Main trends of research in the social and human ... - unesdoc - Unesco

The organization and financing of research 709
schools. The second represents the cluster which has become known as Area
Studies. The third links the humanities with anthropology and linguistics. All
these institutes and, indeed, all departments and schools of the university are
served by a data processing centre which is itself a focus of computational
research. Despite these facilities, institutes represent the least developed aspect
of American universities in social research.
Dissatisfaction and innovation in the universities
22. One way to strengthen research capability is to improve doctoral education.
A seven-year programme in ten graduate schools is being financed with 41
million dollars from the Ford Foundation and 160 million dollars in university
matching funds to provide conditions for full-time study including research and
apprentice teaching in four-year courses.34 Some 10,500 Ph.D. candidates wil
be affected. The participating deans note that:
The major current weakness in doctoral education is its profligate wastage of the
nation’s finest talent. This is particularly evident in the humanities and social sciences.
Even in leading institutions fewer than half of the students embarking on doctoral
studies complete their degree. Those who succeed take a disproportionately long time.
The median Ph.D. now takes seven and a half years, compared with five years in the
natural sciences. Fewer than 15 % complete in four years. These figures reflect patterns
no longer commensurate with the needs of the latter half of the twentieth century.
The ten universities award 30 % of all Ph.D.s in the humanities and the social
sciences.
23. A further set of changes is related to the growing realization that dispersed
resources of the highest calibre must be brought together under whatever heading
to advance work in critical areas.3’ Consortia arrangements are beginning
to grow. An example is the programme in ‘institution-building’ joint between
the Schools of Public Administration in Pittsburgh, Indiana and Michigan
State Universities and the Maxwell School of Government at Syracuse.
14z Other
examples could be quoted from the basic as well as the problem-oriented area,
but the belief dies hard that in order to collaborate people must belong to the
same institution.
24. A more recent concern is over the urban crisis and related problems of
poverty and racial discrimination. The urban crisis is likely to redefine the
relations of the social sciences to society in the United States as no other issue
has done since ‘the great depression’ of the thirties - more permanently perhaps
than both World Wars though these led to developments in psychological
testing and psychological medicine among other fields. As the result of that
depression the idea of informed management of the economy began to take
hold. The foundations for national economic accounting were laid. If this set
economics in a problem-oriented direction it gave a new impetus to theory. The
urban crisis is having the same effect on sociology and social psychology,
driving them to relate themselves to urban planning. A movement has begun to
create ‘urban universities’ ‘to help untangle the mass of physical and social
problems plaguing the nation’s largest cities.’ At a conference held in May
1967 attended by representatives of 40 universities the following proposals were
made :