yet science viewed as a complex and continuously evolving network of
individuals, teams, projects, ideas, and publications demands innovative
research (see Leahey, 2016).
In terms of data and methods, the science of science uses more and better
data (and calculation capacity) to explore developments in scholarly inputs
and outputs, from funding and collaborations to production and evaluation
(Fortunato et al., 2018). Together with big data, multi-level and mixed
methods approaches extend the possibilities for analysis and explanation.
For example, network analysis and shifts away from linear causality toward
complexity promise innovation, yet here too the overreliance on a few
global databases (quantitative) and a few countries (qualitative) produces
a selective and culturally biased picture of global scientific capacity and
output. This also reproduces stratification—detrimental to the diffusion of
ideas.
The evolution of journal publications since 1900 shows major shifts in the
global, regional, and national development of higher education and science
systems. The remarkable expansion of science reflects contrasting and simultaneous trends: rising competition at all levels matched by diverse forms
of collaboration among scientists working in different disciplinary contexts,
countries, and organizational forms. The future of science is indeed global,
but much research remains parochial and particularistic. Thus, more internationally and interculturally comparative research is warranted, especially on
the global flows of researchers and ideas. Governance via international organizations, supranational coordination, and evaluation systems are increasingly studied, but risk reifying stratification patterns within higher education
and science.
Transdisciplinary collaborations among individual scientists, research
teams, and organizations—across national and linguistic borders—demand
enhanced attention, epecially to understand conditions and consequences
(Lee & Bozeman, 2005). Analyses of interactions between institutions (economy, politics, and society) and organizational forms and their respective
networks promise insights into contemporary competition and collaboration
patterns. Opportunities for mobility (brain circulation) and collaboration
as well as ICT and open access publication formats are among the key
drivers of pure exponential growth scientific output globally. Yet forms of
peer review, research evaluation, and publication lag behind in representing
fully the complexity of scientific exchange or the diversity among research
outputs and their impacts.
The establishment and maintenance of truly global scientific networks
responsible for addressing many of the most crucial scientific puzzles
will be an increasingly crucial topic. Given their ascendant importance,
international, transdisciplinary, and intersectoral collaborations deserve
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encompassing studies. If higher education and research policies are to
optimally promote scientific productivity and innovation, such interventions should be developed upon deeper understanding of the drivers and
dynamics of types of research collaboration. Future research will explore
the organizational and network conditions that facilitate collaborations and
thus the science with most influence and impact.
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Justin J.W. Powell is Professor of Sociology of Education at the University
of Luxembourg. His comparative institutional analyses chart persistence and
change in special and inclusive education, in vocational training and higher
education, and in science systems and research policy. His award-winning
books include Barriers to Inclusion: Special Education in the US and Germany
(Routledge, 2011/2016), Comparing Special Education: Origins to Contemporary
Paradoxes (Stanford University Press, 2011), and The Century of Science: The
Global Triumph of the Research University (Emerald, 2017).
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