1. The Role of Researchers at Universities
Since this April, I have been serving as a researcher at a national university in a non-metropolitan region. It goes without saying that our main duty as researchers is to pursue universal truths in the academic field through conducting research activities and writing books and papers. On the other hand, we must also teach students, which is regarded as part of the faculty’s duties at most universities (Note 1). In recent years, students commonly rate their teachers’ lectures, and post such ratings on websites or social media (Note 2). Presumably, these in turn affect the numbers of applicants to their universities. For researchers, the pressure is growing not only on the research front but also on the teaching front.
2. Relationship between Research and Teaching Responsibilities
There is almost complete agreement that the ability to secure research funding is the greatest factor in influencing a university researcher’s research activity. From that perspective, many studies have focused on the question of whether the availability of external funds (particularly competitive funds) promotes the research activity of universities. As reviewed by Koizumi et al. (2021), whereas some empirical studies showed that the availability of external funds contributes to an increase in research activity, some theoretical studies indicated the possibility that it may inhibit research activity. For example, Koizumi et al., using department-level data for Japanese national universities, found that the higher the share of external funds, the larger the number of papers produced, although the number of papers declines when the share of external funds exceeds a certain threshold. In other words, there is an appropriate level of external funds from the viewpoint of research productivity.
On the other hand, few empirical studies have analyzed the interaction between research and educational responsibilities that I mentioned earlier. Meanwhile, some theoretical research models have been developed in order to observe how universities compete with each other in terms of research output and student enrollments under the assumption of the presence of a trade-off between research and teaching. Some of those models predict that if external research funds are introduced, universities will be polarized into two groups—those concentrating on research and those concentrating on teaching (Del Rey, 2001; De Fraja and Iossa, 2002; De Fraja and Valbonesi, 2012). Other theoretical studies showed that, if confronted with a trade-off between research and teaching, some individual departments within universities will focus on research activity and, at the same time, choose to take advantage of other departments to get a free ride with respect to teaching responsibilities, a situation that results in a decline in overall tuition fee revenue for that university (Gautier and Wauthy, 2007).
Focusing on the trade-off relationship (or complementarity) between research and teaching, I (Ambashi, 2019, 2021) conducted a theoretical analysis of the effects of the availability of external funds on universities. The theoretical model, whose details I will omit here, indicated the possibility that when the trade-off between research and teaching is above a certain threshold, an increase in external funds may lead to decreases in both research activity and student enrollments. It also indicated that when the trade-off is very strong, an increase in external funds may lead to a decline in research output. These seemingly counterintuitive results are attributable to the following mechanism: a decrease in the number of enrollments due to a decline in teaching quality causes a fall in tuition fee revenue, which in turn reduces the total amount of funds that can be allocated to research activity. This model also showed that when the assumptions include limitations to a university’s capacity as well as the trade-off between research and teaching, teaching activity inevitably declines if universities and researchers are evaluated only based on the results of their research activity.
In light of the above findings, I also conducted a simplified empirical study using relatively easily accessible U.S. university data. Specifically, I obtained the following datasets from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NCSES): the numbers of students who acquired a doctoral degree at public and private U.S. universities (the total number and the number in natural sciences fields), total university student enrollments, total research and development (R&D) budgets covered by external funds (general R&D programs and scientific R&D programs supported by federal government assistance), total tuition fees, and total faculty member numbers. The empirical study, using a regression analysis, probed how the availability of external funds affected both research and teaching activities, with the number of students who acquired a doctoral degree and the number of student enrollments used as dependent variables and other figures used as independent variables (Note 3). The main findings of the empirical study were as follows. First, in the case of public universities, the R&D budget for each of the general R&D programs and scientific R&D programs supported by external funds were positively correlated with the total number of students who acquired a doctoral degree and the number of students who acquired a doctoral degree in natural sciences fields. On the other hand, in the case of private universities, there was either a negative correlation or no correlation. Second, in the case of private universities, the R&D budget for scientific R&D programs supported by external funds had a negative correlation with student enrollments. Although this study had some analytical limitations, including an inadequate control of endogeneity, the above findings may suggest the presence of a trade-off between research and teaching at private universities.
3. Toward Better Research
It is difficult to put forward generalized policy recommendations, including for Japan, based on the abovementioned results of those theoretical and empirical studies alone, but we can say the following: while research and teaching activities conducted by researchers may exhibit either a trade-off relationship or complementarity, it is essential to come up with a policy design that increases complementarity between these two activities. For example, with respect to teaching activity, providing research-related support for graduate students is expected to produce a positive impact on research activity through student-teacher collaborative research. In addition, it is important for teachers to consider how they can take advantage of their day-to-day teaching responsibilities to advance their research. For universities, one option is to strengthen support for teachers to enable more efficient teaching activity to ensure that time for research is secured.
At a time when concerns have been raised over the decline in Japan’s research capabilities compared with the global standard, it is desirable to seriously consider ways of promoting research activity from various perspectives.
May 29, 2023
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