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PART II— THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH
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PART II—
THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH


81

6—
Research and Teaching in the Universities

Joseph Ben-David

The research university based on the principle of the unity of research and teaching is threatened today. In the 1960s universities considered as their main task enlarging their advanced research and training facilities, in response to the rapidly growing demand for training of students, and increasing funds available for research. By the mid-1970s the situation had changed dramatically: universities were hard put to maintain their research facilities and rarely dreamed of expanding them. They now concentrate their efforts on maintaining enrollments, and they are willing to cater to practically any demand for any kind of study, without paying much attention to its scientific content.

Although, in principle, universities are still committed to research, they feel they can do little about it and leave responsibility for the advance of research to governments and individual initiative. Universities' revenues and operations, which depend usually on the numbers and kinds of students, are today less conducive to research, for students are much less interested in research than were their predecessors fifteen or twenty years ago. Catering to the demands of these new students, universities find it increasingly difficult to treat teaching and research as organically related functions, and so the two tend to drift apart.

I am indebted to Bruce L. R. Smith, Edward Shils, and John Wilson for their comments on the first draft of this chapter, and to the Spencer Foundation for support of my research.

Joseph Ben-David is George Wise Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and Professor of Education and Sociology at the University of Chicago.


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The question I want to address is whether this drifting apart of teaching and research is likely to become a long-term trend that may result in the migration of basic research to nonuniversity institutions, or even in the absolute decline of research. Or is this trend a temporary and reversible phenomenon? To answer this question, I must first describe in some detail recent changes in higher education.

Recent Changes in Higher Education

Student enrollments continued to increase during the 1970s, but at a slower rate than in the 1960s, and in some countries they have declined temporarily. However, if all postsecondary and not only university education is considered, growth has been much greater. In the United States total postsecondary enrollments grew by 31 percent between 1970 and 1976. But in degree-granting institutions the increase was only 16 percent, compared with 69 percent in two-year institutions. Another trend harmful to research is the redistribution of students among disciplines. In the United States between 1970 and 1976 graduate enrollments declined in engineering (12 percent), arts and letters (14 percent), mathematics (34 percent), natural sciences (9 percent), and social sciences (12 percent). The percentages of students electing science declined also in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Italy, and Britain between the mid-sixties and the mid-seventies, but there were small increases in Germany and Sweden. Student demand shifted to less research-intensive subjects, such as business and management studies, communications, public administration, the law and health professions, of which only medicine is research oriented. Between 37 and 71 percent of all American institutions added to their curriculums different kinds of professional or vocational programs and courses. But only between 12 and 37 percent added programs and courses in the arts and sciences—the highest percentage representing courses in fine arts—from 1970 to 1978.[1]

Indications are for a change for the worse in the qualifications of entering students. In the United States average scores of high school seniors taking the College Board Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) declined from 460 to 429 on the verbal, and from 488 to 468 on the mathematical part between the academic years 1969–70 and 1977–78. In fact, 85 percent of American colleges and universities now offer compensatory or remedial programs. That these signs of decline in the quality of students are not reflected in


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grades, which have somewhat improved, can only be interpreted as a compromise of standards. Furthermore, American institutions of higher education of all kinds are trying to recruit dropouts, and evening, adult, and transfer students, as well as several other categories unlikely to go into research. This situation contrasts sharply with that of the late forties to the sixties, when qualifications of entering students constantly improved. The number of American colleges joining the College Entrance Examination Board rose from 79 in 1948 to 707 in 1966. The minimum SAT scores for entrance rose everywhere, in some institutions by as much as one hundred points from 1958 to 1965.[2]

Concern about students uninterested in research extends to Europe as well. Some institutions of higher education have even abandoned research. The most conspicuous move in this direction occurred in Sweden, when a 1977 "reform" transformed the universities partially into community service institutions that cater to all the educational wants of the adult population in their regions, while continuing to teach undergraduates and graduates along more or less traditional lines. Adult learners and most of the undergraduates are taught by lecturers who are not expected to do research and hence are required to teach far longer hours than docents and professors, who are expected to be engaged in research.

The Swedish development does not differ much from the situation in the United States. In both countries higher education in the seventies created new educational opportunities for new types of students, many of whom take sub–college level courses; undergraduate enrollments in vocational fields in which there is no unity of teaching and research have grown; and the recruitment of teachers who are not researchers into institutions of higher and postsecondary education has increased. The difference is that in the United States these new functions have been performed partly by community colleges, partly by specialized professional schools, and only to a smaller extent by colleges and universities, which have begun to place more emphasis on professional training and nontraditional students. In Sweden the new functions have resulted in drastic changes in university structure.

None of these developments is quite new. American universities have been pioneers in the introduction of subjects with little scientific basis, but in the past the universities insisted on subsequently creating a scientific basis for the new subjects through the initiation and encouragement of research.[3] This emphasis on research was characteristic of American univer-


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sities until the late 1960s, but it has considerably weakened since then—a new development.

Weakening Commitment to Research

The weakening commitment to research is also evident in university finance. Expenditures for research grew faster than enrollments in the sixties, but barely kept pace in the seventies. Current expenditure per investigator remained more or less constant, or has declined between 1970 and 1976 in the majority of countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). But capital spending per research scientist declined considerably in all during the same period.[4] These data confirm the impression gained from student statistics. In contrast to the sixties, when research led the development of higher education, it now trails growth in student numbers. The stagnation or decline of spending per researcher permits no leeway for the rising costs of books and increasingly sophisticated equipment. Resources for innovation that is the lifeblood of research have seriously declined.

The picture is even bleaker if one examines the use of research moneys that come from the universities' own resources. These are practically all expended on staff salaries, which means that universities have abandoned maintenance and improvement of laboratories, libraries, and other facilities. This trend began in the sixties when universities—owing to the abundance of outside research funding—became accustomed to defray research-related expenses from those funds rather than from the regular budget. In consequence, responsibility for the allocation of research funds and maintenance of research facilities has been shifting from universities to research councils and other public or private agencies.[5]

However, during the sixties these developments did not diminish the feeling that research was a most important university task. Creation of structures for research and graduate education were among the principal concerns of university administrators. They used outside money because it was available, not because they thought research peripheral to the teaching mission of the university. The insidious and unintended consequences of this practice became visible in the seventies when external funding declined. By then universities found themselves ill equipped to cope with the problem and accepted curtailment of research as inevitable. They did little to find new institutional sources of support and concentrated their effort on educational expansion without much concern for the scientific implications of the new programs and kinds of students. It seems as though some


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universities and systems of higher education deserted the ideal of the unity of teaching and research, despite their continuing lip service to it.

Separation:
A Long-Term Trend?

Let us return to the question of whether this separation of research from teaching is likely to be a long-term trend that might lead, perhaps, to their total separation. We must now inquire into the causes of the decline in support for university research. The immediate cause seems to have been the reduced demand for new academic staff in higher education. Between 1966 and 1969 some 102,000 new academic positions were created in the United States, and American universities granted 88,131 doctorates. But between 1976 and 1978 only 28,000 new academic positions appeared, while 109,400 new doctorates were granted; that is, there were more than four times as many graduates as new positions. Probably a similar decline in demand explains the strange phenomenon in Sweden of an increase in doctoral candidates combined with a sharp decrease in doctoral degrees awarded between 1969–70 and 1977–78.[6] Facilities for graduate training and research were expanded in both countries, and in most others, during the sixties to meet the demand for researchers, of which a large and highly valued fraction was for new university teachers. This demand fell sharply during the seventies, partly because the greatly expanded universities could easily assimilate a large part of the increasing undergraduate enrollment, and partly because the new enrollment consisted mainly of nontraditional students, unlikely to become candidates for research degrees, and often interested in remedial, vocational, and other subacademic—or, in the best case, professional—programs. Needless to say, these programs provide little opportunity for basic research.

Of course, universities had not expanded solely to meet the demand for more university teachers. There was also increasing demand for qualified graduates outside the academic system, and this demand is worth analyzing. No evidence exists that, prior to the expansion of the fifties and the sixties, there was much demand for liberal arts graduates, or for researchers in the basic arts and sciences. In the fifties and sixties industry and government probably could have done with a much smaller crop of graduates in most of these fields. Indeed, decisions to found new universities, to encourage high school graduates to continue their studies, and to increase support for basic research were taken on the basis of circumstantial and incomplete evidence. This included the balance of international trade in technological knowledge, comparisons of competitiveness of science-based with non–science-based industries, and analysis of the sources of long-term growth of the American economy. It was understood that these analyses were in-


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conclusive and did not demonstrate that investment in research always pays off.[7] Still the belief was that research would produce long-term benefits. Since Western economies were thriving in the sixties, and no serious shortages of anything existed, expectation of distant benefits seemed to warrant investing in science. Governments did not have to decide to shift limited resources to research, only how best to allocate surplus funds for the improvement of society's future. The purposes competing with research and education were a variety of welfare programs, which received a considerable share of the surplus.

The availability of financial support, in addition to directly stimulating the growth of higher education and research, also fostered the introduction of more highly educated researchers into industry and government. Educational upgrading of the professional, administrative, clerical, and technical workforce was general,[8] and many firms and government departments initiated research and development activities.

Evidently, this scientific subsidy could not grow at a pace faster than the population and economy for more than a short time. By the late sixties rapid growth came to an end, first in the United States, where it all began, and subsequently in other countries. Although the slowdown of academic expansion was inevitable on purely demographic grounds, its effects were aggravated by the economic stagnation of the seventies. Surplus funds seeking worthwhile public objectives disappeared. Governments were no longer worried about creation of centers of excellence in scientific research, or about finding and financing research in fields that promised fundamental breakthroughs. Rather they were concerned with paying their oil bills and fighting unemployment and inflation. Higher education and research now had to compete with vital everyday needs. Furthermore, research—by the mid-sixties quite a sizable operation—was suspected of serving special interests. Governments and corporations became reluctant to finance projects that did not have foreseeable pay-offs, and they demanded economies and strict accounting for every penny spent on research. Universities had to adjust to a market in which there was no new demand for training and


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research in basic fields. They were forced to explore the possibility of serving a new clientele, with constricted intellectual interests. They faced a new market in which short-term economic or other practical usefulness became an increasingly important criterion for curriculums and for the allocation of research money. Suddenly, the glamour disappeared from study and research in the basic fields.

Stagnation of Academic Research Is Temporary

This analysis suggests that the stagnation of support for academic research during the seventies is not necessarily the beginning of a long-term decline. The events of the seventies seem primarily a reaction to accelerated growth, an adjustment to economic stringency. Our society has not become disillusioned with science; indeed surveys show continuing belief in the importance and potential utility of science, and general industrial and applied research. The only major problem attributed to science is pollution, but even here people trust science to find solutions. According to American surveys from 1976, 45 percent thought that pollution was created by science, but 56 percent held that science and technology could make major contributions to reducing pollution.[9]

Thus, fundamentally, the causes of present problems are two: the cyclical academic slowdown following accelerated growth was inevitable on the basis of demographic trends; and the effects of this slowdown were reinforced by international economic difficulties that precluded investment in the unpredictable future benefits that might derive from basic research. But this interpretation of the decline in university research as a cyclical phenomenon does not imply that all we should do is wait for the cycle to enter a new phase. Cycles do not always have predictable courses. While the present downturn is caused by predictable and predicted demographic and economic trends,[10] its end cannot be foreseen in the same way. For just about the time the deceleration began—first in the United States in 1966–1968—the situation was complicated by the worldwide outbreak of student disturbances, triggered mainly by American political and military failure in Vietnam. The disturbances were accompanied by the rise of ideologies hostile to science and the Westen cultural heritage.

Although these events are not intrinsically related to the fate of university research, they continue to have a profound effect on the prospect of cyclical upturn. Student unrest, particularly the assaults on research by some students and faculty, followed by the worldwide economic crisis of the 1970s, raised questions everywhere about the utility and rationale of basic


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research. The suitability of the university as the place for research also came into doubt. Had there been no student outcry or economic malaise, European countries, in which higher educational enrollments during the sixties did not exceed, and were in most cases well below, 20 percent of the age group, and which invested only 1 to 2 percent of their gross national product in research and development—compared to more than 3 percent in the United States—could probably have continued to expand their university research to catch up with American standards. Similarly, university research is now lagging in nations such as Germany and Japan, which had supported research at a growing rate in the seventies.[11]

Too, the questioning of the legitimacy of basic science depressed the morale of the scientific profession. Had the downturn in university research in one country been offset by continued growth in others, as it once was, few would have taken seriously those who now speak of the impending—and well-deserved—doom of Western science. Everyone would have recognized that the troubles were due to overexpansion and would have sought rational ways to adjust to the new conditions. The international nature of the crisis, however, lends credence to the prophets of scientific disaster. Thus even people who have reservations about the denigration of science spend more time debating the alleged sins of the universities than advancing the cause of research.

To ward off these critics—most of whom come from the ranks of faculty and students—and to satisfy a public alerted to charges of university waste and eager for savings in a time of economic distress, so-called reforms were legislated, which only added to the plight of the universities. In several European countries laws provided for participation of students and non-academic employees in decisions affecting university research. And in the United States recipients of federal funds had to comply with new regulations concerning the preparation of proposals and reports, accounting for time and effort, evidence of expenditure, and observance of so-called equal opportunity criteria—all of which are costly, unproductive, and time consuming.[12] Instead of responding to scarcity with an increase of efficiency, governments and universities adopted policies that render even more problematic the prospects for recovery.

Prospects for Recovery

The prospects for recovery are not easy to assess. One can argue that there is no ground for pessimism about the future of university research. The slowing down of the growth of investment in science was, after all, inescapable. Today's difficulties are only the consequences of the precipi-


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tate, and in many ways unwarranted, expansion of the late fifties and early sixties. Public support for science and the vitality of science-based industry—electronics, genetic engineering, and so on—are signs that sooner or later enthusiasm for university research will return. Deterioration of the university research environment and the obsolescence of laboratory equipment are, of course, serious matters. But one can take comfort that some universities and some outstanding university projects are doing well. This may indicate a new trend toward differentiation, in which some universities do advanced research in all fields, while others specialize or become mainly teaching institutions.[13]

This optimistic assessment is bolstered by the observation that universities have learned to live with the legacy of political disruption. The campuses are now quiet, and research is conducted undisturbed. One may contend that universities have adjusted to the new climate of sentiment and have returned more or less to normal. But although some adjustment had undoubtedly taken place, it remains to be seen whether this represents an injurious truce or promises a restoration of vitality and health.

Symptoms of permanent damage are not lacking. Regulatory burdens have been imposed under pressure for both students and faculty. And despite relative calm and absence of violence—by no means at all universities—an internal threat of political interference with freedom of research persists. In many a European, Australian, and Latin American university belief in some version of Marxism is almost obligatory in the social sciences and in some of the humanistic studies. The situation in the United States is better, but even there a degree of ideological pressure exists. While most social scientific research is ostensibly apolitical, nevertheless a strong bias toward Marxist-inspired themes is evident. Inequality is analyzed in conceptual frameworks that accept unquestioningly the Marxist meanings of capitalism, imperialism , and exploitation . There is also a fair amount of ritual reference to Marx and an etiquette of deference to him. Sometimes it seems that every social scientist, past and present, can be ignored or criticized, but not Karl Marx.

Ideological and Political Pressures

The ideological pressure that prevails in European, Australian, and Latin American universities is reminiscent of the climate in continental Europe—outside the USSR—of the 1920s. Academic freedom seemed to obtain, and by and large research was conducted objectively, dispassionately, and frequently brilliantly. But an unwritten rule permitted professors and students of certain political persuasions to use lecture halls and the university as forums for ideological propaganda and political recruitment. Occasionally this license for the use of terror was abused. Certain political and religious doctrines were treated as beyond dispute. In sensitive fields—


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history, literature, and the social sciences—appointments were rarely made of those professing the "wrong" political views. This ideological license was granted to the parties of the Right, and the fascists greatly exploited it to their political advantage. Today it is the Left that benefits from license.

Some natural scientists and university administrators are not greatly worried by these developments. They hold research in social science and the humanities to be of doubtful validity anyway. Political compromise at the expense of these disciplines, they think, is a small price to pay for academic peace, which allows undisturbed research in the real or "hard" sciences.

This is an ill-informed and shortsighted attitude. Whatever one thinks of the logical and empirical standing of the social sciences, the opportunity to study and discuss social and political issues in an atmosphere of dispassionate tolerance and objectivity is crucial. If this opportunity is withheld at the university there is little hope for tolerance outside, in politics or in the streets.

Furthermore, the threat of political pressure is far from absent in the natural sciences. I do not take a stand on the issues involved. But the means used by some members of the universities against research they deem politically unacceptable or harmful, and against researchers, shows that there are people who will not refrain from coercion and terrorism. I have in mind recombinant DNA research, investigation of the genetic components of intelligence, and research related to the military. One is reminded again and again of Nazi and Bolshevik intrusions into biology and other fields of science, and their victimization of scientists with "undesirable" racial characteristics or ideological views.

Financial Worries

Last but not least, American universities, including some of the most prestigious, are facing formidable financial challenges. In medicine and several branches of other fields, especially physics, up-to-date research requires equipment and facilities that individual universities are unable to afford. They are increasingly less fit to compete with industrial laboratories and a small number of specialized research institutes. Financial difficulties also beset some relatively inexpensive fields—language and areas studies, for example—that have very few students, for universities allocate funds on the basis of enrollments.

These are the kinds of problems that European universities faced a long while ago. In the last decades of the nineteenth century, they debated how to accommodate scientific research that requires a lot of money and bureaucracy. They turned to governments and private benefactors and specialized research institutes were established. These institutes—Institut Pasteur in France; Physikalisch Technische Reichanstalt and the Kaiser Wilhelm (now Max Planck) Institute in Germany; and the British research councils—reduced the importance of universities as centers of research.

The only significant exceptions to this trend of separating research from


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teaching were the American universities. Their graduate schools could accommodate new fields and—by the standards of the times—large-scale research organizations, which Europeans saw as threatening to their traditions and organizational balance. The question is whether American universities will be willing and able to adhere to their institutional resolve. Can they serve as centers for all kinds of basic research and devise new forms of organization and cooperate for that purpose? They did so in the fifties and sixties for high-energy research. Or will they divest themselves of responsibility for research and, weakened by the legacy of internal conflict, follow the European path of abandoning certain fields to specialized research institutions?

The Future of Teaching and Research

In the light of my analysis it is not easy to feel assured about the future of university-based research in the 1980s. A distinct possibility is that the separation of research from teaching will continue and accelerate. Of course, we would still have research and scientific advance, but the nature of research would probably change.

Pursuit of spontaneous basic research has been made possible by close ties between research and teaching. The location of advanced research in independent and competing universities, in each of which there has been a constant flow of new researchers, has served effectively to enforce high intellectual standards, to recognize originality, and to ensure the circulation of ideas to students, and through them to society at large. Severance of the connection between research and teaching would eliminate these highly desirable incentives to both intellectual and cultural vitality.


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7—
The Natural Sciences

Sjoerd L. Bonting

To say anything of significance on so broad a topic it is necessary severely to limit the points to be considered. Although it would be desirable to discuss scientific research in the Communist countries and in developing nations, I shall confine myself to the West and in particular to western Europe. I want to examine the tremendous growth in scientific research during the 1960s and early 1970s and its consequences, considering promises fulfilled and unfulfilled, effects good and bad, societal and governmental reactions favorable and unfavorable, and scientists as heroes and villains. In addition, we must notice the recent radical changes in economic and social conditions in the West and their effect on scientific research in the universities.

Organization and Finance

A recent study by an official of the Netherlands government provides information on six representative western European countries—Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland.[1] In these countries university research is almost completely financed by the government, both directly, through general university funding, and indirectly through research councils. By way of contrast to the United States, private foundations play a very minor role, funding only 2 percent or less of all university research. In these European nations the ministry of education is solely or largely responsible for university funding; although in the

Sjoerd L. Bonting is Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Nijmegen.


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United Kingdom a university grants committee receives, budgets, and disburses the money.

All these countries experienced a substantial growth from the 1950s to the 1970s in both manpower and money for scientific research in general and for university research in particular. Table 1 illustrates this development in the Netherlands. Responsible for this munificence were western European affluence, the large increase in student enrollment and consequent increase in staff, and probably defense spending. Table 2 shows that rapid growth was general throughout western Europe, although data for only the latter half of the period are available. When we add to this expenditure the many European joint research installations and ventures—such as the European Nuclear Physics Institute (CERN), Euratom, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the European Molecular Biology Labo-

 

TABLE 1
Growth in manpower and fund
for science research in the Netherlands, 1959–1976

 

Manpower (1000 man-years)

Funds ($ million)

 

1959

1979

ratio

1959

1979

ratio

Universities

3.6

9.2

2.6

28

376

13.4

Industry

18.4

27.2

1.5

146

1115

7.6

Government institutesa

8.0

12.8

1.6

55

472

8.6

Total

30.0

49.2

1.6

230

1963

8.6

a Government institutes include the intramural and extramural (university grants) expenditure of the national research council.

 

TABLE 2
Manpower and funds for university science research,
ratios of 1975 levels to 1967 levels

 

manpower

funds

Belgium

 

4.2

Italy

1.7

3.9

the Netherlands

1.3

2.6

Norway

1.4

2.8

Switzerland

1.9

2.2

United Kingdom

 

2.4


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TABLE 3
Distribution of science research expenditure
over university, governmental, and industrial laboratories
as percentage of total national research and development budget in 1975

 

university

government

industry

Belgium

32

                         68

Italy

17

23

60

the Netherlands

20

20

59

Norway

28

20

51

Switzerland

16

7

77

United Kingdom

8

28

64

 

TABLE 4
Percentage of science research funds
received by universities from national research councils,
1970–1975

 

%

Belgium

25

the Netherlands

12

Norway

14

Switzerland

22

United Kingdom

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ratory (EMBL)—we may conclude that European scientific research potential now equals that of the United States, although actual scientific productivity is another question.

Expenditures for scientific research in the universities as a percentage of total national expenditure for research and development varies considerably among European countries, as shown in Table 3. The lower percentages result from large expenditures for research in industrial laboratories and in nonuniversity government research institutes, as the last two columns of Table 3 indicate.

Table 4 shows a considerable range in the percentage of university research financed by national research councils as distinguished from general university funds. The lowest percentage is that of the Netherlands, namely,


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TABLE 5
Expenditure for research in science and in humanities and social science
in the Netherlands

 

1969

1976

 

Science a

Humanities and Social Sciences

Science

Science

Humanities and Social Sciences

Science

 

($ in millions)

(% of total)

($ in millions)

(% of total)

personnel

82

23

78

237

87

73

material

30

4

88

78

13

86

operational    costs

123

29

81

423

125

77

total

235

56

81

738

225

77

 

(number per year)

(% of total)

(number per year)

(% of total)

doctoral    degrees

489

139

78

613

195

76

a Science includes technical, medical, and agricultural research.

12 percent. However, the Netherlands government is now increasing the funding of projects through the national research council at the expense of direct university support. In the United Kingdom the percentage of research supported by various research councils has always been high; a substantial part of this money is allocated to the research council units and groups at the universities. However, the situation in these countries differs considerably from that in the United States, where nearly all university scientific research, except for faculty salaries, is directly financed by external agencies.

Several significant differences are not apparent from the data in the tables. For example, the national research councils in the Netherlands and Belgium support only basic research, whereas in Britain up to 25 percent of council funds support applied agricultural, medical, and environmental research through government departments' contracting with university research groups for applied research projects. In the Netherlands the national research council is now starting to support applied as well as basic research. Furthermore, the national research councils in Belgium, Norway, and Switzerland have no research institutes of their own, whereas the councils in Italy, the Netherlands, and Britain have their own institutes. In the latter three countries these institutes receive from 25 to 86 percent of


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the research council moneys, depending on country and field of research. This percentage is tending to rise, which could be detrimental to university research. Finally, Britain and Norway make their national contributions to international research organizations like CERN and ESA from their research councils' budgets; such contributions represent as much as 26 percent of a council's budget.

Traditionally scientific research has received the lion's share of university research expenditure, although in the last decade the proportion allotted to the humanities and the social sciences has increased somewhat. Data illustrating this trend in the Netherlands are displayed in Table 5. Interestingly enough, the proportions of doctorates awarded, taken as a research output indicator, are nearly the same as those for funding.

Science Policy

Given the rapid growth of government expenditure for research in the universities and the deterioration of national economies since the mid-1970s, it is small wonder that most governments have tried to obtain more control over the cost and direction of university research. This greater measure of supervision, called science policy , takes various shapes in different countries, but always involves more bureaucracy in the form of studies and reports compiled by various offices. Unavoidably, such monitoring places some constraints on the autonomy of the university and on the freedom of individual scientists.

However, the effect of science policy on the direction of scientific development is rather slight, as Derek De Solla Price shows by means of extensive statistical studies, presented in a lecture that is reported in a Netherlands government publication. He finds that a country's total spending and manpower devoted to scientific research is closely tied to its gross national product (GNP). The higher the GNP, the higher also is the percentage of GNP spent on research. And there is a remarkable proportionality between this percentage and the country's scientific manpower, as is displayed in Figure 1. He also finds that the number of doctorates granted annually in the United States did not rise sharply in response to the creation of the National Science Foundation or to the Sputnik launching. However, degrees awarded fell sharply after the great depression and at the beginning of World War II, indicating that economic factors mainly determine scientific productivity.

It is well to have in mind De Solla Price's sobering conclusions as we review the directions science policy has taken in some countries. The goals of science policy are usually defined as follows: first, to improve research efficiency, and second, to make scientific research more responsive to social priorities. To achieve these objectives governments use either a coordinated or decentralized form of organization. The former combines a ministry of scientific policy and a national research council, as is the case in Belgium, the German Federal Republic, and France. In the latter model, used by the


97

Fig. 1.
Percentage of gross national product spent on research plotted against scientific manpower per 10,000 population for twenty countries.
(Gr = Greece, Sp = Spain, P = Portugal, I = Iceland, A = Austria,
It = Italy, Ir = Ireland, F = Finland, D = Denmark, N = Norway,
C = Canada, B = Belgium, F = France, Sw = Sweden, J = Japan,
Ne = Netherlands, S = Switzerland, G = West Germany,
UK = United Kingdom, US = United States)


98

United States and the United Kingdom, research is handled through various government departments and research councils. In practice, of course, there are hybrid forms of organization. For example, in the Netherlands from 1977 to 1981 the minister of science policy had only a very small budget, but he had authority to coordinate the scientific activities of the various departments. And in the United Kingdom there is some coordination among the departmental chief scientists and also among the five research councils.

Improvement in research efficiency, the first objective of science policy, is usually pursued through policies of selectivity—the competitive grant system with peer review—and financial concentration on centers of excellence. For example, the Netherlands research council awards 83 percent of its funds in three- and four-year project grants through a large number of national research communities. Usually these communities are organized on the initiative of leaders of university research groups in highly specific fields, for example, nucleic acid, bacterial cell walls, membrane transport, hormonal action, and so on; their members discuss and evaluate one another's proposals. For many years this system worked very well and stimulated research while providing maximum autonomy to the scientists. However, competition began to threaten cooperation once the resources of the national research council ceased to rise, and competitiveness intensified as the number of proposals submitted increased owing to the decrease in university budgets. Moreover, the advocates of science policy rightly feel that the second objective of policy, rendering research responsive to social needs, is hardly met by this structure of organizations and procedures.

To achieve this second policy goal ministers and the research councils are often authorized to concentrate their moneys on particular fields or in special forms. As an example, I point to the research units, research groups, and program grants of the Medical Research Council (MRC) in the United Kingdom. The research units are established around a professor of proven outstanding ability. He appoints a number of staff members who are employed and supported by the MRC. The research unit has indefinite tenure which means it usually lasts for the duration of the active career of its director. In contrast, a research group has limited tenure. Its staff is employed by a university, which is expected eventually to incorporate the group and support it from university funds. A program grant is awarded to a series of linked projects, usually coordinated by one investigator, at a university. In addition, the MRC awards project grants and graduate student stipends.

In 1975–76 the Medical Research Council funds were allocated as follows: intramural research, 18 percent; research units, 43 percent; research groups and program grants, 16 percent; project grants and graduate stipends, 21 percent. Clearly this system affords considerable opportunity to direct research according to social priorities. Moreover, up to 25 percent of research council funds may be used for contracts that permit individual government departments to sponsor applied research on selected topics in university laboratories.


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In the United Kingdom, the Science Research Council, which supports only basic research, has allocated 60 percent of its money for computer science to three universities, namely, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Manchester. The council's purpose was to impede development of this field in other universities in order to have three first-rate, large-scale centers. The council also operates a program of awards to graduate students who carry out joint research projects, the parties to which are industries and university departments.

In the Netherlands the national research council has pursued the second goal of science policy in a very modest way by setting aside a small portion of its funds for projects of national priority such as energy and aging. For these subjects proposals may be submitted directly, that is, not through a research community.

Further Developments

There is no doubt that science policy, especially in its objective of making scientific research more responsive to social priorities, will play an increasing role in European university laboratories in the eighties. Three developments in the Netherlands illustrate this prospect.

First, the national research council is now being authorized to finance applied research, for which proposals must contain a clear description of the expected use of the findings by an industry or another "customer." Second, the government is planning to reduce the direct financing of university research over the next nine years by 50 percent of the present amount. Of these funds one-third will be used to double the research council's budget for project grants in both pure and applied research. The remaining two-thirds will finance university research groups earmarked by the minister of education and sciences, acting upon the advice of the academic council. So far this council has served only as a consultative body of the universities and as an advisory body of the minister in the educational sphere; it has had no prior experience of research management. Hence it is still unclear how this system of earmarked financing will work. In addition, university research groups may undertake contract research for industry and government.

Third, a Netherlands government report on technological innovation enumerates the research areas to be stimulated—microelectronics and biotechnology, for example—and the means by which this is to be done. The universities will be involved in three ways: contract research performed by university laboratories; special grants to university research groups; and establishment of "transfer points" at some universities for scientific and technological information to be utilized by industry, especially small and medium-sized industries.

These and similar developments elsewhere raise questions as to the future of university scientific research. Our forecast must consider the effects not only of science policy but also of other important changes in our societies.

In seeking to improve the efficiency of research, science policy has had


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profound effects through the national research councils and the various forms of competitive research grants. The positive effects are immediately and highly visible: in the well-staffed, well-equipped, and well-supplied laboratories; in the many able young scientists trained on these projects; and in the steady increase of scientific publications issuing from these laboratories. The requirements to explicate research objectives and to become more time- and cost-conscious have certainly been salutary. However, the grant system can unquestionably become a serious administrative burden for the scientist. The often lengthy administrative procedures can hinder free, inventive basic research, which is not only an end in itself but also the wellspring of successful applied research. Fund raising and proposal writing may force investigators to divert attention from their real scientific interests.

The economic depression, coming after a long period of growth, is causing a good deal of harm. The need to reduce personnel costs in the universities especially affects temporary junior staff positions and thus increases the teaching and administrative load of the senior staff. In the Netherlands, the norm for research time of university staff members has decreased from two-thirds in 1969 to less than one-third in 1980. Since the great increase in staff appointments in the sixties and early seventies has been reversed so suddenly, there is soon bound to be a general aging of senior staff coupled with immobility. Moreover, the steady flow of new young scientists, equipped with the doctorate, is now leading to unemployment and inappropriate employment. The makers of science policy should now lend financial support to postdoctoral fellows rather than to new doctoral candidates.

Another set of difficulties for scientific research in the universities is produced by the drastic changes in society heralded by the "student revolution" of 1968 through 1970. The call for "democratization" of the European university system has generated a cumbersome bureaucracy composed of many councils and even more numerous committees. A burgeoning officialdom deluges us with reports and requests for reports. In some universities there is politicization, which is inimical to good science, although probably less so in the natural sciences than in the social sciences. Furthermore, an atmosphere of mistrust and fear of science pervades our society, which has seen too many instances of dual potentials of science: nuclear science yields sophisticated medical treatments but also causes fatalities by radiation in war or accident; biomedical science produces life-saving drugs but also deadly chemical-biological agents; and chemistry gives us useful products but also causes environmental pollution. Even the responsible attitude of molecular biologists, displayed in their call for a voluntary moratorium on recombinant-DNA experiements until safety guidelines had been formulated, worked against them. If this climate of mistrust and fear persists, it could do great damage, not only to university science but also to social welfare.


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Responsibility of Scientists

European university scientists certainly have every reason to be grateful for all that Western society has provided them since World War II. This munificence certainly places them under obligation, now that the economic tide has turned, to cooperate with their governments to use their scientific capabilities for the public good.

There are several ways in which scientists should help to make science policy effective. They should try to overcome their customary disdain for applied research, while continuing strongly to defend the need for spontaneous and innovative basic research as intrinsically valuable and as the foundation for useful applied research. At the same time scientists should critically appraise the aims and methods of science policy and its results. Then they should try to persuade the responsible government officials to frame their policies so that what is achievable can be achieved with a minimum of bureaucratic hindrance. And officials should recognize that novel and useful ideas are not generated in weighty advisory bodies, but rather in the mind of a bright scientist having a lively discussion with some colleagues. Scientists should caution against the trend to enlarge the number and size of nonuniversity government research institutes at the expense of scientific research in the universities. At stake here is both the quality of university research and, even more importantly, the educational mission of the university.

Another important obligation of the scientists is to help dissipate the public's distrust of science. They should take part in explaining to the public and its elected representatives scientific findings and their broader implications. For only then can we expect legislatures and government ministers to make informed decisions about the regulation and application of scientific inquiry.


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8—
The Social Sciences

Martin Bulmer

University social science research is a development of the twentieth century, particularly of the period since 1945. I will briefly sketch the origins of this research, some problems it poses for university organization, and the recent trend of conducting large-scale research outside the university. I am concerned with three particular questions. In what way, and with what success, can large-scale, organized, social inquiry fit into the structure of the modern university; to what extent can it be successfully institutionalized? What are the implications of increased expenditure by government for social science research, both within and outside the university? What effect has increasing government interference had on the conduct of research in the university?

The place of research in the social sciences in universities is central to the long-term health of these disciplines, but it has received less attention than the place of teaching, relations between teachers and students, the government of universities, or the politicization of social science faculties. Research is less glamorous, less controversial, lends itself less to polemic than these other issues. Nevertheless, if the research bases of the various social sciences do not flourish, those subjects will either atrophy or more probably come to occupy a position in universities analogous to more marginal subjects such as social work or journalism. My aim here is less to explore in detail the position of particular countries or disciplines than to raise general questions for consideration.

Martin Bulmer is Lecturer in Social Administration at the London School of Economics and Political Science.


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My focus is on large-scale and organized research in the social sciences, in which a considerable number of auxiliary staff is employed, in which there is division of labor and hierarchical organization. It entails collecting and processing large amounts of data and elaborate statistical analysis or mathematical modeling. Some of it has predominantly a theoretical interest, other parts are predominantly descriptive. My survey ranges over both basic and applied research, with examples drawn from each, although the applicability of the distinction made in a hard-and-fast manner has been questioned: "The adjectives 'pure' and 'applied' imply a division where none should exist and their use can be harmful."[1] My examples are drawn principally but not entirely from Britain and North America.

The Ambivalent Place of Research

A basic theme of my analysis is the ambivalence that universities display toward large-scale research. On the one hand, "big social science" is fostered because of its intellectual importance (for example, economic modeling), the resources that it brings, and the benefits that follow from having a complex research organization to complement the teaching staff. On the other hand, large-scale research meshes uneasily with departmental structures, makes demands on teachers that they are not always willing to meet, and may elevate technique and efficiency over the values of careful scholarship and thought. Some parts of large-scale research are boring and trivial, and some academics feel that the presence of this research (for example, social survey research) dilutes their universities. Moreover, some large-scale research requires the employment of large numbers of nonacademic staff, whose presence at the university prompts considerable resistance and scrutiny of their status in relation to academic staff. Large-scale research enhances the reputation of universities and furthers their scholarly objectives, but it also represents an intrusion that some deem undesirable. Hence large-scale research is increasingly carried on outside universities.

History of Social Research in Universities

The historical origins of research in modern universities are relatively well known. The influence of the late nineteenth-century German university and its later American counterparts is a familiar theme of the history of universities and of research. With the founding of Johns Hopkins University in 1876, "perhaps the single, most decisive, event in the history of learning in the Western hemisphere,"[2] research came to have an importance at least equal to teaching. The foundation of Clark University (1889) and the University of Chicago (1892), together with enlargement of graduate


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work at Harvard and Columbia, transformed the American university system and laid the foundations for its international preeminence in the present century, particularly in the natural sciences. The emphasis in both German and certain American universities upon the advanced seminar and graduate instruction testified to the crucial position of research.

If the seminar was the characteristic mode of instruction in this research-oriented system,[3] "the wheel within the wheel, the real center of the life-giving, the stimulating, the creative forces of the modern university," as E. R. A. Seligman put it in 1892, the setting in which serious scientific investigation was conducted, was the laboratory. At least, this was so in the natural sciences; its equivalent in psychology was Wundt's laboratory in Leipzig, opened in 1879. What, however, of the other social sciences whose methods were nonexperimental? Where did the political scientist, economist, or sociologist go to conduct research? The answer, for the most part, was to the library or to the study or to the archives, to work on printed materials and unpublished documents. Firsthand inquiries in the field were unusual but not unknown.

Beginning around World War I, the methods of research, its organization, and its financing all began to change significantly. These changes had a far-reaching effect on universities. In the first place, social scientists in several disciplines became much more interested in the firsthand gathering of data. Malinowski's sojourn in the Trobriand Islands became the prototype. In American political science, Charles Merriam headed a movement for the direct observational study of political behavior. In sociology, W. I. Thomas and Robert Park similarly turned toward observing, interviewing, and studying unpublished documents. In psychology, J. B. Watson's behaviorism was an aggressive statement of an approach already well established. Wesley C. Mitchell in economics used statistical data in new ways to observe the workings of economic institutions.[4] The study of society became more systematically empirical, relying more on direct contact with the subject matter, rather than on archival data or on qualified informants such as clergymen, magistrates, or other middle-class officials.

Changes in the organization of research followed. At several American universities in the 1920s centers of social science research began to develop, consisting of a loose organization providing support staff, aid for graduate students, subsidies for publication, and released-time for teaching staff to conduct research. The Local Community Research Committee, set up at the University of Chicago in 1923, provides one example;[5] other important


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centers were established at Pennsylvania, Columbia, Harvard, and North Carolina.

A necessary condition of this change was outside financial support. Before 1930, little government money was available for social science research in any country. Early nineteenth-century social investigators were men and women of private means. In the early twentieth century, philanthropy became important, especially through bodies like the Russell Sage Foundation and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial, which in the decade after 1923 put millions of dollars into basic research in America and western Europe.

By 1930, other sources of funding for social research appeared. During the 1930s, particularly after Roosevelt's election, federal government support for research began to grow rapidly, and private philanthropy, although it remained important, was no longer the only source of support. Moreover, foundations altered significantly their grant-giving policies during the decade. Whereas hitherto they had made large general-purpose grants to universities, the increasing growth of social science coupled with financial stringency during the Great Depression led to the project-grant system. Scholars seeking support were required to specify much more carefully their aims and interests. The decision as to which scholars received support moved from the university to other organizations.[6]

At the same time that the social sciences began to rely more on the firsthand collection of data and to create simple research organizations to facilitate such tasks, forward-looking scientists and foundation officials shared a belief that social science could prove useful in making a "massive attack" on social problems. The social sciences thus entered a phase when the results of research were believed to be socially useful.[7] How social science would influence policy was not very clearly articulated. Sometimes, as in President Hoover's Committee on Recent Social Trends, great reliance was placed simply on the comprehensive collection of authoritative social facts. Increased resources for research, coming initially from foundations, greatly enlarged the scale of, and led to some changes in, the organization of research. A few bodies, such as the Brookings Institution, were created altogether outside universities.

The increased scale of financial support and the size of projects and of ancillary staff raised problems of integrating research with teaching and the advance of knowledge. Countries differ markedly in the extent to which the direction and finance of scientific research is centralized and in the extent to which teaching and research are combined.[8] An important feature of the


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developments in the United States between 1860 and 1920 is that there was no "establishment," no sole authority; rather competition existed among different kinds of institutions supported in various ways. Nevertheless, universities became the dominant centers of natural scientific research by the early twentieth century.[9] Independent research institutes were either under their influence or so small that they could not compete effectively with the more dominant university departments. By contrast, there developed in Germany after 1911 the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the Promotion of the Sciences (now the Max Planck Gesellschaft), with its own highly specialized extrauniversity research institutes directed by leading scientists and staffed by scholars free of teaching duties. In Britain and France, research institutes in science and medicine were established outside the university, such as the National Physical Laboratory and various centers supported by the Conseil National de la Recherche Scientifique, which was established in 1939.

In the social sciences, developments were not so rapid, though basic questions concerning institutional integration persisted. Was large-scale social science research promoted most effectively in or outside the university? If within, how should it be integrated with teaching responsibilities and the conventional structure of academic departments? Before the post–World War II expansion, several different arrangements were tried. Outside the university were bodies such as the Brookings Institution in the United States and Political and Economic Planning in Britain.[10] Within the university a variety of different types of research centers flourished, some integrated within teaching departments, some semiautonomous. Of the latter, some were specialized by function (like the Columbia Bureau of Applied Social Research), some by intellectual orientation (like the Frankfurt Institut für Sozialforschung.[11]

Growth of American university science between 1860 and 1920 was the result of a hunger for fundamental knowledge, fostered by a competitive and decentralized system. Though elements of this system persist, notably its competitive hierarchy of universities, public and private, growth in academic social science after World War II was, as in Europe, supported by government and seen as an integral part of national economic policy. Convinced of the usefulness of social science research, governments injected resources on an ever-increasing scale.

Location of Large-Scale Research

In the 1920s and 1930s, when foundation support was decisive, the social sciences were just "taking off." After 1945 the base from which growth


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continued was larger, and the problems associated with growth were on an altogether different scale. Though never on the scale of "big science" in the natural sciences, the postwar period began the era of "big social science," posing new intellectual and organizational problems for social scientists and for those supporting social science. The Rockefeller contribution was effective because it began from a very small base, and allowed universities to expand this base modestly and gradually over a fifteen- or twenty-year period, in conjunction with graduate teaching, without being overwhelmed by the expense or scale of activity. With increased government concern for research and increased reliance on government as the chief paymaster, the scale of research grew. To some extent objectives were modified toward more applied studies, and different types of research organizations were created (some outside the university) to foster social science research. Examples of such organizations include the National Opinion Research Center and the Michigan Institute for Social Research in the United States, and the National Institute of Economic & Social Research and the Tavistock Institute in Britain.

The precise level of financial support by governments in the 1970s is difficult to establish. Global estimates have been put forward of U.S. federal government expenditure in excess of $500 million on all social science research, and British government support of about £50 million. (These estimates relate to direct support for research staff and activities in universities and in nonacademic institutes.) The actual magnitude is in any case less important than the dramatic dependence of social science on government. Although private foundations still provide significant support for research in social science, its scale has become relatively modest compared to that provided by governments. Other sources of finance are of marginal importance. Fee income is not an adequate base from which to finance large-scale academic research, while the commercialization of research within universities has been traditionally proscribed. We will return to these problems of relations between universities and the state, but first let us consider the internal weaknesses of universities as settings for large-scale research.

Though the idea of the unity of teaching and research has been almost universally accepted, its practice has posed severe problems. Research and teachable academic disciplines do not necessarily fit easily together.[12] The intellectual and organizational relation between large-scale research and individual research and teaching of academics is problematical. Of course, large-scale research is not only conducted in universities but also by in-house government research divisions (e.g., U.S. Bureau of the Census; Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, and the Central Statistical Office in Britain); in independent, nonacademic, nonprofit research organizations


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(e.g., Mathematica, and Stanford Research Institute in the United States; Social & Community Planning Research in Britain); and in commercial firms (notably market research in many countries, and in American social research firms such as Abt Associates). Universities nevertheless retain distinct advantages as places in which to conduct research, since they form a public network. Their number gives

the impression of a mighty concourse . . . reinforced by the linkages and interchanges between the members of various learned societies. A trans-local identification was strengthened in the minds of those who experienced this plurality of connections and thus felt themselves to be engaged in a vast national and international movement of the spirit. Despite the specialization of research, the co-existence of practitioners of disciplines within faculties, and of faculties themselves within universities, created a diversity and radius of intellectual intercourse which supported the general conviction that the advancement of knowledge was an end of the highest value.[13]

Even so, not all basic scientific research activity in Europe has been incorporated in the university; for example, the Kaiser Wilhelm (now Max Planck) Gesellschaft and the independent research institutes supported by the British research councils are centers of basic research located outside the academic sphere. Independent institutes such as Brookings, National Institute of Economic & Social Research, and Political and Economic Planning (now part of the Policy Studies Institute); centers for survey research; and independent research contractors constitute organizations for applied social research external to the university.

What determines where research is conducted and how it is organized? Basic research is likely to be conducted at universities, while very large intelligence and monitoring activities, such as the census and large continuous surveys, are always likely to be carried out by government. We will not, however, further discuss in-house government research. Though often demonstrating great strengths in methodology and technique, this research suffers from the overriding disadvantages of subjection to direct political control, lack of real intellectual freedom, and sometimes lack of intellectual power. Government organs are therefore unsuitable locations for much basic and applied social science research, a judgment reflected by the preference of governments for contracting out even highly applied research, a trend that began in the United States during World War II.

The most critical questions concern the capacity of academic institutions to absorb large-scale research. Although universities are seemingly the natural locus for most basic and applied social research, in recent years a good deal of research has moved away from the university. This trend reflects both the universities' view of large-scale research and the fact that


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academic organization has features that constrain the relation of research and teaching. There is no doubt that universities and large-scale research do not fit comfortably together. To understand why we shall consider the different ways in which social research can be institutionalized.

Institutionalization of Large-Scale Research

Large-scale research requires considerable resources: staff, equipment, and materials. As the scale of research activity increases, qualitative changes occur. Staff need to be employed, both trained researchers and nonacademic personnel with secretarial, clerical, computing or routine survey skills. A division of labor emerges, together with some sort of organization to manage the enterprise and administer the funds. Small projects, involving one or two people, may be run partly by the principal investigator, partly with the aid of central university services. Increases in scale, however, require more complex organizational forms of various kinds.

The simplest of these is the collegium , an informal group of colleagues of equal status, who meet to discuss ideas and engage in cooperation on ad hoc projects. Usually decision making is democratic and fairly consensual, and the group has little or no formal authority over the activities of its members (except the right to admit or exclude individuals). Members of a collegium may come from more than one university, from several departments within one university, or from a single department. The learned society is the best example of the interuniversity collegium. Within universities, the degree of organization may be informal, as with "journal clubs" or formal, as with a body like the Society for Social Research at the University of Chicago in the 1920s, which served as an underpinning for the Chicago School of Sociology.[14]

A more complex form is the research committee , a group of persons pursuing their individual research interests within an overall focus and framework provided by the committee. The main advantages of this organization lie in providing a letterhead, secretarial and clerical services, influence in the university and weight with grant-giving bodies.[15] Often having center or committee in their titles, these groups may have members from one or several departments. They offer a forum for sharing common interests, have graduate students attached to them, and usually have a director or chairman. The latter, however, is likely to have little authority other than over the disposal of the minor services that the center or committee commands.

Such bodies do not fundamentally modify the departmental structures of British and American universities. At the London School of Economics, the Population Investigation Committee is a distinguished example of such a


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body. More recently, the International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines draws its members from several departments. At the University of Chicago, the well-established committee system (e.g., the Committee for the Study of New Nations; the Committee for South Asian Studies) crosses departmental lines. Very occasionally, committees evolve into departments or quasi departments (e.g., the Committee on Statistics; the Committee on Social Thought). Committees offer opportunities for fruitful exchange and confer diplomatic and strategic advantages, but they essentially do not direct the activities of their members. They merely provide a convenient framework within which university teachers can pursue their research, sometimes in collaboration with colleagues of similar interests.

A more complex structure is the university research institute , situated within the formal structure of the university but having an existence distinct from departments. Membership in many cases overlaps, but the institute is a distinct entity, with its own board, director, budget, and staff (though these vary in number). Institutes command considerably greater resources than committees, mostly derived from grants from outside sources (government, research councils, and foundations). They have their own offices, perhaps their own equipment, and staff to direct and conduct research (some of whom may be university teachers on leave or on part-time appointment) together with graduate students writing doctoral theses. The director of an institute may have some real authority, although subject to various checks and balances.

Institutes vary in their organizational complexity. Some coordinate activities spread over different departments, as does the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at the University of North Carolina, founded by Howard Odum in 1924, which claims to be the oldest university-associated social research organization in the United States.[16] This pattern was followed in the recent initiative by the British Social Science Research Council to establish designated research centers designed to strengthen research in particular fields by means of large program grants. Such centers have their own budgets, but are headed (with two exceptions) by academic teaching staff for whom the centers are a way of consolidating their own research interests.

Some institutes may be formally autonomous within a university. The British Social Science Research Council supports several research units (in industrial relations, race relations, and sociolegal studies) that are led by a senior academic, but have their own full-time research staff with some ancillary support. The work they perform, however, does not differ much from that done by academics with a large program grant, and such units were set up primarily to stimulate research in particular fields, rather than


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because of any organizational necessity for such a structure. Senior members of the staff are research managers, but in the main they supervise the work of junior colleagues.

By contrast, the most complex form is the nonprofit research enterprise , an organization with a large professional and ancillary staff attached to a university. Much larger than a research institute, the research enterprise involves a very elaborate division of labor, hierarchy of authority, and virtually complete independence from the departmental structure of the university. The prototype is the large American survey research center: the National Opinion Research Center at Chicago, the Institute of Social Research at Michigan, and the former Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia.

Directors of these enterprises are research managers running complex organizations whose form is entirely different from that of an academic department. Conduct of social surveys requires the most extensive division of labor in the social sciences. Staff are needed with specialist knowledge of sampling, questionnaire construction, interviewing, data processing, and data analysis. Coordination of the work of research specialists, technical personnel (in fields like sampling and computing), and field staff for interviewing (most of whom are geographically distant from headquarters) is a completely different sort of activity from that of the scholar-teacher. It is one, moreover, for which many academics are singularly unsuited either by vocation, location in a university teaching department, or temperament.

Essentially, an academic department is a collection of scholars whose work is only minimally integrated in a division of labour sense. . . . When an academician refers to the independence of academic life, he is usually referring to the fact that once he has met his teaching obligations (over which he has a great deal of control) he is free to pursue his own intellectual interests within the limits set by local production standards and the amount of research funds he is able to obtain. Indeed, so pleasurable is the lack of a defined division of labour that any attempt to engage in large-scale research enterprises has led to the grafting on university structures of organisational entities in which such a division of labour is possible, rather than imposing such a division of labour upon existing departmental structures.[17]

Bureaucratic Rationality and Academic Freedom

The largest American survey organizations began as independent agencies that later were grafted on to universities. The National Opinion Research Center is still somewhat separate from the University of Chicago, although located on its campus, while a very large number of the university's social science staff hold positions as senior study directors at the center. The


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management of such an organization entails the difficult reconciliation between the value of individual autonomy, which holds sway in the university, and the principles of centralization and hierarchy. However, unlike a commercial firm, the effectiveness of the enterprise rests ultimately on expert social science knowledge. In a survey the most important decisions of last resort lie with the scientific director of the study, rather than with the project manager who administers the survey through its various stages. As a former director of the National Opinion Research Center has observed, it is very hard to recruit people who have both analytic ability and skills in managing complex survey operations. To administer such an organization involves ensuring harmony among various specialists, reconciling scientific and managerial responsibilities, and balancing centralization and autonomy: "Research administrators do something more than 'chair,' something less than 'direct.'"[18]

The career of Paul Lazarsfeld, founder of the Columbia Bureau of Applied Social Research, suggests the importance also of entrepreneurial spirit in such enterprises. Much of a director's time is spent in trying to secure the future of the organization, which is largely dependent on grants. Lazarsfeld was adept at persuading commercial firms to entrust semi–market research inquiries to him, then riding more fundamental social science research work on their backs. The many skills needed for success in this position are not widely found among academics.

Furthermore, the intellectual and organizational relationships between the nonprofit research enterprise and the university are complex. A social survey research organization employs many persons who are not academics, and there are perennial problems about the integration of large numbers of nonacademics into the university. Some scholars go further and question the intellectual merit of survey research as an academic activity. They do not question its value as a tool for data collection, but some wonder whether it properly belongs in the university setting.

Even if its legitimacy is acknowledged, the nonprofit research institutes encounter intractable problems in reconciling scholarly autonomy with the bureacratic rationality necessary for effective performance of large-scale survey research. These problems are compounded by their employing persons with academic training who have no clear academic status. Moreover, the presence of such centers of survey research may bias the training of graduate students toward survey-based projects for which financial support is readily available. Or it may warp the intellectual fabric of departments by affecting emphases in appointments. And although these problems arise particularly in survey research, other large-scale research centers, such as the Institute of Human Relations at Yale, have encountered difficulties in surviving in the face of departmental antagonism. Trying to marry certain sorts of large-scale research to social science departments may cause the


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academics to dislike the outsiders, to distrust their work, or to envy those who spend all their time on research. Thus members of institutes and especially enterprises are sometimes concentrated elsewhere on the campus and spend most of their time with one another, although this weakens their links to departments.

To sum up, the more complex and large-scale a research organization becomes (as in an enterprise), the more uneasily it fits within the traditional departmental structure of universities. Indeed, so severe can be the strains that enterprises may flourish more successfully outside the university altogether. In the recent past, other forces have also encouraged such separation.

Increasing Government Demands for Social Research

Recent trends in social science research are not simply a function of the internal structure of universities, which are after all institutions for the pursuit of truth. My second theme, increasing government support for research, comes to the fore at this point. For governments have in the last thirty years sought increasingly to commission research of all kinds from a variety of different sources. The movement of large-scale social science research outside the university—the expansion of bodies such as Brookings, the National Institute of Economic & Social Research, the Policy Studies Institute, and the units of the Conseil National de la Recherche Scientifique—is in part a response to the difficulties just discussed but is also an effect of governments' decisions as to where to award grants and place contracts. Even in the United States, research and teaching activities, usually thought to be complementary, particularly at the graduate level, are becoming separated and their numerous connections weakened. Teaching and research are not necessarily still mutually reinforcing:

The United States is beginning to resemble the Federal Republic (of Germany) in having substantial research effort concentrated within institutes or centres attached to universities but with little organized relationship to the teaching functions of the university. The pressure towards more reliance on user groups and national facilities for expensive lines of inquiry could even move research to some extent off the campus, although to date most national facilities have been largely controlled by university-based scientists.[19]

An increasing demand for policy-relevant research has generated new institutions altogether external to the university. In the United States, "just as market research moved in large part (though never entirely) outside academic institutions to commercial organizations, public-policy research has begun to move outside universities to non-profit and profit-making


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organizations, each having its own distinct character."[20] These include the Rand Corporation, Abt Associates in Cambridge, Mathematica at Princeton (but independent of the university), the Stanford Research Institute (which severed its links with the university), Batelle at Seattle, and Westat (a consulting firm set up by former employees of the U.S. Bureau of the Census). To take one example, Abt Associates between 1970 and 1980 increased its staff from 200 to 1,100, and its annual revenues from $3.5 to $27 million. Its 1980 report is that of a very successful and enterprising commercial company (which it is) whose business is applied social research. In Britain, although market research is dominated by commercial interests, nonprofit organizations are more characteristic of social science research outside the university. They are funded partly by endowments, partly by grants from foundations and research councils, and live to some extent on contract research from government. Quite significant contributions to the social sciences have originated from the Tavistock Institute, the Institute of Community Studies, the Centre for Environmental Studies and the Institute of Economic Affairs (though the latter has political affiliations); the National Institute of Economic & Social Research has played a major role in economic research. More recently the Policy Studies Institute has concentrated on research on social policy. Though academics sit on their boards as individuals, all are formally independent of universities.[21]

J. S. Coleman speculates that the general trend in audience, market, and now public-policy research is for the initial exploratory stages to be conducted in the relatively unstructured university setting, but that the university is "too irregular, irresponsible and unpredictable" for the most efficient execution of policy research.[22] So it tends to move off campus. Academic social scientists would of course question whether efficiency is a relevant criterion for judging the worth of research. It is more likely to be salient in large data-gathering activities. Policy research is only one type of social science research, and there is clearly scope for specialization of function between universities and other research bodies. It seems, however, that quite significant amounts of analytical social research (not just census and survey taking) which governments consider useful are now conducted outside the university. The quality of much such research is questionable, and many of the controls provided in universities by open publication or collegial criticism are absent. But the trend seems clear.

Recent Government Intervention

Let us now turn to our third theme, the influence of government on the university. In several ways in recent years, governments have interfered


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with and regulated the activities of social scientists. Intervention may take the form of government-mandated change in the fundamental internal governance of universities, of which the Dutch university reforms of 1970 are the most flagrant example.[23] Changes in arrangements for university finance can be abrupt. In Britain, the unprecedented increase in fees for overseas students will have a potentially severe effect on recruitment in the social sciences; it has plunged into crisis faculties with large numbers of foreign students. Immigration rules in the United States, Canada, and Britain now make it more difficult to appoint foreign social scientists to permanent academic positions, thus impairing the international character of scholarship. Governments can also hinder research. For example, federal regulations in the United States, originally imposed in biomedical research, have been progressively extended to the behavioral and social sciences. That American universities are required to constitute institutional review boards, which vet individual research projects through a local peer-review system, represents major government interference with free scholarly inquiry.[24]

Dependence on the State

The most serious issue, however, is the universities' dependence on state support. When resources were plentiful and expansion continued, universities did not suffer when some resources were directed to extrauniversity research enterprises. Indeed, some welcomed such actions as protecting the university from contamination by too much applied work. However, the era of government faith in the economic benefits of expanded social science now seems to be at an end in several countries. In a climate of economic stringency, how will universities adapt? The dependence on government support, so welcome in times of plenty, may turn out to be a considerable liability. The most serious direct effects seem likely to be felt in graduate teaching and the level of support for basic research.

At the graduate level, universities regenerate themselves by training future scholar-teachers. But when appointments for the immediate future are likely to be so limited, either the attractiveness of graduate study may diminish or departments may feel pressured to tailor curriculums to the job market. In America, for example, one observes significant increases in courses in applied sociology and in public policy. Alternatively, prospective social science researchers may be trained in other ways, for example, by apprenticeship in research organizations. Research institutes and enterprises have always been able to offer financial support to graduate students.


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In the absence of other sources of finance and academic posts, many young researchers may seek training in research organizations. Of course, some see this as desirable for those intending to pursue a research career. Discussing European doctoral programs, in which a higher degree is commonly awarded without the required coursework customary in the United States, a former member of the British Social Science Research Council and chairman of its sociology committee has asked whether the doctoral program is the best mode of educating postgraduates: "I do not question its value as an intellectual experience. Its value, however, as a preparation for a research career, particularly outside the strictly academic world, is questionable."[25] Universities uphold the scholarly ideal in part by offering the ablest among the young the opportunity to become scholars themselves. What will be the effect on graduate study if this inducement is severely contracted as a result of declining government support for the social sciences?

In the conduct of social science research, alternatives to the financial dependence on government are not obvious. Large-scale social science research began in the university with foundation support, but foundations cannot today supply the necessary resources. Nor can universities fund large-scale research out of their own endowments or current income. For example, if social surveys cost approximately $50 per interview, a sample of 1,000 interviews will be far beyond the normal budget of most universities, which make little or no provision for such costs. Commercial sponsorship is also unlikely to be a particularly hopeful or acceptable source of support, except perhaps in certain fields of economics. There are few people who can, like Paul Lazarsfeld, walk the fine line between the academic and commercial worlds.

Academic Integrity

One possibility might be for universities to go into business. But this runs entirely counter to the academic ethos, and introduces extraneous values into the academy that may damage its deepest purposes. Of course, individual social scientists can and do engage in extramural profitable activities, particularly through writing and research consultancies. Bringing such activities into the university in an organized form is quite another matter, as Harvard recently discovered when it considered creating its own genetic engineering company. This proposal was dropped after protests from the faculty. President Bok is reported as saying "the preservation of academic values is a matter of paramount importance to the university, and owning shares in such a company would create a number of potential conflicts with these values."[26]


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In the immediate future, maintaining universities as institutions for the pursuit of truth and promotion of learning will be a difficult task. In the social sciences the outlook is unclear, because of difficulties in incorporating large-scale research in universities, and the problems posed for graduate education by a shrinking job market. Universities are now paying the price for having become dependent on government in a period of expansion. Large-scale social science research, particularly applied, is not necessarily best conducted in a university context. Should universities continue to accommodate it, in order to maintain the prosperity of their social science departments? Or should they recognize that in the present economic situation, social science departments and the scale of their graduate teaching and research activities will have to decline for the sake of academic integrity?


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9—
A Conversation about the Humanities

Walter Rüegg

In chapter 12 of this book Allan Bloom argues that "the humanities above all should be the source of standards for the university. . . . For we can only recognize that there is an intellectual crisis in the light of the standards they provide." Bloom offers four reasons to explain our present crisis, all of which apply directly to problems of research. I shall consider and comment on his diagnosis, for I am convinced that one of the main reasons for the weakness of the humanities is the lack of real conversation among humanists. I write to encourage more conversation.

The Crisis of the Humanities

According to Bloom, toward the close of the eighteenth century, the belief arose that "the human sciences . . . were to provide the rational basis for the understanding of man and the answers to the questions of greatest concern to him. Under the influence of this inspiration the great nineteenth-century scholarship flourished." But something went wrong: "The aimlessness and dispiritedness of the human sciences were powerfully diagnosed by Nietzsche . . . as early as the 1870s." What went wrong? Why this disappointment? Why did the work of the nineteenth century become spiritless?

The standard answer refers to historicism, that is, to the displacement of cognitive authority in the humanities by concentration on the historical process itself. I wish to take this explanation one step further and state as my

Walter Rüegg is Professor of Sociology at the University of Berne.


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main thesis that the nineteenth-century crisis in the humanities was caused by the displacement of the program of studia humaniora by the German invention of the Geisteswissenschaften . The former constitute studies through which men could learn to behave more humanly; the latter are inspired by a conception of the "spirit" of humanity as expressed in its total historical reality.

A New Concept of History

At celebrations of the commencement of the twentieth century, official speakers in German universities, usually professors of humanities, were especially proud to point to German accomplishments in science and technology. Speaking in Berlin, Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf said that Germany, by its nineteenth-century achievements, had only "paid back the debts of gratitude which it owed to nations of older civilizations and finally became their peer."[1] Wilamowitz was one of the most distinguished humanist scholars of the age. His views are typical of the self-understanding of the humanists who had fallen into disgrace with Nietzsche.

For German scholars of the nineteenth century, scientific work was not so much a personal endeavor as performance of a national duty. This duty derived from a secularized form of absolute truth, the objective spirit of world history. The humanist had to reveal through scientific investigation the ideal forms and eternal laws of history that are hidden behind worldly manifestations and differentiations. Hence research in the humanities acquired new significance. Cultures remote in time and space were to be understood as emanations of the "world spirit" in specific historical and geographical contexts.

This new concept of history, which had its origins in the work of Vico and Herder, could be described as the secularized form of the Christian vision of history. It had special significance for Germany. For there intellectuals and political elites during the Napoleonic wars were opposed to French cultural domination and so tried to create a national self-consciousness that depended mainly on evoking tradition. But Germanic tradition offered little intellectual nourishment for national unity. The only traditions in which intellectuals could find principles of unification were in the humanities. Therefore, the Geisteswissenschaften derived initially from a new relation of German thinkers to classical antiquity.

Classical Scholarship and Neo-Hellenism

Classical scholarship developed into Altertumswissenschaften , founded by Winckelmann, who gave a new meaning to the humanities. A whole


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generation of German intellectuals, inspired by his work, found in antiquity a spiritual home in which national self-consciousness could arise. This new approach to classical antiquity sprang from the new conception of history. Winckelmann was not interested primarily in human triumphs as displayed in literary and artistic works. Rather he found in these works, especially in the concreteness of sculpture, religious revelation of divine forces and transcendent ideals. In this light, to imitate the ancients does not refer to style and form; Winckelmann explicitly defines imitation as becoming intimate with inimitable and therefore divine images. This intimacy should be so perfect that a scholar could make his own what a Greek said to an ignoramus about Zeuxis's portrait of Helena: "Take my eyes and a goddess will appear to you."[2] To use his eyes to discover and reveal the divine aspect of worldly phenomena is the task of the scientist, the goal of his research.

Winckelmann discovered in Greek art the famous "noble simplicity and serene greatness."[3] These ideals could be identified with the ideal of youth. In fact, Greek art represented youth as harmony in the same way that Greek poetry and philosophy were seen by Herder and Hegel as harmonious products of a nation in the youth of human history. The German nation was taken to be young in comparison with others.

Youth, natural beauty, harmony, originality, freedom, and patriotism were the principles by which the Greeks could help to shape a fresh German Volkstum . This would be purified of the artificial, unoriginal, and rhetorical Roman tradition and its offspring, French civilization. Professors of classics such as Friedrich Ast (Landshut), Reinhold Bernhard Jachmann (Danzig), Franz Passow (Weimar), Friedrich Jacobs (Munich) found in this affinity of Germans and Greeks the philosophical and historical rationale for a German national education based on learning Greek.[4]

This neo-Hellenism, as Rudolf Pfeiffer accurately designates the new epoch of classical scholarship,[5] was in the Platonic idealist tradition. But in contrast to earlier forms of idealism, the new scholarship did not take its image of man from a transcendental world of ideas or the heavens. Nineteenth-century neo-Hellenism, which spread out from Germany, found its ideal embodied in the historical model of Greek youth. Therefore,


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to develop into an authentic modern man one had to know through research the concrete realizations of the Greek Volksgeist as found in its history, geography, law, philosophy, literature, language, fine arts, medicine, and so on.[6]

Neo-Hellenism:
Positive and Negative Consequences

In both positive and negative ways neo-Hellenism was fundamental to the development of the human sciences in the nineteenth century. Since the humanities aimed at the education of modern man through familiarity with historical instances of a philosophical idea of man, the Greek ideal inevitably came into conflict with other ideals of man and their historical exemplars. Romanticism opposed the pagan ideals by emphasizing the spirit and the men of the Christian Middle Ages. In particular, Romantics promoted all kinds of studies whose purpose was to reveal the Volksgeist of the modern nation itself.

The search for alternative models of man was constrained by the process of research, for research demonstrated that all abstract models were one-sided and incomplete. Neverthless, historical research is the foundation of the admirable scholarship of the nineteenth century. This was the positive outcome of the idealistic origins of the Geisteswissenschaften .

The negative consequences of neo-Hellenism may be illustrated with the history of the term humanism . By its semantics humanism shows the fundamental change brought about by the shift from the "humanities" to the "human sciences." The humanities studied human works as expressions of human self-understanding. The human sciences pursue universal principles that should explain and direct human history. As is the case with all isms, humanism was coined as a battle-cry, first by Niethammer, a friend of Hegel's. In opposition to a progressive educational program established by the Philanthropinum , a school that claimed to develop the natural properties of man and to provide training in useful skills, humanism was to be grounded in the government of mind over nature, and it was to foster idealistic rather than materialistic values. Since man shared natural needs and utilitarian attitudes with all animals, contrary to its name the Philanthropinum was devoted to animality; only humanism could promote humanity.[7] Because the fundamental values of humanity had been presented in classical antiquity, the intellectual class that is to translate the classical ideal into public functions would be educated in the classics.

The younger generation of Hegelians abstracted from antiquity the notion of human evolution as a process of cumulative rationalization. Humanism became identical with industrialism and democracy, with "govern-


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ment of the people and of all human beings over the rigid nature within and outside man," in the words of Arnold Ruge, one of the first editors of Karl Marx. The realization of Greek ideas was to be found not in ancient Greek society but in "democracy as envisaged by the North Americans." The human ideal was no longer the Greek youth, but rather the self-made man of liberal capitalism: "Humanism in opposition to Christianity proclaimed universal education and the rights of man"; "The old form of religion in the Christian faith or the old Christianity is the old religion. The new religion is Christianity realized or Humanism."[8]

Historical Abstraction against the Humanities

In his early writings, Karl Marx appropriated the term humanism , but he emphasized another principle in the idea and history of man. The dialectic between nature and man was given objective reality in the concept of work. Humanism had to be "real" or "concrete." Humanism involved elimination of man's economic alienation that arose with the division of labor and private property: "Communism as a positive elimination of private ownership, as human self-estrangement and therefore as real appropriation of the human being by and through the man. . . . This communism as perfect naturalism equals humanism, as perfect humanism equals naturalism."[9]

The three varieties of humanism have in common an abstract idea of man that could be developed through scientific research into a rational program for moral education and political action. But if the research is carried out in a scientific manner, it is bound to destroy the inspiration on which it is based. For example, by investigating the Greeks' "noble simplicity and serene greatness" classical scholarship soon compromised the idealistic image of the Greeks. Moral and political values to which liberalism and industrialism are related, and which were expressed openly in the nineteenth century—even in encyclopedias and political dictionaries[10] —came into question as supposedly authenticated by the historical, social, and political sciences.

So far as scholarship has as its purpose moral and political edification, its consequences are disastrous. The abstract idea of man taken as an absolute idea paves the way to ideologies, which pretend to supply religion on a


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rational basis but in reality undermine respect for human ambivalence and complexity. This danger is even present in some of the great achievements of nineteenth-century scholarship, for example, Theodor Mommsen's Roman History . Mommsen's depiction of Cicero is a caricature because he ignores the ambivalence and complexity of human personality.[11] On a lower level, reduction of the humanities to a simplified ideal of personality is represented by the German Bildungsphilister .

Thus the dispiritedness of the human sciences, on which Nietzsche remarked, resulted from the emphasis that the Geisteswissenschaften put on the "spirit" of world, nature, and man. The crisis of the humanities did not come from the distinction between nature and freedom, or between nature and history, as Bloom would have it. The Geisteswissenschaften in practice operated to impoverish understanding of human nature. Their penchant for historical abstractions in the service of political or national purpose deprived the humanities of authenticity and deflected them from their true purpose, self-appreciation and understanding.

Further Explanations of the Crisis

The second reason that Bloom offers for the crisis of the humanities is that "nobody is quite sure what they are." Whereas the natural and social sciences can give an account of themselves, "the humanistic part of the university . . . is just a heap of departments without any discernible order or vision of a whole of which they are parts, no account of what kind of knowledge they are seeking or what they contribute to the education of the whole man." Third, the humanities "do not have the authority of science, and they are somehow connected with tradition, style, and form—all of which are contrary to the taste of democracy and anathema to the radical movements." And lastly, to attempt to justify the humanities on utilitarian grounds is profoundly corrupting: "Their highest vocation in a democracy is to present alternatives to the dominant views of man and the good life for the sake of freedom of the mind." But democrats value utility first and foremost.

Bloom's first line of thought suggests that we distinguish between the lack of any order and the kind of knowledge that the Renaissance sought in the humanities. Then the humanities were the leading program of inquiry and higher education, conceived in opposition to the scholastic ordering of knowledge. Although the humanities always lacked any unity of substance, they had a clear vision of the knowledge they were seeking and transmitting to educate the whole man. This program can be summarized in the notion of the studia humanitatis , from which the humanities as we know them are derived. By studying human works, one studies to become more fully human. At the close of the fourteenth century, Coluccio Salutati, the


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founding father of humanistic studies, defined the task of the studia humanitatis . They serve "ad recte scribendum quandam ianuam aperire quo per te possis in alia diviniora et magis ardua penetrare,"[12] that is to say, the humanities should open a kind of entrance to the correct writing by which man on his own can penetrate to other more divine and arduous fields of knowledge. The site of research in the humanities is not the shrine of ultimate truth, but rather the atrium in which men of different condition, birth, power, goals, and faith have to communicate, to compromise, and to cooperate with one another on equal terms. This they do through the correct use of language and common sense. From interactions among individuals a consensus on fundamental values emerges. And they, in turn, maintain a continuing conversation with the authors of their language.

It seems that recent developments in philosophical anthropology have revitalized the old-fashioned idea of the humanities. Since this renewal emphasizes the verbal dimension of culture, it is interrelated to Bloom's arguments that the humanities lack authority and are connected with tradition, style, and form. And so far as this relation is based on an analysis of everyday life, research and education in the humanities should recover their importance for the life of liberal democracies. Even their usefulness for the good life of democratic citizens would be restored. In this way Bloom's fourth reason for the crisis in the humanities would be dealt with.

I propose to illustrate four common aspects of the old and the new conceptions of the humanities by commenting on Bloom's humanistic dimensions of style, form, tradition, and utility. The aspects that I have in mind are the following: the understanding of man as the "language animal," or in a larger view, man as the "symbolic animal"; the dialogical structure of communication; the impact of translation and interpretation for the understanding of tradition; and the common sense of everyday life.

Language and Symbol

According to Buffon, "le style c'est l'homme même." This discovery of the fundamental relation between language and man characterizes far better the humanistic movement of the Renaissance than does emphasis upon the so-called rebirth of antiquity. Already Isocrates had supplemented the myth of homo faber —who constructs the world through his reason—with a definition of man as a being endowed with the gift of speech. For the humanistic tradition—from Isocrates and Cicero to the humanists of the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries—only through language does reason become a moral force.

While Winckelmann seeks divinity in sculpture, Petrarch, the initiator of the Italian Renaissance, is impressed by his reading of ancient authors, for their styles reveal their personalities. Petrarch discovers in the written


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word the emotional and rational expression of another human being in all his richness. If man is conceived as identical with his writings, then orthography, grammar, rhetoric, poetic theory, literary and textual criticism, and other disciplines dealing with language and style, all gain an anthropological and even a philosophical dimension. Research on the correct spelling of a name can become important; misspelling would be offensive to the person. Research on style or the authentic text is justified, because wording not only portrays facts or thoughts but also represents the self-understanding and self-display of a distinct personality. Moreover, research helps to understand the place of the author in his world.

The object of research is neither the author's world in its objectivity nor the absolute truth of the author's position. The grasp of language as the symbolic form by which man expresses his thinking occupies in the Renaissance a philosophical location somewhere between realism and nominalism. Language is regarded neither as a purely subjective invention nor as a manifestation of an objective reality. Rather language is the essential human activity by means of which men try to define their situation in nature and society.[13]

The fundamental importance of language as the symbolic form of human self-assertion and action is now accepted by many anthropologists, sociologists, and philosophers. For example, according to Paul Ricoeur, "human sciences may be said to be hermeneutical (1) inasmuch as their object displays some of the features constitutive of a text as a text, and (2) inasmuch as their methodology develops the same kind of procedures as those of Auslegung or text interpretation."[14] Also notice that Michael Polanyi attempts to bridge the partly artificial gap between Lord Snow's "two cultures" by analyzing knowing as an active comprehension of the things known and as an anticipation of unknown true implications through personal participation. Personal participation is made possible since "by the invention of symbolic forms man has given birth and lasting significance to thought."[15]

Research into the significance and influence of texts through an appreciation of rhetoric can be placed with focus on form and style as an expression of a personal quest for truth. Rhetoric even turns the table on philosophy in Chaim Perelman's thesis that all philosophical proofs are rhetorical in nature. Perelman argues that rhetoric must regain its central position in a humanistic philosophy that is based on generally accepted knowledge, formulated in common sense and the commonplace.[16]


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The Dialogical Structure of Communication

The dialogical structure of communication is the second fundamental feature that characterizes the old conception of the humanities and its renewal. It stems from a change in social structure, from a highly stratified society in which each group had its own function, norms, models, and symbolic forms to a more open society in which social role and cultural orientation are less determined by filiation and tradition. The epistemological and social cleavages between the "I" and the "Thou," between insiders and outsiders, between brothers and strangers, can no longer be bridged by public institutions, for these lack unity and authority.

The political, social, ecclesiastical, and intellectual schisms of the late Middle Ages gave birth to the university. It was conceived as an institution for the education of professionals charged with the tasks of finding and applying rational solutions for conflicts and disturbances in both society and nature. Scholasticism aimed to rectify a disturbed order by eliminating opinions that deviated from objective truth, and the dialectical process was the means to this end. The humanists took everyday experience into account, accepting the diversity of perspectives and actions in the pursuit of personal, social, and transcendental goals. They understood society as oriented toward greater individual freedom; they welcomed greater equality and opportunity; and they looked to conquer and exploit the unknown.

This is the reason why scholastic dialectics were replaced by humanistic dialogue both within and without the university as the fundamental structure of the pursuit of truth. Personal experience and perspective complemented purely rational deliberation in the confrontations of thinkers and speakers. Informal colloquies in Italian gardens and cloisters inaugurated the formalized dialogue in the scientific societies and academies that spread all over Europe from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. This oral dialogue was paralleled by an epistolary style of writing in the presentation of scientific findings. Findings were published in the form of letters addressed to specific persons, relating the personal experiences of the writer and reader to the topic under consideration. The style of communication was differentiated in accordance with the personal and social characteristics of the readers. These letters were published as a conversation between persons who comment on each others' thoughts and statements.[17]

The actuality of this dialogical structure of communication is so obvious that the only question we have to raise is, Why has use of the term dialogue , as in the phrases "dialogue between nations," "dialogue between confessions," or "dialogue between humanists," become so hollow and meaningless? This question leads us to my third concern, the influence of translation and interpretation on the tradition of values.


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Translation, Interpretation, and Tradition

I said that the dialogue between different interests, values, and scientific perspectives has its locus in the atrium and not at the shrine of truth itself. This conversation requires mutual respect from the participants as good listeners and truthful speakers who are willing to learn from one another and to persuade without resort to lies, threats, or subterfuge. When these attitudes are absent or when fundamental issues are at stake—issues that belong not in the lobby but at the shrine of truth—no dialogue will take place. Moreover, dialogue also risks becoming meaningless if it asks for continuing translation and interpetation of the ineffable individuality of others in the context of the actual situation.

This interpersonal process can be described as a tacit integration of small but still significant differences into "personal knowledge." Michael Polanyi illustrates this process with the example of stereoscopic views in which the viewer integrates different images into a single novel image. Our conception of human nature is formed in a similar manner through silent integration of innumerable experiences with quite different personalities.[18] But this tacit integration of stereoscopic views, or novel experiences, presupposes in addition to the differences a prevailing similarity of meaning that informs the outlook of the participants. When this similarity is not guaranteed by an oral tradition, as is the case in closed social groups, participants can combine the visual and experiential differences only if they learn by the translation and interpretation of past experience—stored in written tradition—to understand the meaning of what is expressed by others.

The third humanistic discovery—and therefore the third fundamental element in the humanities—is a new understanding of tradition. Modern man can learn from tradition, but not necessarily because the past offers models for imitation. In the first querelle des anciens et modernes , which took place between 1400 and 1600, humanists like Salutati, Bruno, Valla, and Erasmus made quite plain that modern man must express himself differently from the ancients, precisely because language derives its meaning from the common use and common sense of a specific community.[19] Still modern man can enter personally into conversation with educated men of the past. Through interpretation and translation of their experiences into his own, the modern person can come to understand man in a situation different in time and place from his own. Erasmus praises the use of letters and the art of printing as the most useful inventions for the benefit of mankind. He says they allow you to "converse as much as you like with the


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most eloquent and holy men. And to get as much acquainted with the mind, the attitudes, thoughts, endeavours and deeds of men that lived so many years ago as if you would have been associated with them for many years."[20]

In a society in which traditional values are no longer taken for granted, moral education, political responsibility, and ultimate value orientation all gain from translation and interpretation of documents from the past. Where philosophies of life are no longer transmitted orally from one generation to the next, we have to rely on indirect interaction with the founding fathers of our culture in its institutional and symbolic forms.

The Common Sense of Everyday Life

German scholars used to reproach the Renaissance humanists for their lack of philosophical thinking and their emphasis on commonplace and common sense. It is true that in general the humanists preferred the saluberrimae leges vitae of the Hellenistic morality, represented in the writings of Cicero and Plutarch, to sophisticated syllogisms. If humanistic skepticism and morality did not promote philosophical thought, still they had great influence on the formation of urban elites. Frederick A. Olafson draws attention to "the deep affinities which bind the language of history, literature, and philosophy to the world of myth, on the one hand, and to that of common sense, on the other." By the world of common sense he means "a world of persons," "a world of human purpose and agency," "a world in which one's most significant vis-à-vis is another person and in which the mode of understanding appropriate to a human life as well as to human relationship retains the dramatic and narrative form that characterized myth."[21] The emergence of a world of common sense from the realm of myth characterizes the humanities of the Renaissance as well as their modern renewal.

Everyday life and ordinary language have become so popular, even fashionable, in recent philosophy and sociology that one has to be somewhat skeptical about the ramifications of this trend. Nevertheless, the everyday life of the mass of mankind, to which Allan Bloom refers in contrasting the utilitarianism of democracy with the values of the humanistic tradition, possesses a "prescientific common sense" that "radiates," as Olafson says, "out from the concept of the persons as knowers and agents."[22]


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Humanistic Research and the Future

At the beginning of the liberal epoch, the humanities were successful because they helped societies, in which new economic forces challenged traditional structures and values, to transfer and to adapt the old values to new social structures. I am confident that in our modern societies the humanities will play an even more important role, because future societies will rely even more on the use of symbols. Humanistic understanding will be so fundamental for the future of mankind that humanistic research will necessarily expand in both scope and depth.

In recent decades research in the humanities has made important advances by applying techniques imported from other disciplines, for example, dendrology and radiography in archaeology, and sociology and economics in history. Humanistic studies have also advanced by exploiting the store of nineteenth-century knowledge while discarding its presumed ideological implications. Here I point to the German Rezeptions - and Begriffsgeschichte , the French schools of Annales and Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, the Warburg Institute, and the Renaissance studies in the United States. These occupy the same place today that classical philology did in European investigations of cultural history.

The Task of the Humanities

Between 1939 and 1944 a committee appointed by the American Council on Education explored the situation of the humanities in twenty-two selected institutions. This committee came to almost the same conclusions as Allan Bloom and other scholars who deplore the lack of unity in the humanities.[23] Humanistic self-criticism appears to me to be something of a cognitive lag insofar as the apparent lack of educational value of the humanities can be placed in historical perspective. It is simply one of the negative consequences of the nineteenth-century Geisteswissenschaften , an outlook or a philosophy of life that we no longer subscribe to.

A new anthropologically and philosophically grounded orientation to the fundamental importance of language and other symbolic forms for the understanding and forming of man has arisen. This new humanism begins to revive and enlarge the traditional goals of the humanities through use of the positive results of nineteenth-century scholarship. The humanities have, so to speak, descended from the nineteenth-century mountain top of supreme scientific authority to their former preparatory level. We retreat


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from the shrine to the atrium. But by exploring the foundations and manifestations of man's pursuit of truth, research in the humanities will fulfill a more humble but no less important task for the other sciences and for humanity.


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10—
The Mediterranean Experience

Julio R. Villanueva

Today no one can question the important role played by universities in scientific investigation. But concern is increasing in many countries about the future of academic science, that is to say, the research function of the university. This concern focuses on two main issues, both of which are of major importance to higher education. First, the total funds for research allocated by governments have declined in many countries in recent years. Second, the proportion of funds allocated to universities and to research institutes directly sponsored by governments is changing. In several countries, certain nonuniversity institutions are receiving an increasing share of government money, and in some cases, for example, research in space exploration and military development, their work is classified. These projects require large amounts of money, full-time staff, and specialized equipment that cannot be duplicated on many university campuses. Such developments clearly affect the relation of advanced research to teaching and the responsibilities of faculty. Radical changes in the performance of research could seriously alter this crucial relation and transform the training of future scientists.

University and Nonuniversity Research

One of the fundamental problems facing European universities today is the consolidation of their role as centers for basic research. A general agreement

Many thanks are owed to Professor Sofia Corradi of the University of Rome and to Professor Demetris Deniozos of the Scientific Research and Technology Agency, Athens, for sending me documents and for their valuable comments on the state of research in Italian and Greek universities, respectively.

Julio R. Villanueva is Professor of Microbiology, University of Salamanca.


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that one of the university's main tasks is to conduct basic research of high quality is countered by pressures to withdraw research from the university and to direct it to applied and utilitarian projects.

In some European countries, the science budgets of government departments provide selective financial support for university research through a research council system. These expenditures, for both the universities and the research councils' own institutes and laboratories, are intended to provide a sound scientific and technological base, including a supply of trained manpower, that will meet each nation's needs. The councils' objectives are to foster research and postgraduate training in their specific fields, to carry out research on problems of national and scientific importance, to develop the sciences as such, and to maintain a basic capacity for research.

Various international organizations have expressed concern that the research function of the university is indeed undergoing a series of profound changes induced by social, economic, and political forces. The university's capacity to do high-quality research depends on the maintenance of scientific standards; the provision of the skilled manpower required by government, industry, and other sectors of society; and more fundamentally, the accumulation of knowledge and understanding. Current constraints on these needs include: fluctuations in student enrollments; slowdown in the growth of finance; government pressure for socially relevant research; and changing social values. In addition, many note a lack of innovation, the difficulty of initiating research under optimal conditions of staffing and instrumentation, and pressures on researchers to conduct projects that may not be of the highest scientific importance.

To this situation the universities have responded in ways governed by local circumstance; in adversity, some have been more resourceful than others. These responses have been recently analyzed by the Committee for Scientific and Technological Policy of the Organization for Economic and Cooperative Development (OECD). The committee reports four general areas of response: new modes of distributing resources, separation of teaching and research, stratification of institutions and staff, and recruitment and mobility.[1]

What is striking and gives cause for worry is that only one or two governments have begun to develop policies to address the dangers created by a scientific cadre that is growing older, and becoming less mobile and more demoralized every year.

Basic and Applied Research

There is also great anxiety in many European countries about the kind of investigation conducted in the universities. Some fear that the balance between fundamental and applied research is tipping too much toward the


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latter in an effort to meet current social and economic needs. With the exceptions of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in West Germany, and the Zuiver Wentenschappelijk Orderzock (ZWO) in the Netherlands, whose priorities are essentially scientific, our universities are in danger of becoming too involved in short-term work. For example, the research councils in the United Kingdom are under increasing pressure to fund investigations relevant to policy objectives, and Canadian universities are becoming centers for applied research. As affirmed by the OECD, government research priorities should be established in consultation with the scientific community; officials must develop new modes of participation in decisions and resist the natural bureaucratic propensity to centralize control. For today governments understand better than ever that science is fundamental to economic power. The energy crisis provides new tasks for science and technology, and the latter is drawing more and more on basic research. In many countries the national economy benefits from the capacity of universities to serve as agents of innovation.

The significance of university research is not merely that it is research—mainly basic or long-term—or that it plays a crucial part in preserving the balance and quality of a nation's overall research and development effort. Its importance resides in the fact that it fulfills a number of unique functions that pervade the economic, social, and cultural dimensions of life. But the traditional view that university education and research are inseparable has been challenged not only by economic stringency but also by governments, legislatures, and members of the public. Research and teaching are tending to grow apart as the distinction hardens between research-based institutions and the rest. Further, in some countries the increase in student enrollment in the 1960s was accompanied by an even greater expansion of the non-university sector of higher education. Today a declining proportion of students attend institutions in which any research is conducted, and a declining proportion of all teachers engage in research. Mass education has increased the burden of teaching and has caused some universities to compromise their standards in hiring new faculty. Both the increase in instruction and the deficiency in recruitment have had detrimental effects on the quality of research.[2]

In some countries of southern Europe the renewal of the technical infrastructure on which contemporary science is based is meeting with serious problems. Conversations with scientists reveal that universities are increasingly unable to maintain sufficient equipment out of their normal operating budgets.

Advantages of the University

As a setting for research, the university has several advantages over other academic or industrial institutions: it is closer to basic research; its reserves


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of talent include teaching staff and graduate students; it offers a propitious setting for collaboration among several generations of scientists; and its great diversity offers many opportunities for interdisciplinary work.[3] Further, the university's permanence and longevity permit development of long-term projects. Information and cooperation are the university's main priorities, and investigation is absolutely free and open, under standards controlled by the international scientific community.

It has been generally accepted that a close connection between teaching and research is an essential principle for all universities. High-quality instruction is closely associated with high-quality research, an association that benefits the teacher, the investigator, the student, and society. Indeed, the greatest responsibility of a genuine university lies not merely in the transmission of information, but in the creation of new knowledge, in the search for truth, and in the advance of science. Thus universities must encourage the association of teaching and research.

Unfortunately, many professors find little support from colleagues or society, and often renounce their ambition of achieving better research conditions, as information on the allocation or availability of funds for research may be hard to come by. Others are defeated by a scarcity of equipment and inadequate maintenance, little flexibility in the recruitment of specialized staff or in requisition of materials for laboratory experiments, the unavailability of grants for travel, poorly managed libraries and data centers, and the like.

Scientific Research in Spain

The major obstacles to scientific research in Spain are inadequate funding and student enrollments that demand greater attention to teaching (see Table 1). Too, Spain is a country with a weak research tradition. As a consequence, there is no social conscience to support research and scientific development in general; many people are insensitive to the need to develop science. Even worse, our situation is marked by disinterest on the part of the government and politicians.[4] But Spanish society recognizes that the university is the ideal place for the creation of new knowledge. Spanish universities are deeply involved and committed to the current national reconsideration of values; they are spreading new ideas and locating people of talent. Thus university professors are playing an important part in national renovation.

In 1964, Spain began development plans that have led to spectacular economic growth. Now continuous growth depends on scientific advance, which is the key to technological development. If Spain is to compete in


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TABLE 1
Growth of higher education in Spain,
1960 to 1980

 

1960

1970

1980

Number of Universities

       14

      23

       32

Students

76,362

184,261

650,000

Faculty

              9,625 (1966)

              21,589 (1975)

   34,774

world markets, her assimilation of foreign technology must be followed by the development of her own technology. The government must take an interest in and become responsible for scientific and technological progress.

In recent decades Spanish universities have suffered from a sheer lack of funds, which made it difficult for researchers to form teams with sufficient continuity. However, more recently the equipment of many departments has been considerably improved, and the research, though not the technical, staff has been enlarged. Several important research teams of international renown have been formed, and the creation of many new universities has opened opportunities for young professors. Unfortunately, expansion and mobility discourage team stability. Too, Spanish universities do not now receive sufficient research funds to train graduate students and to offer services to society similar to those provided in other countries.

Financial sources for research at the department level are various, including grant programs for graduate students with parallel research support; research support for lecturers; grants to projects from the Comisión Asesora de Investigación Científica y Técnica; support from private foundations; foreign funding, mostly from the United States; and contributions from industry or the government for specific projects. The first of these sources deserves special comment. The grant program for predoctoral students was established in 1967 on the occasion of the beginning of a national development program (Plan for the Formation of Teaching and Research Staff). On the basis of an open public examination 860 grants were awarded that first year to the most brilliant graduates of all Spanish universities. These renewable grants, which are still awarded annually, include support for the department in which the student is to do his work, and renewals depend on reports issued by the research commission of each university. Many graduate students, possibly more than 8,000 between 1970 and 1980, have been able to complete their doctorates with this assistance, and the vast majority have obtained positions as assistant professors and assistant full professors. This is a very important infusion of competent researchers into the university.

There is no question that the advance of scientific research is already


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producing tangible results. Above all, it encourages Spanish society to appreciate science. Only such a change in the climate of opinion can help to correct serious imbalances that have appeared during the recent spectacular economic developments, including the chronic deficit in our balance of payments. This deficit is, of course, the direct consequence of importing foreign technology.

Reports of the Comisión Asesora de Investigación Científica y Técnica and of the OECD confirm that the research potential in Spain is very low, namely, only .6 per thousand of the active population. This failure endangers the growth of our entire research and development system, although efficient use of our potential could contribute decisively to the regeneration of both scientific and technological advance. Nevertheless, in Spain there is still a lack of respect for science. It is significant that there is no systematic and rigorous study of the deficiencies of the research system.

The Three-Year Plan of Research Advance

The Spanish government is now considering a three-year plan for the advancement of scientific and technical research. This plan places special emphasis on strengthening the basic structure of the national research system. Also modest, but not negligible, programs of applied research and development would be initiated to quickly contribute important economic and social benefits. Additional funds—more than 70,000 million pesetas for a three-year period—would be used principally to deepen the foundation of the research system in both the universities and the state-managed research centers.

Specifically, the three-year plan has four goals. First, advance of research in the public sector; the objective is to consolidate the national infrastructure of research and development. Here the plan contemplates formation of research staff through assignment of 3,300 new scholarships during the three-year period. At the same time, the intention is to adequately endow research centers. Funds are earmarked for renovation of equipment and for expansion of the centers that warrant it. The three other goals of the plan concern the improvement of research and development in the business sector, the development of technical scientific services and activities related to research, and the participation of Spain in the international scientific community. All these activities promise important benefits.

Today nearly all the Spanish provinces have one or more institutions, or centers, of higher education, and the regional balance is very good. However, as a consequence of this great expansion and the high mobility of faculty, it is difficult to organize research groups, even small ones, on a stable basis. In the state research centers, notably the Superior Council for Scientific Research, the problem of staffing is, if anything, even more grave. After vigorous initial growth, this center lapsed into total stagnation through the aging of personnel. Moreover, many of the activities of these state centers have dissipated because they lacked a policy of progressive


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growth. Fortunately, the three-year plan provides for an important increase in the centers' teams. Similarly, the plan provides for improvement of the university research potential, mandating the creation of 2,076 posts for technical and auxiliary research staff, of which approximately half will be assigned to the universities.

The University Autonomy Act of 1982

The University Autonomy Act envisages research as a basic activity of the university, one that should be underwritten by the public authorities, and in which society should collaborate effectively. Thus an opportunity is offered whereby the universities can establish collaborative relations with private and public businesses or with any other organizations interested in the development of science and technology. The intent is to afford more freedom for research, without neglecting the responsibility to employ growing resources in the most efficient manner.

The act specifies that a national scientific policy must focus on the research effort at the universities; they should be given the structures and equipment necessary to carry out their mission. It recognizes that scientific research constitutes a primary function of the university and that it is a faculty right. The act also provides for freedom of choice of objectives of individual research, which must be coordinated with research projects undertaken by the universities.

In 1979, the Ministry of Universities and Research was created, separate from the Ministry of Education and Science established in 1964. However, the new ministry has not been effective in rising above the bureaucratic shuffle; it is now being restructured as the Ministry of Education, Universities, and Research. The only really positive action of the Ministry of Universities and Research was the authorization of 1,800 professorships and 1,800 assistant professorships to be allocated among the universities, an important step toward improving teaching and research. We may hope and expect that Spanish society and government will continue to acquire increasingly positive attitudes toward the university and higher education.

The Italian Universities

Past and present tensions in the Italian universities have complex causes. The Italian system of higher education was transformed in the 1960s to meet the needs of the masses rather than those of an elite. However, facilities, faculty, and social services were not adequately expanded. This incongruity has led to strain in student-professor relations, and a concurrent sharp rise in youth unemployment has lowered expectations and bred resentment among graduates. These circumstances have compelled the Italian government to give university problems high priority.

Many of the problems facing Italian universities are in the area of research; they are common to Mediterranean universities, and we have met with them in our examination of Spanish higher education.


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In Italy, scientific research is carried on mainly in three sectors: university departments, centers of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), and state-run or private industry. Research has always been an important feature of the Italian university, and the CNR supports a large proportion of the research done in university departments. Most of the equipment in their laboratories has been purchased with money from the CNR, and university professors are in charge of most of the CNR's own research centers.

In 1980, the research budget of the CNR amounted to 250 billion lire, with an additional 60 billion for applied research. The CNR has 2,188 investigators, 2,498 technicians, and 192 auxiliary staff. By way of comparison, the Italian universities have 16,249 researchers, 1,047 technicians, and 2,528 auxiliary personnel. Most university people apply to the CNR for research grants.

In 1978, the Ministry of Public Instruction gave Italian universities 24 billion lire for research, although they had asked for seven times as much. In 1979, the funds allocated for university research were 33 billion lire, and the CNR provided 230 billion.[5] A great change came in 1980 when legislation dealt with the universities' strong request for more direct funding from the government. Research funding by the ministry increased from 33 to 91 billion lire. In 1981 the research figure stands at 141 billion, and in 1982 the proposal is for 191 billion.

Two policies—advanced study abroad and distinguished foreign scholars in Italian universities—constitute innovations of the utmost importance that augur great possibilities for the future of research in Italy. Nor can one overlook the strides the CNR is trying to make in applied research. Among the most promising aspects of these developments is the cooperation effectively established among the universities, the CNR, and Italian industry.

An important step forward for Italian universities is the establishment of an information center for ongoing research, to which each university must report on its activity; this information is the basis for future funding. It has been suggested that the Consiglio Universitario Nazionale, as the consultative board of the Ministry of Education, establish objective criteria for future funding. The board will administer 40 percent of the government funding, while the rest will be distributed directly to the universities.

The most basic deficiency in the Italian research system is the lack of a doctoral program designed to further the education of researchers and specialists. Italian professors do basic research with the help of assistants, whose low morale reflects their inadequate pay. It will be most important for the government to establish a research doctorate and a fellowship program to send Italian students abroad, which would allow study abroad to become a keystone of the national research system. Among the many other


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problems with respect to research in university departments is the universities' lack of control over the activities of researchers, who cannot be fired for inefficiency, and whose careers are governed by seniority. Unfortunately, Italian industry has shown little or no interest in university research, as is the case in most Mediterranean countries.

Italian research is in the forefront in a number of fields, including gravitation, the structure of matter, nuclear and energy physics, nuclear medicine and medical pathology, nuclear biology, genetics, archaeology, and agriculture. Italians are doing work of international importance despite difficulties and, at times, virtual institutional anarchy. But conditions have vastly improved, and the forecast for the near future must be that research will continue to be a dynamic force in the Italian university.

The Greek Universities

Greece has fourteen universities and institutions of higher education. The first university was founded in Athens in 1837, on the German model, as a center for scholarship and science. Between 1915 ad 1930, six more universities were created, and five more since 1964 in response to the increasing demand for higher education. The same model was used for all these institutions, and is still in use, despite attempts at reform.[6] Only the two most recent institutions, founded after 1973, have been erected on principles that are distinctly American. However, in the last five years, efforts have been intensified to rework the operational structure of the universities and to integrate them into their social environments.

The 1978 act on university reform, which has been widely contested, above all seeks to improve university efficiency. The act proposes replacement of the traditional professorial chairs by American-style departments, seeks an increase in the turnover of assistant staff, and introduces more stringent study regulations. Early drafts of the act designate research as one of the main functions of the university, a political choice of major importance.

The Greek reform ensures participation of students and assistants in policy making, especially in areas related to teaching and research. Creation of a national council for higher education should constitute a valuable new connection between the universities and society, while vacillations in policy resulting from frequent cabinet changes should be reduced. However, the council may adversely affect university autonomy, for it has authority over the creation of new institutions of higher education, schools, and departments. Its authority also covers the allocation of annual budgets, the general orientation of research, the construction of new campuses, and so on.


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Unlike many western European nations, Greece has no national scientific policy. In Greece, as in other developing countries, university research is identified with basic or fundamental research; it is not viewed as a function of national or regional needs. Recently, various professors (most of them educated in western Europe and the United States) have become more conscious of the distance between the university and society, and they have begun to establish contacts with industry and public authorities.

Finance for university research is provided mainly by the state. A limited number of research programs are financed by various foreign institutions or international organizations. University moneys tend to be used for fundamental research, external funds more frequently for applied research. In 1977 the total budget for the universities amounted to 8,508 million drachmas (about $230 million), nearly 1 percent of Greece's gross national product.[7] However, unable to break this figure down between teaching and research, we must seek a measure of the Greek research effort in an oblique manner. A 1976 survey of research activities in a number of institutions by a branch of the Ministry of Culture revealed about 2,500 projects in progress; universities accounted for 1,100 projects, or 44 percent of the total.

A national research foundation promotes research, in both the natural sciences and the humanities, in the university and elsewhere. Applications for grants are evaluated by groups of experts. In 1976 the foundation spent 30 million drachmas on more than 100 projects, most of which were in the universities. The foundation also supports a number of research institutes and maintains the largest library of scientific journals in Greece. Additional support comes from a state scholarship foundation that provides funds for graduate study in Greece and abroad. In 1978 almost 100 new scholarships were awarded.

In Greece's science and technology centers, much of the departments' equipment and facilities is used for both teaching and research. Graduate students often develop projects under the direct supervision of staff members. As a rule, all departmental staff must distribute their time between teaching and research. In addition, a number of research centers have recently been established. These include the Institute for Modern Greek Studies in the University of Thessaloniki, the Institute for Regional Development in the Panteios School for Political Science, and the Center of Byzantine Research. In these institutions the faculty is completely devoted to research, engaging only in some highly specialized teaching.

A service for research and development has been established in the Ministry of Culture and Science to promote and finance scientific research and development. There is also an interministerial committee on scientific research, and a service for scientific research and technology is located in the


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Ministry of Coordination. According to recent information, this latter committee is responsible for formulating a national research program and for establishing research priorities. Such planning will repair a serious deficiency.

Greece is now a member of the European Economic Community (EEC). Greek universities will have to evolve and improve to the level of the European universities, especially with respect to scientific research. Meanwhile, the present failure to adapt higher education to social development represents a serious handicap for Greece. Higher education and scientific research have to become important political priorities—backed by massive financial resources—if Greece is to participate in the EEC on an equal footing.[8]


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11—
Research in Italy

John A. Scott

Research has always been an important part of Italian university life. Even in 1980, a professor may think little of canceling classes or of beginning the academic year two or three weeks behind schedule; if he has produced a weighty volume he will feel that he has more than earned his keep and the respect of colleagues and students.

To obtain an overall picture of the importance and achievements of academic research in Italy, it is essential to take account not only of work done in universities but also that undertaken in research centers financed by the state, chiefly through the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche. This council finances a great deal of the research carried out in universities (providing about 90 percent of scientific equipment in university laboratories), while its research centers are for the most part under the direction of professors.

Administration of Research

The Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) is a massive organization with over 5,700 research workers. In 1978, 230 billion lire were allocated by the CNR, and 24 billion lire by the Ministry of Public Instruction for research.[1] Most faculty apply to the CNR for grants. There are eleven

John A. Scott is Professor of Italian at the University of Western Australia.


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consultative committees (eight for the sciences, three for the humanities and social sciences). In theory, anyone can apply, but in practice three-quarters of the funds go to the sciences; and, while university assistants (borsisti, contrattisti ) may apply, they must be sponsored by a professor. However, no one teaching in a university or a public high school may be paid for his services, as this would contravene an Italian law designed to prevent payment of two salaries to an individual. Hence, money from public sources must be spent on equipment, travel, and ancillary services.

A law passed in February 1980 provides for increased expenditure on research by the Ministry of Public Instruction: 90 billion lire in 1980; 140 billion in 1981; and 190 billion in 1982. Of these moneys, 40 percent will be administered by the newly constituted Consiglio Nazionale dell'Università, while the remaining 60 percent will be distributed directly to the various universities.[2] The probable result will be that, whereas in the past the CNR has supported basic university research, in the future it will tend to concentrate on setting up and maintaining centers of excellence and special long-term projects of an applied nature. It is impossible to forecast what shifts will occur in the distribution of CNR funds (at present, approximately 15 percent for humanities, 8 percent for social sciences, 77 percent for natural sciences).

Important Deficiencies

On both the CNR and the universities, strong pressure is exerted by trade unions and young researchers to have temporary positions transformed into permanent ones. There is very little control over research workers, who cannot be fired for inefficiency and whose careers are governed by seniority. This leads to unproductive creation of lifelong ricercatori who accomplish little or nothing, while the situation is static: the average age of people in research is constantly increasing—a fact bewailed by many directors of research centers—and there is virtually no turnover and no new blood. Trade unions in the universities may hinder technicians from cleaning laboratories or feeding animals. Italian industry has shown slight interest in scientific research in the universities: large firms either do their own research and train their personnel in their own laboratories or they rely heavily on foreign patents.

For the total number of projects financed by the CNR, with a brief description of each, see: Ricerche finanziate dal CNR (anno 1975) , 2 vols., (Rome: CNR, 1978), which lists 2,890 projects. See also (for 1978): Annuario degli organi di ricerca , 3 vols., (Rome: CNR, 1978). It should be noted that, in 1978, the Ministry of Public Instruction gave Italian universities 10.45 billion lire for research, whereas they had requested 70.37 billion lire (Relazione , pp. 393–395).


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Until now, however, the most basic deficiency in the Italian research system has been lack of any equivalent to a doctoral program, which should be an important supply of personnel while the next generation is being trained by apprenticeship. Thus large programs of both basic and advanced research have had to be carried out by professors, or entrusted to assistants (contrattisti, borsisti, assegnisti : the so-called precari ) who, though employed to do research, have all too frequently been preoccupied with their own precarious situation.[3] They have also had to take classes scheduled for professors and help conduct examinations (a Herculean task in Italy), frequently to an extent that has interfered with their research. This has given rise to further discontent and also to an unjustifiable expectation that a research assignment to work on a particular research project should result in a permanent position.

Significant Innovations

Despite these problems, Italian research is effective. For the future, most important is the establishment of a doctroal program with a research degree (dottorato di ricerca ). The Legge Valitutti of February 1980 specifies that this will be a purely academic title, that is, it will not confer any professional advantage or privilege outside the universities; it will require a minimum training of three years and all candidates will receive a scholarship. A highly significant feature is that no less than a quarter of these scholarships will be set aside for research to be undertaken in foreign universities.[4] What has been tolerated and occasionally encouraged in the past—advanced study abroad—will now become one of the linchpins of the Italian research effort. A parallel development is a provision for university teachers and experts from other countries, who may now be invited to teach for a period of months or even years in an Italian university with rank and privileges equivalent to those held abroad. (Hitherto, only Italian citizens have been allowed to hold official teaching positions in Italian universities.) These two measures—advanced study abroad and provisions for distinguished foreign scholars to teach and undertake research in Italy—constitute innovations of the utmost importance that should open up immense possibilities for the future of research in Italy.

Another highly significant innovation is the introduction of the progetto


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finalizzato , which groups together various projects or subprojects (sottoprogetti ) for specific areas of applied research. As elaborated by the CNR, the progetti finalizzati now cover some twenty-five sectors of research, all clearly linked to the needs and problems of Italian society: for example, the conservation of energy and discovery of alternative sources, preventive medicine, ecology, agriculture, and air traffic. The general commission set up to oversee this new structure includes a majority of university professors as well as representatives of Italian industry.[5] So far, the CNR has spent more than 160 billion lire on these projects: 20 billion in 1976; 35 billion in 1977; 45 billion 1978; 60 billion in 1979. This increase in expenditure was prompted by an increasing awareness of the importance of projects that have proved to be a highly flexible instrument for rapid discovery and realization of new lines of research. One of the most promising aspects is the cooperation effectively established between the CNR, universities, and Italian industry. For example, in 1978, seventeen progetti finalizzati involved 9, 759 research workers: 1,690 from the CNR,.6,570 from the universities, 440 from industry, and 1,059 from other organizations.[6]

Research Frontiers

Italian research is in the forefront in a number of fields. Fundamental work on gravitation and the structure of matter is being done at the University of Rome and at the nearby Istituto di Fisico Nucleare. Important connections with Euratom and the Centre Européen de Recherche Nucléaire (Geneva) help to maintain high quality, which is also stimulated by centers such as the Centro di Cultura Scientifica Ettore Majorana at Erice (Sicily), to which leading scholars from all over the world are invited. Important discoveries have been made by the observatory at Asiago (Vicenza). The CNR's Istituto di Fisiologia Clinica (Pisa) has brought together a team of doctors, surgeons, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians to collaborate in solving problems in nuclear medicine. Computers are used for their work on the pathology and surgery of the human heart, echocardiography, and metabolism of certain proteins. The importance of this exploration was recognized by the award of an international prize at Tokyo in 1974. As is so often the case, this independent center (financed and controlled by the CNR) is under the direction of an academic expert, L. Donato, who also holds the chair of


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special medical pathology at Pisa. Contacts with the Scuola Normale di Pisa (a prestigious institution founded by Napoleon on the lines of the École Normale Supérieure) are also important, while students in both institutions can find a more practically oriented environment and help with their tesi di laurea (and, in future, the dottorato di ricerca ). The Istituto di Fisiologia Clinica is the only research center to have patients; much of its work is directed toward preventive medicine and discovery of techniques for monitoring patients' progress without introducing cumbersome equipment into the body.[7]

Another important development is the Area della Ricerca di Roma, which covers seventy hectares, some thirty kilometers to the northeast of Rome. Organized and funded by the CNR, it provides a centralized service area (for example, in laser research and spectometry) for the University of Rome. The center has eight laboratories; six for chemistry (including nuclear chemistry), one for agricultural science, and one devoted to research into archaeological problems (for example, the preservation of ruins and buildings from the effects of atmospheric pollution; also, a Sabine necropolis is on the site). There are accommmodations for visiting scholars from overseas: the International Congress of Photochemistry was held there in October 1979, the International Congress on the Chemistry of Oxides of Carbon in February 1980.

As mentioned, one of the problems is the general aging of research workers: in September 1980, national concorsi to take on new staff were organized, the first in many years, designed to give a total of 1,800 new research posts to the CNR over the next three years.

Computerization

Use of computers by the Istituto di Fisiologia Clinica in Pisa may provide us with a bridge between research in the sciences, medicine, and the humanities. Italy has the distinction of being the only country to have created a uniform system for its computers. In 1965, IBM offered a new type of advanced computer system (7090) to the University of Pisa, which was chosen because of its airport and its central location. Symbolically, it was decided to use one of the most sophisticated products of modern science to produce the most comprehensive concordance of Dante's Divine Comedy , in honor of the seventh centenary of the poet's birth. In 1949 Professor Roberto Busa, S.J. was the first to use mechanical equipment for a concordance, in his work on Thomas Aquinas. In 1964, the Accademia della Crusca decided to start work once more on its famous dictionary. It was decided to transfer all this mechanical work to the new Centro Nazionale Universitario di Calcolo Elettronico (CNUCE) in Pisa.[8] The need for a


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specialized link between scholars and machines was quickly perceived and provided. This was organized and eventually became a separate center under the direction of Professor A. Zampolli.[9] In June 1978 the section was detached from the CNUCE and became the CNR's Istituto di Linguistica Computazionale (ILC). The ILC provides essential services between computers and some fifty research centers, chiefly in the fields of philology and linguistics. Much of the work consists in providing lists of word frequencies, concordances, incipits, and the like. An electronic library has been set up, with 8,000 magnetic tapes of texts in many languages, converted into machine-readable form. Important links have been formed with similar centers abroad, as the European Economic Community is constructing a computer network with an international linguistic bank. Current pioneering work at the ILC also includes studies in lexicography, dialectology (The Atlante Linguistico Italiano ), linguistical statistics, and the problems of machine translation. Research projects include the Dizionario Macchina dell'Italiano (with about 1,000,000 forms), which will reduce the time necessary for lemmatization; an automatic analysis of Italian syntax; the provision of new models for statistical linguistics and help for studies in psycholinguistics. Work is being extended to Spanish and Sanskrit, as well as an etymological dictionary for Gaelic. Most noteworthy is that the ILC is the only center in the world to combine text processing with the manifold dimensions of computational linguistics.

The computers at the ILC are used by scholars all over Italy. One of the most interesting ventures was launched by the Centro del Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, another research center of the CNR, directed by Professor Tullio Gregory of the University of Rome. It aims to provide a history of the cultural terminology of the Mediterranean world, with particular emphasis on the language of philosophy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (when the vernaculars took over the function of Latin in this area). A comprehensive analysis of Giordano Bruno's lexicon has just been published;[10] monographs are being compiled on the history and evolution of certain terms and word-groups; and three international congresses on intellectual lexicography have been organized (in 1974, 1977, and 1980). The center's work forms a unique marriage between lexicography and the history of ideas.


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The computers at Pisa have also helped to transform the venerable Accademia della Crusca, which is now situated in the bucolic setting of a Medici villa outside Florence. Founded in the 1570s, the academy produced the first great dictionary of a European vernacular in 1612 and inspired the creation of both the French and the Spanish academies. It now has three research centers, concentrating on lexicography, philology, and grammar, each with its own annual journal. Conferences are organized with participants from abroad. In 1964 work on the famous dictionary was resumed under the leadership of the great scholar Giacomo Devoto. It was decided to begin with the medieval period from the origins of the Italian vernacular to 1375 (death of Boccaccio and the explosion of Latin Humanism). Now under the direction of Professor D'Arco Silvio Avalle, the scope of the work undertaken is unique in its effort to expand lexicographical research to include every aspect of the Italian language (instead of attending only to the literary tradition and code, as in that great monument to premechanical lexicography, the Oxford English Dictionary ). Twenty million occurrences have been collected so far; work is estimated to take another ten years to complete. One of the problems in such a long-term venture is that computers evolve, with the ensuing danger that all work done may become obsolete. However, a new and highly sophisticated system of computer programing has been set up for this purpose in collaboration with the ILC at Pisa.[11] A parallel venture is the series entitled Concordanze della Lingua Poetica Italiana delle Origini , for which photographs of all known manuscripts have been gathered from many countries. Accompanied by the decision to use only those manuscripts that can definitely be ascribed to the period before 1300, the resulting synoptic view has led to some illuminating results in the redating of manuscripts and in an understanding of their place in medieval culture, which was dictated by specific cultural policies.[12]

Bright Prospects

Other important domains of Italian research include biology (genetics and the structure of molecular biology), art history, medieval and Renaissance culture, Roman law, classical philology, and archaeology. Etruscology has a leading center at the University of Rome. The University's Institute of Archaeology was responsible for the momentous discovery in 1977 at Ebla, Syria, of a hitherto unknown Semitic language. The deciphering of Linear B in 1953 was quickly exploited by Italian scholars, who have helped to


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revolutionize our understanding of the second millenium B.C. One center for such studies is the Istituto di Studi Micenei (the only CNR institute in the humanities), directed by Professor Saccone of the University of Rome. This institute organizes archaeological missions for the eastern Mediterranean basin and Mesopotamia, publishes Greek incunabula with the collaboration of foreign scholars, and arranged the first International Congress of Mycenaean Studies in 1967.

Modern techniques in archaeology and work with computers by the Accademia della Crusca are striking examples of the way Italian genius combines the best of two worlds, by grafting innovations onto the oldest university tradition in Europe. Fears have been expressed that the new law (Legge Valitutti of 1980) will widen the separation between research and teaching, but it is too early to tell. It must be acknowledged that the proliferation of research centers outside the universities (though usually under the direction of university professors) may lead to an unhealthy split between the overcrowded and at times poorly equipped universities and the relatively peaceful research havens. However, the law now makes it possible for state universities to decide whether or not to create a system of departments, organized according to local needs and resources. This new option goes against the faculty chair system and indeed the whole tradition of Italian bureaucracy;[13] it may be well or ill used. There should be little doubt, however, that Italian scholars have continued to produce work of international importance, despite great hindrance and at times virtual anarchy in the universities. On the whole, conditions have improved, and the forecast for the 1980s must be that research will continue to be a dynamic element in the Italian university system. Determined efforts are being made to rationalize this system, especially insofar as research is concerned. If these are carried through successfully, some brilliant achievements may be expected—perhaps on a par with the legendary group led by Enrico Fermi in the 1930s.


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