Small Mighty Centers in the Global Academic Capitalist Race: A Study of Systemic Factors Contributing to Scientific Capital Accumulation in Nordic Higher Education Systems

In the global academic capitalist race, academics, institutions and countries' symbolic power results from the accumulation of scientific capital (or research production), as acknowledged by rankings and other bibliometrics. Previous studies suggested Anglo-Saxon higher education systems (HES) dominated the academic field, but per capita analyses show that Nordic HES achieve comparatively higher results in terms of world-class universities, publications and citations. The objective of this thesis is thus to identify systemic factors contributing to the accumulation of scientific capital in Nordic HES.;Following a hypothetical-deductive problem approach and a falsification process, seven systemic factors were hypothesized as having an impact and tested in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden according to a multi-governance framework, and a convergent and parallel mixed-method design. The seven factors are: academic traditions, societal beliefs, public authorities, early-career researchers, funding streams, networking with non-academic actors and internationalization.;First, a deductive thematic analysis was performed on transcripts from fifty-six interviews, with saturation as a criterion to assess theme saliency. Second, an exploratory factor analysis was processed on a survey completed by 324 participants. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure verified the sampling adequacy for the analysis (KMO = .85). The analysis resulted in an internally consistent eight-factor structure (a = .89). Saturated themes, items' average score and multiple comparisons based on a one-way repeated-measure ANOVA (and pairwise post-hoc t tests) revealed that the hypotheses regarding the impact of academic traditions and internationalization could not be falsified. Third, the thematic analysis and a multivariate analysis of variance also showed that societal beliefs are perceived to have a stronger positive impact in Finland than in Denmark and Norway, while internationalization is perceived to have a stronger impact in Finland than in Denmark.;This thesis lays down foundations for a "varieties of academic capitalism" (VoAC) approach, which would distinguish between Nordic, Continental European and Anglo-Saxon HES. This new approach could facilitate a more systematic comparison that includes the influence of political-economic structures on the comparative advantage of HES in the global academic capitalist race.