The Impact of Pressures to Produce on Knowledge Production and Evaluation in the Modern Academy

Brandy Simula and Tracy Scott
Additional contact information
Brandy Simula: Department of Sociology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA
Tracy Scott: Department of Sociology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA

Social Sciences, 2020, vol. 9, issue 5, 1-13

Abstract: Combining work from the related but distinct fields of sociology of knowledge and sociology of education, we explore the effects of the changing landscape of higher education on the academic knowledge production system. Drawing on 100 interviews with faculty members from 34 disciplines at an elite private research university, we show that faculty members perceive exponentially increasing pressures to produce, and identify the ways that those pressures can negatively impact the knowledge creation process. We then examine the ways those pressures to produce influence how faculty evaluate their colleagues’ work, leading faculty to extend the benefit of the doubt, rely on reputation, and emphasize the peer review process, even as they simultaneously critique its weaknesses. Finally, we show that faculty members ultimately reconcile their perceptions of weaknesses in the current knowledge production system with their belief in that system by emphasizing their own and their colleagues’ commitment to resisting structural pressures to produce. While much of the existing body of scholarship on the changing higher education landscape has focused on teaching and learning outcomes, this study contributes to our understanding of how those changes impact the research process, underscoring the relationship between institutional structures and evaluative processes.

Keywords: sociology of knowledge; evaluation; higher education; faculty; research process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/9/5/64/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/9/5/64/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:9:y:2020:i:5:p:64-:d:351362

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().