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The Century of Science, a multicultural, international team of authors examine the global rise of scholarly research in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and health fields, providing insightful historical and sociological understandings of the ways that higher education has become an institution that shapes science and society.
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Never before have the scope and limits of scientific freedom been more important or more under attack. New science, from artificial intelligence to gene editing, creates unique opportunities for making the world a better place. It also presents unprecedented dangers. This book is about the opportunities and challenges – moral, regulatory and existential – that face both science and society. How are scientific developments impacting on human life and on the structure of societies? How is science regulated and how should it be regulated? Are there ethical boundaries to scientific developments in sensitive areas? Such are the questions that the book seeks to answer. Both the survival of humankind and the continued existence of our planet are at stake.
A colorful history of US research universities, and a market-based theory of their global success. American education has its share of problems, but it excels in at least one area: university-based research. That’s why American universities have produced more Nobel Prize winners than those of the next twenty-nine countries combined. Economist Miguel Urquiola argues that the principal source of this triumph is a free-market approach to higher education. Until the late nineteenth century, research at American universities was largely an afterthought, suffering for the same reason that it now prospers: the free market permits institutional self-rule. Most universities exploited that flexibility to provide what well-heeled families and church benefactors wanted. They taught denominationally appropriate materials and produced the next generation of regional elites, no matter the students’—or their instructors’—competence. These schools were nothing like the German universities that led the world in research and advanced training. The American system only began to shift when certain universities, free to change their business model, realized there was demand in the industrial economy for students who were taught by experts and sorted by talent rather than breeding. Cornell and Johns Hopkins led the way, followed by Harvard, Columbia, and a few dozen others that remain centers of research. By the 1920s the United States was well on its way to producing the best university research. Free markets are not the solution for all educational problems. Urquiola explains why they are less successful at the primary and secondary level, areas in which the United States often lags. But the entrepreneurial spirit has certainly been the key to American leadership in the research sector that is so crucial to economic success.
Since 1986, the British government, faced with dwindling budgets and growing calls for public accountability, has sought to assess the value of scholarly work in the nation’s universities. Administrators have periodically evaluated the research of most full-time academics employed in British universities, seeking to distribute increasingly scarce funding to those who use it best. How do such attempts to quantify the worth of knowledge change the nature of scholarship? Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra examines the effects of quantitative research evaluations on British social scientists, arguing that the mission to measure academic excellence resulted in less diversity and more disciplinary conformity. Combining interviews and original computational analyses, The Quantified Scholar provides a compelling account of how scores, metrics, and standardized research evaluations altered the incentives of scientists and administrators by rewarding forms of scholarship that were closer to established disciplinary canons. In doing so, research evaluations amplified publication hierarchies and long-standing forms of academic prestige to the detriment of diversity. Slowly but surely, they reshaped academic departments, the interests of scholars, the organization of disciplines, and the employment conditions of researchers. Critiquing the effects of quantification on the workplace, this book also presents alternatives to existing forms of evaluation, calling for new forms of vocational solidarity that can challenge entrenched inequality in academia.
The debate about access to scientific research raises questions about the current effectiveness of scholarly communication processes. This book explores, from an independent point of view, the current state of the STM publishing market, new publishing technologies and business models as well as the information habit of researchers, the politics of research funders, and the demand for scientific research as a public good. The book also investigates the democratisation of science including how the information needs of knowledge workers outside academia can be embraced in future.
Too many universities remain wedded to outmoded ways of teaching science in spite of extensive research showing that there are much more effective methods. Too few departments ask whether what happens in their lecture halls is effective at helping students to learn and how they can encourage their faculty to teach better. But real change is possible, and Carl Wieman shows us how it can be brought about. Improving How Universities Teach Science draws on Wieman’s unparalleled experience to provide a blueprint for educators seeking sustainable improvements in science teaching. Wieman created the Science Education Initiative (SEI), a program implemented across thirteen science departments at the universities of Colorado and British Columbia, to support the widespread adoption of the best research-based approaches to science teaching. The program’s data show that in the most successful departments 90 percent of faculty adopted better methods. Wieman identifies what factors helped and hindered the adoption of good teaching methods. He also gives detailed, effective, and tested strategies for departments and institutions to measure and improve the quality of their teaching while limiting the demands on faculty time. Among all of the commentary addressing shortcomings in higher education, Wieman’s lessons on improving teaching and learning stand out. His analysis and solutions are not limited to just one lecture hall or course but deal with changing entire departments and universities. For those who want to improve how universities teach science to the next generation, Wieman’s work is a critical first step.
The teaching of engineering and a change in liberal arts curricula, both stimulated by industrial growth, encouraged the creation of specialized courses in the sciences. By the 1890s, Gingras argues, trained researchers had begun to appear in Canadian universities. The technological demands of the First World War and the founding, in 1916, of the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) accelerated the growth of scientific research. The Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada could no longer publish everything submitted to it because of the disproportionately large number of research papers from the fields of science. In response, the NRC created the Canadian Journal of Research, a journal specifically dedicated to the publication of scientific research. By 1930, a stable, national system of scientific research was in place in Canada. Following the dramatic increase in the national importance of their disciplines, scientists faced the problem of social identity. Gingras demonstrates that in the case of physics this took the form of a conflict between those who promoted a professional orientation, necessary to compete successfully with engineers in the labour market, and those, mainly in the universities, who were concerned with problems of the discipline such as publication, internal management, and awards. Physics and the Rise of Scientific Research in Canada is the first book to provide a general analysis of the origins of scientific research in Canadian universities. Gingras proposes a sociological model of the formation of scientific disciplines, distinguishing the profession from the discipline, two notions often confused by historians and sociologists of science.
This book takes a closer look at the relation between current issues and trends in higher education and scientific research in the Arab World and in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states of Qatar and United Arab Emirates (UAE). This thoroughly researched text traces the development of higher education in the GCC area as it continues to be positioned in an intersection of international and local factors. The text further articulates the pivotal political and cultural influences that act as real and perceived barriers towards the advancement of key fields. The chapters analyze the current policy trends, structures, and coping alternatives in addressing higher education challenges, whilst also providing comparative first-hand texts with the other Arab states in the region. By drawing focus on the GCC area, the text identifies the crucial factors that hamper learning and research performance. The book serves as an invaluable discussion on the implications for policy makers and HEIs in relation to the eponymous regions and other Arab states in the GCC area. Enhancing understanding of the scope, scale, and complexity of higher education and scientific research in the GCC area, the book will be of interest to academics, researchers, and post-graduate students in the fields of educational policy, comparative and international education and higher education.