Call for Papers for the Issue of The Journal of Comparative & International Higher Education (Published by the Higher Education SIG of the Comparative and International Education Society; Print ISSN: 2151-0393 Online ISSN: 2151-0407):
Academic Profession, Entrepreneurial Universities and Scholarship of Application: The Imperative of Impact
Issue Editors: Hei-hang Hayes Tang, Roger Chao, Jr.
Since the global spread of neo-liberalism in the 1990s, diminishing government revenues for higher education has been a reality facing a significant number of universities across the world (Breneman 1993; Fairweather 1988). In most of the higher education systems, government funding is increasingly allocated on a competitive basis. Economic globalization and the emergence of knowledge economies intensify “the entrepreneurial state” (Mazzucato 2013) within universities, whereas the “corporate model” of university governance has been supported by supranational organizations such as Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and World Bank. The global trend of academic entrepreneurialism (for example Clark, 1998; Tang, 2014) profoundly affects the organization of higher education institutions and of academic life. Particularly, the form of scholarship has been undergoing a subtle but constant transformation. Alongside the “scholarship of discovery,” the “scholarship of application” (SoA) is given enhanced attention. The emergence of the policy discourses related to the scholarship of application – as well as the discussions and actions in response to it – coincide with the intense neoliberal changes that affected traditional academia in the 1990s. One social technology for promoting SoA is the policies of knowledge transfer, which have been institutionalized and formalized in the higher education sector, especially through the role played by the intermediary of knowledge transfer unit on campus (Geuna and Muscio 2009). In some cases, the academic profession is changing with a strong focus on engaging in ‘impactful’ research and acquiring external research grants, which demand knowledge and expertise derived from the SoA, especially when academics are looking for funds from public organizations, industry or business. An invisible academic revolution has been ongoing (Loi and Chiara 2015) when SoA becomes one imperative dimension of the “third mission” of universities, on top of teaching and academic research (for example Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000; Laredo 2007).
It is argued that the spirit of the SoA can be traced back to the time when Abraham Lincoln was the American president (Boyer 1996). During his tenure, the Land Grant Act of 1862 was enacted to seek alignment between university activities and the national agricultural and industrial reforms. The federal government donated land to each state for such educational endeavors. “Land-grant colleges” committed vigorously, throughout the nineteenth century, in the liberal and practical education for improving the lives of farmers and industrialists. Subsequently, the idea of the “service mission” of American universities has been reflected by the leadership of university presidents. For example, Charles Eliot, the President of Harvard University from 1869 to 1909, considered the profession of American universities to live out the “democratic spirit of serviceableness”. American universities’ unrelenting commitment to service was advocated amidst the rise of academic returnees from Europe in the nineteenth century.
When the global world is entering the age of fourth industrial revolution, universities are expected to be an imperative component of any innovation system, applying basic research and innovative knowledge via the “triple-helix model” of university-industry-government interaction (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 1997). In the context of Europe, the renewed EU (European Union) Agenda for Higher Education focus on priorities that support the move to the SoA. It is suggested that universities must play their part in facing up to European Union’s scientific and democratic challenges, as there are too few PhD holders, in comparison to the United States and Japan, who develop a career outside academia. European academic professions need to promote SoA through greater focus in doctoral programs on the application of knowledge and interaction with future employers. Universities are not always contributing as much as they are expected to innovation in the wider economy, hence there are innovation gaps to be filled now and then.
Towards the brand new era of academic entrepreneurialism, the quality and impact of research will be measured not only by conventional academic metrics, but also by the tangible benefits the academic profession bring to the global, regional, national and local communities. In view of the imperative of impact, university education should offer every student with opportunities for holistic personal development, enhanced language competence and experience outside their locality and comfort zone, through internships, work placements, other experiential learning at community organizations, charities and commercial firms.
This special issue seeks to examine the way academic entrepreneurialism manifests itself in the changing discourses of the notion of “scholarship”, its impact on the changing academic profession as well as on the world conditions out of the academy. It particularly investigates the contexts, rationales, definitions and implications of the discursive field of the “scholarship of application”. It welcomes papers which research the changing connections between higher education, society and economy. It supports development, analysis, and dissemination of theory-, policy-, and practice-related issues that are related to the theme and influence higher education. Relevant topics include, but not limited to: university new missions for knowledge exchange/transfer, impact of academic profession in the 21st century, public accountability and entrepreneurial universities, the role of basic research in innovation system, academic entrepreneurship, national/local society and internationalization, as well as critical review of globalizing academic entrepreneurialism and academic capitalism.
Contributors of the special issue can take single or various country cases or institutional cases supporting - or present counter cases against - higher education practices in relation to academic entrepreneurialism and SoA. Informed analysis can be conducted with a focus on regional, national and institutional policies related to the SoA. Conceptual discussions and empirical scholarship offered by this special issue can create new knowledge for better understanding the way in which the public mission of higher education is being reinvented in the new century of academic entrepreneurialism, and probably through the entrepreneurial state of university governance.
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