Funding, then, doesn’t force results but it provides a strong steering process. Only certain types of knowledge are likely to result because the researchers are paid to look only for certain types of things.
Funding for the majority of formal research in the world today is provided by governments and corporations. The amount of funding from trade unions, churches, environmental groups or women’s groups is tiny by comparison. That means that most research follows governmental or corporate agendas.[3]
Military research is a big proportion. Here the aim is to develop more powerful weapons, more precise guidance systems, more penetrating methods of surveillance, and more astute ways of moulding soldiers to be effective fighters. For the researchers, the tasks can be very specific, such as designing a bullet that is more lethal — or sometimes less lethal, for crowd control purposes. Many talented scientists have devoted their best efforts to making weaponry more deadly.
In most government and corporate labs, practical relevance to the goals of the organisation is highly important. In these labs, the direct influence of groups with different agendas is minimal. Environmental groups do not expect chemical corporations to do research into biological control as an alternative to pesticides, and do not bother to lobby for such a change. Groups with little money to fund research turn instead to universities.
Overall, university research is less targeted to specific outcomes than most government and corporate research. This is especially true of fields like philosophy and mathematics. But before getting carried away by the wonders of “pure research” in universities, a bit of context is needed.
Universities were originally set up to train ministers and lawyers who were part of the privileged classes. Over the centuries, different groups have pushed to have universities serve their own purposes. Business leaders want graduates who will be committed and hard-working employees. Leaders of the legal, medical and other professions want training to reproduce the profession. Governments want training for prospective civil servants. Parents want opportunities for their children. Social movements look for scholarly support for their agendas. The university is a focal point for these and other pressures and agendas.[4]
No single group has been able to control universities for its own purposes. If, for example, corporate leaders decided to run universities themselves, it would cost a lot of money. They would come under attack from other groups with conflicting agendas, such as parents and professional elites. The consequence has been that most universities are funded wholly or partly by governments but retain a considerable degree of autonomy compared to corporate or government research labs. The belief in “academic freedom” for scholars to pursue teaching and research provides a convenient way for universities to appear to serve the general interest while still catering for those with more power and money.
The training of members of professions remains a key task for universities. The majority of students and staff in most universities are in specific applied areas, such as medicine, law, accountancy and engineering. Research in these fields tends to be oriented to the priorities of the wider profession. Medical researchers are far more likely to investigate surgical treatments of haemorrhoids than prevention of haemorrhoids by change of diet. There is scope for research in a variety of directions, but there are several pressures towards a service orientation, including outside funding (for example by medical supply companies), controls by certification bodies (needed to vouch that a degree is suitable preparation for becoming a doctor), possible jobs outside the university, and the expectations of colleagues.
A few fields are not so tightly tied to outside groups, notably the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. This includes disciplines such as physics, biology, sociology and history. Even in these areas there is the possibility of outside funding that influences research agendas. It might seem that biologists and historians are in a good position to undertake research that serves groups without money to directly pay for research. A few of them do, but not many. There are other factors to consider. Not least is the self-interest of academics themselves.
Most universities are divided up into units according to what are called disciplines, from architecture to zoology. The names and sizes of units vary from place to place. Some universities have a single mathematics department, others have pure mathematics, applied mathematics, and statistics. Occasionally new disciplines emerge and break off, such as computer science. The important point, though, is that members of each discipline jealously guard their own little patch of knowledge. They attempt to control teaching of students in their discipline, appointments in the field and the type of research that is published in the field’s central journals.
Disciplines are based around a framework for understanding the subject matter of the field. Students are trained in the standard way of thinking. If researchers work in a university setting, they are influenced by colleagues. If they want to publish scholarly papers, they have to get past referees, who are usually established members of the field, most of whom expect research to follow the standard patterns. Referees and editors expect authors to be familiar with standard ideas and publications in the field, which requires a considerable investment of effort to comprehend. All this prevents outsiders from waltzing in to make a contribution to the discipline. To use another metaphor, disciplinary expectations operate like strong tariff barriers against moving very far from one’s own training and previous research output.
So far, then, I’ve discussed two major factors that influence the production of knowledge: funding and disciplines. Sometimes these reinforce each other. For example, a civil engineer working for a government roads authority will be primarily oriented to the practicalities of road design and construction, but may maintain a link to the engineering profession through journals and conferences, perhaps even writing papers for conference proceedings.
On the other hand, sometimes funding and disciplinary influences pull in different directions. Many practical problems cannot be dealt with effectively within one discipline. For example, the development of an effective military strike force requires skills from manufacturing, economics, psychology, organisational dynamics and other areas. Discipline-based universities are not much use for pulling these areas together; think-tanks, with teams of many different specialists and generalists working together, are more likely to be helpful. Little bits of the larger problem can be farmed out to specialist researchers.
| Plenty of funding | Little funding | |
|---|---|---|
| Disciplines | chemical engineering, computer science, accountancy, law | philosophy, history, creative writing |
| Interdisciplinary fields | policy making, military planning, corporate strategies | peace studies, women’s studies, political economy |
There is quite a bit of disagreement about what constitutes a discipline. In fact, there is ongoing tension and conflict in universities over boundaries between disciplines. Usually it is those who deal with theory — pure mathematicians, theoretical physicists, econometricians — who lay claim to the core of the discipline. Others are simply “applying” the knowledge. The theory-application or pure-applied tension results from the two dimensions of influence in the above table, funding and disciplines. Power for disciplines comes from control over ideas, hence the status and influence of theory. Most money comes directly or indirectly from the potential for applications, but this makes researchers more dependent on outside groups. This creates the curious situation in universities in which theoreticians have the greatest status but applied work reaps the greatest material rewards.
3
David Dickson,