The Two Cultures Problem

Abstract

Historically, a division of scientific labor evolved in the USA where universities conducted basic or pure research, federal laboratories and bureaus conducted applied research, and private industry engaged in the development of new products and commercial processes. These boundaries have never been impermeable, but for the most part, basic research and applied research have been conducted by different individuals, who are physically separated by location, and who are also divided by the “two cultures” of academia and business. Much has been written about the incompatibility of the two cultures of business and academia, but that incompatibility is intensified when entrepreneurial culture is brought inside the university, and ironically, this is particularly true in the corporate bureaucratic university. The contradiction between the principles of corporate-bureaucratic organization and entrepreneurial flexible organization is illustrated in four general problems: the pigs at the trough syndrome, the “if I can’t have it, then you can’t have it” syndrome, the campus meetings culture, and the never answers the phone dilemma.

The professional educator is quite as likely to become

narrow and provincial as is any other specialist…it may

not follow that those same learned men are the best judges

of what should be the trend of that educational system…

Keen foresight, a wise and well-seasoned judgment of the

practical value of things ordinarily go to make up the

mental equipment of the man who has made a million

dollars…

– Frank A. Vanderlip, Business and Education (1907)