Science faculty at US research universities: The impacts of university research center-affiliation and gender on industrial activities

Abstract

Academics work in increasingly complex institutional environments. Universities become more engaged with commercial activities at the same time that they generate new internal structures to manage research activities. Faculty members are the principal agents through which these interactions develop and mature. How these institutions and industrial arrangements affect faculty career management continues to be investigated in recent work. We use scientific and technical human capital theory to test the hypothesis that university research center-affiliation helps to facilitate valuable industrial involvement by university professors. We are particularly interested in how gender may moderate the effects of university research center-affiliation on industrial activities. We study tenure-track academic scientists and engineers in US research universities to find that affiliation with a university research center increases the industrial involvement of both men and women. We conclude that the development of university research centers has resulted in a new basis of institutional stratification among professors, with affiliates engaging in more industrial activities than their exclusively department-based peers. Although university research center-affiliation advantages both men and women, male university research center-affiliates enjoy a slightly greater advantage than female center-affiliates in their industrial involvement.