Higher Education Management and Policy

Frequency :
3 times a year
ISSN :
1726-9822 (online)
ISSN :
1682-3451 (print)
DOI :
10.1787/17269822
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Previously published as Higher Education Management, Higher Education Management and Policy (HEMP) is published three times each year and is edited by the OECD’s Programme on Institutional Management in Higher Education. It covers the field through articles and reports on such issues as quality assurance, human resources, funding, and internationalisation. It also is a source of information on activities and events organised by OECD’s IMHE Programme.

Also available in: French
Article
 

Critical masses for academic research groups and consequences for higher education research policy and management You do not have access to this content

Authors:
Ralph Kenna, Bertrand Berche
Publication Date
16 Jan 2012
Pages
16
Bibliographic information
No.:
16,
Volume:
23,
Issue:
3
Pages
1–21
DOI
10.1787/hemp-23-5kg0vswcm27g

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Smaller universities may produce research which is on a par with larger, elite establishments. This is confirmed by a recently developed mathematical model, supported by data from British and French higher education research-evaluation exercises. The detailed nature of the UK system, in particular, allows quantification of the notion of critical mass in research. It is shown that research quality increases with group quantity, but only up to a limiting size referred to as the upper critical mass. The condition for smaller universities to produce top-quality research is that they contain research groups of sizes above the upper critical masses appropriate to their respective disciplines. Policies which concentrate support into progressively fewer, larger institutions are therefore unjustified for high-quality academic research. Instead, to amplify overall research strength, support for medium-sized groups should be prioritised to help them attain upper critical mass.