Governance and management in higher education

1. Governance and management in higher education National Seminar hosted by the Lithuanian Centre for Quality Assessment in Higher Education Vilnius, 2 September 2005 Jon File and Harry de Boer

2. Origins and objectives

3. Center for Higher Education Policy Studies Public Admin & Policy Education Economics. History CHEPS interdisciplinary research centre (1984) Major Research areas Governance Management Economics Finance Comparative HE Studies Quality Strong International Research & Project Network M & D Education Projects Short Courses Consultancy

4. Some key characteristics of CHEPS 20 fte research staff, plus support staff >50% with PhDs Main fields: Higher Education Policy, Economics Public Policy, Sociology Developmental trajectory Initial focus on Dutch HE Broadens to EU, OECD then C&E Europe, Southern Africa, Latin America & Asia Annual Budget close to 2,5 million Euro <25% 1st and 2nd stream basic research > 75% 3rd stream applied research, and projects

5. The Cheps approach • Inter-disciplinary perspectives • multi-level approaches to higher education • integrating research with education, training and consultancy • International networks • Broad and comparative research interests (and in our projects - 15 countries each year) None exclusive to us, but in combination they give a unique Cheps approach to HE policy studies

6. CHEPS AND EUROPE: 2000 - 2004 Countries where: Cheps staff originate Cheps has PhD candidates or graduates Cheps has research or consultancy projects

7. Countries where: Cheps has PhD candidates or graduates Cheps has research or consultancy projects CHEPS BEYOND EUROPE: 2000 - 2004 CHEPS BEYOND EUROPE: 2000 - 2004 Cheps staff originate

8. Perhaps flattering, but here it is anyway! Professor Burton Clark described CHEPS as: “the major research house of its kind in the world, combining domestic practical projects with basic research in comparative higher education….” (Creating Entrepreneurial Universities, 1998:52)

9. The times they are a changing Bob Dylan, late 1960s What is it about our time in higher education that leads many to assert that this is an era of unprecedented change?

10. The major environmental changes • Global warming type changes: • Economic globalisation • knowledge based economies • information and communication technologies • Nationally mediated or specific changes: • Mass HE provision • Greater level of diversity in system • Changes in nature of government co-ordination • Heightened levels of competition • Resources less than growth, and diversifying • More stakeholders with more involvement

11. State - University interaction is changing • A convergence on “state supervision” (but from different models, and with some help from “global best practice”) This is reflected in: • funding mechanisms • accountability mechanisms, quality assurance • public HE strategy: demand-oriented, greater levels of competition • decentralisation, management autonomy, external stakeholder participation

12. New Public Management • Active and accountable management of public service delivery not just political leadership and bureaucratic delivery • Output – effectiveness orientation • Decentralisation of service providers from policy-making centre • Competition within and between service providing organisations From UK and NZ to the world?

13. NPM within higher education • Priority setting, by government and within institutions, including government-university contracts, targets and outputs, performance indicators; • 2. Strengthening management and leadership functions within universities • 3. Client-orientation, including a new focus on quality for both students and research sponsors and on marketing • 4. Value-for-money, with an increasing emphasis on cost and returns. Central is the development and operation of effective systems of planning and management. (Taylor and Miroiu 2002)

14. Clark’s triangle of co-ordination Market(s) State Academe

15. Complex new steering paradigm Markets (International) competition European Research area Diverse stakeholders European Education area Strategic university alliances State supervision Academic disciplines State control State Policy networks Academe

16. Harry and his graphic equaliser improve on the triangle

17. The governance “graphic equalizer” State regulation (SR) Stakeholder guidance (SG) Academic self-governance (AG) Managerial self-governance (MG) Competition for scarce resources (COM)

18. The Governance Equalizer: Example AG SR SG MG COM

19. The Governance Equalizer: Example AG SR SG MG COM

20. 4 countries compared SR AG SG MG COM

21. Coming soon! Market(s) The Dutch case study State Academe

22. Governance 2 Institutional management

23. Explaining to your 12 year old daughter The university that I work for is like a …. (another type of organisation) Because: (1) (2) (3)

24. The university as a mini-city

25. The university as shopping mall?

26. The University “Sometimes thought of as a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking” Clark Kerr 1963: 20

27. “About eighty-five institutions in the western world established by 1520 still exist in recognisable forms, with similar functions and unbroken histories, including the Catholic church, the parliaments of the Isle of Man, of Iceland and of Great Britain, several Swiss cantons, and seventy universities. Kings that rule, feudal lords with vassals, guilds with monopolies are gone. These seventy universities, however, are still in the same locations with some of the same buildings, with professors and students doing much the same things, and with governance carried on in much the same ways.” Clark Kerr: 1982: 152

28. Are universities different? • HEIs lack a single, clearly definable production function • HEIs demonstrate low levels of internal integration • The commitment to discipline and profession is higher than commitment to the institution • HEI managers ability to hire and fire is relatively low • HEI managers are accountable to more stakeholders than their counterparts in business. • More and more HEIs have to be managed as hybrid organisations (public & private elements) • More businesses are knowledge based

29. Predictable and perverse black boxes(Birnbaum 1988, parrot by CHEPS) BOX # 1

30. The predictable black box

31. Hmm, looks the same as the first. Here I go around again! BOX # 2

32. The perverse black box large wheel rubber band gear (offset) rotor Connector bar black box moderator plastic piping

33. Levels of authority NATIONAL INSTITUTIONAL BASE UNITS

34. The widest perspective: Burton Clark's3 modes of authority distribution (1983) The “Continental” Mode • Faculty guild & state bureaucracy - weak middle level (institutional admin. / trustees) The “British” Mode • Faculty guild & some power at level of institutional leadership / trustees/ collective faculty rule, weak state influence The “American” Mode • Weaker faculty authority, strong institutional bureaucracy, little national authority

35. Differences across systems CE USA UK A new convergence?

36. Changing patterns of authority NATIONAL MINISTRIES or HE Councils INSTITUTIONAL MANAGEMENT FACULTIES (DEANS) DEPARTMENTS

37. The five major sites of internal institutional authority “EXT. BOARD” supervisory EXECUTIVE stronger FACULTIES SCHOOLS Teaching, research & contracts ADMINISTRATION professionalising “SENATE” academic policy

38. Sets of challenges for“the managed university” • Reducing tension between academics and managers following introduction of executive leadership • Challenge of necessary decentralisation to responsive parts without compromising integrity and coherence of the whole • Avoiding “calculating behaviour” and “symbolic compliance” • Executive leaders often in multiple binds

39. Real-time systems (an ICT definition) In real-time multiprocessing there is the extra requirement that the system complete its response to any input within a certain critical time. This poses additional problems, particularly in situations where the system is heavily loaded and is subject to many simultaneous demands.

40. In a rare and fascinating account of ‘importing organizational reform’, in this case importing to Hungary the US idea of intermediate boards of external stakeholders at the system and institutional level, the consultants came to the following conclusion: As economic and academic globalisation marches on, innovative structural configurations like intermediate boards are encountering cultural traditions and long-held distributions of power. Other characteristic structural features of the region, such as relatively weak, elected rectors and very powerful senates with broad management powers, clash with what might be regarded as “global” management models that call for a stronger executive function including expanded powers of the rector and separation of administrative from faculty expertise. It will be interesting to watch the strength and pervasiveness of these dominant, increasingly perceived as global, management norms and models as they encounter regional and national cultures…these are sufficiently strong, particularly in countries with large, well-established university sectors and with a culture of strong government bureaucracies, to question the value of these “global” management norms. At the very least, we believe that these global management norms will be substantially adapted by these strong regional and national cultures. (Morgan and Bergerson, 2000. p. 447)

41. Towards a conclusion • Institutional management has more power and responsibility now than ever before, whether it has the necessary capacity and support staff is a serious question in many systems • The division of authority within institutions varies across national systems and between HE sectors, and to a lesser extent within them • While there is much technical “best practice”, crafting an effective management structure for an institution remains a contextually and culturally contingent task!

42. One of our ‘Real time’ conclusions “We are unconvinced abut the existence of really workable ‘global’ management models, but we are convinced that effective and modern HE leadership and management approaches will be developed out of regional and national traditions and experiences” Jon File and Leo Goedegebuure, 2003