Are big university departments better than small ones?

Abstract

The aim of this article is to examine whether large university departments create better opportunities for research than small ones. The data are drawn from a questionnaire study among all faculty members of the rank of assistant professor or higher at Norway's four universities. There is no significant relationship between department size and productivity in scientific publishing. Furthermore, there is a tendency that faculty in the smallest departments are more content with the research environment than their colleagues in the largest departments. There are, however, large differences between fields of learning in this respect.