Project Details
Projekt
The Competitive Positioning of Universities and their Members in an International Comparative Perspective: Germany, the UK, and the US
Applicant
Professorin Dr. Anna Kosmützky
Subject Area
Sociological Theory
Term
since 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 447967785
The project’s objective is to conduct an international comparative analysis of the institutional configurations of multiple competition within three science and higher education systems: Germany, the UK, and the US. To achieve this, the project will employ a comparative, interview-based case study approach, supported by extensive literature reviews and the analysis of macro-level organizational data. Initially, during Phase 1 of the research, the project has focused on studying the competitive institutional configuration of multiple competition in the German science and high-er education system. This research specifically examined how universities and their members position themselves competitively. In Germany, the driving force of the competition is third-party funding and prestigious research clusters, involving both universities and individual academics. Additionally, German states actively support and promote academic competition as they vie for political influence via these research clusters. Building on these findings in the German context, the project will next investigate how competitive institutional configurations differ in the science and higher education systems of the UK and the US. Because of the distinct patterns in the competitive institutional configuration in the UK and the US, we anticipate discovering variations in how organizational and individual competition interact within these contexts. Although competitive research funding is crucial in various national systems, the methods for evaluating performance and assigning reputation differ between countries. In the UK, organizational reputation relies on publications and societal impact assessed through the Research Excellence Frame-work (REF). In the United States, universities mainly compete for resources and revenue through tuition fees and endowment funds.
DFG Programme
Research Units
