Universities vs. research institutes? Overcoming the Soviet legacy of higher education and research

Abstract

Universities and non-university research institutes have been recognised as two key sectors producing research globally. The Soviet model of research organisation included a large network of research institutes, affiliated with the USSR Academy of Sciences and republican academies, as well as industry research institutes, affiliated with sectoral ministries. Universities played a minor role in research. Post-Soviet higher education and research systems went through reforms in the last three decades which led to changes in the patterns of knowledge production. This study offers an overview of the reforms and a bibliometric analysis of 319410 publications in journals indexed in the Web of Science database to examine how selected post-Soviet countries have overcome the Soviet legacy of organisational separation of higher education and research. While universities now produce the bulk of research output in selected countries, in the majority of national contexts, Academies of Sciences continue to be important players in research.

Who funds the production of globally visible research in the Global South?

“…3 Kazakhstan being the outlier here can be explained by a relatively high public investment in higher education and research in Kazakhstan in the last decade or so, when compared to other countries in the region. Kazakhstan has implemented a variety of policies which reconfigured the higher education and research organisational and funding landscapes (Chankseliani et al, 2022;Lovakov et al, 2022). These policies contributed to the sharpest rise in the production of globally visible research by Kazakhstani-based researchers since 2010, when compared to other post-Soviet countries (Chankseliani et al, 2021a(Chankseliani et al, , 2021b.…”

“…Such public allocations are not normally mentioned in funding acknowledgements of research output. The majority of globally visible research in these countries is produced either at universities or research institutes (Lovakov et al, 2022). Like in many other parts of the world, both types of institution receive public funding that sustains their educational activities and some limited research activities.…”

Higher Education in Post-Neoliberal Times: Building Human Capabilities in the Emergent Period of Uncertainty

“…Soviet central control during the Cold War approach made coordinated expansion in "factory-like" institutions. The Soviet model also created research institutions separate from universities, inhibiting their development of globally competitive research capabilities in post-soviet universities during globalization (Lovakov, Chankseliani, & Panova, 2022). The transformation from central control to market systems was not easy.…”

Dynamics of the disciplinary structure of research in post-Soviet countries

“…The disciplinary structure of research can also be reproduced through inertia. In particular, in many post-Soviet countries, the Academy of Sciences is still the main or one of the main producers of scientific knowledge (Lovakov et al, 2022), largely reproducing the same structure of research institutes that existed at the time of the collapse of the USSR. In some countries, not only the structure, but also the style of science management still exists, which significantly complicates research work, especially in the social sciences (Jonbekova, 2020).…”

“…In these countries, the Academy of Sciences has become a club of scientists, and its subordinate research institutes have been integrated into universities or have become independent. In other countries, the Academy of Sciences still has a status more or less similar to that of the Soviet period, but in most of them universities are actively involved in scientific research (Lovakov et al, 2022). Three groups of countries can be distinguished.…”