| This dissertation explains how and why academic science in the U.S., which was historically shielded from the market economy, became closely and explicitly tied to it. Using historical methods, including primary and secondary research, archival work, and interviews, it shows how three new market-oriented institutions were introduced and gradually took hold: (1) the university-industry research center, (2) the patenting and licensing of academic research, and (3) entrepreneurship in the biological sciences. The dissertation uses a two-fold comparative strategy. First, to understand what caused these practices, it evaluates the relative roles of universities, industry, and government in their creation and promotion. Second, to understand how institutions move toward the marketplace more generally, it compares the practices' three different paths to institutionalization.; The dissertation's main finding is that the primary cause of this shift was not corporate needs, university budget cuts, or new opportunities to make money. Instead, I show that government provided the biggest push of academic science toward the market. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, several different groups began promoting a variety of unrelated government policies, each for its own reasons, but none had great success at implementing its proposals. During the 1970s, the U.S. experienced an extended period of economic stagnation, which led to a widespread argument that its economic problems were being caused by an "innovation gap" with countries like Japan. This led to a moment of political opportunity for policies that could be presented as a solution to this gap. In each of these cases, supporters took advantage of this opening to successfully reframe their projects as connecting technological innovation with economic growth.; By the mid-1980s new government policies had helped to institutionalize each of these practices. Equally important, the arguments behind the policy changes---that academic science could act as an economic engine---had introduced a new market-oriented logic into the university. The study demonstrates how a market logic can come to dominate an institution even without a concerted effort to promote it. This has implications for our understanding of other social institutions being transformed by the market. |
