Abstract
Over the course of the 20th century, unprecedented growth in scientific discovery was fueled by broad growth in the number of university-based scientists. During this period the American undergraduate enrollment rate and number of universities with STEM graduate programs each doubled three times and the annual volume of new PhDs doubled six times. This generated the research capacity that allowed the United States to surpass early European-dominated science production and lead for the rest of the century. Here, we focus on origins in the organizational environment and institutional dynamics instead of conventional economic factors. We argue that three trends of such dynamics in the development of American higher education not often considered together—mass undergraduate education, decentralized founding of universities, and flexible mission charters for PhD training—form a process characterized by a term coined here: access symbiosis. Then using a 90-year data series on STEM PhD production and institutional development, we demonstrate the historical progression of these mutually beneficial trends. This access symbiosis in the U.S., and perhaps versions of it in other nations, is likely one critical component of the integration of higher education development with the growing global capacity for scientific discovery. These results are discussed in terms of the contributions of American universities to the Century of Science, recent international trends, and its future viability.
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Notes
Because articles earlier in the century more frequently did not include institutional addresses for authors than later, it is possible that university-based authors are underestimated from 1900 to 1930.
There are many 4- and 2- year undergraduate colleges that also schooled the rise in undergraduate, but without graduate training.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Center for the Study of Higher Education and Social Science Research Institute at Penn State University, the SPHERE research collaborative, The Spencer Foundation, and the National Science Foundation for support in the obtaining and housing of the SED data; Lisa Broniszewski for data security compliance; and, Roger Geiger, David Guthrie, Kelly Rosinger, Royel Johnson, Karen Paulson, John Cheslock, Alicia Dowd and the Baker-Schaub lab group for comments on earlier drafts.
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Fernandez, F., Baker, D.P., Fu, YC. et al. A Symbiosis of Access: Proliferating STEM PhD Training in the U.S. from 1920–2010. Minerva 59, 79–98 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-020-09422-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-020-09422-5