Faculty norms and university/industry linkages in STEMM

ABSTRACT

This study investigated academic norms related to faculty engagement with industry in one public research-intensive university in the United States in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics, and Medical (STEMM). Primary methods included exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, logistic regression, and ANOVA applied to responses to a survey instrument we implemented based on current literature on university/industry linkages. Results show how faculty embrace the coexistence of different logics in their norms differing by rank, type of engagement with industry, prior experience working in the industry, and field. Overall, faculty in this study hold values traditionally associated with the academic profession except when there are possibilities of participating in the market and seek commercial gain from research.

KEYWORDS:

• Academic norms
• university–industry linkages
• academic capitalism
• the academic profession
• Triple Helix Model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Tables with statistics are available upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This study was in part supported by The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey in 2014.