Building a Research University (Preview)

Building a Research University Peter J Heard

Building a Research University A Guide to Establishing Research in New Universities

Peter J Heard

Copyright © 2022 by Sunway University Sdn Bhd Published by Sunway University Press An imprint of Sunway University Sdn Bhd No. 5, Jalan Universiti Bandar Sunway 47500 Selangor Darul Ehsan Malaysia press.sunway.edu.my All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, now known or hereafter invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-967-5492-59-4 Perpustakaan Negara Malaysia

Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Heard, Peter J. Building a Research University : A Guide to Establishing Research in New Universities / Peter J Heard.

ISBN 978-967-5492-59-4 1. Research institutes--Malaysia.

2. Education, Higher--Research.

3. Research--Management.

I. Title.

001.406

Edited by Hani Hazman, Sarah Loh Designed and typeset by Rachel Goh Printed by Vinlin Press Sdn Bhd, Malaysia

Cover image: Lera Efremova/Shutterstock.com Image used under licence from Shutterstock.com

Contents Preface 1 The Expansion of Universities and Research

iv 1

2 League Tables

11

3 Building Academic Reputation

22

4 Research and Impact

30

5 Funding Research

35

6 Balancing Teaching and Research

46

7 Research Focus and Critical Mass

61

8 Publish or Perish, and Academic Fraud

71

9 Academic Staffing Strategies

85

10 Research Management

109

Notes

128

Further Reading

131

Acknowledgements

132

Index

135

Preface The demand for higher education has never been greater.

In such rapidly changing and uncertain times, it is heartwarming (to me, at least) that the demand seems only to be growing stronger by the day. Universities are places that naturally, and quite possibly uniquely, dwell simultaneously in the past, present, and future—professors of history look back at past events, professors in the business school seek to understand how today’s globalised economies work, and professors in the science departments look to create new technologies that will serve us in the future.

Individually, these perspectives are not unique. In universities, however, they coexist, collide, and bounce off each other, creating an environment perfect for young, open minds to learn from the mistakes of past experiences alongside the possibilities of the future, while being grounded in the reality of today. That is why higher education is so important, and why it is so heart-warming to see that across virtually all sections of society, the value of higher education is recognised and its growth supported.

The growing demand for higher education has come not just with the expansion of existing universities, but also an explosion of new universities in pretty much every corner of the world, particularly in parts that do not have the benefit of long-standing higher education systems. Most newer

iv

Preface

universities begin life as small teaching-only institutions, struggling to attract the best students and teaching staff within a highly competitive environment. Not surprisingly, students want to go to the most prestigious universities because they believe that the standard of education will be higher and that they will be able to achieve more, and hopefully secure a well-rewarded job upon completing their studies.

Prestige is thus a very valuable commodity in higher education—universities are, almost universally, in a constant arms race to become better recognised than those around them locally as well as globally. A common denominator among the world’s most prestigious universities is that they are actively engaged in high-quality research. Indeed, research has become de rigueur that without it, a university is unlikely to be truly recognised as prestigious. For new, teachingfocused institutions, it is almost an existential imperative for them to establish research programmes alongside their teaching ones and to endeavour to join, and then climb, the regional if not the world university league tables.

Based on my own experience in helping to lead two newer universities at the beginning of their research journeys, this book seeks to shed some light on the following questions. How is a university to make the transition from a teaching-only institution to one that is also actively engaged in research? What are the challenges universities and their staff and students will face? How can universities successfully overcome some of these challenges?

v

Building a Research University

This book aims to provide a useful guide to university leaders, staff, and students who are frustrated by some of the new policies and directives emanating from their university.

There is of course no single, right way for a university to grow its research, but there are some wrong ways to do things.

I hope this book will enable universities to avoid some of the mistakes that others, including myself, have made.

Peter J Heard Chancellery Office Sunway University

vi

The Expansion of Universities and Research

CHAPTER 1

The Expansion of Universities and Research

What is a university? Most people assume a university to be an organisation that has two primary roles: teaching students to an advanced level and undertaking research.

Is that necessarily so? The Oxford English Dictionary defines “university” as an educational institution designed for instruction, examination, or both, of students in many branches of advanced learning, conferring degrees in various faculties, and often embodying colleges and similar institutions.

Notice that nowhere in this definition is the word “research” mentioned. Indeed, if we were to look at the universities that existed little more than a hundred years or so ago, most of them were focused very much on the teaching of students rather than research. In his now famous book, The Idea of a University, which was first published in 1852, John Henry Newman argues that the university is a place of teaching universal knowledge, not scientific and philosophical discovery.1 In other words,

1

Building a Research University

universities are for teaching, not research. However, times change and universities, which are not generally renowned for embracing change, were starting to transform as well around the time Newman wrote his book.

Philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt, a name that not many outside or even inside academia may know well, has had a profound influence on the shape of modern universities. He championed higher education to be a synergistic combination of research and teaching, a model now known as the Humboldtian model. The University of Berlin, founded in 1810 as a direct result of Humboldt’s influence, was renamed Humboldt University of Berlin after the Second World War. Since its establishment, the University focused on having a unity of teaching and research.

This basic idea that a university should be a place of both teaching and research took hold, spreading across Germany to Northern Europe and then to the United States (US), where Humboldt’s ideas were very much embraced. Despite, or perhaps because of, having one of the longest established systems of universities in the world, the United Kingdom (UK) came rather later to the party—the model only gained traction here by the end of the First World War. By the 1960s, the idea that a university was really only a proper university if it was doing research was almost universal.

2

The Expansion of Universities and Research

There are now somewhere in the region of 30,0000 universities and other institutions of higher learning worldwide.2 The number continues to increase rapidly, particularly across parts of Asia and Africa where education is seen as a route to greater prosperity and social mobility and where increasing wealth means higher education is no longer the preserve of the fortunate few.

A good example that shows this expansion, and one with which I am most familiar, is the UK. In 1850, there were just eight universities in the UK. That number had grown to around 20 by 1950 and then to 47 by 1989, the year I first went to university. Today, there are more than 147. We can only wonder how many there might be by 2050 (but that is for another book altogether!). As it is true in the UK, so it is much more in other parts of the globe—the vast majority of universities are really quite young.

The Research Arms Race

The road to establishing a university can be long, arduous, and bureaucratic, and one that more often than not requires getting multiple layers of government approval. Governments are rightly reluctant to allow new entities to join the “university club” for fear of damaging the country’s higher education sector in both the eyes of its own citizens and the wider world, and because of the

3

Building a Research University

burden that universities, even private ones, tend to place on the exchequer. That said, in most countries, research is not a necessary criterion for an institution of higher learning to be granted the moniker “university” and be allowed to grant degrees.

Given that most new universities rely almost exclusively on fees paid by undergraduate students to support themselves, and that research is a costly endeavour, almost all universities start out as small teaching-only institutions.

Although the majority of universities in the world today are relatively new and have a greater focus on teaching than research, the amount of research conducted has also grown rapidly over the last few decades. In 1989, for example, the Web of Science lists just over 900,000 publications for the whole of the year; in 2019, in contrast, there were almost 3.2 million publications (and the Web of Science is far from the largest database of scholarly output).

As research is now all but universally seen as a key part of any good university’s mission, it is hardly surprising that many—although not all—universities see increasing their research output as a way of improving their standing with stakeholders. This is true not just for newer and traditionally teaching-focused institutions, but also research-intensive universities which are, in many respects, under even greater pressure to keep growing the volume and quality of their research. If they do not, they will be overtaken by those that do!

4

The Expansion of Universities and Research

Universities are, and have been for several decades, in a high-intensity research arms race where they have to “run” fast just to stay where they are. Research costs a lot of money and this is one reason why university fees have risen so much in real terms. It is no coincidence that the number of international students accepted by universities has also blossomed. The need to secure additional funding streams is a significant factor behind the drive to recruit more international students; in most countries, international fees are higher than home fees, providing a net income boost.

Of course, universities prefer to highlight more altruistic reasons for international student recruitment drives (and of such reasons there are many), but behind the scenes, money is undeniably a key consideration.

Some people argue that the research arms race has been detrimental to education. Undoubtedly, there are downsides to today’s publish-or-perish culture which, for example, has given rise to more instances of unethical behaviour such as the fabrication of data and paying, or otherwise inducing, others to cite you, and (arguably) placed less emphasis on the development and delivery of high-quality teaching. Businesses have also sprung up to capitalise on this culture, some of which are engaged in deeply unethical practices, such as the so-called predatory journals and conference organisers.

Universities themselves are not immune; there are known instances of universities deliberately falsifying data returns to rankings organisations and even bribing

5

Building a Research University

academics and others to vote for them in the academic reputation surveys.

Despite these issues, the vast majority of academics and their universities are, without doubt, seeking to do the right things in the right ways to the benefit of their students and society. I believe that a really good university balances its obligations to its undergraduate students with its desire to continually grow its research output. After all, the number of undergraduate students in all but few universities is higher (far higher in most cases) than the number of doctoral students and researchers.

There are many who think that there is too much research. Certainly, a lot of research can be described (derogatorily) as “handle turning”: the simple collection/ description of facts that does little to extend the body of knowledge. I am sympathetic to this view; too much of what I see when I review papers for journals falls into this category, and I do wonder what the value of it is. Yet, questions such as this have been raised for many years. We might equally argue that all knowledge has at least some intrinsic value and that we just never know how important an idea might turn out to become in the future. Who might have guessed the profound impact Michael Faraday’s firstever electric motor would have, and continues to have, on the world?

6

The Expansion of Universities and Research

Many also argue that the act of conducting research helps to ensure that the academics themselves are keeping at the forefront of their disciplines which, in turn, ensures that what they are teaching their students is also at the forefront. I am a strong advocate of researchinformed teaching. I believe that students are best taught by academics who are passionate about their subject.

Those who are passionate will be eager to learn more Students are best about their subject by taught by academics undertaking research and who are passionate passing that knowledge on— about their subject the Humboldtian model in action!

A Matter of Academic Judgement

With research now expected of any good university, it is true to say that teaching-focused institutions are very often viewed as being of lower quality than researchfocused ones (and whether or not this is fair I leave you to decide). This view is held most firmly by not just many academics worldwide but also prospective students, governments, and employers. As such, many teachingonly universities can find it difficult to attract students, particularly as the number of universities grows and the competition to attract students and the necessary highquality staff to teach them continues to increase. Such

7

Building a Research University

institutions can often find it hard to attract government or other additional income streams to help them develop.

While some universities have taken a deliberate decision not to incorporate research within their agenda, many more see transitioning from teaching only to the dual mission of teaching and research as vital for their longterm success.

The idea that a university is not a good university unless it does good research is of course today’s mantra, but that does not necessarily mean it will be for tomorrow.

Universities are often very slow to change, far too slow in the eyes of many, but they do change. We have already seen how universities evolved to incorporate research as part of their core mission relatively recently, at least recently on the timescales that universities tend to measure themselves on. Could this again change and the importance of research decline? It is certainly possible.

The Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), first introduced in the UK in 2017, for example, is a system for assessing the quality of teaching in universities. Based on a series of seven metrics, universities are rated as Gold, Silver, or Bronze. The TEF is intended primarily as a resource for prospective students, to help them decide which university to choose. The TEF is still relatively new, and it remains to be seen how much of an influence the TEF will be on students’ choice and how much it might have an impact on the general perception of which universities are the best.

8

The Expansion of Universities and Research

Could our idea of a good university also become strongly shaped by whether or not employers think its graduates make good employees? We shall look at league tables in more detail in the next chapter, but one element that contributes to them is employer reputation. The desire to get a good, well-paid job of choice certainly looms large on the radar of many students I come across.

Most of the 30,000 or so universities and other institutions of higher learning will agree that their graduates’ employability is an essential indicator of success for them.

If employers think a particular university’s graduates make the best employees, then surely that will raise the prospect of students from that university achieving their (at least initial) career aspirations. Does this, in turn, mean that the particular university will be perceived as a good university?

It will be hard for anyone to argue to the contrary. It may well be that the importance of employer reputation in university rankings will grow but, and it is quite a big but, I find it hard to foresee a day any time soon where research is not one of, if not the, primary indicator of success.

For one, it is academics at other leading universities that are ultimately among the primary judges of what good universities are. These academics are focused very much on research, both as measures of their own standing and of academics and universities elsewhere. Until they

9

Building a Research University

change their view, it is hard to see the dominance of research as the measure of excellence coming to an end any time soon. Research is thus, and in my view, likely to remain for the foreseeable future, a determining factor in what makes a good university a good university in the eyes of the world.

For any university striving to be recognised as good on the global stage, building research is a must. In later chapters, we will look at some ways in which universities can do that, but we should first consider some of the key strategic drivers behind the explosion in research.

To be recognised as In the next few chapters, we good on the global consider the league tables and stage, building the importance of academic research is a must reputation. We will then go on to consider what research actually is in a bit more detail, and how to consider whether research really has any meaning or value beyond the ivory towers of academia itself.

10