Managing a University in Turbulent Times

Universities are a distinct organizational type, evolved for a particular set of purposes and resting essentially on the allocation of influence to scholars, within a supporting administrative system. This traditional structure is now threatened by forces that have risen on a wave of global demand never before experienced. University management is now under severe pressure to reconcile the earlier rationale with the recent pressures. This is an under-researched managerial challenge. To address it lessons are drawn from a general theory of executive duty in large complex organizations undergoing change. At the core of this is the problem of retaining willing cooperation with the organization’s purposes by its key members. A current partial response to this challenge is reported. Certain more universal lessons about moral legitimacy and executive authority within strategic management are also drawn.

Reactions, Reflections, and Renewal

This chapter draws together the arguments, ideas, concepts, recommendations, case studies, and empirical data provided in the preceding chapters built on and around the conceptual framework set up in the first two chapters. The chapter does not attempt to replicate or repeat the many and varied points of view expressed in the detailed and informative work of the author contributions but rather to be summative, reflective, and forward-looking. This handbook has observed that modern times are hard times, changing times, where enactments in higher education have never been more crucial, nor more closely watched. The handbook also argues for critical thinking, for diversity, for social and economic progress as cornerstones of innovation and renewal, thus survival, of the vibrant but troubled ecosystem universities have become. In looking for solutions, reflecting back to when the common and public good was also a cornerstone of why universities existed, helps re-justify their elevated place in all social systems.

Policy Implications for Equity, Gender, and Widening Participation in Higher Education

This chapter examines the intersecting inequalities and differences in HE that persist despite decades of HE policy focused on equity and widening participation. Attention is given to the ways that patriarchy, neo-liberalism, corporatization, and managerialism work together to generate new forms of inequality and power relations, which include inequalities in access and participation, women in leadership positions, sexual assault or harassment on campus, care-less university cultures, and complex temporal inequalities. The chapter examines the emergence of widening participation and equity policies in many countries of both the global North and the global South whilst the forces of globalization, neo-liberalism, and marketization have repositioned students as consumers of the market of higher education. It shows how these forces have produced an individualizing focus on student and staff experience, concealing the contextual, temporal, and structural inequalities that profoundly undermine policy concerns to widen access and participation. Individualism and marketization impact student and staff experiences in relation to the different social location and the gendering of education, work, and family, which privileges the productive (with a focus on paid labour and employability) over the reproductive (with a focus on unpaid labour and caring) dimensions of social life. The chapter shows the power of feminist analyses of questions of equity and widening participation to bring to light the insidious ways that inequalities are reproduced through the neo-liberal, patriarchal university.

The Collegial Tradition in English Higher Education

The basic structure of the Oxbridge type evolved historically as a federal set of multi-disciplinary and largely self-governing colleges. Each set was balanced between competition and cooperation. A distinct feature is that teaching is divided between the university role of organizing and examining taught courses, and the college role of organizing the attendant processes of student learning, especially via the system of tutorials/supervisions, a form of apprenticeship in critical thinking. University policy is strongly influenced by faculty assemblies. This formula is now under pressure from greater dependence on government research funding, and from new performance criteria in evaluation. There are fears that new forms of state control will result in a decline of autonomy, and so the capacity for academic initiative, as universities as a whole become more market-driven.

Maintaining the Contribution of Higher Education to Societal Progress

Such is the speed of change and the large number of forces changing, that response by university leaders is, not surprisingly, without a robust and widely accepted basis. The role of universities has traditionally been seen as fostering for a society a combination of human capabilities that may be judged in terms of their merit or practical utility, or their worth as adding to a society’s overall quality as a form of civilization. The former of these is now in the ascendant, driven by rising demand and so societal cost, and by the real needs of the economy for human skills. It is argued here that universities might take the initiative in rebalancing this bias, and in doing so to engage with the wider policies about societal needs that are less well articulated than are the more immediate demands.

Educating for the Cooperative Society

The concept of citizenship needs to be redefined in the twenty-first century to emphasize the notion of cooperation amongst individuals, as the institutional action that often results can have a crucial importance in politics, the economy, and culture, at the local, regional, global, and individual levels. This requires the shaping of new societal consciousness. Education, especially higher education, has to assume major responsibility in this process, as it has done historically. This may well entail a revised concept of citizenship—not only through curricular changes but also through institutional practices. Responsible citizens should act in coordination with each other following the new requirements of a modern knowledge-based society reacting to global challenges. This is in line with another mission of the university—that of public good—providing individuals with access to knowledge so that citizens develop professionally, acquire new skills, and become competitive in local and global labour markets. In a century of transformational global change, it is now more than ever the mission of higher education institutions to cultivate citizens capable of tackling local and global challenges in an innovative but also cooperative manner.

Educating for the Cooperative Society

This chapter investigates the relationship between industry and academia from the perspective of industry. In addition to the theoretical review, it is based on feedback from industry leaders on how they see the role of their organizations in wider society. This chapter utilizes case studies to examine the relationship between specific companies, their academic partners, and the wider society. It focuses on the UK experience reflecting the location of its author. It specifically looks at the links between Coventry University, a British public institution located in the West Midlands, and its selected partners: the Unipart Group, Horiba MIRA, Interserve, and KPIT in India. It also refers to a bespoke Global Leaders Programme which is an exclusive, extra-curricular offering, designed to enhance students’ leadership and soft skills and prepare them for future employment after graduation. Wherever possible, the author aimed to obtain feedback from the industry representatives to assess their views on the impact of their companies on the wider society. In the same spirit, relevant colleagues from Coventry University were asked for their feedback to ensure that both perspectives were fairly captured. The examples given, and indeed, the philosophy behind the projects could be transferred to other countries and applied to other industries.

Educating for the Cooperative Society

The role of government in fostering HE’s contribution to societal cooperativeness is, in present conditions of high demand, contested both politically and ideologically. Although devolution of decision taking to universities is widely apparent, four types of strong influence remain in government use: mandates, funding incentives, investment in capacity-building, and overall system adjustment. These have fostered changes in the HE policy agenda from the outcomes espoused in the foundational Robbins Report namely: skilling (not prioritized), general powers of the mind, the advancement of learning, and a shared culture of citizenship. Over-skilling now grows, and leaves difficult policy questions such as: occupational filtering down, student debt and loan servicing, bureaucratic drift with related transaction costs, and decline in education standards. Considering what a university is good for, as opposed to good at, is a challenge for many policy makers.

Criticality, Academic Autonomy, and Societal Progress

To avoid ethnocentric analysis, HE’s role in societal progress may be placed in a context that is abstract enough to be taken as universally applicable, even though the interpretation of its principles is likely to differ between societies and cultures. The literature on development is reviewed to extract core principles that may be conjectured as universal on historical evidence to date. These are specified as capabilities achieved by a society that allow it to adapt to surrounding change, and still remain cohesive. HE can play a significant part in building these capabilities, in its work to transform both individuals and societies. Key catalysts would be scholarship, reasoned analysis, and moral frameworks to support social fusion and incentives to adapt.

Developing and Maintaining Transnational Research Collaborations

An emphasis on research collaborations across national boundaries can now be found in policy statements of most leading higher education institutions (HEIs) around the world. These statements suggest that a globally distributive system of knowledge development and dissemination demands regularized, ongoing, and symmetrical transnational links. This chapter argues that while most national systems of higher education now advocate transnational research collaborations, their approaches to the development and management of these collaborations vary greatly. The rationales they provide for such collaborations are often tied to particular national interests, as nations seek to locate the role of higher education within their shifting geopolitical objectives. Not surprisingly, therefore, the challenges they face in establishing and coordinating programmes of research collaboration are linked not only to the major characteristics of their systems of higher education but more importantly also the broader objectives of their foreign policies. In order to show how this is so, this chapter provides a case study of Australia, exploring how and why the Australian system of higher education has, in recent decades, increasingly sought to develop research links with Asian universities; and what challenges its HEIs have faced in this endeavour.