Jason Owen-Smith

Research Universities and the Public Good

Discovery for an Uncertain Future

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Countering recent arguments that we should "unbundle" or "disrupt" higher education, Jason Owen-Smith argues that research universities are unique gems that deserve our financial and social support. While they are complex and costly, their enduring value is threefold: they simultaneously act as sources of new knowledge, anchors for regional and national economies, and hubs that connect disparate parts of society. Based on his stellar research, he offers a stirring and timely defense of an endangered class of institutions just in time.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 232
• Erscheinungstermin: 10. November 2020
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 228mm x 153mm x 17mm
• Gewicht: 369g
• ISBN-13: 9781503615038
• ISBN-10: 1503615030
• Artikelnr.: 59313219

Autorenporträt

Jason Owen-Smith is Professor of Sociology, Executive Director for the Institute for Research on Innovation & Science (IRIS), Barger Leadership Institute Professor and Director, and Research Professor in the Institute for Social Research, Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: Knowledge, Infrastructure, and the Need for Change
chapter abstract
State divestment in public campuses and stagnant federal funding put
research universities in a position where maintaining their complex mission
requires them to rely more and more heavily on institutional funding to
support research and public service. This unsustainable funding model is
being cemented at a time when skepticism about academic research and higher
education is high, when austerity rhetoric makes substantial public
investment difficult, and when justifications for universities emphasize
individual returns to education and the impact of single grants or research
fields. These trends put research universities at risk by wedding their
work more tightly to the market and its rationales. Understanding why this
is dangerous and how to protect these important institutions requires a
new, system level, network approach to universities and their research.
1A System to Insure the Future
chapter abstract
This chapter introduces three metaphors (sources, anchors and hubs) that
organize the book. It demonstrates that current tools for analyzing,
explaining and improving the work of research institutions are insufficient
to the task. In order to ensure that publicly supported research
universities remain the cornerstone of the national and global innovation
system, it is necessary to develop a new model for understanding and
explaining their work. That model focuses on collaboration networks,
regional and community effects, and the inter-organizational connections
that make universities into clearinghouses for problems and solutions from
across society. An extended case study of Google's PageRank algorithm shows
the surprising ways that federal research funding supported Google's
development. It highlights the importance of focusing on research careers,
multiple discoveries, and networks at many levels of analysis to understand
how research universities and public support result in significant
innovation and economic returns.
2The Organization of Research Universities
chapter abstract
Today's universities were not designed to serve the roles that make them so
important. They evolved through a complicated process kicked off by key
federal policy debates in the early Cold War years. Those conflicts and
their outcomes help to explain the organization of today's universities,
their complicated missions and the ways their work is or is not associated
with collective benefits. The chapter addresses their complicated financial
models and organization, focusing on decentralization, on campus public
goods, and tradeoffs across revenue streams. A proposed revision to that
the University of Wisconsin system's shows how the institutional and
organizational complications that make universities difficult to explain
and evaluate contribute to their fertility. The key to understanding how
universities consistently serve important purposes for society has to do
with their conservative character (they are slow to change) and their
innovative work (they are a preeminent source of novelty).
3Sources of Discovery: Networks on Campus
chapter abstract
Chapter 3 starts with the process of innovation. The discovery of new
things (or new ways of doing old things) often results when existing pieces
of knowledge or technology are combined in new ways. The smart phone touch
screen pioneered by Apple provides a key example. Universities are
continual sources of new discoveries because of the collaboration networks
that grow on and across campuses. Those networks are diverse, balanced, and
complex. Understanding how they work in order to have a chance to change
and sustain them requires attention to the process by which they grow and
reproduce themselves. A high-profile book in gender theory helps to
illustrate the point. The chapter concludes with a detailed discussion of
original qualitative research that uses human embryonic stem cell science
to illustrate the ways that federal research funding plays a key role in
the process of collaboration and the networks that result.
4Community Anchors: Building Resilience and Connection
chapter abstract
Public support and the particular features of universities make them
important anchors for communities, economies, industries, and regions. The
anchor metaphor has three components. Universities add resilience to the
things they anchor because they are stable, conservative, and
geographically fixed. They help set the tone of their regions by acting as
anchor tenants. The positive externalities created as they pursue their
work make it easier for other types of organizations and communities to
locate near them and succeed. Finally, they function as network actors
whose commitment to openness and the public good allows them to pursue
their own interests without exerting control over their products. That work
means they can serve as a convener and meeting ground for many different
constituencies. In that role, they strengthen connections among partners
providing a scaffold for generative networks to grow. A case study of Napa
Valley wine illustrates the point.
5Hubs Linking Communities: Generating Solutions for Known and Unknown
Problems
chapter abstract
Universities are hubs connecting far flung parts of society and they
economy. In doing so they create shortcuts between different sectors,
industries and communities. Being a hub makes universities good sources
because it insures that problems and opportunities flow to them from many
different parts of the world. It also makes them a target because their
work touches on and influences some of the most important parts of society.
Universities are hubs in two senses. They are network hubs because flows of
people and knowledge to and from campus connect them to partners in all
precincts of society. They are institutional hubs because their multiple
missions and wide range of fields mean that most domains of contemporary
life depend on their products. Case studies of the breast cancer gene
(BRCA1) and the MIT Media Lab integrate and illuminate the various aspects
of this important metaphor.
6Facing the Future Together
chapter abstract
Chapter 6 describes how the system of research universities keeps our
nation and the world poised to benefit from "unknown-unknown" opportunities
and to respond to unforeseeable threats. It also calls for rigorous but
local experimentation to improve research universities' ability to do this
work. Such experiments should be guided by shared principles and informed
by a research infrastructure that turns the academy's best science on
itself. Academic responses to the recent outbreak of Zika Virus and the
development of a new and powerful genetic technology (CRISPR) anchor the
first portion of the chapter. Policy recommendations for expanded federal
funding and a revitalized federal-state partnership enhanced by private
sector engagement are offered.