The academic capitalism research focuses on the relationships between macrostructural (e.g., state, higher education system, market), organizational (e.g., departments, science parks, academic spin-offs), and individual-level (e.g., administrators, researchers, students) higher education actors and argues that these actors are linked together through new funding streams as the public funding for higher education institutions has steadily decreased. These funding mechanisms resulted in the proliferation of academic capitalism approaches in the academy, such as seeking external funding sources and the commercialization of the research outputs (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997). In other words, market and marketlike behaviors become increasingly interwoven with academic work.

The theory of academic capitalism proposes three main categories of academic capitalism activities in higher education. The first one focuses on globalization, internationalization, and their effects on academic culture. The second category deals with how the proliferation of productivism in higher education has changed academic work and culture. Finally, the third strand of research has looked at the university-industry relationship, technology transfer, and science commercialization, and the present study was built upon this research strand. These studies have shown that universities have moved away from Mertonian norms associated with the public good knowledge regime and embraced a more market-oriented academic capitalist knowledge regime (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997). Despite its negative connotation, this regime shift due to academic capitalism was regarded as beneficial in many aspects. For example, it was concluded that practices associated with academic capitalism, such as receiving funding from private companies for their academic studies does not have a negative impact on graduate students (Mendoza, 2007), that university administrators interpreted these market-oriented practices as a way to contribute to the public interest (Glenna et al., 2007), and that academic capitalism practices could create networking opportunities for graduate students (Gluck, 1987).

In addition, previous research has established that socialization involves three core elements, namely knowledge acquisition (i.e., acclimating to the culture, standards, and expectations), investment (i.e., putting forth energy and time to meet requirements), and involvement (i.e., deeper engagement through interpersonal relationships) (Weildman et al., 2001). Unlike most socialization models assuming that socialization is a unidirectional process in which knowledge is transmitted to new members, this model postulates a nonlinear, dynamic, and bidirectional socialization process in that organizations are also shaped by the new members. According to this framework, socialization in an academic field includes interaction with faculty and peers, learning, and integration within an institutional culture and may be affected by peoples’ backgrounds, predispositions, and personal communities.

Considering that the research assistants are central to the research workforce and are considered future academics, gaining knowledge, skills, and values associated with academic capitalism through socialization processes is vital for them and higher education institutions. Therefore, in an effort to reveal how research assistants socialize in the academic capitalist higher education context, this single case study conducted in a research university in Türkiye investigates their experiences and perceptions of academic capitalism and how socialization processes transfer this knowledge, skills, and values to them. Thus, this study aimed to address the following research questions:

a) What activities associated with academic capitalism do research assistants experience?

b) How do research assistants perceive academic capitalism practices?

c) How do research assistants learn knowledge, skills, and values associated with academic capitalism through socialization processes?

A single case study is employed as the research design in this study. The reason for using the case study approach was to be able to make detailed investigations and observationstions from various perspectives in order to reveal how research assistants' socialization into academic capitalism occurs in a research university context. The research site is a university where academic capitalism has penetrated the research activities through various existing structures (e.g., a technology transfer office, technopolis, an Office of Sponsored Projects). Although the selected university has various graduate schools, the science and engineering departments affiliated with the Graduate School of Natural and Applied Science were purposefully selected as the bounded case of the study due to their high level of involvement in academic capitalism compared to the other departments. Moreover, research assistants who have participated in at least one research conducted in their department and have worked in their department for at least one year were considered information-rich participants and included in the study. To obtain rich and context-specific data on research assistants’ socialization, field visits to the working spaces (e.g., laboratory, office, research center) and semi-structured focus interviews will be conducted using an interview protocol. The interview questions were developed based on the literature reviewed for the study and in consultation with a group of graduate students and a scholar to improve the credibility of the study. In addition, documentary information will be collected in this study to understand the academic capitalist context of the university and how the values related to academic capitalism are transferred through internal communication channels (e.g., in-house e-mail lists, university and department websites). This triangulation of data sources will contribute to establishing trustworthiness. As in the data collection, multiple data analysis methods will be used in this study to investigate research assistants’ experiences, perceptions, and socialization processes. It is supposed that using multiple methods will simultaneously contribute to understanding distinct aspects of the case of the study. The analysis of descriptive field notes is planned to be an ongoing inductive process to immerse the researcher in the data (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2011). Furthermore, interview data will be inductively coded and subjected to a thematic analysis procedure. Approval from University’s Ethics Committee was obtained for all data collection instruments to ensure that there is no harmful effect of the data collection instruments or study topic on study participants.

The preliminary results obtained from two field trips and two interviews conducted following the field trips with two research assistants from civil and aerospace engineering departments have revealed three themes: research assistants’ experiences of academic capitalism, research assistants’ perceptions of academic capitalism, and socialization ways to the academic capitalist university context. The findings indicate that research assistants experience academic capitalism practices either directly or indirectly. For example, some of the codes associated with their direct experiences were “preparing reports,” “academic capitalist role models,” and “effect of academic capitalism on graduate studies,” while some of the codes corresponded to their indirect experiences related to their colleagues’ activities, such as “consultancy duty,” “patenting activities,” and “increased competition for grants.” The findings showed that they have both positive and negative perceptions of academic capitalism. The codes revealed that they perceive it positively considering that it results in “individual benefits,” creates “funding opportunities,” and increases “researchers’ motivation.” In contrast, they perceive academic capitalism negatively, as they think that it can be a source of antagonism among researchers” and “negatively affect scientific activities.” The last theme from the study informs us that research assistants socialize in their academic roles through “observation,” “communication channels,” and “verbal communication with others.” The preliminary findings were congruent with academic capitalism and socialization theories in higher education. Research assistants seem aware of macrostructural, organizational, and individual-level actors’ academic capitalism practices. For example, data showed that they have direct and indirect relationships with organizational-level actors like funding agencies, intermediating organizations (e.g., technology transfer office), and governmental agencies. In addition, they are familiar with activities that scholars frequently practice due to the increasing importance of receiving external funding and commercialization of research output. These activities, to name a few, are patenting, consulting, preparing reports for grants, and establishing academic spin-off companies.

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