In many ways universities in the US have come to resemble high-end shopping malls. They are in the business of building state-of-the art facilities and a reputation that attracts good students, good faculty, and resources (Stephan 2012). They turn around and lease the facilities to faculty in the form of indirect costs on grants and the buyout of salary. To help faculty establish their labs—their firm in the mall—universities provide start-up packages for newly hired faculty. External funding, which was once viewed as a luxury, has become a necessary condition for tenure and promotion. The shopping mall model puts tremendous stress on universities, especially in a time of flat resources. Three are noted here and discussed further in my research. First, incentives have arguably led faculty, as well as the agencies that fund faculty, to be risk averse when it comes to research. Applications are often scored for “doability” (Alberts 2009). The pressure on faculty to receive funding quickly in their academic career—at the end of their third year at many universities—means that faculty can ill afford to follow a research agenda of an overly risky nature.

US university science: The shopping mall model | vox Sunday, March 23, 2014 @ 9:34pm