Abstract:

The university sector is usually thought of as to be ruled by ‘merit’. It is widely thought of as true that students flock to institutions with a reputation for a good education, that researchers get extra funds when they are seen by their peers in the scientific communities as outstanding and that the personnel is carefully selected according to their abilities (Merton 1973). But some observers have critized this picture as too rosy and instead propose a ‘rule by birth right’ (Bourdieu 1988). According to this theory are winners in the academic competition institutions and persons who are in the possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition.

We test both – conflicting - positions with a dataset of all professors in engineering at German universities, using information about third-party-research grants, patents, estimations of reputation etc. Engineering is a core segment in the German university system with a very high international reputation and therefore many departments and professors employed. In addition to usual regression calculations to explain the placement of professors we perform a network analysis on the basis of sending and receiving institutions.

Besides some interesting descriptive findings we test four hypotheses concerning the interplay of merit and social capital. Our findings are that social networks play an important role in the placement of professors. In addition, the critique, that in Germany bigger institutions are favoured by the science finance system (Münch 2007), is confirmed. Our conclusion is therefore: the self-governance of universities is less merit-based than assumed..

References:
Pierre Bourdieu, Homo Academicus, Stanford 1988.

Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, Chicago 1973.

Richard Münch, Die akademische Elite: Zur sozialen Konstruktion wissenschaftlicher Exzellenz, Frankfurt/M. 2007.

Keywords:

Governance, Reputation, Professors, Engineering, Social Capital, Germany.