Has the Study of Philosophy at Dutch Universities Changed under Economic and Political Pressures?

Abstract

From 1980 until 1985, the Dutch Faculties of Philosophy went through a period of transition. First, in 1982 the national government introduced a new system of financing research at the universities. This was essentially based on the natural sciences and did not match philosophers' work organization. In 1983 a drastic reduction in the budget for philosophy was proposed within the framework of a policy of introducing savings by distributing tasks among the universities. Recently, a visiting committee reported on the weak and strong areas of Dutch philosophy and proposed a policy to strengthen Dutch philosophy. This study explores the effects of the institutional reorganizations on the study of philosophy at the faculties, using scientometric methods. In addition to presenting empirical results, some methodological questions concerning the application of scientometric methods to a field of the humanities will be discussed. The number of publications went up as funding was cut back and different subfields made different kinds of changes in orientation. The results show the relevance of publication-based data in research evaluation.

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