(Continuing the discussion begun in Modularity in university higher education, June 16, 2006)
Research is, of course, what defines the reputation of most university faculty. In turn, the reputation of the faculty builds the reputation of the university. Thus the connecting input characteristics of the research module must be defined in a way that it supports the efforts of the faculty in this domain. In addition, there are very close ties between research and Ph.D. education, and so one of the outputs that one would have to maintain for a research module is that it be appropriate for graduate training and, increasingly, undergraduate research experiences. However, in many if not most of our major research universities, there are research centers- often quite large - whose primary mission is not training, but production of focused sponsored research for, typically, government, sometimes industry. Indeed, at one limit, many such centers do classified research, which is inappropriate for the training of students. Much of the research in these centers generally is not carried out by regular faculty, but by a staff of professional researchers. Thus, even in some cases when the research itself may be quite appropriate for graduate training, lack of involved faculty mentors may give these centers marginal value for graduate training. The rational for having such centers will vary from university to university, but for those centers most removed from the academic center, the rational is often tied up in the larger service role of the university. Such centers can contribute significantly to the reputation of the university, thus bringing value in a different dimension.
Thus we see within a typical large university at least two different types of research module. One of these is closely aligned with aspirations of regular faculty and with graduate training, and therefore has rather well defined input and output characteristics that allow it to work synergistically with other modules (e.g. education) in the university. The other is more divorced from the educational component of the university, and tied in perhaps with the service component. Its output requirements are primarily that it satisfy its funding sources, input requirement that it do so in a way that enhances the reputation of the university e.g. through service, or perceived excellence. Of course, the reality is that there is a continuum of possibilities that lies between these two types of modules. However, these two extreme cases will let us investigate how the opportunities of globalization might lead to improvements in both.
What will drive or enable global optimization of university research modules, and how should we define “optimization”? Clearly, much of the best research in many fields is done most effectively by individuals working with students and postdocs, but without peer collaborators. For such research, globalization and optimization have little impact other than to increase the number of competitors. However, an increasing percentage of problems of interest to society generally are broadly interdisciplinary in nature, and are best studied through a team approach. For such problems, optimization and globalization describe putting together the most effective team using the best researchers worldwide.
Many individual faculty have already taken small but important steps in the direction of optimization by seeking out talented collaborators worldwide in the hopes of being able to produce research of higher visibility and impact through collaboration than would have been possible individually. How might these collaborations be expanded and made more effective in order to further increase visibility and impact? Resources and opportunity clearly are key.
As noted, most of the global collaborations now result from faculty initiatives. To move the process further, institution to institution relationships need to be created that provide additional encouragement for collaboration and infrastructure to support it. Universities generally have not taken the step of forming effective limited partnerships with universities and other educational or research institutions (e.g. museums or governmental research labs) in other countries in order to better encourage and enable research in a specific field or on a specific problem, although some counterexamples exist. The overwhelming majority of the millions of existing agreements of collaboration between universities are “paper agreements” without any substance or strategic importance. However, one could imagine that universities might create very effective problem- focused partnerships if at least three conditions could be met:1) the problem is viewed to be of significant strategic importance to all partners; 2) the researchers working on the problem in the different institutions view each other as peers who could provide important synergy in attacking the problem- and thereby advancing the reputations and careers of all; and 3) effective collaboration increases the probability of increasing resources to carry out the research.
One can imagine several ways in which effective collaborations might lead to increased resources. First, for research in many areas, corporation support is of growing importance. Corporations increasingly don’t care about the nationality of the researchers they support, so long as the desired results are produced. The more effective the team can be, the more likely it is to find corporate support. Second, governments may see that the collaboration enables their own nationals to be more effective in their research, thus leading to increased support. This could happen, for example, because the foreign nationals provide to the group key missing skills, or because the international collaboration provides increased geographic or demographic access critical to the studies. Third, governments increasingly might see benefit in supporting transnational teams to focus on problems that are themselves transnational, such as the environment or disease control. Fourth, the increasing amount of wealth held by individuals who have some emotional allegiance to more than one country may provide attractive fund-raising possibilities to leverage the collaboration. Those who are more imaginative can undoubtedly think of additional ways.
I used the words “limited partnerships” above to emphasize that participating in a collaboration on one focused area should not preclude a university from joining other collaborations focusing on different areas. Freedom to pick the best possible global partners for a specific endeavor will of necessity be a component of “optimization”. Similarly, agreements defining the collaboration will have to be written to recognize that some partners may leave (e.g. their part of the project is done), and others may need to be added (e.g.research has led to a point that new sets of skills need to be added to the group). Again, optimization will require flexibility. (see What has offshoring got to do with research universities? Feb. 22, 2006)
Effective institution to institution collaboration on focused areas of research could add significantly to graduate training. Students would be exposed to a greater range of expertise, learn how to collaborate with peers from other cultures and backgrounds, and have greatly increased opportunity for a research experience in another country. Faculty reputations could benefit from greater visibility and productivity. Thus, the input/output relationships would be preserved for the first type of research module. Assuming that conditions 1) and 3) above are met, the input/output relationships of the second type of research module will also be met.
Collaboration-at-a-distance is always difficult. However, as communication technology continues to improve, such institution-to- institution focused collaboration might become an increasingly important part of the globalization of research. One of the reasons so many collaborations lapse is that the attention of regular faculty (first research module) is pulled in so many directions, and often the difficult distance collaboration is the thing that has to go. Thus, a successful large scale collaboration almost certainly will involve not only regular faculty, but also a dedicated research staff (second research module) to maintain continuity and momentum. In other words, a hybrid research approach will be necessary for success.
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