Monday, February 28, 2005
Swedish political scientists worst in the world
Karl Gunnar Persson at Copenhagen University delivers this front attack on Swedish political scientists (in Swedish) in an op-ed in Sweden's leading daily Dagens Nyheter.
The key paragraph in the op-ed includes the following sentences:
In his slaying of the Swedish political scientist dragon he refers to an evaluation made by Simon Hix, from London School of Economics. The bottom line being that Swedish Political Scientists are poorly represented in the world of science, due to nepotism and political hiring strategies (I believe it is called quotation based on gender...). And what follows is that Swedish Pol. Sci. Ph.D:s don't get published where it matters - in the important academic press.
An international comparison makes it obvious: A political scientist at Columbia University is seven times as productive as a political scientist at Lund University.
I guess I have to take refuge in my home university in the U.S., George Mason University, which is ranked 40th in the world - as opposed to my Swedish campus, Lund University - where one member of the faculty wanted to throw me out because I used rational models in my research. Well, let's just say that he is a part of a faculty that is being ranked as number 287 in the world...
You can read the entire study here.
I have to agree to a large degree: Political Science in Sweden seems to make less sence every day that goes by. But there are some great exceptions, a person who, as it happens, left Lund a long time ago.
The key paragraph in the op-ed includes the following sentences:
"Alltför många samhällsvetenskapliga institutioner präglas av en självgodhet som
manifesteras i en oroväckande hög - i en del fall nästan total -
internrekrytering, inte bara på adjunkts-, forskarassistents- och lektorsnivå
utan även på professorsnivå. Brist på mobilitet och stimulanser från andra
miljöer förstärker självtillräckligheten."
In his slaying of the Swedish political scientist dragon he refers to an evaluation made by Simon Hix, from London School of Economics. The bottom line being that Swedish Political Scientists are poorly represented in the world of science, due to nepotism and political hiring strategies (I believe it is called quotation based on gender...). And what follows is that Swedish Pol. Sci. Ph.D:s don't get published where it matters - in the important academic press.
An international comparison makes it obvious: A political scientist at Columbia University is seven times as productive as a political scientist at Lund University.
I guess I have to take refuge in my home university in the U.S., George Mason University, which is ranked 40th in the world - as opposed to my Swedish campus, Lund University - where one member of the faculty wanted to throw me out because I used rational models in my research. Well, let's just say that he is a part of a faculty that is being ranked as number 287 in the world...
You can read the entire study here.
I have to agree to a large degree: Political Science in Sweden seems to make less sence every day that goes by. But there are some great exceptions, a person who, as it happens, left Lund a long time ago.
