Diversity in the Funding Structure of Research Universities in the U.S.: A Study on the Social Foundations of Academic Research
2022 Volume 32 Pages 53-73
Details
2022 Volume 32 Pages 53-73
Focusing on research universities is key in exploring the social foundations and conditions under which academic research operates. It was in 19th-century Germany that universities began to encompass the research function, but the concept of the "research university" has become popular in the U.S. , where the functional differentiation of higher- education institutions made significant progress in the 20th century. In Japan, certain American research universities often serve as models for university reform. Stanford University, for example, is sometimes taken as a model, but its unique model is not suited for Japanese universities. In this way, diversity of research universities is often overlooked.
Mimetic isomorphism may cause a certain degree of homogeneity among research universities. However, they have not been uniformly shaped by government policies but rather have formed naturally through the involvement of various actors and factors. Thus, the U.S. seems to have a great diversity of research universities. The role of these research universities encompasses more than just research, and which role they emphasize varies from university to university. Since World War II, the U.S. federal government has been an extremely important source of research grants, and the quantity of federal research grants that universities receive is used to measure their research activities. However, research universities are not driven solely by federal research funding.
Therefore, in order to avoid misunderstandings caused by using the specific research universities as a model and to clarify how society supports academic research, this paper explores the diversity of the financial base of American research universities. The analysis shows that research universities can be classified into several groups, including tuition-dependent, institutional grant-dependent, research grant-dependent, investment revenue-dependent, hospital revenue-dependent groups, and so on.
