Richard Münch - Academic Capitalism : universities in the global struggle for excellence

This book investigates the intensifying struggle for excellence between universities in a globalized academic field. The rise of the entrepreneurial university and academic capitalism are superimposing themselves on the competition of scientists for progress of knowledge and recognition by the scientific community. The result is a sharpening institutional stratification of the field. This stratification is produced and continuously reproduced by the intensified struggle for funds with the shrinking of block grants and the growing significance of competitive funding, as well as the increasing impact of international and national rankings on academic research and teaching. The increased allocation of funds on the basis of performance leads to overinvestment of resources at the small top and underinvestment for the broad mass of universities in the middle and lower ranks. There is a curvilinear inverted u-shaped relationship of investments and returns in terms of knowledge production. Paradoxically, the intrusion of the economic logic and measures of managerial controlling into the academic field imply increasing inefficiency in the allocation of resources to universities. The top institutions suffer from overinvestment, the rank-and-file institutions from underinvestment. The economic inefficiency is accompanied by a shrinking potential for renewal and open knowledge evolution.

Richard Mnch is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bamberg.

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Academic Capitalism
Universities in the Global Struggle for Excellence
Richard Mnch

Academic Capitalism

Universities in the Global Struggle for Excellence

Richard Mnch

First published 2014
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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2014 Taylor & Francis

The right of Richard Mnch to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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Mnch, Richard, 1945

[Akademischer Kapitalismus. English]

Academic capitalism: universities in the global struggle for excellence / Richard Mnch.

pages cm. (Routledge advances in sociology; 121)

Translated from German.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Universities and collegesEconomic aspects. 2. Educational change. 3. Education, Higher. I. Title.

LC67.6.M8613 2014
338.43378dc23
2013029441

ISBN13: 978-0-415-84014-9 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-76876-1 (ebk)

Typeset in Sabon
by IBT Global.

When writing this book, I learned a lot from discussing major steps with colleagues, assistants and students in seminars and colloquia at Bamberg University and at many other locations I visited to give lectures. In some parts, the book draws on my German studies