英文摘要
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This paper employs a series of assumptions, deductions, simulations, and empirical references to infer the impact of small scale on the development of social sciences in small nations like Taiwan.
It is found that the small scale of social sciences community in small nations would reduce not only the overall quantity of academic production, but also the average quality of research, teaching, evaluation, academic leadership, and academic policy. These shortages are caused by the material condition of scale, therefore could not easily be corrected by institutional design or individual endeavor, or even larger research budget.
It is inferred that the most essential steps to alleviate these predicaments of small nations would be, firstly, to significantly expand the scale of social sciences community; secondly, to enlarge the size of universities and departments; thirdly, to establish in each discipline several leading departments sizable enough to be endowed with several distinguished scholars as a core to lead the research and teaching in these departments and their discipline in large; and, finally, to encourage translation of foreign works in order to increase the reading material available to students.
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