‘Academic drift’ is a term sometimes used to describe the process whereby knowledge which is intended to be useful gradually loses close ties to practice while becoming more tightly integrated with one or other body of scientific knowledge. Drift in this sense has been a common phenomenon in agriculture, engineering, medicine and management sciences in several countries in the 19th and 20th centuries. Understanding drift is obviously important, both to practitioners concerned that higher education should be relevant to practice, but (...) also to historians who seek to make sense of long-term trends in knowledge-production. It is surprising, therefore, that although the existence of drift has been widely documented, remarkably little attention has been given so far to explaining it. In this paper I argue that drift is not an invariant universal tendency but a historically specific one which arises under particular circumstances. I outline a model of institutional dynamics which seeks to explain why drift has occurred at some institutions but not others. In the second section I explore the implications of the model for educationists and policy-makers concerned with the reform of higher education in these areas. (shrink)

Divergent models applied to the chronology of Australian science leave us with two particular problems unresolved: was late-nineteenth-century science in this peripheral setting becoming more or less dependent on its British fountainhead, and what is the meaning of the reportedly narrow, utilitarian focus of ‘colonial science’? This paper argues that a complex interplay of imperial and local imperatives makes neat classification and periodization of Australia's scientific development a hazardous venture. Compounding the complexity is the nature of the relationship between science (...) and technology, a factor largely ignored in the historiography of Australian science. Contrary to common assumptions, an empirical focus on science-technology links suggests that scientific and technological dependencies were not running in parallel, but out of phase, with science as the laggard. Indeed, it appears that science in late-nineteenth-century Australia may have developed more from its interaction with technological systems than from its own internal dynamics. (shrink)

ArgumentState patronage and the modernizing role of the government have been considered crucial for the development of science in Russia during both Imperial and Soviet periods. This paper argues, on the contrary, that the start of Russian agricultural science had predominantly local and non-governmental sources of support. Amateur experiments by nobles aspiring to become “cultured” landlords, university professors applying their scientific knowledge to their own estates, and the efforts by local community administrations, zemstvo, to compete for grain markets all contributed, (...) by 1900, to the establishment of various stations for agricultural research. The Imperial government became involved in this process rather belatedly, with an effort to further stimulate and coordinate the institutional network of agricultural science. By 1917, this network included more than 300 breeding and experimental stations. Despite revolutionary violence and the loss of former patrons, most of these stations managed to maintain their functions throughout the Civil War and formed the basis of Soviet agricultural science. (shrink)