Sheila Slaughter

The Emergence of a Competitiveness Research and Development Policy Coalition and the Commercialization of Academic Science and Technology

This article describes the emerging bipartisan political coalition supporting commercial competitiveness as a rationale for research and development (R&D), points to selected changes in legal and funding structures in the 1980s that stem from the success of the new political coalition and suggests some of the connections between these changes and academic science and technology, and examines the consequences of these changes for universities. The study uses longitudinal secondary data on changes in business strategies and corporate structures that made business elites in the defense and health industries consider supporting competitiveness R&D policies. The article identifies and assesses an array of national R&D legislation concerned with competitiveness that was passed in the 1980s and 1990s and that has implications for academic R&D. The effects of competitiveness R&D policies on universities and academic science and technology are appraised by analyzing changes in time-series data (1983-1993) on science and technology indicators compiled by the National Science Foundation.

Expanding and Elaborating the Concept of Academic Capitalism

In our recent book, Academic Capitalism: Politics, Policies and the Entrepreneurial University (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997), we used the term ‘academic capitalism’ to define the way public research universities were responding to neoliberal tendencies to treat higher education policy as a subset of economic policy (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2000). In this policy environment faculty and professional staff increasingly must expend their human capital stocks in competitive environments. The implication is that some university employees are simultaneously employed by the public sector and are increasingly autonomous of it. They are academics who act as capitalists from within the public sector: they are state-subsidized entrepreneurs.1 Academic capitalism deals with market and market-like behaviors on the part of universities and faculty. Market-like behaviors refer to institutional and faculty competition for monies, whether these are from external grants and contracts, endowment funds, university–industry partnerships, institutional investment in professors’ spin-off companies, student tuition and fees, or some other revenue-generating activity. What makes these activities market-like is that they involve competition for funds from external resource providers. If institutions and faculty are not successful, there is no bureaucratic recourse; they do without. Market behaviors refer to for-profit activity on the part of institutions, activity such as patenting and subsequent royalty and licensing agreements, spin-off companies, arms-length corporations (corporations that are related to universities in terms of personnel and goals, but are chartered legally as separate entities), and university–industry partnerships when these have a profit component. Market activity also covers more mundane operations, such as the sale of products and services from educational endeavors, for example logos and sports paraphernalia, profit-sharing with food services and bookstores and the like. Volume 8(2): 154–161 Copyright

The “Traffic” in Graduate Students: Graduate Students as Tokens of Exchange between Academe and Industry

This study analyzes interview data from 37 science and engineering faculty involved in university-industry relations. Faculty are particularly concerned about how these relations affect their work with graduate students. Our analysis is guided by ritual exchange theory and network theory. First, we explore the ways faculty define and redefine what makes industrial or corporate research appropriate or inappropriate for training graduates. Second, we examine difficulties and tensions faculty face when they work with students on industrial or corporate projects. These difficulties and tensions center on intellectual property and we look at how faculty negotiate with industry over restrictions on publication of graduate student and faculty research results, on faculty and graduate student involvement in start-up companies, and on faculty and graduate student ownership of intellectual property.

Faculty and Administrators' Attitudes toward Potential Conflicts of Interest, Commitment, and Equity in University-Industry Relationships

In the 1940s the federal government began awarding grants and contracts for significant amounts of money to academic researchers who pursued paths of national as well as scholarly interest (Smith, 1990). During the post-World War II years, the conduct of research through federal sponsorship became a source of prestige and autonomy within the academic profession. In the mid-1970s the federal share of academic research funding began to decrease, and faculty and administrators began to look for other sources of funding. At the same time, business leaders voiced concern that governmental regulations, restrictions, and processes were impending their ability to compete in the global marketplace. In the 1980s the U.S. government responded by encouraging increased cooperation between universities and firms, allowing universities to hold patents on federally sponsored research and financing research projects in which universities and firms were both active participants (Campbell, 1995, 1997; Campbell & Slaughter, 1999; Slaughter & Rhoades, 1996). Although the academic and industrial sectors had worked together on a limited basis before 1980, over the past fifteen years, collaborative relationships have intensified, and increasing numbers of academics are seeking ways to position themselves close to the commercial marketplace. Ample literature has tracked this activity between academics and industry, particularly since the late 1970s (Blumenthal, Campbell, Anderson, Causino, & Louis, 1997; Blumenthal, Campbell, Causino, & Louis, 1996a, 1996b; Blumenthal, Epstein, & Maxwell, 1986; Blumenthal, Gluck, Louis, & Wise, 1986a, 1986b; Bowie, 1994; Braxton & Bayer, 1996; Dooris & Fairweather, 1994; Etzkowitz, 1983, 1990, 1992, 1993; Fairweather, 1988, 1989, 1993; Fassin, 1991; Feller, 1992; Hackett, 1990; Lambright & Rahm, 1992; Lee, 1994, 1995; Louis, Anderson, & Rosenberg, 1995; Louis, Blumenthal, Gluck, & Stoto, 1989; Rahm, 1994a, 1994b; Wood, 1992; Zuckerman, 1993). Those in favor of increased interaction suggest that, for the most part, faculty and administrators(1) approach industry-sponsored research as professionals who strive to maintain Mertonian norms such as rationality, impartiality, and objectivity rather than allow themselves to be influenced by the potential financial gains that might arise from their research. Their discussions focus on the benefits that arise out of university-industry relationships and suggest that most adverse impacts on institutions are anomalous and readily remedied (Bok, 1982; Geisler & Rubenstein, 1989; Peters & Fusfeld, 1982). Those more skeptical of this movement toward the market warn that the potential to generate revenue at personal and institutional levels has had a multifaceted, not always positive, impact on academe. For example, administrators are increasingly treating faculty in the same manner that industrial managers treat their employees and, as a result, faculty are losing ownership of their discoveries and autonomy over their professional lives (Dickson, 1984; Florig, 1986; Luton & Zinke, 1989; Rhoades & Slaughter, 1991a, 1991b; Slaughter, 1990; Slaughter & Rhoades, 1990). Although faculty involvement in collaborative activity is encouraged by federal sponsors and university leaders (Campbell, 1995, 1997), thus far there is neither a large body of university policy nor professional customs and norms that guide and shape entrepreneurial faculty behavior. Administrators, faculty, and business persons are in the process of establishing new entrepreneurial norms, and this provides a unique opportunity to study the reshaping of professional roles as well as the tensions and conflicts that surround such changes. Some tension between faculty and administrators has been accepted as an enduring part of academic life, but few studies have explored empirically the possibility that differences between the two groups may be amplified when industry enters into the picture. …

Models of institutional resource allocation: Mission, market, and gender

In an era when expansion is no longer the obvious solution for dealing with curricular change in research universities, the question of how and why institutions allocate resources among departments, the organizational units that deliver curricula, should become increasingly important. Resource constraint has caused widespread restructuring in public research universities, but few studies examine its effects on departments, although the broad goals of restructuring are to redesign institutions to lower costs, achieve greater student learning, give more attention to teaching, and contribute to regional economic development (Guskin, 1994; Gumport & Pusser, 1996; Massey & Zemsky, 1994), all efforts that depend on departmental cooperation. Institutional resource allocation affects departments in a number of ways. The resources available to departments shape who is hired, how much and whom they teach. Quality of faculty and work load, in turn, influence research norms and productivity. Changes in patterns of resour ce allocation among departments are critical to understanding the shape of knowledge in the twenty-first century. In the 1980s, prompted by periodic state and institutional budget crises, researchers began to study internal resource allocation among departments within colleges and universities (Ashar, 1987; Ashar & Shapiro, 1990; Hackman, 1985; Melchiori, 1982; Morgan, 1983). But in the 1990s, questions about internal resource allocation among departments generally were put in the broader context of restructuring. This shift meant that attention turned away from departments as units that created and delivered particular kinds of knowledge and curricula efficiently and effectively and toward individual faculty performance on productivity measures as well as individual faculty response to institutional incentives (Layzell, 1996; Levin, 1991). If departments were considered at all, they were treated as generic departments that reacted to institutional and professional incentives rather than as departments organized around concrete kinds of knowledge, peopled by faculty with similar characteristics who trained students for specific careers (Fairweather, 1996; Massy & Wilger, 1992; Massy & Zemsky, 1994). Costing studies were the exceptions, but these used econometric models to identify abstract cost structures among departments aggregated in broad fields of study, a process that reified rather than explained patterns of difference in institutional investment (Brinkman, 1990; Dundar & Lewis, 1994). Along with a relatively small number of researchers using critical theory and feminist perspectives, we see this shift from department to individual, or, conversely, broad field of study (science and engineering, humanities, social sciences) as the unit of analysis, as masking increasing stratification between departments and within universities (Bellas, 1994, 1997; Gumport, 1993; Kerlin & Dunlap, 1993; McElrath, 1992; Slaughter, 1993; Volk, 1995). Critical researchers view faculty and the curricula they deliver as organized in departments that powerfully mediate individual faculty performance. Faculty delivering some curricula may not receive the same resources as faculty associated with other curricula, just as faculty in departments preparing students for certain careers may not be given the same support as faculty in other, more favored departments. Department, rather than individual faculty performance, may be a powerful explanatory variable. Faculty located in underresourced, overextended departments m ay not be able to respond fully to the complex array of institutional incentives and disincentives that characterize multimission public research universities. We think that understanding which departments receive resources and why is critical to understanding the far-reaching reorganization and revaluing of knowledge that is presently occurring. To explore our questions about resource allocation among departments, we reviewed the several theories that purport to explain variance in allocation. …

Problems in Comparative Higher Education: Political Economy, Political Sociology and Postmodernism.

This article explores the ways we might use modern and post modern theoryto examine problems in comparative higher education. The problems orobjects of study on which comparative higher education currently focusesare problematized and interrogated. The implications of several versionsof globalization theory for comparative higher education are exploredas are the various post-alities, Manns political sociology of socialpower, Foucauldian theory of knowledge/power regimes, and feminist theory. Finally, the article looks at methods that might be used when drawing on these theories to study comparative higher education.

The Development and Current Status of Market Mechanisms in United States Postsecondary Education.

Market forces are powerful in U.S. postsecondary education. Such forces were employed when the first postsecondary institutions were established in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and many present day forms can be traced to these early beginnings. Over recent years public university revenue shares in block-grants from state governments have declined, thereby destabilizing the institutions. The universities have compensated by increasing shares from grant and contracting organizations and from students. The end result has been that expenditure shares for instruction have declined while shares for research and for administration have increased. Internally, these changes in “resource dependencies” have lead to the redistribution of internal university power, loss of “community”, and ever-higher charges to students.

Higher Education and Regional Development

At the outset it is necessary to clarify what is meant by economic development as it relates to higher education. Currently, when community leaders speak of economic development in relation to higher education, they seem to have a fairly limited, investment as opposed to consumption, benefit in mind.1Their attention appears drawn exclusively, or nearly so, to how higher education research can be translated into community jobs and related economic gains over the long term. There is an implied focus on indirect benefits — investment benefits — as opposed to direct benefits normally associated with consumption spending. Phrases such as “technology transfer” and “university — business partnerships” capture the essence of what seems intended or hoped for.

Towards a Political Economy of Retrenchment: The American Public Research Universities

This article explores the dynamics of retrenchment at the state and federal levels using theories of fiscal crisis and state economic variation to interpret state and federal funding patterns for public research universities during the past decade. States with low levels of unionization attract business, gain new jobs, and have above average higher education spending, while highly unionized states are losing business and jobs, and are falling below average in educational spending. Federal R & D spending shows a tendency to follow state patterns. Business leaders’ profit maximizing strategies and capital investment patterns shape states’ abilities to finance higher education, while institutions’ capacity to attract R & D monies is influenced by states’ fiscal soundness. In this article, what these trends might mean for specific institutions in terms of state budget, R & D capacity, and prestige of graduate programs is explored in a case study. Finally, suggestions are given as to the strategies faculty and administrators can pursue to stabilize their economic environment.

Continued efforts to cope with declining resources: selected post-secondary education systems in the United States and Canada, an introductory essay

In the mid-1980s, the problems posed by declining resources continue to plague higher education. In this issue, these problems are again examined, this time by comparing patterns of public spending on higher education at the institutional as well as the system level in selected Canadian provinces and U.S. states. A comparative perspective is useful in such an enterprise because retrenchment is occurring throughout North America. Understanding commonalities as well as locating points of difference may illuminate the phenomenon with which we are grappling. Canada and the U.S. are well suited for comparison. The two countries share a common border, many of the same economic problems, and systems of government where authority for higher education is not located at a central or federal level, but rather in the several provinces or states. However, the two countries are dissimilar enough with regard to cultural, political and legal traditions for comparative work to yield new insights into the problems under consideration.