Academic productivity is an underrated — and under-researched — topic, displaced by infamous ranking studies and league tables. There is no proper improvement in higher education without sound concepts and studies of academic productivty.  

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There are tendencies to tie academic productivity to individual factors (relating to faculty members or students). That is only half of the story; the other half of the narrative would relate academic productivity to institutional — or morphological — factors, and it is that part of the story that needs to be clarified.

 

Educational systems are change averse, and perhaps rightly so. But in the case of research universities institutuons are locked into their particular higher education cultures (Humboldtien, Napoleonic, Anglo-Saxon, etc.), to the detriment of education and research activities.  Differences in higher education cultures ought to be supported (and cherished) to the extend that they do not affect negatively academic productivity (and equal rights or opportunities among the members of the academic community); furthermore, locked-in modes of higher education ought to broken up to free the academic commmunity to perform to its potential.