Response and Reflection

Lowen, R. S. (1997). Creating the Cold War University. Berkeley: University of California Press.

The first chapter of this text outlines some of the many difficulties both public and private universities had to face during a period of economic disparity.  Enrollments significantly declined, public funding followed, and institutions were forced to transform, seeking funding from non-traditional sources.  Faculty in institutions like Stanford were forced to do industry work to bring in money because the endowments and revenues generated from these endowments were not meeting the financial needs.  This change was met with a degree of resistance because of the threat of industry influencing faculty research interests.  The specific examples Lowen provides are from both physics and aeronautical engineering.

The second chapter of the text moves with history.  As we know, after the depression, Roosevelt began to sway his attention to the war in Europe.  Meanwhile, the aeronautical engineering program at Stanford had dried up its funds and was about to loose the university's support.  The program then aligned itself with NACA and managed to pull itself out of its red button line using federal government funding. By the 1940s, this first initiative gave way to the search for federal contracts as the nation was moved from national defense to preparation for war.  With many faculty members in support of US intervention in the war, the continued focus on government contracts became the norm.  Once fully engaged in war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Stanford had lost over 40 faculty members to war related initiatives.

The university again had to transform to identify funding sources without running a major deficit.  The institutions began to engage in major training initiatives in many core areas for the military, such as engineering or physics.  In response, initiatives both within and between universities bring more research money into the institutions.  These initiatives were successful and to avoid future financial problems, universities began to assess overhead costs on the incoming funds, which gave rise to some major political debates.  This is the origin of contract overhead assessed by universities on grants, contracts, and other funding sources to universities.

The third chapter discusses another major transformation period of the American university due to a political attack on the system - the transformation was to a public service institution post World War II.  There were some major concerns during this period about the level of quality in teaching, the relationship of faculty doing government contracts versus those that weren't, and the autonomy of departments and influence of the department chairs.  Lowen makes the convincing claim that the American university was enduring outpour of patronage after the WW II. Consequently, the institution pushed itself through the transformation process by integrating a series of reforms to make the institution not only a leading research institution, but also a leading public service provider.  This process put into question departmental autonomy.  Who controls the university?  Stanford's administrators wanted faculty to feel like they were in control, but as department autonomy dwindled (new vice presidents spawning), yet conformity was acknowledged for fear of retaliation.

The fourth and fifth chapters of the text emphasize a period patronage between more all key players and the American university.  This was a period of stronger relationships between the federal government and universities,  industry and universities, and the military and universities.  Now, the federal government, industry, military and society at large were all patrons of the American university.  To secure these patrons, a tremendous amount of money and effort was placed in developing the best engineering college west of the Mississippi.  Faculty were hired based on their potential to ascertain more funding and to meet the needs of these patrons.

As mentioned by Lowen, the increasing importance of the Cold War and the advent of the Korean war increased military budgets and constricted university  budgets.  As a consequence, this increased the importance of military patronage.  Many  contracts were established with the military, though this applied line of research was difficult to integrate into the curriculum.  Throughout the process of increased patronage, American universities (especially Stanford, such as the SRI or ERL) became very good at doing what they did.  This resulted in a many formal relationships with patrons bound by contract (with overhead feeding the university operations budget).

The sixth chapter emphasizes the potentially dangerous imbalance imposed by the high degree of patronage to federal sources for funding.  Some perceived this imbalance as necessary, forcing the universities to be responsive to national needs.  Others perceived it as a danger to the purpose of a university.  Further, the imbalance caused problems within institutions between academic departments...  those that are and those that are not.  Further, with the closure of WW II, American universities were overwhelmed with an influx of war veterans (part of federal patronage) seeking an education.  When Ternan's ideals reached the top, an engineering model was imposed on each department, looking at the specific productivity of each faculty member individually and department collectively.  Eventually, slacking departments and schools were forced into a practice known as salary splitting to keep afloat.  One comment covers the gist of it: "... administration to reward those professors with successful, externally supported research programs and effectively to penalize those whose main effort was devoted to undergraduate teaching. ""

The seventh chapter of the text discusses the elevation of the social sciences in the research arena via the behavioral paradigm.  Research funding up to this point had primarily been directed towards the hard sciences.  With the genesis of the Ford foundation as an admirable organization like the Carnegie or Rockefeller, the Ford foundation placed monies in the less funded to compete and receive recognition as a private donor comparable to federal patronage.  The chapter mentions a conflict that arose from this private donor to university relationship in regards to the political science department, in which the Ford foundation committee believed the department needed more of a behavioral and statistical flare.  The discussion leads to the process of tenure and promotion and its relationship with a department's autonomy and ability to make prudent judgment.  It would appear that the political bias of a professor came at the cost of a professorship due to the bias of the institution.

The seventh and final chapter seems to deviate from the primary focus of the text until I took closer look.  Really, this chapter talks about the effects of all these other things on one of the most important stakeholders: the undergraduate students.  Of course, this reminds me of Cuban's book (How Scholar Trumped Teachers), which clearly parallels the discussion in this book.  The creation of the Cold War university, as creatively described by Lowen, has not taken into account undergraduate education.  

I am not sure that I fully understand the connection between this text and the sociology of knowledge besides understanding the context in which knowledge was developed in United Statesfrom the depression to the collapse of the Cold War.  Perhaps that is the major connection and thus the sociology of knowledge construction.  Regardless, this text most helped me understand more of the inner-working of universities and why many of the things are the way they are in our universities.  It also helped me understand the influences of political and economic events on the American university.  For example, I knew why deans and provosts did not mind university researchers seeking funding...  they were able to take the cut from the top as overhead to supplement university operational budgets.  However, I did not understand how this process was instituted.  At minimum this text helped me better understand the relationship between American universities and their key funding sources... something that will certainly aid my career as a scholar.  Patronage in higher education is paramount.