Strategic Research, Post-modern Universities and Research Training

The old division of labour between fundamental and applied or problem-oriented research has almost disappeared, and with it, the functional distinctions between universities, public labs and industrial and other private research. Doctoral research training can then also become diversified in terms of its content and its location. Closer analysis of ongoing changes, in particular, the emergence of a regime of strategic science, is necessary to specify requirements for a career in science in the coming decades. Disciplines as we know them may not be of major importance, but interdisciplinarity as such is not the answer. For universities, the key challenge is to diversify and recombine, both cognitively and institutionally, into what I call a post-modern university, which includes overlaps and alliances with centres (of excellence and relevance), public labs and various private organizations. In such a university, a doctoral student can wend his or her way through the types of locations, just as is to be expected of his or her later career.