Management as ideology: the case of ‘new managerialism’ in higher education

The paper explores ideological conceptions of management, especially ‘new managerialism’, with particular reference to their role in the reform of higher education. It is suggested that attempts to reform public services in general are political as well as technical, though there is no single unitary ideology of ‘new managerialism’. Whilst some argue that managers have become a class and have particular interests, this may not be so for all public services. The arguments presented are illustrated by data taken from a recent research project on the management of UK higher education. It is suggested that managers in public service organisations such as universities do not constitute a class. However, as in the case of manager‐academics, managing a contemporary public service such as higher education may involve taking on the ideologies and values of ‘new managerialism’, and for some, embracing these. So management ideologies do seem to serve the interests of manager‐academics and help cement relations of power and dominance, even in contexts like universities which were not traditionally associated with the dominance of management.     

Science,Society and Trends in Science Education‐‐some Thoughts on the Development of Integrated Science in the Educational Systems of the World

Summaries

English

Before constructing a new curriculum for any level in integrated‐science education, it is very important to establish a basic philosophy of science teaching which reflects a symbiotic relationship between education and the socio‐economic development in a particular country of the world.

The curriculum structure of integrated‐science education should broaden the basis of curricular decision and should be designated to follow the expectations of the society in providing professional intellectual training so that education can make a significant contribution to the socio‐economic growth of the country. This basic assumption which established a link between cultural and socio‐economic growth, involves a diversification of the cultural trends of science education which must become appropriate to the economic and historical context of each country in a fast changing world of work.

Therefore, by critically removing outside influences in the transmission of scientific knowledge, there should be less uniformity in the context and methods of teaching, and considerable restructuring of education for each country should occur. Thus, considering the historical and geographical differences, a new order in international division of labour would come into being.

In such a hypothesis, a research‐oriented integrated curriculum in science education can play a central role (certainly a better one than in the traditional, discipline‐oriented scheme of science teaching) in obtaining an adequate interaction between scientific education and social problems; this is required for modern cultural and economic development of the world.     

Aspiration for global cultural capital in the stratified realm of global higher education: why do Korean students go to US graduate schools?

This study aims to understand Korean students’ motivations for studying in US graduate schools. For this purpose, I conducted in‐depth interviews with 50 Korean graduate students who were enrolled in a research‐centered US university at the time of the interview. In these interviews, I sought to understand how their motivations are connected not only with their family, school, and occupational backgrounds, but also with the stratification of global higher education. Theoretically, this paper attempts to combine the concept of global positional competition with Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural capital in the field of global education. By critically examining a push–pull model of transnational higher education choice‐making, this study situates Korean students’ aspirations in the contexts of global power and the hierarchy of knowledge‐degree production and consumption. After analyzing the students’ qualitative interviews, I classify their motivations for earning US degrees within four categories: enhancing their class positions and enlarging their job opportunities; pursuing learning in the global center of learning; escaping the undemocratic system and culture in Korean universities; and fulfilling desires to become cosmopolitan elites armed with English communication skills and connections within the global professional network. Based on this analysis, I argue that Korean students pursue advanced degrees in the United States in order to succeed in the global positional competition within Korea as well as in the global job marketplace. As they pursue advanced US degrees, Korean students internalize US hegemony as it reproduces the global hierarchy of higher education, but at the same time Korean students see US higher education as a means of liberation that resolves some of the inner contradictions of Korean higher education, including gender discrimination, a degree caste system, and an authoritarian learning culture. Therefore, this study links Korean students’ aspiration for global cultural capital to complex and irregular structures and relations of class, gender, nationality, and higher education that extend across local, national, and global dimensions simultaneously.     

The future of higher education and the future of higher education research

Abstract

Higher education research is closely linked to the debates on higher education policy and practice. It provides the information basis for decisions about the future of higher education. As the themes of the public debate on problems and reform needs in higher education change quickly, higher education research has to anticipate future problems and themes of debates in order to develop concepts and to generate knowledge well in advance. Future‐conscious higher education research might aim to identify likely future changes in thematic areas which are already in the limelight of public attention, as trends in the areas of expansion of higher education, diversification of structures of the higher education system, system steering and institutional management as well as internationalisation and globalisation suggest. Moreover, future‐conscious higher education research should try to identify thematic areas not frequently discussed at present but likely to be major issues in the future. For example, professionalisation of higher education in terms of the emergence and expansion of new administrative and service professions in higher education institutions might have far‐reaching implications in the future and is worth to be paid attention by higher education researchers.     

Modernist 16‐19 Business Education in a Postmodern world ‐ critical evidence of business practice and business education in the cultural industries

Abstract

This article examines the continued relevance of the 16‐19 business education curriculum in the UK, stimulated by doubts expressed by Thomas (1996), over its continued relevance. We express a concern that business education needs, but is struggling, to respond to significant societal shifts in consumption and production strategies that do not sit easily within traditional theories of business practice currently underpinning 16‐19 business education. We examine firstly, the extent to which a formal body of knowledge couched in a modernist discourse of facts and objectivity can cope with the changing and fluid developments in much current business practice that is rooted in the cultural and symbolic. Secondly, the extent to which both academic and vocational competences provide the means for students to develop a framework of critical understanding that can respond effectively to rapidly changing business environments.

Findings are based on research conducted jointly by the University of Manchester and the Manchester Institute for Popular Culture at Manchester Metropolitan University. The growth of dynamism of the cultural industries sector ‐ largely micro‐businesses and small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) ‐encapsulates forms of business knowledge, business language and business practice which may not immediately fit with the models provided within business education. Results suggest increasingly reflexive forms of consumption being met by similarly reflexive and flexible modes of production.

Our evidence suggests that whilst modernist business knowledge is often the foundation for many 16‐19 business education courses, these programmes of study/training do not usually reflect the activities of SME and micro‐business practitioners in the cultural industries. Given the importance of cultural industries in terms of the production strategies required to meet increasingly reflexive markets, it is suggested that there may be a need to incorporate a postmodern approach to the current content and pedagogy; one that is contextual, cultural and discursive.     

DROP‐OUT AS A MANIFESTATION OF REPRODUCTION DYNAMICS IN HIGHER EDUCATION

The link between drop‐out rates and the indicators of the socio‐cultural background of undergraduates is analyzed. The conceptualization of the drop‐out problem is based on the theory of cultural reproduction. The tension inherent in this Bourdieuan concept is linked to the opposition between different student cultures and the one‐dimensional, largely hidden, cultural expectations of higher education institutions. One can argue that students who have the most favourable sociocultural backgrounds obviously adapt themselves better to the quite elitist culture of the academic world. The likelihood of this kind of existence of cultural screening is, however, related to the hierarchical status structure of the given academic field. Presumably, the disciplinary culture of top‐units, that corresponds to the culture of the dominant classes, hinders the efforts of common undergraduates to complete their studies. The empirical findings of this study indicate that persons who withdraw from higher education without having been awarded a diploma come from a lower social class background slightly more frequently than do those who do not withdraw, and, surprisingly, are males living in urban and more educated communities. Such unequally biased post‐selection is also more common for the middle and upper than for the lowest‐ranked fields of the academic hierarchy. Generally speaking, differences between social classes, so far as this phenomenon is concerned, are quite small, but may become more pronounced.     

A history of learning difficulties Australia: Part four‐managing change

Abstract

As the Australian Remedial Educational Association (AREA) approached its silver jubilee in 1990, significant changes were occurring in education. The principle, if not the practice, of integration into mainstream schools for students with disabilities had been widely adopted by education authorities, one outcome being an expectation that class teachers would provide for much greater diversity within the mainstream. Broader changes in education, including in end‐of‐school assessment, posed further challenges. During the decade from the mid‐1980s to the mid‐1990s, AREA was occupied in much internal discussion as Council searched for a framework that would encompass new ideas about special education while maintaining its service for remedial consultants as a priority. The association overcame financial and other difficulties, surviving with a new name, the Australian Resource Educators Association, to reflect an expansion of membership beyond the traditional concept of remedial teacher.     

“The center of the manual training movement in Germany”: die Deutsche Lehrerbildungsanstalt für Knabenhandarbeit in Leipzig, 1887–1914

ABSTRACT

In the decades around 1900, reformers in virtually all industrialising countries debated boys’ manual training as a new subject for primary education. This contribution discusses the German debates on and institutions of manual training from a transnational perspective. The focus is on the German Association for Manual Training founded by Emil von Schenckendorff in 1886 and its Training College for Teachers established one year later in Leipzig, which notably organised summer courses where teachers received supplementary training in manual skills. The Training College soon developed into a centre for manual training instruction of European and global significance. This article discusses the Training College in Leipzig as a portal for educational globalisation. Its two directors Woldemar Götze and Alwin Pabst, on the one hand, transferred Scandinavian, French and American ideas and practices to the German context. On the other hand, foreign experts visited and referred to the Training College in order to enhance reforms in their respective countries. Especially after his trip to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in 1904, Pabst enthusiastically embraced American education and – albeit with limited success – planned to transform the Training College into a model school and new education research centre. Moreover, Pabst theoretically reflected on processes of cultural development and cultural transfers, largely following the ideas of historian Karl Lamprecht. Manual training, in this respect, appeared as a panacea for constructing a genuinely modern and cosmopolitan society.     

Non‐traditional students in Australian higher education: Persistent inequities and the new ideology of ‘student choice’

Abstract

Despite the expansion of access to Australian higher education in the past decade, the participation shares of rural and isolated people and people from lower socio‐economic backgrounds have altered little and remain unacceptably low. This paper reports findings from two national studies at the Centre for the Study of Higher Education that have examined student choices about higher education, especially the inhibiting factors still present for non‐traditional students. The discussion focuses on the dilemmas and challenges for Australian universities in balancing the adoption of entrepreneurial approaches to student recruitment with an unfinished equity agenda. The paper raises questions about the new ideology of individual choice influencing university policy and whether or not this can be reconciled with social equity objectives.     

The New Independent Higher Education Institutions in China: Dilemmas and Challenges

One impact of globalisation has been the expansion of higher education to meet changing current socio‐economic and political requirements. This expansion places considerable stress on the public purse and many states have turned to alternative solutions. In China, a new phenomenon has emerged: independent higher education institutions that complement public and private institutions in helping to cater for the expanded numbers of students. These independent institutions are formed through partnerships between existing institutions and the business sector. After analysing the political, socio‐economic and cultural contexts that shape the policy of developing independent institutions, this paper explores the dilemmas and challenges that have arisen at the implementation level and critiques some of the solutions that have been found.     

Globalization and the freedom of knowledge

This article considers the transmission of knowledge in higher education. It takes the metaphor of the music industry that pre‐selects the music people can buy. The sales potential is the leading principle in the selection process. Often the small producer is excluded because his or her music is not of commercial interest. The end‐customer does not know what he or she is missing because he or she has never heard the music. It is to be feared that a similar market principle will also influence the selection of knowledge and affect the capacity of higher education institutions to freely generate and transmit new knowledge. The globalization of higher education risks homogenizing the cultural traditions of the non‐Western world through a process of Western cultural domination. On the other hand, the Internet, via open source software like LINUX, might serve to democratize higher education and allow greater grassroots input.     

Change and Equity in Higher Education

In this article, I explore the dynamic relationship between political and organizational change in higher education. Change is interrogated in relation to policies and discourses of New Right reform, mass expansion, new managerialism, equity and post‐modernist theories of power, with questions raised about the interconnection of demographic changes, consumer entitlement and equality of opportunity. I consider the extent to which economic, intellectual and socio‐cultural changes intersect. Equity is examined in relation to the democratic rhetoric of enhanced access and connections are made between equality and quality by questioning the changing nature of the product being accessed by new student populations.     

Education and new hegemonic blocs: Doing policy the 'right' way

Discussions of higher education need to be placed within larger processes of socio-economic and cultural restructuring. While higher education does indeed have its own specific histories and its own relatively autonomous dynamics, the entire sphere participates in and is connected in complex ways to social transformations and to struggles over power. The author examines these larger transformations that are changing the very landscape on which higher education - and education in general - sits. He analyzes the formation of a new hegemonic bloc that is pushing education in particular rightward directions. This tense alliance includes various factions - neo-liberals, neo-conservatives, authoritarian populists, and a particular fraction of the upwardly mobile new middle class. The author critically examines the policies that are being proposed and the possibilities of counter-hegemonic action.     

Lecturing in Post‐Compulsory Education: profession,occupation or reflective practice?

Abstract

This paper argues that a new conceptualisation of teaching in post‐compulsory education is required. Taking into account the radical ideology‐driven change experienced in the sector in recent times, it is suggested that there are difficulties with the model of the lecturer as a ‘professional’, chief amongst which is that lecturers do not seem to think of themselves in this way. It is suggested that any alternative conceptualisation must: (i) take into account lecturers' own conceptions of their working practices, (ii) reflect the range of these practices, and (Hi) reflect the epistemological and ethical basis of teaching, in particular lecturers' sense of the value and worth of what they do. Finally, some implications of the proposed model of teaching for management practice and development, and the potential of the approach for theory practice and practitioners, are explored.     

Female Education in Saudi Arabia and the Reproduction of Gender Division

This paper explains the reproduction of gender divisions and power relations through education in a traditional Islamic country, Saudi Arabia. That country has drawn both upon Islam and its oil wealth to expand female education vastly within traditional boundaries. Its model of female education is unique among all Islamic countries, in its structure and strategies for the reproduction of gender divisions through (1) a dual system of male and female education; (2) a gender‐specific educational policy that emphasizes women's domestic function; (3) gender‐segregated schools and colleges; and (4) curriculum differentiation at the various educational levels. The author maintains that Saudi education, a microcosm of Saudi Arabian society, has intentionally instituted these mechanisms and structures as a means of cultural conservation and social control. The Saudi experience proves previous research findings that female educational expansion does indeed increase women's social and occupational options, but does not necessarily alter gender and power relations.     

Becoming and Being a Specialist: anticipating and experiencing higher education English

Abstract

This paper presents and discusses a hitherto largely neglected area of academic and pedagogic research in one of the most popular subjects in higher education — English. The authors examine student‐held views of what constitutes ‘English’, focusing for part of the discussion on reading and reading logs in routine English teaching. The first part of the paper concentrates on the quality of students’ insights into reading as revealed by the novel experience of keeping a reading log. The second part of the paper places this pedagogic experience in a larger context. Here, students’ own views of English, anticipated and subsequent to arrival in higher education, are evaluated. The authors apply different theoretical constructs in both their methodology and interpretation of findings. They conclude that one significant challenge for students in higher education English today is to adjust themselves, with a balance between flexibility and coherence, to a new techno‐cultural world. This world demands the intellectual capabilities both of self‐reflection and community affiliation in an expanding disccurse called ‘English’.     

New Information Technologies in Special Education

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine possible applications of new information technologies (NIT) in special education within different educational, socio‐economic and socio‐cultural contexts and, in particular, the possibilities of transference of these applications from the industrialised nations to the developing countries. The study also contains references to positive and negative results of the use of NIT in the special education of children, youth and adults.     

Form IV Cambridge School Certificate,Pupils' Aspirations in Zimbabwe

This article is based on two major studies. One study was carried out in 1985 and the other in 1987. The discussion examines Form IV Cambridge School Certificate pupils' aspirations in Zimbabwe with special reference to the post‐independence period. Among the main factors said to determine pupils' aspirations, highlighted in the study include: the class structures of scoiety, parents' occupations, gender, the urban‐rural dichotomy and the type of schools attended.

Pupils' aspirations for a developing country such as Zimbabwe have implications for the country's education policies. These implications are in areas such as the expansion of educational provisions, universal primary education, material provision, educational costs, manpower supply and demand and entry into the University.

As far as cost implications are concerned, there is debate in Zimbabwe as to whether the country can afford free and compulsory primary education given limited resources. At the same time limited resources have affected the quality of education. This article attempts to give suggestions as to what education policy makers could do to improve upon the situation.     

Conflict and contentment: Case study of the social mobility of working‐class students in Canada

This article offers a tentative exploration of how working‐class students' mobility is affected by the push to enter middle‐class careers and lifestyles, and the pull of their working‐class origins. Based on a nine‐year qualitative longitudinal study of working‐class students at a Canadian university, I will show that few study participants experienced mobility as an uncontested or linear trajectory. Two key storylines can be identified: (a) a story of adjustment, modification and contentment; and (b) a story of conflict, loss, and struggle. For most, educational mobility was tempered by revisions of occupational ambitions, by returns to their home communities and by lifestyle choices that do not fit simple narratives of status mobility. And yet, all expressed a growing sense of self‐confidence, appreciated their education as an experience of personal growth, and achieved on their own terms, in post‐graduate education and newly discovered careers.     

高校素质教育对促进大学生职业发展的作用分析

伴随着社会经济环境恶化与高等教育大众化的影响,大学生就业问题向高等教育提出了新的任务和挑战。结合高校素质教育的基本特征,分析素质教育在大学生能力素质结构的全面完善、职业发展的扩展与延伸、职业创新能力形成、主体性因素体现中发挥的作用。强化高校素质教育是促进大学生就业与职业发展的重要举措。