Abstract
The global system of higher education and research is undergoing a transformation so radical that it can reasonably be compared to the most decisive events in the history of the university. The introductory chapter considers the nature of this transformation. Based on recent scholarship and the contributions to this volume, it is argued that the mission of the university is increasingly becoming construed as that of a supplier of a certain kind of commodity, “knowledge,” to the global economy, in particular, to powerful economic actors within that economy: those who have the resources to engage in gambling on commercialized scientific results and who can outsource R&D activities to the university. The propertization of research and the privatization of its results lead, among other things, to a proletarization of academic labor (research and teaching), with manifest consequences for the character and consequences of its activities. The supply and demand definition of quality in higher education and research erases the distinction between the concept of value and the concept of demand. The notion of “innovation” collapses higher education, research, development, and commercialization into one and the same aim.
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Notes
- 1.
The concepts “mode 1” and “mode 2” were first introduced in Gibbons et al. (1994), to describe how science was moving from being a relatively autonomous activity to one which was increasingly being adapted to stakeholder needs and interests, where the value of research is seen as context- and use-dependent. In “mode 2”, scientific activity and its results are evaluated in terms of social and economic value, rather than with a view to purely intra-scientific standards, practices, and criteria. In Nowotny et al. (2001), the authors suggest that we are moving away from a model of “reliable knowledge” as the goal of science to “socially robust knowledge.” Playing on the term “double helix,” which refers to the structure formed by double-stranded molecules of nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA, Leydesdorff and Etkowitz launched the notion of a triple-stranded relation to describe a structure of innovation in which the university, industry, and administrative agencies and authorities interact, where the university is a motor for economic and social development in a knowledge-based society (Leydesdorff and Etkowitz 2000). There has been heated discussion during the course of the last two decades concerning these models. The academic capitalism debate was particularly lively at the turn of the millennium. See, for example, Etkowitz and Leydesdorff (1997), Bok (2003), Geiger (2004), Stein (2004), Washburn (2005) and Slaughter and Rhoades (2004).
- 2.
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Hasselberg, Y., Rider, S., Waluszewski, A. (2013). Introduction. In: Rider, S., Hasselberg, Y., Waluszewski, A. (eds) Transformations in Research, Higher Education and the Academic Market. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 39. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5249-8_1
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