During his tenure as Director, Krücken has sought to integrate his expertise in the area of knowledge management with a broad range of scientific interests, including interdisciplinary research on higher education and science, sociological theory, and neo-institutionalism, and to apply the fruits of such integration to his management of INCHER.

WiHo editorial team: What do you think your organisation's profile should look like in 10 years?
Krücken: I would like to begin by noting that higher education research, in my view, is not interdisciplinary per se. Interdisciplinarity can thrive only in a context of excellence in individual disciplines, i.e. interdisciplinarity has to be founded on such excellence. INCHER, a university research centre, is committed to carrying out interdisciplinary, international and theory-driven higher education research, and to upholding long-term standards of excellence in the process. We are well-equipped to fulfil these commitments in the coming years. Recently, we created a new position, that of executive vice director of INCHER-Kassel. Prof. Dr. Guido Bünstorf, a renowned professor of economics, has been appointed to this new position. In addition to serving as director, I continue to work as a professor for sociology. With Dr. Bünstorf's arrival, the top-level management of the institute now includes a second professor who is also active in higher education research. Dr. Bünstorf's appointment enables us to engage in interdisciplinary research cooperation that brings both social sciences and economics to bear on subjects, and to do so at a cutting-edge level of excellence. We have used this approach, for example, to study competition processes in the higher education and science system.

WiHo editorial team: How is INCHER contributing to the advancement and further development of research on higher education and science?
Krücken: Over the past five years, a total of 13 doctoral degrees have been completed at INCHER-Kassel. As this suggests, we maintain a very high level of support for young scientists and researchers, one we plan to build on. This will include intensifying the interconnections between our research and doctoral programmes – ideally, in the framework of the support provided by the German Research Foundation (DFG) – in order to contribute substantially to the further development of research on higher education and science.  

As in the past, INCHER's involvement in many international research-cooperation efforts will figure centrally in our profile, as will our role as a host for frequent research stays by visiting scientists and researchers from abroad.

WiHo editorial team: Regarding the status quo of research on higher education and science in Germany: In what areas is such research especially strong? In what ways does it still need to improve?
Krücken: In listing the special strengths of research on higher education and science in Germany, I would include the strong theoretical foundations and "mixed-methods" orientation seen in numerous research projects. These aspects have become more pronounced in recent years. The reasons for this include Germany's broad and diversified research funding and the fact that government ministries – unlike comparable organisations in other national systems – do not support only short-term contract-research projects. This orientation accords researchers independence, and it allows them to be completely objective with regard to their research findings, i.e. to let their research take them where it will.

Although the links between research on higher education and research on science have become stronger in recent years, I certainly think there is room for such links to become stronger still. I would also like to see these research areas strengthen their connections to current theoretical and methodological developments a) in the disciplines that underpin these research areas and b) in related interdisciplinary research areas.

WiHo editorial team: How do you think Germany compares internationally in terms of its research on higher education and science?
Krücken: Our research on higher education and science is well established and equipped in terms of substance and content. We can be proud of what we have achieved. One area in which we are weak, however, is that of international publication. Given the size of our field, we are still publishing too little internationally, especially in peer-reviewed journals.

WiHo editorial team: What can we learn from other countries, and from which countries can we learn?
Krücken: We can always learn. I would like to mention two aspects in particular in this regard. First, we can learn especially from smaller countries – such as the Scandinavian countries, the Netherlands and Portugal – that frequently carry out international comparisons and are very quick to adapt to international trends and be inspired by them. German research is sometimes too self-centred. To be fair, we have to remember that this is tied to the sheer size of our national higher education and science system, as well as to the considerable volume of research focused on that system. Similar situations are seen in the UK and the U.S.  Second, the research conducted in the U.S shows us the great advantages of having a widely accessible fund of data available for research on higher education and science. The data situation there is clearly better than that prevailing in Germany, even though the higher education and science sector in the U.S. is highly decentralised and diverse. As the available fund of data improves, so do the methods that analyse it, especially the methods used in quantitative research. The learning opportunities that I see, when I look across the Atlantic, thus have especially to do with development of methods. That said, I think our theory development is thriving. Major breakthroughs in theory development, by the way – when they occur at all – tend to be achieved by exceptional individual researchers, such as Robert K. Merton, Ian Hacking and Bruno Latour. In principle, such luminaries can emerge in all national systems. 

WiHo editorial team: Currently, we are seeing a strong trend in which more and more people are enrolling in higher education programmes. In addition, the numbers of study programmes being offered have grown rapidly in the past few years. Can you explain these trends from your perspective as a researcher who studies the higher education and science sectors?
Krücken: The arguments that tend to predominate in our public discussions are functional ones, according to which the development of the knowledge society is making it necessary for more and more people to undertake higher education studies. Such arguments tell only part of the story, however. Mutually reinforcing processes of adaptation and competition, at the state, organisational and individual levels, are just as important. Another reason why the percentages of people undertaking studies, and the numbers of study programmes, are increasing is that Germany, via the OECD, the EU and other supranational institutions, is adapting to overarching trends. By introducing new study programmes, higher education institutions, as organisations, intensify their involvement in competition. Individuals compete for career and life opportunities, and this produces incentives to undertake studies, since such opportunities correlate with educational attainment to a greater degree than ever before.