Martin Finkelstein – författare

Springer is proud to announce that ''Universities in the Knowledge Society'' has received the ASHE-CIHE award for Significant Research on International Higher Education.

Congratulations to Timo Aarrevaara, Martin Finkelstein, Glen A. Jones, Jisun Jung and all contributors!

This book explores the complex, multi-faceted relationships between national research and innovation systems and higher education. The transition towards knowledge societies/economies is repositioning the role of the university and transforming the academic profession. The volume provides a foundational introduction to the concepts of knowledge society and knowledge economy, and these concepts ground the detailed case studies of eighteen systems, located across five continents. Each case study was written by a leading expert in that jurisdiction, and provides a critical analysis of the research and development infrastructure, the role of universities, and the implications for the academic profession. The book describes how nations in various geographic regions and at various stages of economic maturity are restructuring their university systems to adapt to the new imperatives, and provides a cross-case analysis identifying common themes and distinctive features.

In telling the story of higher education’s on-going global metamorphosis, the contributing authors place current developments in the context of the university’s historic evolution, survey the changing metrics that national governments are adopting to measure university performance, and describe a new international project, the Academic Profession in the Knowledge-based Society [APiKS] that involved a common survey of academics in more than twenty countries to take the pulse of developments “on the ground” while documenting the challenges confronting knowledge workers in the new economy. 

This volume provides a nuanced empirical assessment of the extent to which the academic profession is internationalized at the beginning of the 21st century. It indicates which are the most internationalized academic activities, and focuses on specific topics such as physical mobility for study or professional purposes, teaching abroad or in another language, research collaboration with foreign colleagues, and publication and dissemination outside one’s native country or in another language. It places the main theme in the wider context of the history of higher education’s internationalization. It provides explanations on what drives and deters academics from international activity, and documents some of the consequences that internationalization has on academic work and productivity.

This study is based on a survey of 25,000 academics working at higher education institutions in 18 countries and Hong Kong on five continents. Comparing data from the 1992 Carnegie International study to the 2007 CAP survey, relying on respondents’ perceptions of change, and comparing different academic generations, it offers valuable insights on changes in the internationalization of the academy.