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NATIONAL RESPONSES
In response to these emerging global trends, policy-makers in all nations are now evaluating
the roles of their research institutions universities, government laboratories, non-profit
research institutes, and industrial laboratories and are pursuing new policies and programs.
The symposium speakers described the changes occurring within each country. The following
summaries focus on contemporary events; the full presentations included in Part Two describe
longer-term historical developments.
United States. After World War Two, the United States achieved preeminence in most
scientific and technological fields. The professional integration of U.S. scientists -within
worldwide scientific networks was achieved through widespread scholarly exchanges, the
education of foreign students, and the introduction of new information technologies. From
1945 to 196S, U.S. basic research capacity, located primarily within its universities, greatly
expanded because of increased federal funding for research and the rapid growth of higher
education institutions. Since then a diversification has occurred in sources of university
research support. During the 1980s, the rate of growth in non-federal funding of university
research from university, industry, and state government sources- outpaced growth rates in
federal funds.
With the emerging economic and scientific strength of Japan and Europe, policy-makers
in the United States are now focusing increased attention to promoting the domestic industrial
utilization of the substantial U.S. basic research capacity and to sustaining a large,
decentralized, and expensive research system. Characteristic of the decentralized U.S. system,
responses to global economic change are occurring at all levels of government, in industries,
and in universities. The allocation of federal, state, and industrial support for research now
reflects a growing emphasis on programmatic research. Innovative research relationships-
integrating basic and applied research programs- are emerging among industries, universities,
and government agencies. University faculty in several fields are adopting entrepreneurial
roles for the commercial development of their research.
Japan. Over the past several decades, Japan has created a substantially different type of
research system from that which exists in the United States today. The Japanese system links
basic research more closely with industry. It relies far more heavily on private financing, but
with government funding in critical fields, primarily within governmental and corporate
research institutes.
Japanese scientists historically have been isolated from international centers of research,
despite such efforts as overseas exchange programs and journal translations. Yet throughout
its history, Japan has expertly imported basic science and technology from other nations to
produce and market goods more efficiently. The government has successfully targeted and
subsidized the development of high-technology industries that have greatly increased the
Japanese share of the international marketplace.
As Japan now achieves global economic power, the nation is turning its attention to
improving the quality and quantity of its own indigenous basic research. Japanese scientists
are under great pressure to become part of the worldwide network of elite scientists Japan
5
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is in a race with Western nations to win Nobel Prizes in the sciences and is attempting to
attract foreign scientists to Japanese laboratories.
Japan historically has been receptive to new arrangements for the organization of research.
Although there was estrangement between universities and industry following the Second
World War, cooperation between Japanese firms and universities has resumed. In this mutually
beneficial relationship, companies sell or lease equipment to universities at reduced prices,
professors and graduate students are given access to corporate laboratories, and faculty are
appointed to lead industrial research programs funded by industry.
Soviet Union. The Soviet Union has a large number of scientists and engineers and many
. .
research system
have made s~gn~~icant contributions in several scientific fields. The Soviet
as a whole, however, is highly bureaucratic. With glasnost', the Soviet Academy of Sciences
is pressured to reward scientific achievement and elect members based upon non-political
criteria. With perestroika, the Soviet research system, composed primarily of large-scale
institutes staffed with personnel of varying talent, is now facing increasing challenges to its
organization and reward-structure. "Democratization," however, may not necessarily present
a more promising alternative for Soviet-style Big Science, which encompasses vast numbers
of institutes staffed by many people who won their posts through political, Party, or personal
connections. Recent attempts to administer these institutes by internal elections of all staff
members have produced disorderly confusion, further politicized the Soviet research system,
and hindered scientific advancement.
Given the history of the Soviet research system, universities may hold the greatest promise
for Soviet science. Although beset by Party and politics after 1930, the universities were
largely left out of the vast bureaucratization that accompanied Stalinism, and they were able
to remain centers of tradition and quality.
Within the Gorbachev government, there are growing pressures on the scientific enterprise
to help improve the stagnant Soviet economy. Yet improving the economic contributions of
Soviet science presents a profound dilemma for the Soviet government. After nearly seventy
years of international near-isolation from the non-Socialist scientific community, Soviet
scientists now require the use of new Western information and computer technologies and
participation in worldwide scientific networks. It is uncertain whether the Soviet Union can
financially or politically afford to import such technologies on a wide scale and to reinstate
the international scientific exchange programs that brought Russian science to world
prominence in several fields earlier in this century.
Great Britain. In response to the relative international economic decline of Great Britain
over the past decades, the government has recently embarked upon a comprehensive
restructuring of its research system. Emerging British research policies focus on strategic
research investments, increased research productivity, and diversification in funding sources.
With a stringent government science budget, research funding is being targeted to applied and
strategic fields that are expected to contribute to economic growth. Projects are more closely
scrutinized and selectively funded. In an attempt to make the British academic research
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system more efficient and productive, the Thatcher government has abolished tenure for new
faculty and seeks to restrict government investments in research infrastructure to a limited
number of universities.
Consistent with Thatcher government free market policies, British universities are now
pressured to seek supplemental funding from non-governmental sources. Universities are
forming consortia with industry as well as other universities and polytechnics to compete for
limited public funding. Greater cooperation with industry in Britain is evident by the
participation of industry representatives in the Universities Funding Council, the boards of
research councils, and other major science advisory committees.
One the greatest challenges to the British science and research effort is the forthcoming
economic integration of the European Community in 1992. At this time it is uncertain what
kind of federal government may eventually emerge in Brussels and how new arrangements
would affect the university-based British research system. All of the factors that go into
determining science policy-taxing and funding strategies, support for industry, support for
high technology, the excellence of research training, the quality of lower forms of education,
the general structure of incentives and rewards for competitive achievement may have to be
reconsidered by the British government.
Federal Republic of Germany. For over one hundred years, the Germans have been
committed to the proposition that competitive science and technology make economic security
and its benefits possible. The key ingredient in the German research success story has not been
the university system as commonly believed, but the creation of new institutions intended to
stimulate or bypass those moving too slowly for the times. Competitiveness has been sustained
by the turn-of-the-century institutionalization of a synergistic system for the generation and
dissemination of knowledge that has functioned in a sophisticated, modern manner, blurring
the distinctions between pure science, applied science and technology. In particular, there was
generated a dual legitimation of basic research in organizations such as the Kaiser Wilhelm
Society's network of institutes-justifying research as "pure science" when undirected and
"applied" when directed, even if the same persons in the same institute were doing the work
under discussion. A profound, and very useful, ambiguity allowed the government and certain
far-seeing university professors to extol the virtues of the science-technology interaction when
confronting industrial figures for more financial support, while stressing the distance between
basic researchers and application when addressing concerns of their more culturally
conservative colleagues.
After various efforts to secure economic autarky between 1914 and 1945 had failed,
Germans once again became committed to a policy of highly competitive exports. The postwar
West German recovery required little transformation of its basically late- 1 9th century
economic structure, but the combination of the impact of Allied occupation and the success
of earlier techniques has left West Germany the master of innovation in the sciences and
technologies of the "second industrial revolution." Efforts to construct a coherent science
policy9 however, were long confounded by conflicting federal claims to manage the economic
implications of science and state claims to administer its educational and cultural elements.
Pressures to remain export-competitive are strong, but West Germany's ability to adapt to the
research environment of the "third industrial revolution" information technologies and
biotechnology-is still unclear.
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Following developments in East Germany since December 1989, German science and
technology policy-makers will have to focus attention to the probable integration of the
research systems of East and West Germany. Since the early 1970s, the politically dominant
East German institution has been the Academy of Sciences of the German Democratic
Republic, which is an amalgamation of the erstwhile Prussian Academy of Sciences and the
Russian model of an academy of sciences with a system of institutes. A set of councils has
determined policy and personnel allocations for the Academy and the other primary research
institutions such as the universities. If Article 23 of the West German Basic Law were ever
invoked, allowing an East German Land to join the Federal Republic, then the universities and
various institutes of technology that predated the segregation of the German states in 1949
would probably be readily assimilated into a unified German research system. If Article 146
were to come into play, rewriting a unified German governmental structure from the top
down, the Academy system and councils would become more assimilable than otherwise.
France. For most of its post-revolutionary history, the French government did not promote
scientific and engineering innovation, relying instead upon imported technology for its
industry. However, beginning with the de Gaulle presidency in 1958, the government
embarked upon a series of five-year plans to establish French preeminence in targeted applied
research fields. The primary performers of this increased French research and development
activity including basic research-have been government research personnel, rather than
university faculty who remain primarily teachers. Long-term research objectives in selected
fields, such as molecular biology, have been successfully achieved within French government
research institutes. French industrial support for research, however, remains small compared
to that of industries in other major nations.
While French government support for university faculty research remains limited, recent
educational reforms have encouraged faculty research as one means to motivate students to
enter research careers. In the universities and the grandes ecoles, which in the 1960s still
tended to be set apart from the relatively prosperous world of the organizations for research,
a new wave of planning has won support. The implantation of Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) groups in university laboratories has accelerated the diversion
of significant research funding into higher education and helped further to erode the
traditional French divide between research and teaching.
As France responds to a changing global economy, centralized government research
planning has become even more important to the intrinsically programmatic French research
system. The French government is addressing the instability of short-term planning by
instituting longer-term planning cycles. While the old rivalries between the universities and
the CNRS-or between the advocates of open-ended research and those with more immediate
expectations of an economic return- have not completely disappeared, the benefits of thirty
years of a coordinated national policy for research are evident. The pace of scientific activity
is quickening, as successive governments continue to foster research in priority areas of
technological innovation.
8
Representative terms from entire chapter:
research institutes
