What metrics of excellence will society use in determining the quality of research universities in the 21st century? Will they be the same as those used to define the great universities of the 20th century? That is the question I addressed in a piece I wrote as input for our 2004 strategic planning process. It is called Change and the Research University.
As the title implies, this piece looks at a number of changes that have occurred in American research universities, primarily during the past 60 years. My scaffold for the discussion is the idea of modernity, which underlies much of the rhetoric about excellence in the academy today. Many of the ideas I present were greatly influenced by Stephen Toulmin’s wonderful book Cosmopolis , which elegantly argues the central role of Descarte’s philosophy in defining today’s research university. To this I add Vannevar Bush’s Science the Endless Frontier, which seems to me to be an almost perfect “modernization” of the Cartesian approach to knowledge. Bush’s definitions of “basic” and “applied” research have served – and limited – us into the present. In addition, Bush introduced powerful public policy arguments for government support of university research: such research was needed to increase scientific capital, not to create some specific piece of knowledge with immediate use.
I describe a number of events over the past half century that show the weakening of Vannevar Bush’s basic/applied dichotomy, and a corresponding weakening of the Cartesian view of academic quality. I also describe the waning of Vannevar Bush’s concept of policy-driven support of research, as market-oriented forces move to the fore (see also Welcome to the Market State, Feb. 20, 2006). These two changes have major implications concerning how universities see themselves, and how society sees them. The piece concludes with a number of questions about the future directions of higher education that are suggested by these changes.
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