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

The organization and financing of research 725
Committee proposes ‘a privately developed annual social report’ and ‘a national
data system with protection for an0nymity’.~3
55. The surge of interest in the policy implications of the social sciences has
led a number of leading American social scientists to think with a breadth of
vision little in evidence ten years ago. The Presidential Address of Kenneth
Boulding to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1966,
‘Dare We Take the Social Sciences Seriously ?, exemplifies this trend :6
We are still left with two further questions: One, could we take the social sciences
seriously, and two, should we do so. Iwould answer both these questions with a cautious
affirmative. There certainly seems to be no reason why our theoretical structure, our
inferences, and our perceptual apparatus should prove intractable to improvement, if
we set our best minds on the problem and if we were prepared to devote economic
resources to the kind of instrumentation which, say, the nuclear physicist now demands.
The network of social data stations which I suggested above would probably not cost
more than a billion dollars a year and the return for this investment might be enormous
in terms of disasters avoided, stable peace established, and development fostered. By
and large, the social sciences have not been ambitious enough to want to study the
sociosphere as a totality. They have been content with the kind of professional advance-
ment which comes from the adequate processing of small pieces of information. They
have not had the larger vision of the study of the sociosphere as a totality.
Next steps in an American policy for the social sciences are likely to await the
maturing of this larger vision in a wider cross-section of its political, industrial
and academic leaders. Whatever the form and rate of implementation, the
new ‘appreciation~’I9~ have already been made or are under way. It cannot be
long before the distance travelled from the decade of the fifties wil become
generally apparent.
111. TRANSITION IN WESTERN EUROPE
The state of the universities
I. The sixties represents a decade of transition for the social sciences in Wes-
tern Europe during which they began to receive all-round recognition for the
first time. Just as it seemed appropriate to approach American social science
by considering the scale and character of the resource base, so is it appropriate
to approach Western Europe by considering the structure and state of the uni-
versities. Universities in Western Europe are state institutions or, if independent,
financed primarily by the state. Most governments are committed to policies of
expanding higher education. Yet by and large universities have not expanded
their teaching staffs (or indeed their other facilities such as libraries, equipment
premises or ancillary services) to keep pace with the rising demand for higher
education.
2. Since World War 11 student populations in Western Europe have increased
several fold. In Belgium and Norway the increase is more than three tirne~.~4’~~
In France and the Federal Republic of Germany where teaching overloads are
most severe it is six or seven times.49~39 This overload has been more serious for
the social than for the physical and biological disciplines; available faculty have