In this paper, drawing on magazines read by US academic leaders, we explore the spread of commercial language into the world of higher education. We ask whether commercial codes are taken for granted, considered routine, and common sense in academic settings. We develop a multidimensional approach, considering two practices, strategic planning and…

This article discusses the history of American and Soviet transformations in German universities during the period of the Cold War, 1945-1990. Both American and Soviet policies were resisted by the university community, particularly by the conservative German professoriate, in both parts of the divided Germany. The article shows how and why both…

As universities are increasingly called by their national governments for a more entrepreneurial management of public research results, they started to develop internal structures and policies to take a proactive role in the commercialisation of university research. For the first time, this paper presents a detailed chronicle of how country-level…

Today universities are increasingly seen as motors of innovation: they not only need to provide trained manpower and publications to society, but also new products, new processes and new services that create firms, jobs, and economic growth. This function of universities is controversial, and a huge and still expanding literature has tried to…

Universities worldwide are facing enormous strains as a result of increased external expectations where global visibility should be mixed with local and regional utility. In debates on the future of higher education, becoming an entrepreneurial university has been highlighted as a novel--although perhaps a more hybrid--way to deal with this…

By comparing three types of hybrid organizations--18th-century scientific academies, 19th-century institutions of higher vocational education, and 20th-century industrial research institutes--it is the purpose here to answer the question of why new hybrid organizations are continuously formed. Traditionally, and often implicitly, it is often…

Universities are expected to be places where knowledge is shared freely among academicians. However, the reality shows that knowledge sharing is barely present within universities these days. As Malaysia shifts towards building a knowledge-based society, academic institutions, particularly the public universities, now face ever-growing faculty…

This study looks at some of the traits that characterized Argentina's scientific and university policies under the military regime that spanned from 1976 through 1983. To this end, it delves into a rarely explored empirical observation: financial resource transfers from national universities to the National Scientific and Technological Research…

The objective of this paper is to balance two major conceptual tendencies in science policy studies, continuity and discontinuity theory. While the latter argue for fundamental and distinct changes in science policy in the late 20th century, continuity theorists show how changes do occur but not as abrupt and fundamental as discontinuity theorists…

It is commonplace to say that the modern economy is knowledge based but a moment's reflection points to the vacuity of this notion. For all economies are knowledge based and could not be otherwise. The question is rather how is one kind of knowledge based economy to be distinguished from another? This essay proposes that the answer may lie in…

A comparison of the engineering schools at UC Berkeley and Stanford during the 1940s and 1950s shows that having an excellent academic program is necessary but not sufficient to make a university entrepreneurial (an engine of economic development). Key factors that made Stanford more entrepreneurial than Cal during this period were superior…

American universities are purported to excel at technology transfer. This assumption, however, masks important features of American innovation. Attempts to emulate the US example must recognize the heterogeneity of its industries and institutions of higher education. Stanford University and the biomedical cluster in Boston, Massachusetts,…

This essay considers recent implications of "new public management" (NPM) strategies for the universities of Germany. It argues that NPM poses a threat to the traditional values of the academic profession, and asks what the universities should do to restore public trust in their methods and management.