THE CHANGING SOCIAL CONTRACT FOR SCIENCEAND THE EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSITY

Ben R. Martin

SPRU – Science and Technology Policy ResearchUniversity of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RF

United Kingdom

September 2001

Draft chapter prepared for book edited by A. Geuna, A. Salter and W. E. Steinmueller onScience and Innovation: Rethinking the Rationales for Funding and Governance

THE CHANGING SOCIAL CONTRACT FOR SCIENCEAND THE EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSITY

Ben R. Martin, SPRU, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9RF, UK

1. Introduction

According to some (e.g. Ziman, 1991 & 1994; Pelikan, 1992), science and the university areunder threat. As we move towards a knowledge-intensive society, academics face pressures tolink their work more closely to the needs of the economy and society with (it is feared) potentiallyadverse long-term consequences for scientific research and the university. This has beencharacterised (e.g. by Guston and Keniston, 1994a) as a fundamental change in the ‘socialcontact’ between science and the university, on the one hand, and the state, on the other, with thelatter now having much more specific expectations regarding the outputs sought from the formerin return public funding. Others (Gibbons et al., 1994) have described it as a transition from‘Mode 1’ to ‘Mode 2’ knowledge production. This paper argues that, if one adopts a longer-termhistorical perspective, then what we are witnessing appears to be not so much the appearance of anew (and hence potentially worrying) phenomenon, but rather a shift back towards a socialcontract closer to the one in effect for much of the period before the second half of the 20thCentury.

In what follows, we first consider previous versions of the social contract, in particular thoseembodied in the Humboldt university and the contract set out by Vannevar Bush in 1945. Afteranalysing the global driving forces subjecting the social contract to change, we examine therevised contract emerging over recent years. We identify some key questions that have beenraised about these changes and their possible implications for science and universities. To answerthese, we consider the process of historical evolution of universities, including the emergence ofdifferent ‘species’ of university reflecting their differing functions, ethos and relations with thesurrounding environment.1

As we shall see, for much of the history of modern science, funds have been provided with a clearexpectation that the work will result in specific benefits. Only for a period of a few decades afterthe Second World War was this former social contract relaxed, when governments were preparedto invest in science with much less precise and immediate expectations as to the eventual benefits.That period is now apparently ending.

1 This section draws substantially on Martin and Etzkowitz (2001). The author is very grateful to Henry Etzkowitz

for many of the historical examples discussed here. The chapter has also benefited from comments of those whoattended the International Workshop on ‘New Policy Rationales for the Support of Public Research in the EU’held in Paris on 3-4 May 2001. However, any errors are those of the author.

2

2. History of the Social Contract

2.1 The Humboldt social contract

While it is conventional to begin by focusing on the Vannevar Bush social contract which heldsway for most of the second half of the 20th Century, it is worth looking first at the earlier socialcontract embodied in Humboldt university model. In this, government assumed responsibility forfunding the university (in contrast with earlier ad hoc funding arrangements). However, the keycharacteristic of the Humboldt model was the unity of teaching and research – the assumption thatboth functions had to be conducted within the same institution.

The Humboldt model subsequently spread from Germany to other countries in the 19th and 20thCenturies – but not to all. In France, for example, universities and particularly grandes écolescontinued to concentrate on teaching while much of the academic research was carried outelsewhere in laboratories of organisations such as CNRS and INSERM (cf. Schmoch and Winnes,2000). The separation of teaching and research was even more pronounced in Eastern Europe.Nevertheless, by the second half of the 20th Century, there was a widespread belief amongacademics and others that the unity of teaching and research was essential to the university and toscientific knowledge production.

The Humboldt social contract, despite the reliance on the state for funding, was characterised by ahigh level of autonomy for both individuals and institutions. Academics were free to engage inresearch (typically spending 30-50% of their time on this) and to choose their research topic. Atthe institutional level, in European countries (and some others but not the United States)governments provided general institutional funding for both teaching and research, leaving theuniversity free to determine the allocation of resources across disciplines.

2.2 The Vannevar Bush social contract

The social contract that ran from 1945 to approximately the end of the 1980s is generally linked toVannevar Bush and his 1945 report, Science: The Endless Frontier. A succession of scientificdiscoveries in first half of the 20th Century together with several prominent applications ofscience during the Second World War gave rise to a belief in a simple linear ‘science-push’ modelof innovation, beginning with basic research, leading on to applied research, then technologicaldevelopment and finally innovation. This model was set out in the Bush report.2 The clearimplication of the model was that, if government put money into the basic research end of thechain, out from the other end of the chain would eventually come (at some indeterminate time)benefits in terms of wealth, health and national security, although exactly what form thosebenefits would take was also unpredictable.

2 This was perhaps the first time that the linear model had been set down formally, although it had appeared in

discussions at the end of 19th Century (Godin, 2000, p.5).

3

The linear model had the great merit of simplicity (even politicians could understand it!) as wellas obvious financial convenience – it furnished a ready case for getting money out ofgovernments.3 It also implied that few ‘strings’ should be attached to the public funds provided tobasic researchers, leaving them with considerable autonomy.

The social contract for the post-war period can be described as follows:

Government promises to fund the basic science that peer reviewers find mostworthy of support, and scientists promise that the research will be performed welland honestly and will provide a steady stream of discoveries that can be translatedinto new products, medicines, or weapons. (Guston and Keniston, 1994a, p. 2)

There were thus several essential characteristics of the Bush social contract. First, it implied ahigh level of autonomy for science. Secondly, decisions on which areas of science should befunded should be left to scientists. It therefore brought about the institutionalisation of the peer-review system to allocate resources, a system used before the War by private foundations whichsupported research. Thirdly, it was premised on the belief that basic research was best done inuniversities (rather than government or company laboratories).

The Bush social contract proved very successful in the decades after 1945, especially in theUnited States. It contributed to large increases in government funding for science,4 in the numberof trained scientists and in research outputs (e.g. publications in scientific journals).

3. Global Driving Forces for Change

Some time around the late 1980s (but perhaps slightly earlier in the UK and US) we began to seethe emergence of a revised social contract replacing that set in place by Vannevar Bush (Guston,2000). In this section, we consider the main forces bringing about that change.

One that was particularly important in the US was the end of the Cold War, resulting in a greatlyreduced need for research in physical sciences and engineering. A related factor with similarconsequences was dwindling enthusiasm for nuclear energy.5 However, three factors which havebeen more global in their impact are increasing competition, constraints on public expenditure,and the growing importance of scientific competencies.

3 A proper economic justification for the Bush social contract came later with the work of Nelson (1959) and Arrow

(1962).4 There were other important contributing factors in the US such as the arms and space race with the USSR and

decisions by Congress to wage ‘war’ on diseases like cancer.5 Both these factors are obviously linked to another trend, namely the decline in importance of physical sciences

compared with biomedical sciences.

4

3.1 Increasing Competition

We live in an ever more competitive world.6 Over the last 10-15 years, many more market-economy ‘players’ have emerged – in Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and elsewhere, greatlyincreasing the level of economic competition. Moreover, there are huge variations in labour costs(e.g. by a factor of 100 or more between Germany and China) at a time when the process ofglobalisation means that firms can much more easily shift resources and production betweencountries to benefit from lower costs or other local resources.

For industrialised countries, the key to success lies in continuous innovation to improveproductivity and competitiveness. Consequently, new technologies such as information andcommunication technologies and biotechnology are becoming more important. These are heavilydependent on basic research for their development and exploitation, giving rise to the notion ofthe knowledge-based economy (e.g. Stehr, 1994), which in turn has led to pressures on scienceand on universities to help deliver that knowledge-based economy. Science is becoming more ofa strategic competitive resource that nations have to use to maximum advantage. Governmentstherefore need to have more explicit science policies. The open-ended Vannevar Bush socialcontract is hence no longer appropriate.

3.2 Constraints on Public Expenditure

At the same time, governments in many countries have been experiencing significant publicexpenditure constraints as they attempt to balance their budgets. Those constraints are likely togrow over time for various reasons including the ageing population and increasing costs of – andrising expectations concerning – healthcare, education and social welfare.7 This trend is creatingdemands for greater accountability and for better ‘value for money’ from all areas of governmentspending, including that on science and universities. Consequently, assessment has become muchmore common (Geuna and Martin, 2001).

Because of these expenditure constraints and the growing cost of research and development, nogovernment can afford to do everything in science and technology, not even the richest.Governments now realise that they must be more selective – they must have explicit policies andclearer priorities for science. Choices have to be made. In the past, those choices tended to bemade tacitly – they just ‘emerged’ from the policy process. Many governments now, however, areseeking to devise more systematic procedures for priority-setting in relation to science andtechnology – for example, through technology foresight exercises. Again, this runs counter to theVannevar Bush social contract.

6 In the light of the historical criticisms made later, one should perhaps qualify this statement to ‘more competitive

than over the period 1945-90’.7 Another factor is that we may be reaching the politically acceptable limits to tax-raising; if a government attempts

to extract taxes above a certain level, companies or affluent individuals may take their business ‘off-shore’ to acountry where the tax regime is less burdensome, an option made much easier by growing use of electronictransactions.

5

3.3 Increasing Importance of Scientific and Technological Competencies

A third key driver, closely linked to the first, is the increasing importance of scientific andtechnological competencies in the form of both knowledge and skills. As argued above, scientificand technological knowledge is becoming a strategic resource for companies and countries as wellas for improving the quality of life. Scientific and technological skills or expertise are alsobecoming ever more important in relation to wealth creation and improvements in the quality oflife. Here, matters are complicated by the fact that new technologies not only demand new skills;they also make old skills obsolete (arguably, at an increasing rate). The latter points to the needfor continuous learning, with a shift away from the notion that the individual is educated only inthe first 20 years or so of life to one of ‘lifetime learning’, a shift in which new technologies canmake a major contribution.

The demand for new skills on the part of an ever increasing proportion of the population toenhance their competitiveness in job markets underlies the determination of several governmentsover the last decade to shift from a relatively elitist system of higher education to a mass HEsystem. While governments may be willing to pay for large increases in higher educationteaching, they are not necessarily prepared to pay for similar increases in the scale of scientificresearch. The inevitable consequence is that not all academics or HE institutions can continue todo research, or that academics will spend less time on research and correspondingly more onteaching than previously. In either case, the end result is to break or substantially weaken acentral aspect of the Humboldt social contract.

4. The Revised Social Contract

These various forces for change mean that some time around the end of the 1980s (the exacttiming varying across countries) saw the beginnings of a shift in the social contract for science anduniversities (Guston and Keniston, 1994a and b; de la Mothe and Halliwell, 1997; Martin andEtzkowitz, 2001). Faced with increasing competition and tighter financial constraints,governments now expect more specific benefits in return for continued investments in scientificresearch and in universities. In the case of the US, this revised contract has been described by aleading Congressional figure in science policy as follows:

The scientific community must seek to establish a new contract with policy makersbased not on demands for autonomy and ever increasing funds, but on theimplementation of an explicit research agenda rooted in [social] goals (Brown,1992, quoted in Guston and Keniston, 1994a, pp. 6-7).

In other words, under the revised social contract there is a clear expectation that, in return forpublic funds, scientists and universities should address the needs of ‘users’ in the economy and

6

society. They are also subject to much more explicit accountability for the money they receive.8

In addition, implicit in the new contract is a more complex model of science and innovation thanthe previous linear model, unfortunately making it harder to persuade politicians of the merits ofincreasing public spending on research!

An alternative way of interpreting these changes is the Mode 2 thesis.9 In an influential analysisof the changing nature of knowledge production in universities and elsewhere, Gibbons et al.(1994) have argued that we are witnessing a shift from Mode 1 to Mode 2. Mode 1 involves newknowledge being produced primarily within individual disciplines, mainly in universities andother academic institutes. There is little direct connection to societal needs and the results of theresearch are transferred at the end of the project to users who may or may not take up thoseresults. There is also only fairly limited societal accountability required from those engaged inresearch; the obverse of this is that there is a considerable degree of autonomy for scientists tochoose the problems on which to work.

Mode 2, by contrast, generally involves multi- or trans-disciplinary research carried out in agrowing variety of institutions (i.e. not just universities) and with a blurring of the boundariesbetween the traditional sectors (university, industry etc.). Knowledge is increasingly beingproduced “in the context of application” – in other words, with societal needs having a directinfluence from an early stage and with relatively explicit social accountability for the fundingreceived from government. In its strongest form, the claim of Gibbons et al. is that

we are now seeing fundamental changes in the ways in which scientific, social andcultural knowledge is produced. ... [T]his trend marks a distinct shift towards anew mode of knowledge production which is replacing or reforming establishedinstitutions, disciplines, practices and policies.10

The implication here is that Mode 2 is new. However, Gibbons et al. are somewhat lessconvincing in terms of putting forward systematic evidence for such a new phenomenon (cf.Weingart, 1997; Godin, 1998). As we shall see later, it is perhaps better to characterise this not somuch in terms of the appearance of something new in the form of Mode 2, but rather a shift in thebalance between the already existing forms of Mode 1 and Mode 2. In other words, while therehas perhaps been relatively more Mode 2 taking place towards the end of the 20th Century than inprevious decades, we may be merely returning to a balance between the two modes exhibited inearlier eras (cf Pestre, 1997; Weingart, 1997; Shinn, 2000).

8 Examples of this greater emphasis on accountability and evaluation include the Research Assessment Exercise

(RAE) to which UK university departments have been subject since 1986, and the application of the GovernmentPerformance and Results Act (GPRA) to research agencies and programmes in the US.

9 Another way of envisaging these changes is in terms of a shift to a ‘triple helix’ relationship between universities,government and industry – see Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz (1996 and 1998), and Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff (1998and 2000).

10 Quoted on the back cover of Gibbons et al. (1994) - emphasis added.

7

These various discussions about the future of science and the university raise a number ofquestions which the remainder of this chapter will be try to address.

• Are science and universities becoming more closely linked to societal needs? Or are wemerely reverting to the situation in an earlier era?

• Is there more Mode 2 research now and, if so, compared with when?

• Is the social contract changing and, if so, compared with when? Is basic research underthreat?

• Will the university survive in its current form? Is it threatened by new entrants?

• How great a threat is the separation of research and teaching in universities? Will theuniversity remain a multi-function institution?

• Will science and universities become more central in the knowledge economy? If so, at whatcost (if any) to their autonomy?

To address these questions, we consider an evolutionary model of the university, examining howit has adapted over time to its changing environment. Such a model may help us assess moresystematically the prospects for the university and science in coming years.

5. On the Origin and Evolution of the University ‘Species’

5.1 Evolving functions and ethos of the university

Let us go back to the beginning – to the mediaeval university. Originally, this had two functions:teaching priests, public servants, lawyers and so on; and scholarship in a variety of disciplines(biblical, classical, medical etc.). Over time as the societal environment changed, so thosefunctions evolved. With regard to teaching, there emerged two relatively distinct types ofeducational function, one being to develop the full potential of the individual student, the other toproduce trained people with knowledge and skills useful to society, be they priests, administrators,physicians or whatever. Scholarship also evolved with two fairly fundamental changes. The firstwas that scholarship was broadened to include the creation of new knowledge – in other words‘research’ – as well as the re-analysis and synthesis of existing knowledge. Secondly, adistinction emerged between two types of research – knowledge ‘for its own sake’ as opposed toknowledge to meet the needs of society.

These changes in the function of the university and its surrounding environment11 were reflectedin the emergence of different varieties and ultimately different ‘species’ of university. First, themediaeval university was gradually transformed, emerging in Germany, for example, as theHumboldt university and in Britain as the Cardinal Newman university. The European model waslater transferred to other countries, appearing in the United States as the ‘Ivy League’ university

11 For a more detailed discussion of the co-evolution of the structure, function and external relationships of

universities, see Martin and Etzkowitz (2001).

8

and in Japan as the imperial (and subsequently the national) university. Although there aresignificant variations between these national models (‘varieties’ to use Darwinian terminology),they can be treated as a single ‘species’, henceforth referred to as the ‘classical university’.

Later on saw the appearance in Europe of a second species variously termed the technical college(or ‘high school’ or university), the institute of (science and) technology or the polytechnic.Again, this model was later transferred to the United States, Japan and elsewhere. While coveringquite a range of ‘varieties’, these can likewise be grouped together as a single species which weshall subsequently refer to as the ‘technical university’.

Implicit in the ‘classical’ and the ‘technical’ university are two quite distinct conceptions of thenature and purpose of the university. According to the first, which might be termed the pure or‘immaculate’ conception, the purpose of the university is education and knowledge ‘for its ownsake’. Set against this is the instrumental or utilitarian ethos of the ‘technical university’,according to which the role of the university is to create and disseminate useful knowledge and totrain students with skills useful to society.

These rival conceptions were perhaps implicit from the start within the mediaeval university (cf.Geuna, 1998). However, over time the tensions between them led, in a process akin to speciation,to the emergence of two species, the classical and the technical university. In the former, with theCardinal Newman version one had the ‘ivory tower’ of independent scholars producingknowledge for its own sake and passing it on to students to enable them to develop their fullpotential. In the Humboldt version were the additional features of the integration of teaching andresearch, and a heavy dependence on the state for funding.

As regards the technical university species, one of the earliest examples was the EcolePolytechnique set up to provide training for engineers and to meet the military needs of France.Other examples include the technical ‘high schools’ in Germany and Switzerland, and theinstitutes of science and technology in Britain at Manchester and Imperial College, London. Asnoted above, this species was later transferred to other countries including the Unites States (withthe formation of institutes such as Rennsselaer Polytechnic Institute, MIT and Caltech), Italy (forinstance, the polytechnics in Milan and Turin) and Japan (for example, the Tokyo Institute ofTechnology).

Although these have been the two main species of university, other relatively distinct species haveemerged. For example, in the second half of the 19th Century a new species12 was created in theUnited States – the so called ‘land grant’ university – which was set up explicitly to meet regionalneeds, initially agricultural but later on industrial needs more generally. Other members of this‘regional university’ species include the regional colleges in Europe which are seen as an ‘engine’for the development of a region, especially the economic and industrial development but perhaps

12 Some might dispute whether the land-grant university is really a separate species from the institute of technology.

As in the biological kingdom, there is an element of ambiguity in such classification schemes.

9

also culturally (e.g. in Sweden).13 Another example of a new species is the Open Universitycreated in the UK in the 1960s and later copied in other countries, in which students receive mostof their education at a distance.

In addition, the United States witnessed the creation of various hybrids. For example, CornellUniversity was set up as a cross between the Ivy League and the land-grant university. It shouldalso be noted that not all universities took on a research function; in several countries, ‘teachingonly’ institutions co-existed with ‘full’ universities combining teaching with research (andsometimes with research-only institutions). Examples of the ‘teaching university’ species includegrandes écoles in France, Fachhochschulen in Germany, the former polytechnics in Britain, andthe so-called ‘liberal arts’ colleges (although many teach science as well as humanities) in theUnited States.

5.2 Co-evolution of different university species

Within each national environmental ‘niche’, there have normally been two or more species ofuniversities co-existing. In Germany, for example, the Humboldt universities co-existed withtechnical universities and Fachhochschulen. In France, there were universities and grandesécoles, and in Britain universities and institutes of science and technology and later polytechnics.In the United States, there was even more variety with Ivy League universities, land-grantuniversities, institutes of technology and ‘liberal arts’ colleges (teaching-only universities), not tomention hybrids like Cornell. In Japan, three types of university – national, prefectural (i.e. stategovernment) and private – have co-existed.14

In each of those countries, there has been continuous tension between the rival ideologies, thistension being especially pronounced in the United States in the latter part of the nineteenthcentury. Eventually, the pure ethos came to dominate in the early part of the twentieth century,particularly in the prestigious institutions of North America and Europe. As Rosenberg andNelson (1994, p.338) observe:

[A]fter World War II ... [there] was a shift of academic research toward the basicend of the spectrum and the development of a strong belief, at least in academia,that basic research is the proper role of the university.

Yet although Mode 1 became the more prominent form of knowledge production in mostuniversities, or at least the one accorded most visibility in the prevailing academic ethos, it isimportant to stress that there was still much Mode 2 knowledge production taking place duringthis time. In the US, for example, over the second half of the 20th Century the great majority ofresearch in universities was funded by the mission-oriented agencies such as the Departments of

13 S. Hemlin (private communication).14 In many of these countries, these various species of universities have also co-existed with research-only

institutions - for example, Max Planck institutes in Germany, CNRS laboratories in France, Research Councilinstitutes in the UK, and Federally Funded R&D Centres in the US.

10

Defense, Energy and Agriculture, the National Institutes of Health and NASA rather than thebasic research agency, the National Science Foundation.15 This research was closely linked tomeeting societal needs in the defence, energy, agriculture, health and space sectors. It wasconducted not only in ‘technical universities’ but also in Ivy League universities. Nevertheless, inthe ideology of academic science that came to dominate during this time, the emphasis was verymuch on Mode 1 knowledge production and the pure or immaculate conception of the university.

6. Relations and Tensions Between Functions

6.1 Teaching-research symbiosis – reality or convenient myth?

For many, an essential feature of the university is the integration of teaching and research. Sincethe time of Humboldt, it has become conventional wisdom, even an article of faith, that researchand teaching have to take place within the same institution. Yet there is surprisingly littlerigorous evidence to support this belief (Johnston et al., 1993; Schimank and Winnes, 2000).According to the traditional rationale, there are mutual benefits between teaching and research.On the one side, in order to provide up-to-date teaching, lecturers need to be at the forefront oftheir research field. On the other, it is argued that teaching keeps lecturers broad in their interests;if they are not teaching, there is a danger that concentration on research may result in thembecoming ever more specialised while the broadening influence of teaching may provide apositive stimulus to their research. There is some circumstantial evidence at both the individualand the institutional level to support this conventional justification for having teaching andresearch combined in one institution. There is also evidence of the dangers of not combining thetwo – especially from the academy institutes in Eastern Europe where the lack of involvement inteaching may have been one factor that contributed to many of them becoming rather stagnantresearch institutions.

However, there are also prominent counter-examples of leading institutions where research andteaching are not combined. There are numerous excellent research-only institutes like the MaxPlanck institutes, CNRS laboratories, MRC laboratories in the UK and the US National Institutesof Health. Likewise, there are some very good teaching-only higher education institutes such asthe French grandes écoles (although some of these have developed a research capability in recentyears) and US ‘liberal arts’ colleges.

Consequently, it is probably more productive to view the combination of teaching and research asa relationship that brings both benefits (in the form of synergy) and costs (if one is devoting timeand energy to teaching, there is less of both of these for research, and vice versa) with sometension between them. In some circumstances the benefits may outweigh the costs, but in othersthey may not. One cannot automatically assume that the benefits of combining teaching and

15 NSF accounted for less than one fifth of federal support over post-war period (Rosenberg and Nelson, 1994,

p.335)

11

research will always be greater than the costs, as the conventional ideology of academic sciencewould maintain. Nor is it essential that teaching and scientific research should always becombined in higher education institutions.

6.2 The two traditional functions (teaching and research) versus the ‘third mission’

Next, let us consider the relationship between the two traditional functions of the university –teaching and research – and the ‘third mission’ of contributing to the economy which has becomemore prominent under the revised social contract of the last decade. Here, the conventionalacademic ideology is that this third function may damage both teaching – through an over-emphasis on short-term specific skill needs as opposed to a broader education – and also research– because of an over-emphasis on short-term applied research to the detriment of longer-termbasic research.

Again, there is little rigorous systematic evidence for or against this belief. There is certainlysome anecdotal evidence to support it but also some running counter to it. For example, in thecase of teaching, at French grandes écoles where the teaching is geared to such specific skills ascivil engineering or administration, these institutions nevertheless provide a high qualityeducation that remains useful to the students over many years. As regards research, technicaluniversities such as Aachen, Imperial College and Zurich have been engaged for many decades inresearch that addressed the needs of society but that has not apparently damaged their ability toconduct very high quality basic research. Likewise, leading US universities funded by theDepartment of Defense and the National Institutes of Health to carry out research aimed atmeeting national needs in relation to defence and health have also been responsible for some ofthe best quality basic research.

Moreover, it is not just in the twentieth century that the third mission of contributing to theeconomy and society has co-existed within universities with teaching and research. Indeed, in thelatter part of the 19th Century, the third function was perhaps even more pronounced than today(Etzkowitz, 1997, pp. 141-43). For example, in German universities (and later in Japaneseuniversities), engineering departments worked closely with companies in the mechanical, civil,chemical and subsequently the electrical engineering sectors, often effectively acting as researchlaboratories for new companies with their research results being directly applicable to innovativeproducts. This does not appear to have curtailed their ability to conduct basic research.

To take another example, in Britain and France leading physicists such as Lord Kelvin and MarieCurie spent up to half their time working on industrial problems (cf. Pestre, 1997), apparentlywithout adversely affecting their basic research. In the United States, in the case of the land-grantuniversities, the ‘social contract’ embodied in the 1862 Morill Act involved giving them land inreturn for supporting the development of agriculture and the mechanic arts (Rosenberg andNelson, 1994, p.325); again, this does not seem to have affected their ability to carry out basic

12

research or to provide high quality teaching. Indeed, many land-grant universities went on tobecome leading universities of the 20th Century.

Nor was the 19th Century atypical. Indeed, since the emergence of modern science, researchfunding - whether from monarchs, other wealthy patrons, governments or companies - has oftenbeen linked with the expectations of benefits, for example in the form of new or improvedweapons, more accurate nautical almanacs for navigation (based on improved astronomicalobservations), better medical care and agriculture, improved engines, new chemicals andmaterials, new energy sources, new electrical devices and so on. Indeed, historians andsociologists of science have found few instances where expectations of economic or socialbenefits were not influential in shaping science (e.g. Merton, 1938).

In short, there is little convincing historical evidence that an emphasis on helping to meet theneeds of society and the economy necessarily results in adverse long-term consequences foruniversities or scientific research.16 Again, it is perhaps best to view the linking of universityteaching and scientific research with addressing economic and societal needs as something thatbrings both benefits and costs. In some circumstances, the benefits may be outweighed by thecosts, in others the reverse may be true as the examples listed above suggest. Furthermore, theremay be differences across fields, resulting in more benefits and hence more emphasis on theexternal effects of research within technical and medical sciences than in natural and socialsciences and humanities.

7. Some Tentative Conclusions

7.1 Are science and universities becoming more closely linked to societal needs? Or arewe merely reverting to the situation in an earlier era?

Let us now attempt to provide some tentative conclusions to the questions set out earlier, the firstof which concerns whether science and universities are becoming more closely linked to societalneeds. This analysis has suggested that in many countries there has been a shift in the balancecompared with the period from 1945 to the late 1980s when the relationship between universityteaching and research, on the one hand, and the needs of society, on the other, was muchweaker.17 However, even during that period the links with societal needs were not as insubstantialas the dominant academic ideology might suggest. As we have noted, during the post-war perioda large proportion of government-funded research in the United States and elswhere was fundedby mission-oriented agencies. Within classical as well as technical universities, much of theresearch was explicitly trying to address societal needs (cf. Etzkowitz et al., 2000, p.318), even

16 This is an area where more empirical research and analysis is clearly required.17 Sweden may be one exception here. The post-war decades were characterised by an unusually heavy emphasis on

Mode 2 knowledge production with Swedish universities expected to contribute to meeting societal needs.However, in the last few years, there has been a reaction against this system and calls for a shift back towards theHumboldtian ideal (R. Stankiewicz, private communication).

13

though the rhetoric of that time suggested that autonomy was all important to the university and toscientific research.

Since 1990, however, the situation has in several respects become more similar to that prevailingin the late nineteenth century, with many universities taking up more explicitly the third missionof contributing to technology transfer, innovation, the economy and society more generally. Justas science and universities survived and indeed thrived under these challenges a century ago, sothey are likely to be able to adapt to their new and more central role in the knowledge-basedeconomy and to take advantage of the opportunities that this brings without sacrificing theirautonomy (cf. Benner and Sandstrom, 2000; Pearson, 2000).

7.2 Is there now more Mode 2 research than previously? Compared with when?

One important characteristic of Mode 2 research is its inter- or trans-disciplinary nature. Inrelation to this, we need to remember that there have always been interdisciplinary researchactivities. Science is a dynamic system consisting of both established disciplines and emerginginterdisciplinary areas. What starts off as a new inter-disciplinary area may over time evolve intoa recognised discipline. There are numerous historical examples of this, for exampleexperimental psychology emerging from a combination of anatomy and physiology withphilosophy, or the formation of biochemistry from biology and chemistry. Cognitive science is amore recent example arising from a combination of several fields including psychology,philosophy, linguistics and computer science to form a new discipline. This continuous creationof new disciplines from interdisciplinary research activities has always been going on.

Likewise, research that is carried out ‘in the context of application’ (a second key characteristic ofMode 2 research) has always been present within universities, in particular in universities inGermany and the United States at the end of the 19th century. Similarly, there has always beensome blurring of institutional boundaries, a third Mode 2 characteristic. The US land-grantuniversity was set up to provide an agricultural extension service to farmers as well as to carry outthe traditional tasks of teaching and research. Such blurring of institutional boundaries may bemore common or more pronounced in the case of technical and medical sciences than in thenatural sciences.

Nevertheless, during the 20th Century and particularly after 1945, Mode 1 came to be seen inacademic ideology as the ‘normal’ form of knowledge production while Mode 2 was viewed as aless central or even ‘deviant’ form of research that posed dangers to the university as aninstitution. That period is now ending. Yet, while there may be more Mode 2 research today thanduring the period from 1945 to the late 1980s, the level is not necessarily greater than a centuryearlier.

14

7.3 Is the social contract for science changing? Compared with when? Is basic researchunder threat?

As with the previous question, the answer would appear to be, ‘Yes, the contract is changing butonly compared with the period from 1945 to the late 1980s’. This then raises the question ofwhether that post-war period was merely a temporary and, in historical terms, comparatively briefphase. One possible interpretation, for example, is that the relative generosity of the state towardsscience and the willingness to provide funds to researchers without too many strings attachedrepresented a reward to scientists for their contributions in helping to wage and to win the SecondWorld War (for instance, their work on the atom bomb, radar, penicillin, operations research andcode breaking).

There are, of course, other historical factors at work. In particular, during the 20th Century, theassumption that the public and private spheres were separate was at its height. That assumption isnow being displaced by a model of overlapping spheres (cf. Etzkowitz et al., 2000), with severalactivities that in the 20th century were viewed as solely government responsibilities now beingorganised on a joint public-private basis. In the case of science and of universities, this trend isreflected in the growing importance of patents (part public, part private), incubators for start-upfirms, university ‘spin-offs’ and so on (ibid.).

However, such changes should not necessarily be seen as threatening to science. The history ofmodern science shows that many of the most important advances have come from workcharacterised by Stokes (1997) as falling within ‘Pasteur’s Quadrant’ – i.e. research that is bothconcerned with addressing some societal need and at the same time essentially fundamental innature. In this respect, the traditional categorisation of research as either ‘basic’ or ‘applied’ ismisleading; it implies that research which is in some way linked to an application cannot also bebasic in nature, in turn suggesting (erroneously) that greater concentration of effort on the formercan only be at the expense of basic research.

7.4 Will the university survive in its current form? Is it threatened by new entrants?

One of the questions to be considered is whether the university is under such severe threat thatone must ask whether it has a future in its current form. In the light of this brief historical review,it is clear that the university has proved remarkably adaptable over the course of its long history.The environment in which it has operated has been in constant flux. There have always been newentrants – former technical colleges, further education colleges, more recently the OpenUniversity and other distance-learning institutions. However, universities have managed toevolve – to adapt to the changing environment and to new competition, perhaps by shifting theemphasis between their functions, perhaps by embracing new functions, occasionally even

15

forming a new species. Indeed, it is so adaptable that there have been very few instances of the‘death’ of a university.18 Universities reproduce but they very rarely die!

Given this adaptability, we would expect the university to survive (cf. Barnett, 2000) but in somecases to take on new or modified forms – new species or hybrids. One new factor here is thedevelopment of information and communication technologies. These are likely to lowersubstantially the barriers to entry confronting new entrants to the higher education sector, leadingto new species and hybrids and to more blurring of institutional boundaries.

Overall, we therefore expect to see far greater variety across higher education institutions. First,we will continue to see general universities combining teaching and research. Secondly, therewill be new hybrids – perhaps a hybrid of the traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ university with theopen university delivering a large proportion of its higher education at a distance, the so-called‘bricks and clicks’ university.19 Thirdly, there will be specialised universities, in particularteaching-only institutions although those may be the ones that prove most vulnerable to newentrants from the commercial sector. Research-only universities are also possible – some in theUS are now almost research-only institutions.

Fourthly, there will be new entrants. New private universities are beginning to emerge in Europeparticularly in Central and Eastern Europe but also in Germany (Pearson, 2000). There are alsolikely to be more ‘no frills’ universities like Phoenix University, adopting the philosophy of thesupermarket to ‘pile them high, sell them cheap’. Commercial publishers and software companiesare certainly getting involved in ‘e-universities’, and some consultancies are developing researchand teaching capabilities which they may subsequently package and offer to others outside thecompany. There will probably also be more company universities; already certain large firms inthe United States and Britain (e.g. British Aerospace) have decided that the skill and trainingneeds of their employees are so extensive and perhaps so specific that it is more effective toprovide them through their own ‘university’ rather than using traditional universities.

A fifth possible development is the networked university, either involving vertical integration offurther education colleges with a university to form an integrated supply chain or horizontalintegration of similar departments across several institutions working together and linkedelectronically. There may also be closer integration with research institutes like the Fraunhoferinstitutes and perhaps also the integration of some universities with consultancies to form anotherhybrid. A related possibility is growing numbers of mergers and acquisitions. Already inLondon, University College, London (UCL) and Imperial College have taken over most of the

18 Some might contend that this is where the evolutionary model breaks down because universities do not die.

However, there is at least one analogy in the biological world - the subterranean fungi that have survived forthousands of years without dying.

19 One example of this is the University of California, Santa Cruz, which, in addition to 10,000 ‘traditional’ students,has 70,000 obtaining higher education delivered into their homes or offices (M.R.C. Greenwood, presentation atSmithKline Beecham Science Policy Workshop, London, 1997).

16

previously free-standing medical research institutes. Likewise in Sweden, the KarolinskaUniversity in Stockholm, as part of a ‘network’ strategy to enhance its critical mass, has takenover nursing, social work and other professional schools across Sweden.

Lastly, we shall certainly see the spread of the ‘entrepreneurial university’ species predicted byEtzkowitz (1997 and 2001) – that is, institutions giving considerable emphasis to the thirdfunction of contributing to the economy as well as to teaching and research.

7.5 How great a threat is the separation of research and teaching in universities? Willthe university remain a multi-function institution?

As we have seen, there has always been a degree of separation between teaching and research insome academic institutions. Consequently, to argue that such a separation represents ‘the end ofcivilisation as we know it’, as some academics have implied, is to exaggerate the dangers. Mostuniversities may remain multi-functional but certainly not all of them. Some may choose to focusprimarily on undergraduate education (as many have done during the 20th Century or earlier),some largely on research and graduate education. Others may embrace the third function ofmaking more direct economic contributions and become entrepreneurial universities. Onerelevant factor here could be a decreasing time lag between the creation and use of knowledge.This may encourage the convergence of certain ‘classical’ and ‘technical’ universities, swellingthe population of the ‘entrepreneurial university’ species in which are combined the functions ofknowledge creation, knowledge transfer (particularly through trained students) and knowledgeexploitation – i.e. the integration of the three functions of teaching, research and contributing tothe economy.

7.6 Will science and universities become more central in knowledge society? At whatcost to autonomy?

The analysis presented here suggests that the university will become more central as the economyand society become more reliant on knowledge. It will be responsible for generating not onlyintellectual but also economic and social capital. As we have seen in recent decades, many of themost successful innovative regions in North America and Europe have included entrepreneurialuniversities as an essential component (Pearson, 2000, pp. 9-10). In coming decades, theuniversity is likely to become an ever more important ingredient in building the knowledge-basedeconomy.

Will this come at the price of reduced autonomy? Benner and Sandstrom (2000) have consideredthis issue from the perspective of neo-institutionalist theory. They describe and contrast twomodels by which university research has previously been funded. The ‘autonomy model’ isexemplified by the traditional research council emphasising scientific quality, an internationalorientation and academic initiatives, reinforced by collegial reputational control and an orientationtowards basic research. In contrast, in the ‘interventionist model’, the mission-oriented agency is

17

at the centre, trying to re-orient academic research to industry's knowledge interests, with thefunding agency acting as a pro-active entrepreneur.

Benner and Sandstrom (ibid., p. 300) suggest that we are witnessing the emergence of a neworganisational field that is a hybrid of traditional academic research and the knowledge-basedeconomy, combining collegial recognition with entrepreneurialism and societal accountability.This ‘trans-institutional model’ has been emerging since the 1980s, combining elements of theabove two models in a organisational form related to the triple helix of Etzkowitz andLeydesdorff. The new model is based on academic autonomy and initiatives taken by universityresearchers, but at the same time efforts are made to direct academics to modes of operation thataddress the needs of industry (ibid.).

The main difference from the interventionist model is the catalytic rather than theregulating role of the funding agency. The intention is to develop transinstitutionalnorms for knowledge production, which evolve within a wide socio-economicnetwork, involving academic and industrial interests in the regulation of researchprograms. (ibid., p. 300)

As a consequence, the autonomy of the university may actually be strengthened as it becomes lessdependent on government funding. The ability to establish more explicit policies than previouslymay mean that there is less accidental evolution than previously.

To sum up, we have seen how various driving forces are bringing changes in the relationshipbetween science and universities, on the one hand, and the state, on the other. Science anduniversities are now expected to contribute much more to the development of the criticaltechnologies that nations feel they need to be at the forefront of – the technologies that are oftenidentified in national foresight or other priority-setting exercises (Martin and Irvine, 1989; Martin,1995; Martin and Johnston, 1999). What we are witnessing here is a significant shift in the socialcontract; there are now much more explicit and direct expectations that, in return for publicfunding, universities and researchers should endeavour to deliver greater and more direct benefitsto the society than they did in the period from 1945 through to the 1980s.

While there are some who fear that these changes threaten the autonomy of the university and thebasic researcher, the historical analysis presented above would suggest that what is involved isactually more a shift back towards the social contract embodied in the nineteenth century in theinstitutes of technology and technical universities, and in the land-grant universities in the UnitedStates. If so, the fact that science and universities were able to survive and to adapt to the socialcontract then in place would imply that they can do so again in the 21st Century.

ReferencesArrow, K. (1962), ‘Economic Welfare and the Allocation of Resources for Invention’, in R.Nelson (ed.), The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activities, Princeton University Press,Princeton, 609-625.

18

Barnett, R. (2000), ‘ “The University” Is Dead, Long Live the University’, The Times HigherEducation Supplement, No. 1422 (11 February), 14.Benner, M. and Sandstrom, U. (2000), ‘Institutionalizing the Triple Helix: Research Funding andNorms in the Academic System’, Research Policy 29, 291-301.Brown, G.E. (1992), ‘The Objectivity Crisis’, American Journal of Physics 60, 779-81.Bush, V. (1945, reprinted in 1990), Science: The Endless Frontier, National Science Foundation,Washington, D.C.Clark, B.R. (1998), Creating Entrepreneurial Universities, Pergamon, Oxford.de la Mothe, J and Halliwell, J. (1997), pp. ???-?? in Irvine et al. (1997).Etzkowitz, H. and Leydesdorff, L. (eds) (1997), Universities and the Global KnowledgeEconomy: A Triple Helix of University-Industry-Government Relations, Cassell, London.Etzkowitz, H. (1997), ‘The Entrepreneurial University and the Emergence of DemocraticCorporatism’, pp. 141-52 in Leydesdorff and Etzkowitz (1997).Etzkowitz, H. and Leydesdorff, L. (1998), ‘The Endless Transition: A “Triple Helix” ofUniversity-Industry-Government Relations’, Minerva 36, 203-08.Etzkowitz, H. and Leydesdorff, L. (2000), ‘The Dynamics of Innovation: from National Systemsand “Mode 2” to a Triple Helix of University-Industry-Government Relations’, Research Policy29, 9-23.Etzkowitz, H., Webster, A., Gebhardt, C. and Terra, B.R.C. (2000), ‘The Future of the Universityand the University of the Future: Evolution of Ivory Tower to Entrepreneurial Paradigm’,Research Policy 29, 313-30.Etzkowitz, H. (in press), The Second Academic Revolution: MIT and the Rise of EntrepreneurialScience, Gordon and Breach, London.Etzkowitz, H. and Martin, B.R. (forthcoming), ‘W(h)ither the University? Towards anEvolutionary Model’ (manuscript).

Geuna, A. (1998), ‘The Internationalization of European Universities: A Return to MedievalRoots’, Minerva 36, 253-270.

Geuna, A. and Martin, B.R. (2001), ‘University Research Evaluation and Funding: AnInternational Comparison’, to be submitted to Minerva.Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotony, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P. and Trow, M. (1994), TheNew Production of Knowledge, Sage, London.Godin, B. (1998), ‘Writing Performative History: The New New Atlantis?’, Social Studies ofScience 28, 465-83.Godin, B. (2000), ‘Measuring Science: Is There “Basic Research” Without Statistics?’, Project onthe History and Sociology of S&T Statistics Paper No. 3, Observatoire des Sciences et desTechniques, Montreal.Graham, L. (1998), What Have We Learned about Science and Technology from the RussianExperience, Stanford University Press, Palo Alto.Guston, D.H. and Keniston, K. (1994a), ‘Introduction: The Social Contract for Science’, pp. 1-41in Guston and Keniston (1994b).Guston, D.H. and Keniston, K. (eds) (1994b), The Fragile Contract, MIT Press, Cambridge andLondon.Irvine, J., Martin, B.R., Griffiths, D. and Gathier R. (eds), 1997, Equipping Science for the 21stCentury, Aldershot and Brookfield, Vermont: Edward Elgar.

19

Jencks, C. and D. Riesman, D. 1968, The Academic Revolution, Doubleday, New York.R Johnston, R., Currie, J., Grigg, L., Martin, B., Hicks, D., Ling, E.N. and Skea, J. (1993), TheEffects of Resource Concentration on Research Performance, National Board of Employment,Education and Training Commissioned Report No.25, Australian Government Publishing Service,Canberra.Leydesdorff, L. and Etzkowitz, H. (1996), ‘Emergence of a Triple Helix of University-Industry-Government Relations’, Science and Public Policy 23, 279-86.Leydesdorff, L. and Etzkowitz, H. (eds) (1998), A Triple Helix of University-Industry-Government relations: The Future Location of Research?, Science Policy Institute, StateUniversity of New York, New York.Martin, B.R. and J. Irvine, J. (1989), Research Foresight: Priority-Setting in Science, PinterPublishers, London and New York.Martin, B.R. (1995), ‘Foresight in Science and Technology’, Technology Analysis and StrategicManagement 7, 139-68.Martin, B.R. and Johnston, R. (1999), ‘Technology Foresight for Wiring Up the NationalInnovation System: Experiences in Britain, Australia and New Zealand’, TechnologicalForecasting and Social Change 60, 37-54.Martin, B.R. and Etzkowitz, H. (2001), ‘The Origin and Evolution of the University Species’,Journal for Science and Technology Studies (Tidskrift för Vetenskaps- och Teknikstudier, VEST)13, pp.9-34.Merton, R.K. (1938), Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England, St.Catherines Press, Bruges.National Science and Technology Council (1999), Nanotechnology Research Directions: Visionfor Nanotechnology in the Next Decade, Executive Office of the President, Washington DC.Nelson, R. R. (1959), ‘The Simple Economics of R&D’, American Economic Review.Pearson, I. (2000), Universities and Innovation: Meeting the Challenge, The Social MarketFoundation, London.Pelikan, J. (1992), The Idea of the University: A Re-examination, Yale University Press, NewHaven.Pestre, D. (1997), ‘La Production des Savoirs entre Academiés et Marché’, Revue d’EconomieIndustrielle 79, 163-74.Rosenberg, N. and Nelson, R.R. (1994), ‘American Universities and Technical Advance inIndustry’, Research Policy 23, 323-48Schimank, U. and Winnes, M. (2000), ‘Beyond Humboldt? The Relationship Between Teachingand Research in European University Systems’ (manuscript).Shinn, T. (2000), ‘The “Triple Helix” and “New Production of Knowledge” as Socio-CognitiveFields’, paper presented at the Third Triple Helix Conference, Rio de Janeiro, 26-29 April 2000.Stehr, N. (1994), Knowledge Societies, Sage, London.Stokes, D.E. (1997), Pasteur’s Quadrant: Basic Science and Technological Innovation.Brookings Institution Press, Washington DC.Weingart, P. (1997), ‘From “Finalization” to “Mode 2”: Old Wine in New Bottles?’, SocialScience Information 36, 591-613.Ziman, J. (1991), ‘Academic Science as a System of Markets’, Higher Education Quarterly 12,57-68.

20

Ziman, J. (1994), Prometheus Bound: Science in a Dynamic Steady State, Cambridge UniversityPress, Cambridge.