|
|
|
|
|
|
Baker, David
- Professor
- The Pennsylvania State University
- Department of Sociology
- United State
|
|
|
David Baker is currently the Harry
and Marion Eberly Professor of Education and Sociology
at the Pennsylvania State University, where he has
also served as the Associate Director of the Social
Science Research Institute. He was a Fulbright Senior
Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development,
Berlin, Germany in 2003-04. From 1992-94, he was
the American Education Research Association's Senior
Fellow at the National Center for Education Statistics
U.S. Department of Education, where he helped to
develop that agency's international unit. As a senior
research scientist at American Institutes for Research
in Washington DC from 1994-97, he contributed to
numerous NCES international projects and directed
a number of NCES public reports. Baker has managed
statistical projects for the World Bank, and consulted
to USAID, OECD, UNESCO, and a number of national
governments on educational policy. Additionally,
he led a multi-year analyses project of the TIMSS
database funded by the Fund for the Improvement
of Education, U.S. Dept of Education and the National
Science Foundation.
He is currently working with OECD on designing a
new cross-national teacher survey.
Given his interest in education as an institution,
over the past few years he has turned to examining
higher education comparatively and focusing on
recent institutional trends in higher education
and their organizational consequences. For example,
on the relentless privatization and marketing
of higher education, Baker and a colleague have
just finished The Lion and the Swoosh: Universities,
Big Corporations, and the People who make our
Clothes. He is finishing up two analyses of
long-term institutional change in higher education
one of which is a book that examines the historical
rise of shadow education (i.e. test-preparation
and tutoring services) and its relationship to
higher education in South Korea.
Selected Publications
- Baker, David and Gerald LeTendre (2005) National
Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture
and the Future of Schooling. Stanford CA:
Stanford University Press.
- Baker, David (2005). "Can We Predict
Institutional Change? Evidence from Cross-national
Comparisons of Educational Phenomena."
In Rowan, B. and Meyer, H. (eds.) Neo-Institutionalism
Perspectives on Education. SUNY Press: New
York.
- Baker, David and Nalini Chhetri (forthcoming).
The Lion and the Swoosh: Universities, Big
Corporations, and the People who make our Clothes.
- Baker, D., Goesling, B. and LeTendre, G. (2002).
"Socio-economic Status, School Quality,
and National Economic Development: A Cross-national
Analysis of the "Heyneman-Loxley Effect"
on Mathematics and Science Achievement"
Comparative Education Review 46 (3) 291-312.
- Baker, David "Should we be more like
them? American High School Achievement in Cross-national
Comparison. Brookings Papers on Education Policy,
The Brookings Institute, Washington DC, 2002.
|
|
|
| The Institutional Crisis of the
German University: Assessing New Public Management
Strategies to Improve the Future of University Research
The on-going crisis of the German university
is a case ripe for comparative analysis of the
future of higher education in the 21st century.
Once an exalted institutional model for higher
education development in Western societies, the
German university system of today, struggling
to adapt to new challenges facing higher education
for the new century, appears at times entrapped
within the myth of its former self. Caught between
pincer forces of pressure towards greater access
and concern about less than internationally
competitive research, the system struggles to
adapt. At the same time, the on-going Bologna
process within the European Union confronts German
higher education with models of tertiary education
that run counter to the unique German combination
of political control by state (i.e. Lander) authorities
and a strong tradition of oligarchic academic
self-regulation makes for particularly interesting
institutional problems to study.
The German higher education crisis is particularly
salient to the New Century Scholars themes of
the future of research in the modern university
as it responds to the pressures of mass education.
Building internal competition, innovative flexibility,
and differentiation into the German higher education
system are important goals for developing an effective
organizational climate for high-quality research,
but it is high-quality leadership and dynamic
management that will effectively lead German higher
education towards these goals. In collaboration
with colleagues the Wittenberg Institute for Higher
Education Research, Martin Luther University and
the Max-Planck Institute for Human Development,
Berlin, I propose a comparative study of selected
German universities that have implemented management
strategies aimed at improving university research
based on the ideas behind the New Public Management
(NPM) with those that have are not using these
strategies. The analysis will focus on three areas
of organizational outcomes and related research
questions. One, in comparison to traditionally
managed universities, has universities using NPM
strategies created more competition for resources
to build centers of excellence in research? Two,
have NPM universities been able to have more differentiation
between teaching and research activities, accompanied
by some degree of faculty specialization in research?
Three, have NPM universities developed and implemented
effective policies to incorporate young scientists
and underrepresented scholars such as women within
research activities?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
