ABSTRACT
The paper examines the nature of the relationship between changes in European higher education and social science research on higher education
and why this matters. In so doing, it draws on a sociology of knowledge approach as outlined in the editors’ introduction to this volume, particularly drawing on the principles of the symmetry of different knowledge claims, rejection of internal and external divisions between knowledge production and societal or economic developments, situatedness which emphasizes the micro-settings of scholars and academic departments and contexualism which suggests how national or regional cultures can shape knowledge debates. The paper relates the recent history of a relatively new sub-field of Education studies,1 namely Higher Education (HE) research. This account enquires into the status of HE research (it isn’t a close disciplinary community with high paradigmatic and methodological consensus), its legitimacy (which is as much in relation to practice as policy) and its connections to European education policy and practice. The paper deals with how HE research is generated and how EU bureaucrats may have accidentally helped develop a new type of researcher studying HE, one typically focused on teaching and learning, as well as a new type of HE in the aftermath of the Bologna process reforms to structures, systems and processes in higher education institutions. EU grant funding has played a part in the growth of HE research, but it is the Bologna transformation of European higher education and the massification of HE that has generated the most pressing questions for new researchers in the sub-field (Curaj et al. 2012; Corbett and Henkel 2013). Both the social context and the science have often been closely intertwined, in the tradition of co-production of knowledge (Jasanoff 2004), thus to a large extent blurring the internal and external elements of the sub-field. At the same time, the proliferation of research themes and inexperience of many HE researchers mean a high degree of contestation in the field (Bourdieu 1986, 1988) and a danger of overlooking the issue of symmetry in relation to past and present knowledge claims. Also, the prominence of European initiatives fuelling the sub-field’s growth could lead to what Vauchez (2008), writing about the development of European Legal Studies, calls a ‘weak’ academic field, heavily dependent on EU bureaucrats and lawyers for its very existence, though it seems this is only partially true for HE research. As we will see later, the European HE sub-field is characterized by a large number of doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers, typically based in Education, Sociology, Public Administration, Economics or Management/ Business units, where HE is often a minority interest for a small number of established academics. Other emerging researchers may be focused on pedagogical research in their own subject, institutional research or working in a unit supporting the development of new academics’ teaching skills. Thus, sources of legitimacy for and motivation to work in the field cross many local contexts. In addition, there are a very small number of established HE Research Centres in Europe that attract significant external research funding. The knowledge produced in the field of HE is very varied. Some of it
serves particular political and strategic interests or is funded directly from European sources (whether policy-focused or ‘blue skies’), while other projects deal with practical demands (most usually related to teaching) at
264 R. Deem
the coalface of higher education institutions. Although co-produced by practitioners and researchers, these projects are not directly related to the activities of EU bureaucrats, even though some pedagogic and curricular challenges arise from the consequences of the uneven imposition of the Bologna process (Curaj et al. 2012). Emerging researchers working in the HE sub-field may have no sense of being situated within a coherent academic community (Ashwin, Deem and McAlpine 2013) and their projects often reflect local conditions or practitioner challenges, not European concerns. The lack of agreement on key paradigms or methodologies means that in Bourdieu’s terms (Bourdieu 1986, 1988), this is a highly contested field. It is not, however, the local or wider national context that gives rise to this, rather it is the wide range of disciplines that HE researchers come from. Emerging HE researchers are not always able to exploit the full potential of the knowledge they have created and may have naı¨ve views about how to interact with the policy process (Ashwin, Deem and McAlpine 2013). All this is considered in the sections about the field and who undertakes HE research and in the final section of the paper where three large European HE projects are considered. But first, we turn to a description and analysis of the field of HE research as presently constituted.
