22 Aug 2007
Managing Human Resources in Higher Education George Gordon, Celia Whitchurch
Human resource capacity has become a critical issue for contemporary universities as a result of increasing pressures from governments and global markets. As a consequence, particularly where the institution is the employer, changes are occurring in the expectations of staff and institutions about employment terms and conditions, as well as the broader aspects of working life, and this is affecting academic and professional identities. Even under different regimes, for instance, in Europe, with the government in effect as the employer, institutions are giving greater attention to ways in which they might respond to these developments. This paper considers key issues and challenges in human resource management in higher education, and some of the implications of these changes.
22 Aug 2007
Peripheries and Centres Philip G. Altbach
The research university is a central institution of the 21st century – providing access to global science, producing basic and applied research, and educating key leaders for academe and society. Worldwide, there are very few research universities – they are expensive to develop and support, and the pressures of massification have placed priorities elsewhere. For developing countries, research universities are especially rare, and yet they are especially important as key ingredients for economic and social progress. This article argues for the importance of research universities in developing countries and points out some of the challenges that such institutions face.
22 Aug 2007
The Impact of League Tables and Ranking Systems on Higher Education Decision Making Ellen Hazelkorn
As the battle for "world class excellence" accelerates, competition for students, faculty, finance and researchers between higher education institutions, nationally and internationally, has intensified. In this environment, the results of formally and relatively benign benchmarking exercises have taken on increased prominence and importance elevating the popularity and notoriety of league tables and ranking systems. To date, critical attention has focused on assessing the methodology behind these different systems and asking whether the resultant tables provide reliable information or denote quality. In contrast, this paper examines what impact, if any, league tables and ranking systems are having on higher education institution decision making. Drawing on a comprehensive survey of higher education leaders and senior managers worldwide, the paper aims to better understand the influences on strategic and operational decision making and choices, and institutional reputation and prestige. The study raises important challenges for both institutional leaders and governments.
22 Aug 2007
Universities on the Catwalk Hamish Coates
National and international rankings of institutional performance are playing a growing role in contemporary higher education. It is critical that researchers develop pragmatic, educationally sensitive and methodologically informed approaches for managing this aspect of higher education. This paper compares three approaches for modelling key indicators which underpin a national evaluation of university education in Australia: rankings of aggregate institutional performance; comparisons of institutional change over time; and performance variations within fields of education. The results show that simple institution-level aggregations are misleading, and that contemporary analytical methods must be used to account for the influence of fields of education. More broadly, the findings expose the need for a more robust methodological development of university rankings.
22 Aug 2007
League Tables as Policy Instruments Jamil Salmi, Alenoush Saroyan
This article examines the role and usefulness of league tables that are increasingly used to measure and compare the performance of tertiary education institutions. The article begins with a general overview and a typology of league tables. It continues with a discussion of the controversies they have generated, including the basis and the range of criticism they have invited, the merit of indicators they use as measures of quality, and the potential conditions that place universities at an advantage or a disadvantage in ranking exercises. The paper ends with a discussion of implications of league tables for national policies and institutional practices both in the developing world and in industrial countries.
22 Aug 2007
The University and Its Communities David Watson
This article analyses the engagement of universities with the community in three domains: the consequences of the university simply "being there", contractual and other partnerships, and the relationship between the institution and its members. The consequences are then explored for the values espoused and practiced by the universities, including the possibility of their codification into a set of "ten commandments".
22 Aug 2007
Academic Values, Institutional Management and Public Policies David Ward
The impacts of market-related policies and revenues on higher education are not uniform but globalisation has opened most institutions to new pressures. The public funding models developed 50 years ago underestimated the full cost of mass higher education as an entitlement while the sheer scale of resources needed to sustain a comprehensive research university demand a more nuanced balance of research and teaching for most institutions. These same pressures threaten equitable access if rising tuition fees are not fully matched by adequate need-based financial aid while in the absence of tuition pressures, unfunded increases in student participation undermines the quality of higher education. In this environment, justifications of increased funding are often based on utilitarian goals affecting the motives of research and scholarship and distorting the balance of curricular developments. In contrast, the increased range of revenue streams has created opportunities for more creative and less regulated institutional priorities. The potential impacts of private interests on higher education are well recognised but a politically vulnerable and often singular dependency on state funding is also capable of deflecting academic values. As institutions of higher education clarify their values to cope with global pressures to provide mass higher education and to meet the needs of the knowledge economy, they must also serve as places of imagination, innovation, disputation, scepticism and questioning. Those values are also critical as leaders in higher education attempt to confront themselves with the changes that they themselves need to make to their institutions.
