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

728 Eric Trist
combined to produce the severe dissociation of research and teaching typically
found in German and French universities.
9. In Britain an association between social research and teaching departments
persists, partly because staff and students have increased in step and partly
because certain research funds and support facilities have been provided, even
if on a limited scale, by the University Grants Committee, an autonomous body
which mediates bulk government funds to universities.55 Yet the British
pattern has clung to the small single professor department and continued to
prefer fundamental research on an individual and uni-disciplinary basis. There
are well over 40 universities in Britain and several hundred social science departments,
340 of which applied in 1967 for post-graduate awards to the Social
Science Research Council.60 Most of these departments consist of less than ten
faculty members combining teaching and research along with handful of graduate
students with a research orientation.
IO. In the Netherlands the best is made of both worlds by departments setting
up institutes attached to themselves with interchange of ~taff.3~ A splitting of
fundamental research and contract work on applied problems is prevented.
Part-time multiple chairs are an accepted pattern. University departments
represent a third of all research institutes in the social sciences. The head of the
department is also head of the institute, which engages not only most of the
departmental teaching staff on a part-time basis but a number of junior research
workers, contracted for specific projects, who comprise the graduate students
and senior undergraduates for whom the department is academically responsible.
The department’s regular expenses are covered by government or by
founding organizations. Grants for special purposes are obtained from a variety
of sources. The Nederlandse Organisatie voor Zuiver-Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek
(Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research)
(a government body) finances fundamental work leading to dissertations. The
department negotiates contracts with public and private bodies. Effective
functioning and expansion depend less on material conditions than on organizational
substructure and quality of staff.
I I. Most professors assume non-academic responsibilities in voluntary
associations, political and religious movements, and other sectors of public
life, including government committees. These engagements constitute a considerable
proportion of their regular activities. Much of the work is done on an
honorary basis. This ‘cumulation of functions’ is regarded in the Netherlands
as a structural characteristic of the social sciences - a manifestation of an intensive
interaction between social research and public policy. Cumulation of
teaching, research, and organizational functions of university professors is
founded on a limited teaching obligation: six teaching hours a week is considered
heavy load. This is rendered possible by regular integration into the academic
structure of persons working part-time in industry, government or other organizations.
They become ‘extraordinary professors’.