How Universities Transform Occupations and Work in the 21st Century: The Academization of German and American Economies: Volume 47

Advanced education is often thought to respond to the demands of the economy, market forces create new occupations, and then universities respond with new degrees and curricula aimed at training future workers with specific new skills. Presented here is comparative research on an underappreciated, yet growing, concurrent alternative process: universities, with their global growth in numbers and enrollments, in concert with expanding research capacity, create and privilege knowledge and skills, legitimate new degrees that then become monetized and even required in private and public sectors of economies. A process referred to as academization of occupations has far-reaching implications for understanding the transformation of capitalism, new dimensions of social inequality, and resulting stratification among occupations. Academization is also eclipsing the more limited professionalization processes in occupations. Additionally, it fuels further expansion of advanced education and contributes to a new culture of work in the 21st century. Commissioned detailed German and US case studies of the university origins and influence on workplace consequences of seven selected occupations and associated knowledge, skills, and degrees investigate the academization process. And to demonstrate how universal this could become, the cases contrast the more open and less-restrictive education and occupation system in the US with the centralized and state-controlled education system in Germany. With expected variation, both economies and their occupational systems show evidence of robust academization. Importantly too is evidence of academic transformations of understandings about approaches to job tasks and use of authoritative knowledge in occupational activities.

This chapter outlines how the academic field in Germany, particularly universities as institutions of research and education, became a constitutive element in the process of digitalization. Institutions in higher education created long-lasting networks not only by scientific relations in the academic field but also by the establishment of business-oriented and application-oriented disciplines. This chapter focuses on the case of business information systems (BIS) and reconstructs the structural conditions under which BIS evolved from an initially marginal data-centric subfield of business administration into an independent discipline. This discipline has had a major influence on the transformation of work processes in recent decades and is an important player in the digital transformation in Germany. This chapter therefore also outlines the far-reaching implications of the paths taken, which are eventually not limited to the academic field but manifested in transformed work processes in almost all professional fields.

Within the last two decades, entrepreneurship education has become institutionalized in Germany. It is offered as a stand-alone program or as part of a business degree, combining academic knowledge, practical skills, and personal development to enhance the entrepreneurial success of university graduates. While entrepreneurship education has experienced similar growth worldwide, its emergence in Germany is closely tied to the country’s political and economic developments. The significance of entrepreneurship education for a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem and contemporary economic policy has been instrumental in advancing its academic recognition. This chapter provides a historical analysis of the academization of entrepreneurship in Germany. It explores the recursive and often idiosyncratic processes involving state and financial institutions, companies, and universities that have created, respecified, and mutually reinforced a subdiscipline and field of study. Academic entrepreneurship knowledge successively not only became relevant for starting a business but also for employment within the entrepreneurial infrastructure and beyond. This chapter follows a chronological order, highlighting three key stages in the academization of entrepreneurship education. First, the academic, financial, and political roots (I) of entrepreneurship up until the 1970s. Second, it explores the transformation (II) of entrepreneurship into a viable policy alternative and the challenges faced in establishing complementary research and education in higher education institutions during the 1980s. Finally, it sketches the institutionalization (III) of entrepreneurship as a central driver of government economic policy, allowing for the late bloom of entrepreneurship education and research at universities around the turn of the millennium.

Schooling expansion is typically operationalized as the proportion of the population attending and the number of years attained; however, expansion can also be examined through new fields of study. Early childhood education entered the university as occupational training and has grown into a legitimate field of study. For example, an analysis of the expansion of early childhood papers and topics in scientific journal articles shows a slow steady rise before a dramatic increase in the 1956–2021 time period. The expansion of early childhood education as a field has been synergistic with the process of academization. Training in the occupation of early childhood education started first in its country of origin and then moved to independent training programs and normal schools in the United States before landing in four-year institutions that include everything from small colleges to large universities.

This chapter examines early childhood pedagogy in Germany. It developed in the wake of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) education debate, and the expansion of higher education led to new types of application-oriented courses. For a long time, child day care in Germany was not seen as a subject of theoretical worth. Vocational training for kindergarten teachers, overwhelmingly employed in day care centers, has not yet been academized. The academic study of childhood pedagogy is a thereof separate project, taught especially at universities of applied science. Nevertheless, constructions of new disciplines are directed toward professional fields, for which they claim relevance with their academic training. With its focus on “Bildung” childhood pedagogy in Germany claims to offer a scientifically based solution to the practical problems of action in child day care. This chapter discusses the specific content of the curricula statistical figures of graduates at universities and in the fields of practice. It provides first empirical clarification on observable phenomena of a scientific “penetration” of cognitive rationality in kindergartens. It fosters an academic habitus that induces a distancing from direct interaction with children, leads to a diversification of tasks in day care centers, and promotes hierarchical processes of professional role differentiation in the field of childcare.

This chapter investigates the ongoing process of academization within the field of educational therapy in Germany, particularly in the context of the introduction of university degrees in integrative educational therapy and the psychology of learning. The introduction of these degrees brought about transformative changes in the professional landscape. Educational therapists holding such degrees often demonstrate a more advanced understanding of their roles, which is underpinned by thorough university education and the legitimizing influence of their academic titles. Prior to the establishment of these degree programs, the field of educational therapy was notably unregulated, devoid of a protected professional title or a specific qualification. This lack of regulation resulted in a proliferation of varied providers, giving rise to what’s known as the “after-school market” phenomenon. This chapter explores the genesis and institutionalization of degree programs in educational therapy as a path toward professionalizing the field. It reveals the crucial role that professional associations along with scientific experts have played in launching these degree programs. Additionally, it discusses the impact of competition among different approaches to educational therapy within this rapidly evolving landscape.

A hybrid of architectural design and engineering, architectural engineers (AEs)design and remediate problems with internal and external structures and systems of building and facilities in the US. Trained and credentialed in academic programs awarding approximately 1,000 degrees annually, AE is a mid-sized specialty engineering degree comparable to computer software, nuclear, or materials engineering. The case outlines the origins and history of the occupation and illustrates three aspects of the academization process: integration of the university’s charter for knowledge production within an occupation; possibilities for conflict and power within universities that can shape occupational outcomes; and the role of the university and collaborations with practitioners in creating change in theoretical conceptions, on-the-job skills, and problem-solving strategies. AE demonstrates academization in a field with specific physical outcomes and functional requirements that are technically bounded. As counterfactuals, possible alternative occupational paths for the work roles of AEs are considered, along with reasons why they did not happen. What did occur demonstrates the impact of the academization process, with both credentialing and new research. AE is an informative example of constructed functionalism, formed and continually shaped by the university.

In this chapter, the interplay between the development of the discipline, the development of the field of study, and the emergence of professional fields is examined using the example of mathematics. In connection with the formation of the modern research university, mathematics has emerged as an independent scientific discipline and as an independent field of study. In the process, mathematics attains a high degree of formalization and internal coherence. This is the basis for the penetration of mathematicians into more and more professional fields, even outside science. Real problems or real facts are reduced to aspects that are amenable to mathematical modeling by treating them as quantifiable parameters. As mathematics expands as a field of study, more and more professional sectors become applications of mathematical models. As a consequence, more mathematical fields of study are differentiating themselves, specializing in these application fields. This chapter analyzes this dynamic and its preconditions.