The Growth of Five US Design Disciplines, 1984-2012

Abstract

This paper undertakes a quantitative, macro-comparative study of the institutionalization and growth of five design disciplines (architecture, landscape architecture, urban/city planning, interior design, industrial design) in the US. By analyzing the intra-and extra-institutional resources and conditions that promote the growth of design disciplines using lagged random effects regression models, the paper provides valuable insights to policymakers and administrators who seek to make meaningful interventions within the academy and will advance sociological understanding of the changing organization of academic knowledge.This study is unique for a couple of reasons. First, it is the first of its kind that utilizes IPEDS database. Second, there are no analyses that assess the growth and institutionalization of design disciplines using longitudinal data and complex statistical tools. The studies in the extant literature are generally limited to historical and isolated cases studies and as such, far from providing a holistic picture of the development of design in the US Higher Education. Keywords: Design education in the US, longitudinal analysis, higher education, sociology of design INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUNDThis paper analyses the patterns of growth and decline among design disciplines during the period 1984-2010 in the US higher education system. I examine the institutional trajectories of the five major design fields: architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, urban/city/community and regional planning (henceforth, urban planning), and industrial design. These five fields were selected because: a) they are older and more established design fields compared to others, and hence provide an exemplar for the newer design disciplines; and b) since they are older, the data regarding them is more consistent and goes back to 1984 without any major problems that may jeopardize my research design. In some other fields (e.g. graphic design, jewelry design, fashion design etc.) the coding schemes of my data sources are not as robust.My research objectives are fourfold. First, I will examine the institutional factors that inhibit or promote the institutional growth of design disciplines. Second, I will also examine the extra-institutional factors that inhibit or promote growth (e.g. unemployment and economic growth). Third, I will analyze how visual arts and engineering fields affect the institutional growth of the design disciplines as these fields share historical/institutional ties. Fourth, I will investigate the effects of the "disciplinary clustering" effect on the growth and institutionalization of the design disciplines.

Interdisciplinarity and insularity in the diffusion of knowledge: an analysis of disciplinary boundaries between philosophy of science and the sciences

“…These silos are reproduced in part by the incommensurability of disciplinary paradigms and epistemic cultures, ''disciplinary ethnocentrism'' (Campbell 1969), asymmetrical borrowing (Klein 1990), and ''willful ignorance,'' as researchers simultaneously make their own disciplinary knowledge more esoteric and push back against knowledge from other disciplines (see Jacobs 2014). Many interdisciplinary fields in the social sciences and humanities emerged in the context of these and related critiques of the disciplinary system (Ilhan 2013;Rojas 2007;Small 1999;Turk-Bicakci 2007).…”