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Increased emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to research and graduate education is a common feature of academic strategic plans written since around 2000. This emphasis follows from the coupling of two propositions, one about the characteristics of academic research and the other about the hierarchy within America’s higher-education system.
The first proposition is the widespread, albeit not unanimous, assessment by scientists, academic leaders, government and foundation officials, and industry leaders that “interdisciplinary thinking is rapidly becoming an integral feature of research” (National Academy of Science, 2005, Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research). This development is variously attributed to the changing structure of scientific knowledge, the fact that societal problems rarely fall within the domains of single disciplines, and the expressed needs and interests of students and employers.
The second proposition is that both established and aspiring research universities recognize that they operate within multiple competitive environments, in which their success at what Stephen Stigler has termed “intellectual competition” depends upon the importance, novelty, and currency of their ideas. Strategic planning focused on interdisciplinarity reflects the latter’s heightened standing as a competitive strategy for enhancing institutions’ performance, national rankings, and capacity to secure external funds.
But strategic commitment is not implementation, and progress towards interdisciplinarity has varied across universities. Four national studies over the course of a decade, which included site visits, interviews with university administrators and faculty members, and reviews of relevant documents at a cross-section of major research universities, all reveal that movement at some universities has been rapid, at others slow, and at others blocked.
Two opening caveats: First, these are snapshots of strategies, events, and early outcomes, not conclusions about irreversible behaviors or predictions of inexorable long-term outcomes. Second, I am not arguing for (or against) current thrusts towards interdisciplinarity. Reservations about its intellectual force and organizational staying power clearly exist, as suggested by Abbott’s characterization of the enthusiasm for cross-disciplinary work as a “perpetual hazy buzz.”
Irwin Feller is a senior visiting scientist at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a professor emeritus of economics at the Pennsylvania State University, where he directed the Institute for Policy Research and Evaluation from 1977 to 2002. His research interests include science and technology policy, the economics of higher education, and program evaluation. He is the author of Universities and State Governments (Praeger, 1986) and over 100 journal articles, book chapters, and research reports. Research from the article was supported in part by a grant from Atlantic Philanthropies.
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