Brendan Cantwell
Biographic Data
| ID | 300105 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brendan Cantwell |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brendan |
| FAMILY NAME | Cantwell |
| SIGNATURE | CANTWELL B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Michigan State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3882-4200 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 100 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Paths to status among public research universities in the United States, 2010–2021
Although universities are often characterised as ‘elite’, institutions can attain status in multiple dimensions—reputation, research, money and selectivity. We studied 21st century public universities in the United States, using latent profile analysis to identify which universities followed each path to status. Most universities pursued none, and very few pursued all four. Membership in the four groups was stable over time, indicating limited mo…
Conceptualizing State Re-Engagement With Public Higher Education
Three trends have characterized state policymaking for higher education in the 21st century: divestment, accountability, and race neutrality. These policy agendas are often justified as an attempt to optimize system efficiency and performance by making institutional actors (agents) responsive to the demands of state officials (principals). In this manuscript, we present quantitative evidence that these three policy initiatives have not achieved t…
Making sense of change in higher education research: Exploring the intersection of science and policy
Higher education studies give considerable attention to understanding change . The interest in change reflects the historical conditions in which higher education emerged as a distinct field of study. Around the mid-twentieth century, a pragmatic need for an academic response to managing larger and more complex higher education institutions and systems was taking shape. This need gave rise to a tradition of studying change in higher education, wh…
Years of Higher Education: A critical reflection and thoughts on an evolving agenda
What university makes a public good
Relations between China and the United States will invariably influence the future of the human and natural world. New theory [Marginson, Simon, and Lili Yang. 2021. “Individual and Collective Outcomes of Higher Education; A Comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese Approaches.” Globalisation, Societies and Education.] opened a space for more work on how higher education might support something like the second sort of future by generating collecti…
Explanatory accounts in international and comparative higher education research
Developing plausible explanations rooted in theory and supported by evidence is a challenge for comparative higher education studies. The purpose of this article is to consider how comparative studies in higher education might develop accounts that allow the research community to enhance explanatory power. Higher education studies can advance explanations about what is happening and why, as well as interpret the meaning of occurrences by drawing …
Ordering the global field of academic science: Money, mission, and position
Researchers have identified the emergence of a global field of academic science. In order to understand the dynamics of this field, this study used latent profile and regression techniques to analyze data gathered for a sample of 114 research universities from around the world. Sociological theory informed the framing and conceptualization of the study. Results demonstrated that leading research universities emphasized different areas of science,…
Partisanship, White Racial Resentment, and State Support for Higher Education
Dominant explanations of state higher education policy tend to emphasize economic models that foreground the business cycle or political approaches that cast ideology as fairly fixed. We instead foreground changing social context to conceptualize state appropriations as predicted not only by these classic explanations, but also by the interplay of racial representation and political party control. Drawing on the racial backlash hypothesis and qua…
Unequal Higher Education: Wealth, Status, and Student Opportunity
American higher education is often understood as a vehicle for social advancement. However, the institutions at which students enroll differ widely from one another. Some enjoy tremendous endowment savings and/or collect resources via research, which then offsets the funds that students contribute. Other institutions rely heavily on student tuition payments. These schools may struggle to remain solvent, and their students often bear the lion’s sh…
High Participation Systems of Higher Education
Higher education has become a central institution of society, building individual knowledge, skills, agency, and relational social networks at unprecedented depth and scale. Within a generation there has been an extraordinary global expansion of higher education, in every region in all but the poorest countries, outstripping economic growth and deriving primarily from familial aspirations for betterment. By focusing on the systems and countries t…
Unequal Higher Education in the United States: Growing Participation and Shrinking Opportunities
This paper argues that rising institutional inequality is a component of individual-level inequality in the United States because U.S. higher education provides a diverse group of students with unequal access to different kinds of institutions. Using latent profile analysis, we classified all public and private nonprofit higher education institutions in the U.S. from 2005 to 2013 into seven categories. We held these categories stable over time an…
Social mechanisms and strategic action fields: The example of the emergence of the European Research Area
The point of departure of this article is Fligstein and McAdam’s A Theory of Fields. It is argued that their theoretical framework would be strengthened by a more systematic focus in social mechanism-based explanations since this would increase understanding of how new strategic action fields (SAFs) emerge. This argument is illustrated by exploring the emergence of the European Research Area (ERA) as a SAF. In identifying social mechanisms the ar…
Research Universities and The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Competition, Resource Concentration, and the ‘Great Recession’ in the United States
Rise of the Science and Engineering Postdoctorate and the Restructuring of Academic Research
Since the 1980s the number of postdocs employed at U.S. research universities has in-creased dramatically as has the importance of postdocs to academic research. Growth in postdoc employment has coincided with increased dependence on external research funds. Using panel regression analysis, this article explores the organizational characteristics associated with the tendency to employ postdocs and the relationship between postdoc employment and d…
Academic Capitalism in the Age of Globalization
Today, nearly every aspect of higher education - including student recruitment, classroom instruction, faculty research, administrative governance, and the control of intellectual property - is embedded in a political economy with links to the market and the state. Academic capitalism offers a powerful framework for understanding this relationship. Essentially, it allows us to understand higher education's shift from creating scholarship and lear…
Assessing the public university
Global Status, Intra-Institutional Stratification and Organizational Segmentation: A Time-Dynamic Tobit Analysis of Arwu Position Among U.S. Universities
Quasi-Markets in U.S. Higher Education: The Humanities and Institutional Revenues
We conceptualize colleges and universities as embedded in quasi-markets, meaning competitive sites created by policy, that disfavor the humanities. We therefore posit that increased revenues from a quasi-market predict institutional de-emphasis of the humanities. Results indicate that private colleges and universities follow this pattern while public institutions do not
Transatlantic moves to the market: The United States and the European Union
Transnational Mobility and International Academic Employment: Gatekeeping in an Academic Competition Arena
Academic in-sourcing: International Postdoctoral Employment and New Modes of Academic Production
International postdoctoral researchers are growing in number and importance in academic research around the world. This is contextualised by a shift to international and enterprise modes of academic production. Through a multiple case study, this paper analyses the role of international postdoctoral employment in life sciences and engineering fields at universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. In doing so particular attention is g…
Four stories: Confronting contemporary ideas about globalisation and internationalisation in higher education
There is a common distinction between globalisation and internationalisation in higher education scholarship. Globalisation is seen as an over‐arching social and economic process where as internatinalisation is understood as the ways in which institutions of higher education respond to globalisation. This conceptual distinction has also worked its way into the practice of university administration around the world. Drawing on the theoretical work…
Caught on the Mexican–US border: The insecurity and desire of collaboration between two universities
Understandings of cross‐border university collaboration are often informed by a concept of internationalisation that privileges the rationales of university administrators. A case study of two asymmetric universities along the border of Mexico and the United States – one of the most active and problematic borders in the world – found that, rather than administrative rationales, the insecurities and desires of individual collaborators play a more …
Transnational Mobility and International Academic Employment: Gatekeeping in an Academic Competition Arena
Academic in-sourcing: International Postdoctoral Employment and New Modes of Academic Production
International postdoctoral researchers are growing in number and importance in academic research around the world. This is contextualised by a shift to international and enterprise modes of academic production. Through a multiple case study, this paper analyses the role of international postdoctoral employment in life sciences and engineering fields at universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. In doing so particular attention is g…
Partisanship, White Racial Resentment, and State Support for Higher Education
Dominant explanations of state higher education policy tend to emphasize economic models that foreground the business cycle or political approaches that cast ideology as fairly fixed. We instead foreground changing social context to conceptualize state appropriations as predicted not only by these classic explanations, but also by the interplay of racial representation and political party control. Drawing on the racial backlash hypothesis and qua…
Global Status, Intra-Institutional Stratification and Organizational Segmentation: A Time-Dynamic Tobit Analysis of Arwu Position Among U.S. Universities
Four stories: Confronting contemporary ideas about globalisation and internationalisation in higher education
There is a common distinction between globalisation and internationalisation in higher education scholarship. Globalisation is seen as an over‐arching social and economic process where as internatinalisation is understood as the ways in which institutions of higher education respond to globalisation. This conceptual distinction has also worked its way into the practice of university administration around the world. Drawing on the theoretical work…
Unequal Higher Education in the United States: Growing Participation and Shrinking Opportunities
This paper argues that rising institutional inequality is a component of individual-level inequality in the United States because U.S. higher education provides a diverse group of students with unequal access to different kinds of institutions. Using latent profile analysis, we classified all public and private nonprofit higher education institutions in the U.S. from 2005 to 2013 into seven categories. We held these categories stable over time an…
Rise of the Science and Engineering Postdoctorate and the Restructuring of Academic Research
Since the 1980s the number of postdocs employed at U.S. research universities has in-creased dramatically as has the importance of postdocs to academic research. Growth in postdoc employment has coincided with increased dependence on external research funds. Using panel regression analysis, this article explores the organizational characteristics associated with the tendency to employ postdocs and the relationship between postdoc employment and d…
Quasi-Markets in U.S. Higher Education: The Humanities and Institutional Revenues
We conceptualize colleges and universities as embedded in quasi-markets, meaning competitive sites created by policy, that disfavor the humanities. We therefore posit that increased revenues from a quasi-market predict institutional de-emphasis of the humanities. Results indicate that private colleges and universities follow this pattern while public institutions do not
Social mechanisms and strategic action fields: The example of the emergence of the European Research Area
The point of departure of this article is Fligstein and McAdam’s A Theory of Fields. It is argued that their theoretical framework would be strengthened by a more systematic focus in social mechanism-based explanations since this would increase understanding of how new strategic action fields (SAFs) emerge. This argument is illustrated by exploring the emergence of the European Research Area (ERA) as a SAF. In identifying social mechanisms the ar…
What university makes a public good
Relations between China and the United States will invariably influence the future of the human and natural world. New theory [Marginson, Simon, and Lili Yang. 2021. “Individual and Collective Outcomes of Higher Education; A Comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese Approaches.” Globalisation, Societies and Education.] opened a space for more work on how higher education might support something like the second sort of future by generating collecti…
Research Universities and The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Competition, Resource Concentration, and the ‘Great Recession’ in the United States
Caught on the Mexican–US border: The insecurity and desire of collaboration between two universities
Understandings of cross‐border university collaboration are often informed by a concept of internationalisation that privileges the rationales of university administrators. A case study of two asymmetric universities along the border of Mexico and the United States – one of the most active and problematic borders in the world – found that, rather than administrative rationales, the insecurities and desires of individual collaborators play a more …
Caught on the Mexican–US border: The insecurity and desire of collaboration between two universities
Understandings of cross‐border university collaboration are often informed by a concept of internationalisation that privileges the rationales of university administrators. A case study of two asymmetric universities along the border of Mexico and the United States – one of the most active and problematic borders in the world – found that, rather than administrative rationales, the insecurities and desires of individual collaborators play a more …
Four stories: Confronting contemporary ideas about globalisation and internationalisation in higher education
There is a common distinction between globalisation and internationalisation in higher education scholarship. Globalisation is seen as an over‐arching social and economic process where as internatinalisation is understood as the ways in which institutions of higher education respond to globalisation. This conceptual distinction has also worked its way into the practice of university administration around the world. Drawing on the theoretical work…
Transnational Mobility and International Academic Employment: Gatekeeping in an Academic Competition Arena
Academic in-sourcing: International Postdoctoral Employment and New Modes of Academic Production
International postdoctoral researchers are growing in number and importance in academic research around the world. This is contextualised by a shift to international and enterprise modes of academic production. Through a multiple case study, this paper analyses the role of international postdoctoral employment in life sciences and engineering fields at universities in the United States and the United Kingdom. In doing so particular attention is g…
Transatlantic moves to the market: The United States and the European Union
Assessing the public university
Global Status, Intra-Institutional Stratification and Organizational Segmentation: A Time-Dynamic Tobit Analysis of Arwu Position Among U.S. Universities
Quasi-Markets in U.S. Higher Education: The Humanities and Institutional Revenues
We conceptualize colleges and universities as embedded in quasi-markets, meaning competitive sites created by policy, that disfavor the humanities. We therefore posit that increased revenues from a quasi-market predict institutional de-emphasis of the humanities. Results indicate that private colleges and universities follow this pattern while public institutions do not
Academic Capitalism in the Age of Globalization
Today, nearly every aspect of higher education - including student recruitment, classroom instruction, faculty research, administrative governance, and the control of intellectual property - is embedded in a political economy with links to the market and the state. Academic capitalism offers a powerful framework for understanding this relationship. Essentially, it allows us to understand higher education's shift from creating scholarship and lear…
Research Universities and The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Competition, Resource Concentration, and the ‘Great Recession’ in the United States
Rise of the Science and Engineering Postdoctorate and the Restructuring of Academic Research
Since the 1980s the number of postdocs employed at U.S. research universities has in-creased dramatically as has the importance of postdocs to academic research. Growth in postdoc employment has coincided with increased dependence on external research funds. Using panel regression analysis, this article explores the organizational characteristics associated with the tendency to employ postdocs and the relationship between postdoc employment and d…
Social mechanisms and strategic action fields: The example of the emergence of the European Research Area
The point of departure of this article is Fligstein and McAdam’s A Theory of Fields. It is argued that their theoretical framework would be strengthened by a more systematic focus in social mechanism-based explanations since this would increase understanding of how new strategic action fields (SAFs) emerge. This argument is illustrated by exploring the emergence of the European Research Area (ERA) as a SAF. In identifying social mechanisms the ar…
High Participation Systems of Higher Education
Higher education has become a central institution of society, building individual knowledge, skills, agency, and relational social networks at unprecedented depth and scale. Within a generation there has been an extraordinary global expansion of higher education, in every region in all but the poorest countries, outstripping economic growth and deriving primarily from familial aspirations for betterment. By focusing on the systems and countries t…
Unequal Higher Education in the United States: Growing Participation and Shrinking Opportunities
This paper argues that rising institutional inequality is a component of individual-level inequality in the United States because U.S. higher education provides a diverse group of students with unequal access to different kinds of institutions. Using latent profile analysis, we classified all public and private nonprofit higher education institutions in the U.S. from 2005 to 2013 into seven categories. We held these categories stable over time an…
Unequal Higher Education: Wealth, Status, and Student Opportunity
American higher education is often understood as a vehicle for social advancement. However, the institutions at which students enroll differ widely from one another. Some enjoy tremendous endowment savings and/or collect resources via research, which then offsets the funds that students contribute. Other institutions rely heavily on student tuition payments. These schools may struggle to remain solvent, and their students often bear the lion’s sh…
Explanatory accounts in international and comparative higher education research
Developing plausible explanations rooted in theory and supported by evidence is a challenge for comparative higher education studies. The purpose of this article is to consider how comparative studies in higher education might develop accounts that allow the research community to enhance explanatory power. Higher education studies can advance explanations about what is happening and why, as well as interpret the meaning of occurrences by drawing …
Ordering the global field of academic science: Money, mission, and position
Researchers have identified the emergence of a global field of academic science. In order to understand the dynamics of this field, this study used latent profile and regression techniques to analyze data gathered for a sample of 114 research universities from around the world. Sociological theory informed the framing and conceptualization of the study. Results demonstrated that leading research universities emphasized different areas of science,…
Partisanship, White Racial Resentment, and State Support for Higher Education
Dominant explanations of state higher education policy tend to emphasize economic models that foreground the business cycle or political approaches that cast ideology as fairly fixed. We instead foreground changing social context to conceptualize state appropriations as predicted not only by these classic explanations, but also by the interplay of racial representation and political party control. Drawing on the racial backlash hypothesis and qua…
What university makes a public good
Relations between China and the United States will invariably influence the future of the human and natural world. New theory [Marginson, Simon, and Lili Yang. 2021. “Individual and Collective Outcomes of Higher Education; A Comparison of Anglo-American and Chinese Approaches.” Globalisation, Societies and Education.] opened a space for more work on how higher education might support something like the second sort of future by generating collecti…
Making sense of change in higher education research: Exploring the intersection of science and policy
Higher education studies give considerable attention to understanding change . The interest in change reflects the historical conditions in which higher education emerged as a distinct field of study. Around the mid-twentieth century, a pragmatic need for an academic response to managing larger and more complex higher education institutions and systems was taking shape. This need gave rise to a tradition of studying change in higher education, wh…
Years of Higher Education: A critical reflection and thoughts on an evolving agenda
Conceptualizing State Re-Engagement With Public Higher Education
Three trends have characterized state policymaking for higher education in the 21st century: divestment, accountability, and race neutrality. These policy agendas are often justified as an attempt to optimize system efficiency and performance by making institutional actors (agents) responsive to the demands of state officials (principals). In this manuscript, we present quantitative evidence that these three policy initiatives have not achieved t…
Paths to status among public research universities in the United States, 2010–2021
Although universities are often characterised as ‘elite’, institutions can attain status in multiple dimensions—reputation, research, money and selectivity. We studied 21st century public universities in the United States, using latent profile analysis to identify which universities followed each path to status. Most universities pursued none, and very few pursued all four. Membership in the four groups was stable over time, indicating limited mo…
Political science (22 works) · Higher Education Governance and Development (19 works) · Higher education (18 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Economics (15 works) · Law (15 works) · Social science (9 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Public Administration (7 works)