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Education Higher

Leading Research Universities in a Competitive World

by (author) Robert Lacroix & Louis Maheu

translated by Paul Klassen

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Feb 2015
Category
Higher
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773584846
    Publish Date
    Feb 2015
    List Price
    $100.00
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780773544772
    Publish Date
    Feb 2015
    List Price
    $55.00

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Description

Although research universities represent only fifteen to twenty per cent of national university systems worldwide, they provide the bulk of fundamental research and doctoral training. Written by two veteran university administrators, Leading Research Universities in a Competitive World focuses on the international ranking systems’ uneven distribution of these institutions in industrialized countries, and the organizational factors affecting their efficacy, prestige, and performance.

Robert Lacroix and Louis Maheu argue that research universities, despite being embedded within academia’s mindset and rules, have to master market influences and relationships in order to produce new knowledge and attract the rare talent and limited financial assets required for successful research and education activities. Comparing the configuration of higher education systems in the US, UK, France, and Canada, the authors outline the ways in which research universities, which need public funding and have to engage diverse forms of state regulation, may possess sufficient autonomy to behave as independent actors. They demonstrate that reaching an equilibrium between autonomy and state regulation, though challenging, is an essential element in the success of high performing research universities.

Leading Research Universities in a Competitive World illuminates the operation of these institutions through substantive quantitative and qualitative datasets to address the fundamental question of why universities perform differently.

About the authors

Robert Lacroix is professor of economics and president emeritus at Université de Montréal, and fellow of CIRANO (Center for Interuniversity Research and Analysis of Organizations).

Robert Lacroix's profile page

Louis Maheu is professor emeritus of sociology at Université de Montréal, fellow of CIRANO, and co-editor of Challenging Genetic Determinism: New Perspectives on the Gene in Its Multiple Environments.

Louis Maheu's profile page

Paul Klassen's profile page

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