Recent Trends in Funding for the Academic Humanities and Their Implications

[Excerpt] Never abundant, financial support for the “academic humanities” is now scarce. How scarce it is, both in absolute and relative terms, and whether the humanities now confront particularly hard times, are the pressing questions. To piece together an answer, we ask first how much the government, foundations, and private donors provide for the humanities now compared to estimates John D’Arms made in 1995, when he completed his important review of “funding trends.” Then we probe expenditures universities and colleges make on the humanities. Is there evidence, for example, in institutional budget allocations that the humanities are holding their own, or have rising costs of other academic activities, such as scientific research, been accompanied by reduced support for the humanities? And last, because public universities are so large and numerous, and because many operate on conspicuously tight budgets, we ask how well the humanities in this class of institutions have fared in comparison with their counterparts at private universities. The answers to such questions are not mere matters of financial accounting. Although much can be achieved in the humanities with quite small investments, the pursuit of excellence in scholarship and teaching in these fields is not cost-free. For relevant evidence, we draw on the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’s useful Humanities Indicators Prototype, as well as a variety of other available (but often imperfect) data sources

The Graduate Education Initiative: Description and Preliminary Findings

[Excerpt] In1991 the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation launched the Graduate Education Initiative (hereafter GEI) to improve the structure and organization of PhD programs in the humanities and social sciences. Such changes were seen as necessary to combat high rates of student attrition and long times-to-degree in these programs. While attrition and time-to-degree were deemed to be important in and of themselves, and of great significance to degree seekers, they were also seen more broadly as indicators of the effectiveness of graduate programs. Several characteristics of doctoral programs were earmarked as contributing to high attrition and long degree time, including: unclear expectations, a proliferation of courses, elaborate and sometimes conflicting requirements, intermittent supervision, epistemological disagreements on fundamentals and not least, inadequate funding. Projections that faculty shortages would occur in the late 1990s in the humanities made the goals of reducing student attrition and time-to-degree particularly timely if an adequate number of PhDs were to be available. This was far from the first such effort to reduce times-to degree-and rates of attrition. Earlier programs, which provided grants in aid to individual students or to graduate schools to distribute as they saw fit, had failed conspicuously. Based on data which showed that there were marked differences among departments and on a great deal of experience on the ground, the architects of the GEI determined that to improve graduate education would require departments to make changes in their PhD programs. As such, the Foundation shifted much of its support for doctoral education, which had previously gone directly to students, to block grants that would be awarded to departments within major universities

Insiders, Outsiders, and the Struggle for Consecration in Cultural Fields: A Core-Periphery Perspective

Building on recent research emphasizing how legitimacy depends on consensus among audiences about candidates’ characteristics and activities, we examine the relationship between cultural producers’ (candidates) position in the social structure and the consecration of their creative work by relevant audiences. We argue that the outcome of this process of evaluation in any cultural field, whether in art or science, is a function of (1) candidates’ embeddedness within the field, and (2) the type of audience—that is, peers versus critics—evaluating candidates’ work. Specifically, we hypothesize that peers are more likely to favor candidates who are highly embedded in the field, whereas critics will not show such favoritism. We find support for these hypotheses in the context of the Hollywood motion picture industry

Sex differences in risk-based decision making in adolescents with conduct disorder

Altered decision making processes and excessive risk-seeking behaviours are key features of conduct disorder (CD). Previous studies have provided compelling evidence of abnormally increased preference for risky options, higher sensitivity to rewards, as well as blunted responsiveness to aversive outcomes in adolescents with CD. However, most studies published to date have focused on males only; thus, it is not known whether females with CD show similar alterations in decision making. The current study investigated potential sex differences in decision making and risk-seeking behaviours in adolescents with CD. Forty-nine adolescents with CD (23 females) and 51 control subjects (27 females), aged 11-18 years, performed a computerised task assessing decision making under risk—the Risky Choice Task. Participants made a series of decisions between two gamble options that varied in terms of their expected values and probability of gains and losses. This enabled the participants’ risk preferences to be determined. Taking the sample as a whole, adolescents with CD exhibited increased risk-seeking behaviours compared to healthy controls. However, we found a trend towards a sex-by-group interaction, suggesting that these effects may vary by sex. Follow-up analyses showed that males with CD made significantly more risky choices than their typically developing counterparts, while females with CD did not differ from typically developing females in their risk-seeking behaviours. Our results provide preliminary evidence that sex may moderate the relationship between CD and alterations in risk attitudes and reward processing, indicating that there may be sex differences in the developmental pathways and neuropsychological deficits that lead to CD

Virology Experts in the Boundary Zone Between Science, Policy and the Public: A Biographical Analysis

This article aims to open up the biographical black box of three experts working in the boundary zone between science, policy and public debate. A biographical-narrative approach is used to analyse the roles played by the virologists Albert Osterhaus, Roel Coutinho and Jaap Goudsmit in policy and public debate. These figures were among the few leading virologists visibly active in the Netherlands during the revival of infectious diseases in the 1980s. Osterhaus and Coutinho in particular are still the key figures today, as demonstrated during the outbreak of novel influenza A (H1N1). This article studies the various political and communicative challenges and dilemmas encountered by these three virologists, and discusses the way in which, strategically or not, they handled those challenges and dilemmas during the various stages of the field’s recent history. Important in this respect is their pursuit of a public role that is both effective and credible. We will conclude with a reflection on the H1N1 pandemic, and the historical and biographical ties between emerging governance arrangements and the experts involved in the development of such arrangements

The universal values of science and China’s Nobel Prize pursuit

China does not seem to believe the existence of universally acknowledged values in science and fails to promote the observation of such values that also should be applied to every member of the scientific community and at all times. Or, there is a separation between the practice of science in China and the values represented by modern science. In this context, science, including the pursuit of the Nobel Prize, is more a pragmatic means to achieve the end of the political leadership – the national pride in this case – than an institution laden with values that govern its practices. However, it is the recognition and respect of the latter that could lead to achievement of the former, rather than the other way around