The Graham-Diamond Report:
In The Rise of American
Research Universities, Hugh Davis Graham and Nancy Diamond assess the position
of research institutions in the increasingly competitive postwar marketplace
of American higher education. There, they argue that the conditions of that
marketplace have produced public research universities that, in many cases,
are "innovative" and "ambitious," outdistancing what they refer to as "traditional
elite" - that is, say, Harvard or MIT.
By their assessment, the
University of Oregon is ranked 15th among public research universities on a
combined index for Top-Science, Top-Social Science, and Arts and Humanities;
what's more, they anticipate that the University of Oregon's combined index
rating will continue to rise.
This assessment is based
on the University's overall performance in terms of per capita research achievement.
What this means is that while the University of Oregon spends a fraction of
what many other comparable universities spend on Research and Development, scholars
at the University of Oregon perform at a significantly higher level in per capita
research categories.
The UO's significant status
as a public research institution is due in no small part to its ranking in per
capita publications and research and development. In their analysis of the twenty-six
universities designated "Research Two" institutions, Graham and Diamond list
the UO as 6th in terms of publications and research and development. At "Research
Two" institutions, faculty scores are higher than $14,000 in average per capita
research and development; they exceed 1.5 in per capita publications.
Most studies seeking to
rank colleges and universities use quantitative rather than qualitative variables,
Graham and Diamond assert, relying upon reputational rankings and numerical
accumulations which focus on quantitative statistics. In contrast, Graham and
Diamond have adopted a more complex, historical approach to analyzing colleges
and universities in an effort to understand the kinds of institutional changes
that have taken place in the half-century following the Second World War.
The Graham-Diamond study
differs from most institutional rankings studies in seven inter-related respects:
- New Knowledge: The study
concentrates on one particular function of the university: the creation of
new knowledge. Knowledge creation is central, the study's authors contend,
to the mission of any university and, more importantly, is one key way in
which universities contribute to the economy of the future.
- History: The Graham-Diamond
analysis is historical. In specific, the study focuses on the period from
1945-1995, taking into account developments in federal research policies as
they relate to role of the state in a decentralized, competitive academic
climate.
- Research: Research performance
of faculty is analyzed comparatively. By examining a wide range of research
institutions - over two hundred in all - Graham and Diamond go beyond the
typical analysis that treats only a handful of elite institutions. This type
of analysis renders the picture of American higher education more complex.
- Scale: Research activity
is analyzed in terms of institutional size in the Graham-Diamond report. To
do this, Graham and Diamond divide faculty performance variables by the number
of full-time instructional faculty at a given institution, yielding a per
capita product that allows them to draw comparisons among universities of
different sizes. This method allows researchers to avoid conflating quantity
with quality.
- Scale: Research activity
is analyzed in terms of institutional size in the Graham-Diamond report. To
do this, Graham and Diamond divide faculty performance variables by the number
of full-time instructional faculty at a given institution, yielding a per
capita product that allows them to draw comparisons among universities of
different sizes. This method allows researchers to avoid conflating quantity
with quality.
- Quantifiable Measures:
The Graham-Diamond report makes use of quantifiable measures of research achievement
across the disciplines, relying on a core set of data that establishes research
performance in five categories. In all, they reflect scientific research and
scholarly productivity in science, the social and behavioral sciences, and
the arts and humanities.
- Academic medicine: The
Graham-Diamond study integrates into its analysis the role of academic medical
schools within universities, describing and comparing their performance alongside
one another. Medical schools are apt to face the same financial crises their
academic affiliates face in the twenty-first century, which may, Graham and
Diamond suggest, break down the wall that separates the world of academic
medicine from the rest of the university.
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College of Arts & Sciences • 1245 University of Oregon • Eugene, OR • 97403-1245 •
541.346.3902 • (f) 541.346.1150 • cas@cas.uoregon.edu |
