The Global Financial Crisis and Funding for Independent Scientific Research

The global financial crisis influences the allocation of resources and threatens the future funding for independent scientific research. The author claims that the new global democracy is manifested in many ways. For example, the Rating Culture, despite all its faults, is a modern "market square" which enables a complete and impartial expression of the opinion of the majority. When resources shrink, people tend to narrow their search and focus on the realization of their most basic needs (Maslow, 1943).

Academic evolution is placed in the higher levels of Maslow's pyramid, increasing the risk of being pushed aside and discarded in difficult times. One might doubt if these days, the same coalition of states would have come together in order to fund the building of the Large Hadron Collider in CERN (Giudice, 2012).

Since the politicians who divide the funding are deeply influenced by Rating, the university should find ways to develop public interest and appeal so that research would keep going. The university, as the main host of scientific research, has to adapt to the changes in the world in order to survive and develop new alternatives to the new status of knowledge, while maintaining the values of independent and impartial academic research (Etzkowitz, and Leydersdorff, 1997; Delanty, 2001)