Cutting NSF Is Like Liquidating Your Finest Investment
Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using […]
Showing Institutions Matter: Douglass North, 1920-2015
Douglass C. North’s contributions to economic theory have had an enormous influence on how scholars understand institutions and the process of economic change.
The Value Added by Universities Exceeds Their Constituent Services
Academics do not simply teach and do research: they are teacher-researchers, notes Steve Fuller. In reviewing the UK spending review, he says, it is the value added to society by nurturing this complex role that should be at the forefront of the state’s thinking about the criteria used to fund universities.
Will the UK Government Listen to Nurse Review?
Scientists in the UK are facing great uncertainty ahead of the Conservative government’s comprehensive spending review on November 25. Not only is funding for UK research under threat, the government is believed to be planning on culling many of the agencies that fund research in an effort to make savings.
Welcoming the American ‘Nudge Unit’
The White House’s Social and Behavioral Sciences Team has done an impressive job so far in using small, inexpensive changes to make federal policies better serve citizens.
There’s Life Beyond STEM: A Plea from Australia
Academia has long recognized that wicked problems require cross-disciplinary research approaches, yet Australia’s Science and Research Priorities enthrall mainly STEM researchers. This divide puts academia back into silos: those on the sunny side of funding decisions and those under a constant rain cloud.
A New Front in the Replication Wars: Economics
A sense of crisis is developing in economics after two Federal Reserve economists came to the alarming conclusion that economics research is usually not replicable.
In South Africa, OA is a Necessity, Not a Nicety
Individual academics and institutions have driven the open access process in South Africa. This bottom-up approach has its merits, argue John Butler-Adam, Susan Veldsman and Ina Smith, but a push from the top is needed to ensure that the nation stays on track.
Deaton’s Victory for Applied Economics, Statisticians
Angus Deaton’s work is a model of what applied economics ought to be, says Ian Preston. No award the Nobel committee has made has pleased the author as much, for the recognition it gives both Deaton and the type of work he does.
