Following the Path from Teaching to Research University: Increasing Knowledge Productivity

The 21st century has started out with universities adhering to a school of thought that has evolved to the point of believing in the metamorphosis of people and society through the creation of powerful inventions. And society seems to expect that too. Universities around the world are experiencing an increasing pressure to produce revolutionary ideas that can be translated into publications, patents, business, and the like. As a way of welcoming the third mission for universities, elite winners of this tough game are gathering prestige, visibility, and all kind of human and financial assets. Training and research (the first and second missions) are no longer enough; universities are in a race for resources expressed in rankings that tend to model the whole higher education system. But, what about the small and middle size universities? They are watching the game and want to be part of it. This book is concerned with that group, especially private higher education that is looking for ways to become visible and attract more resources. Leadership at these institutions is becoming more entrepreneurial every day, and following in the steps of highly research productive schools. Changes like these do not come without resistance from, among others, faculty members who see these shifts as a threat to their traditional teaching mission. In short, this wave of producing inventions has put an incredible amount of stress on human resources and funding at smaller institutions.The book illustrates the perceptions that professors have about the production of knowledge and their organizational environment. This study seeks, through a mixed-method, to unveil organizational and personal characteristics of faculty members most related to research productivity at 12 small to medium sized not-for-profit, private, doctorate-granting universities in the United States of America. As an additional contribution, the author taps into alternative models of higher education, the implications for which should be considered in broader society. This is a scholarly work that is oriented to both policy makers and scholars of private universities that are evolving from a teaching oriented culture to a more research intense one. See more