August 2021
This month reports summarises four studies that in/directly relate to the impact of universities. The first paper questions the validity of a triple helix approach to research funding (Anderson and Anderson, 2020). The second piece of research compares the efficiency of European universities (Herberholz & Wigger, 2021). The third research addresses pernicious misbehaviour that is potentially undermining scientific integrity (Paradeise & Filliatreau, 2021). The last contribution represents a book chapter, which investigates the epistemic role of novices for science (Donahue Wylie 2001).
[1]) The paper not only sets out to question the notion of the triple helix as a strategy for governments to fund research, it propositions that it represents a logical impossibility. The authors arrive at this conclusion based on mathematical modelling the triple helix approach, and pointing out its internal contradictions when long-term timescales are taken into account. Additional evidence stems from comparing historical and contemporary trends, and that the universities increase their “allocation of financial and human resources to administrative activities in marketing and other types of external engagement” (p. 249), which all further dilutes their original purpose.
[2]) The authors compare 450 European universities in the period between 2011 and 2014 and focus on their research efficiency. Albeit the authors do not explicitly define efficiency, based on their methodology they acknowledge that they utilise bibliometric data, and recognise the inherent shortcomings in this type of data. Their findings seem to indicate a positive relation between, the size of the institution, the student fees and the degree of third party funding with the publication rate of the university. Furthermore, above 30% share of third party funding the research output increase significantly, which the authors interpret as efficiency.
[3]) The authors acknowledge that scientific integrity is increasingly called into question, with biomedical research being at the forefront of such concerns. They acknowledge that a changing funding landscape, turned what initially used to be a primarily intellectual and self-policed enterprise into the increasing competition for scarce resources. Furthermore, this development is cast as an irreversible trend, and “[r]esearchers, their teams, their labs, and their fields have largely lost control of their disciplinary agenda with the fragmentation of communities, the unruled competition between individuals, the resulting damage to mutual trust, and the impairment of the scientific conversation.” (p. 307). The authors propose open science, as a ameliorative strategy.
[4]) The author bases her findings on an ethnography of two engineering laboratory communities, which included undergraduate workers in a medium sized research university. She found the role of who was a novice was contextual and fluid, that in technological situations undergraduates taught the teachers. Meanwhile, when it came to subject specific knowledge the established researchers assumed their traditional teacher role. The authors concludes, that in this dynamic shifting back and forth, of mutual learning trust and epistemic confidence in the results is built.
[1] Andersson, D. E., & Andersson, Å. E. (2020). The impossibility of the triple helix. Prometheus, 36(3), 235-252.
[2] Herberholz, L., & Wigger, B. U. (2021). Efficiency of european universities: A comparison of peers. Research Policy, 50(9), 104314.
[3] Paradeise, C., & Filliatreau, G. (2021). Scientific Integrity Matters. Minerva, 1-21.
[4] Wylie, C. D. (2021). The epistemic importance of novices: How undergraduate students contribute to engineering laboratory communities. In (Eds) Kastenhofer, K. & Molyneux-Hodgson, S. Community and Identity in Contemporary Technosciences, 31, pp. 145-162.
