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Entangled in academic capitalism? A case-study on changing ideals and practices of university research

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Abstract

During recent years universities have engagedincreasingly in academic capitalism as aresponse to the decrease in budget funding andthe external push towards entrepreneurialactivities. This paper explores on the microlevel what impacts the changing fundingpatterns have on university research, how thechanges are responded to in different researchunits, and how researchers experience them.Based on focused interviews with seniorresearchers in three different types ofresearch settings in Finland, the paper arguesthat engaging in academic capitalism iseveryday reality in all units but takes adiversity of forms depending on how close ordistant the field is from the market. Inaddition the disciplinary and institutionalcultures shape the process of adaptation to thechanging environmental conditions. It isconcluded that increasing market-orientationdoes not displace traditional academicpractices, values and ideals as researchers tryto accommodate them to entrepreneurialactivities. However, especially due to thegrowth and intensification of project work onshort-term contracts, achieving a balancebetween the two value-sets is at present feltto be increasingly difficult, thus generating avariety of tensions in the daily work of theresearchers and even endangering the quality ofresearch.

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  1. Department of Sociology and Social Psychology, University of Tampere, 33014, Finland

    Oili-Helena Ylijoki

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Ylijoki, OH. Entangled in academic capitalism? A case-study on changing ideals and practices of university research. Higher Education 45, 307–335 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022667923715

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