Many leaders of public research universities worry about falling behind private research universities at a time when private university finances have improved dramatically and state support for higher education has declined. In this paper, I provide grounds for a more optimistic view of the competitive position of public research universities. I develop two "business models" for higher education: the public research university model is based on high volume of enrollments and low cost per student, while the private university model is based on low volume and high cost. I show that the...
Charles Vest gave the third of three Clark Kerr Lectures on the Role of Higher Education in Society on September 13, 2005 on the Berkeley campus. In public as well as private universities, resources provided by philanthropic individuals and foundations and by corporate research sponsors increasingly support the margin of university excellence, and increase the access of students to that excellence. The congruence of interests, goals, and expectations of philanthropists and corporate sponsors with those of universities must be carefully considered. The values of excellence and access...
This study reports on five disciplinary case studies that explore academic value systems as they influence publishing behavior and attitudes of University of California, Berkeley faculty. The case studies are based on direct interviews with relevant stakeholders — faculty, advancement reviewers, librarians, and editors — in five fields: chemical engineering, anthropology, law and economics, English-language literature, and biostatistics. The results of the study strongly confirm the vital role of peer review in faculty attitudes and actual publishing behavior. There is much more...
Charles Vest gave the second of three Clark Kerr Lectures on the Role of Higher Education in Society on April 21, 2005 on the Santa Barbara campus. The Age of the Internet presents remarkable opportunities for higher education and research in the United States and throughout the world. The rise of a meta-university of globally shared teaching materials and scholarly archives, undergirding campuses everywhere, both rich and poor, could well be a dominant, democratizing aspect of the next few decades. Even as we develop the meta-university and other forms of digitally empowered...
The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the variety of information and communication technology (ICT) applications at traditional universities and to integrate them into a holistic picture of the institution. Using the distinction of three key elements of scholarly activity (research, publication, education), it suggests a functional perspective of the organization as a way to raise questions for the assessment of ICT applications in universities. This may lead to a better understanding of the different rationales in research, publication, and education. Acknowledging...
This chapter from the author's dissertation summarizes findings from case studies of university-based start-up firms. The case studies contribute descriptive accounts to support and illuminate emerging empirical research on this specialized set of start-ups. The case studies highlight several interesting findings related to the special role of inventors and the university in developing the technology as well as how the operating experience of these firms compares and contrasts with standard beliefs about start-ups. For example, the case studies document the stark contrasts among...
Movement to fully open-access electronic scholarly publication has been hampered by the conflicting interests of universities, private publishers, researchers themselves, and those who fund research. The situation interacts strongly with traditions regarding peer review and the ways in which researchers establish stature within their fields. Progress to date has led to seemingly awkward and probably transient systems of dual publication or dual publication status, including green, gold, and hybrid open access. There are also efforts to establish pay-to-publish as the standard model to...
Igor Chirikov is the Director of the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium and Senior Researcher at CSHE. SERU Consortium is an academic and policy research collaboration based at Center for Studies in Higher Education at the UC Berkeley working in partnership with Etio and member universities. The Consortium is a group of leading research-intensive universities that increase student success by generating and analyzing comparative data on the student experience.
As SERU Consortium Director Igor Chirikov has broad responsibilities for overall SERU Consortium...
John Aubrey Douglass is Senior Research Fellow -- Public Policy and Higher Education at the Center for Studies in Higher Education (CSHE) at the University of California - Berkeley. He is the author of Neo-Nationalism and Universities (Johns Hopkins Univeristy Press 2021), Envisioning the Asian...
