This essay argues for the urgent need for philosophy as the necessary first step in any educational undertaking. Philosophy is involved with making fine distinctions which are necessary to clarify concepts and terms. The paper focuses primarily on the problems with an overreliance on scientific research in the social sciences, with special…

On September 22, 2022, the National Academy of Sciences held a symposium entitled Endless Frontier 2022: Research and Higher Education Institutions for the Next 75 Years. The event was a follow up to a February 2020 NAS symposium convened to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the landmark report Science, the Endless Frontier. Building on the 2020…

Established in December 2016, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Roundtable on Data Science Postsecondary Education was charged with identifying the challenges of and highlighting best practices in postsecondary data science education. Convening quarterly for 3 years, representatives from academia, industry, and…

Over the last two decades, colleges and universities in the United States have significantly increased the formal ethics instruction they provide in science and engineering. Today, science and engineering programs socialize students into the values of scientists and engineers as well as their obligations in the conduct of scientific research and…

This article is the author's Distinguished Lecture presented at the 2010 Annual Conference of the American Association for Agricultural Education (AAAE), in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 25, 2010. In this lecture, the author looks back at the significant changes in agricultural education in the last 100 or so years and discusses four major ways that one…

The norms of science define appropriate and inappropriate scholarly or research role performance. The four norms described in this study are (1) universalism: research is assessed on its merit, not particularistic criteria; (2) commonality: research must be made public and shared with the research community; (3) disinterestedness: research is…

The value of research and the career of a university lecturer depend heavily on the success in publishing scientific papers. This article reviews the guidelines for writing and submitting research papers. The three most important success criteria in publishing are as follows: the paper describes a good research, it is written according to the…

A program of service provision by medical technology program faculty at Northern Illinois University is described. The faculty offer their laboratory expertise to other university faculty and to graduate students who require blood testing in their research design. The services requested and the reimbursement for the services can be negotiated by…

Conflicts between basic research and applied science segments of pharmacy are discussed, with special attention to traditional goals of teaching, research, and service and to improving relationships between these branches of the profession. Techniques already tried, such as peer review of grant proposals, and faculty nontenure "service track," are…

Those outside the circle of scientists and research and academic administrators who criticize certain features of the symbiotic relationship between campus research and the Federal Government run the risk of being labeled anti-science by persons who view a continuing, increasing, and unquestioned flow of federal funds as the sine qua non of campus…

This paper describes changes in German higher education as a consequence of the reunification of East and West Germany, focusing particularly on personal evaluation of East German faculty and assessment of their scientific expertise. An introduction reviews the major historical events that have shaped the current situation. The paper states that…

This paper discusses the growing resource imbalance that is emerging between public and private institutions of higher education and the growing inequality of resources that is occurring within the public and private sectors. It illustrates implications of some of these changes for patterns of faculty compensation and faculty turnover observed…

Issues concerning the federal role in financing research and development (R&D) and the impact of these policies on academic research are examined. Specific concerns are whether the Reagan Administration is militarizing research and implications of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program. National Science Foundation data are examined,…