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Political Science General

Public Science, Private Interests

Culture and Commerce in Canada's Networks of Centres of Excellence

by (author) Janet Atkinson-Grosjean

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Feb 2006
Category
General
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802080059
    Publish Date
    Feb 2006
    List Price
    $88.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442678897
    Publish Date
    Jan 2006
    List Price
    $86.00

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Description

The Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) program is Canada's flagship research funding initiative and a policy innovation that has been emulated by a number of other countries. The NCE program is historically significant in the political economy of Canadian research: established in 1988 by the Mulroney government, it was the first program to attach expectations of industry partnerships and commercial exploitation to funding for academic research. The program rests on dual goals of research excellence and commercial relevance and promotes a national research capacity that 'floats across' existing academic institutions and provincial jurisdictions.

Janet Atkinson-Grosjean's Public Science, Private Interests is the first book-length study of NCEs, and offers an assessment of the long-term impact of the erasure between public institutions and private enterprise. Atkinson-Grosjean reveals not only the cultural and commercial shifts sought by policymakers, but also unintended consequences such as regional clustering, élitism and exclusion, problems with social and fiscal accountability, tensions with host institutions, and goal displacement between science and commerce. This is a work of great importance to Canadian policy studies and particularly to science and medical research policy.

About the author

Janet Atkinson-Grosjean is a research associate with the Centre for Policy Research on Science and Technology at Simon Fraser University and the W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics at the University of British Columbia.

Janet Atkinson-Grosjean's profile page