Creating the Market University: How Academic Science Became an Economic Engine

by Elizabeth Popp Berman

When science adopts the logic of the market

American universities today serve as economic engines, performing the scientific research that will create new industries, drive economic growth, and keep the United States globally competitive. But only a few decades ago, these same universities self-consciously held themselves apart from the world of commerce. Creating the Market University is the first book to systematically examine why academic science made such a dramatic move toward the market. Drawing on extensive historical research, Elizabeth Popp Berman shows how the government―influenced by the argument that innovation drives the economy―brought about this transformation.

Americans have a long tradition of making heroes out of their inventors. But before the 1960s and '70s neither policymakers nor economists paid much attention to the critical economic role played by innovation. However, during the late 1970s, a confluence of events―industry concern with the perceived deterioration of innovation in the United States, a growing body of economic research on innovation's importance, and the stagnation of the larger economy―led to a broad political interest in fostering invention. The policy decisions shaped by this change were diverse, influencing arenas from patents and taxes to pensions and science policy, and encouraged practices that would focus specifically on the economic value of academic science. By the early 1980s, universities were nurturing the rapid growth of areas such as biotech entrepreneurship, patenting, and university-industry research centers.

Contributing to debates about the relationship between universities, government, and industry, Creating the Market University sheds light on how knowledge and politics intersect to structure the economy.

Genres: Science, Economics, Stem, Sociology, Nonfiction

264 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Steven · Rating 1 out of 5]

In this book, Dr Elizabeth Berman documents a sea change in the sciences at academic institutions. In contrast to the norm prior to the 70's, many academic faculty in the sciences embody a strong entrepreneurial spirit. In an even larger change, most universities now employ policies to support and encourage this spirit. In this book, Dr. Berman remains focused on how and why this sea change came about. If I understand it right, and I'm not sure I do for reasons I will describe later, she claims the sea changed because of an almost serendipitous collision between changes in governmental policy and a public infatuation with how new ideas can spur new businesses.

This sounds like a cool idea, right? My book club thought so. After all, Google, Facebook, and a lot of biotechnology have been spun out of universities. My fellow book clubbers and I work in the sciences at an academic institution and are, in step with the university, trying to patent and commercialize our ideas. This is a relevant topic.

But, to our dismay, we didn't realize that this book is an expansions of the author's sociology Ph.D. thesis. It is soooooo bone dry boring. Most of us couldn't read more than 5 pages. I lucked out and found a chapter by chapter summary at the end of the introduction and just read that. It was all I could take. Zero human interest stories that make these topics more palatable. Just endless descriptions of complex sociology theories and minutia about various policies at various institutions.

I'm guessing this is a very strong piece of academic sociology work. It that's your field, you may like this book. However, it's a terrible choice for a book club. We are all furious at the man who recommended this book (and then didn't even show up for the discussion!).

[Yisu Z. · Rating 3 out of 5]

试图解释美国的大学为何从70年代末开始亲市场了。解释框架是很典型的institutional logic：多种逻辑并存（「科学就是为了科学本身」「科学为了经济发展」），在外部环境发生变化的情况下，原有的边缘逻辑一下子获得了关注（科学技术是生产力），带动了政府态度的转变，从而影响关键行动人，再到大学。由远及近的框架，以及链条式的传播，解释力一般般。