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The Undercomplexity of Higher Education Policy Innovations

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Berlin Keys to the Sociology of Technology

Abstract

Higher education policy reforms rarely seem to achieve their intended effects. The aim of our paper is to contribute to a comparative perspective of innovation research by providing a hypothetical explanation of this observation. We consider higher education policy reforms as social innovations and discuss two examples of such innovations, namely measures intended to facilitate an earlier independence of junior researchers and the introduction of performance-based funding in universities. We demonstrate that these innovations were designed as modular innovations, which neglected their embeddedness in complex systems of action and institutional structures. Since the limited success of both innovations can be explained by this neglect, it can be hypothesized that due to the low modularity of social innovations it is difficult to aniticipate conditions under which they can succeed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    § 110 of the Berlin Higher Education Act, https://gesetze.berlin.de/bsbe/document/jlr-HSchulGBE2011pG11 (Accessed: 27.02.2023).

  2. 2.

    One study compared early careers in molecular biology and the historical sciences in Germany, the Netherlands and Australia (Laudel 2017). A second study analysed the emergence of the first individual research programmes of junior German academics in plant biology, experimental physics and early modern history (Laudel and Bielick 2018). In total, 106 interviews were conducted with junior German academics in both projects.

  3. 3.

    This study compared the opportunities for researchers to develop innovations in their field in four countries (including Germany). The study included the junior researcher phase. The subjects were experimental atomic and molecular optics, evolutionary developmental biology, educational research, and linguistics (see the contributions in Whitley and Gläser 2014).

  4. 4.

    Employer Statement [05/16], Form 53.12, https://www.dfg.de/formulare/53_12_elan/ (Accessed: 27.02.2023).

  5. 5.

    In the following, we only consider the performance-based allocation of research funding. A second innovation in higher education policy, the performance-based salary introduced in 2004 for newly appointed professors, has so far hardly been studied in terms of its structures and effects (Biester and Flink 2015; Ringelhan et al. 2015).

  6. 6.

    Identifying effects of governance instruments is always a difficult undertaking, as the identification of changes in research and their causal attribution to governance instruments must overcome numerous methodological problems (Gläser and Laudel 2016). However, the absence of effects can be stated with some certainty.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Ingo Schulz-Schaeffer for his constructive comments on an earlier version.

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  1. Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Jochen Gläser & Grit Laudel

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  1. Jochen Gläser
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  2. Grit Laudel
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Correspondence to Jochen Gläser .

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  1. Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Technische Universität Dortmund, Dortmund, Germany

    Cornelius Schubert

  2. Institut für Soziologie, TU Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Ingo Schulz-Schaeffer

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Gläser, J., Laudel, G. (2023). The Undercomplexity of Higher Education Policy Innovations. In: Schubert, C., Schulz-Schaeffer, I. (eds) Berlin Keys to the Sociology of Technology. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-41683-6_7

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