Cost Management in a Nigerian First-generation University

This study evaluates past trends in cost management in university education as a way of finding solutions to the continued financial constraints facing Nigerian universities. Taking the University of Benin as a case study, this article shows that between the 1988‐1989 and the 1992‐1993 academic years, this university was grossly underfunded, despite increasing recurrent expenditure, consistent rapid growth in student enrollments, and inadequate academic staff. As of the 1992‐1993 academic year, the federal government was providing 94.5 percent of the total financial revenue of the university. The balance of 5.5 percent was raised from internal sources by the university. Since one fundamental problem of educational cost management in this university appears to be the inadequacy of funding, the study advocates the adoption of cost-recovery policies by introducing user fees and student loan schemes to soften the impact of these fees.     

Organizing the ‘productive transformation of knowledge’: linking university and industry in traditional manufacturing areas

The article aims at underlining the role played by extra-academic and autonomous organizations strongly connected with university institutions and researchers in producing, acquiring, transferring and transforming knowledge. The study examines a particular Italian case, the Politecnico Calzaturiero, a private institution providing technical training and research services operating in North-eastern Italy. The analysis of this experience suggests that, in traditional manufacturing areas, organizations playing a key role in managing the ‘productive transformation of knowledge’ may be neither universities nor firms. ‘Special organizations’, like the one discussed in this article, are deeply embedded in their economic and institutional environment, are closely interconnected within a dense and extended network of various actors, engage in complex and time-consuming processes, and can be understood as organizational relé, that is entities which are able to connect structures that are usually not connected. For these reasons, they represent an underestimated resource for universities’ third mission and its management.     

Die schulpraktische Ausbildung im Rahmen der Lehrerausbildung an den Österreichischen Universitäten

In the course of the fundamental reform of studies at the Austrian universities the education of grammar school teachers was renewed in 1971. In a long tradition (since 1855) teachers for upper secondary education, especially for grammar schools (which lead pupils to the matriculation qualification for university education) were prepared for their teacher admission examination by studies at the universities which comprised besides of subject matters theoretically introducing courses in pedagogy and psychology. Their practical training was organised in a guided probationary year at schools (apprenticeship‐type).

Since 1982 a new integrated (concurrent) preservice teacher education programme is realised at the Austrian universities, which combines subject studies (in two fields) with teachers’ professional preparation (comprising theoretical studies and practical activities and experiences in education and teaching). The new teacher education programme takes 4#fr1/2> years and leads to the academic degree of a master of arts or science, which gives full professional teacher qualification. The profession‐oriented parts include studies in education and psychology (10 semester course units: 150 hours), subject teaching studies (12‐24 semesters course units: 180‐360 hours) and a 12‐week period of practical teaching experience. Each university designs within this framework a specific study programme. An overview is given in the paper; the programme of the university of Graz is shown in more detail as an example.

At present the introduction of a one‐year‐lasting induction period as a second phase of teacher education is discussed and planned, which should be established in 1988‐89.     

Will gender equality ever fit in? Contested discursive spaces of university reform

Similar to other European countries, the introduction of non-academic, especially managerial, criteria in higher education has shaped and altered Austrian universities since over a decade. This paper presents the results of a frame analysis of Austrian higher education debates from 1993 until 2010. It outlines how reforms in higher education were prepared and enhanced by a new policy discourse, with a special focus on the way gender equality is framed in reform debates. Our article describes three core frames: ‘from local to global’, ‘from ivory tower to business’ and ‘from civil servant to excellence’. We cluster these three frames around imaginations of space that are embedded in the normative foundations of academia, and discuss how this links up with arguments for gender equality. We furthermore propose to analytically separate two conceptions of the university: the ‘entrepreneurial’ and the ‘managerial’ university.     

The recontextualisation of ‘quality’ in Australian higher education

In the education policy arena, the notion of ‘quality'as a mechanism for increasing accountability to stakeholders has risen to prominence in the 1990s, as part of the micro‐economic reform agenda of many national governments. This study analyses the way in which policy makers in Australian higher education have recontextualised the notions of quality adopted in other countries to reconstruct a uniquely Australian version. Further, the study analyses how this recontextualisation continues from the ministerial level, through the Higher Education Council (HEC), and then the Committee for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (CQAHE), to the site of intended policy effect ‐‐ individual universities. A theoretical framework, in part offered by Stephen Ball's policy trajectory studies, is employed to examine the negotiation, resistance and even transformation of the original ministerial quality policy of 1991. A central contention is that the operation of the subsequent 3‐year cycle of quality reviews between 1993 and 1995 provides an example par excellence of a government strategy of ‘steering at a distance’.     

Die Geschichte des Faches Pädagogik an den österreichischen Universitäten von 1805 bis 1970

The study offers an overview of the history of pedagogics at the Austrian universities between 1895 and 1970. From its beginnings in Vienna, where the first Austrian chair for pedagogics was established in 1805, the author describes the varied development of the discipline at the universities of Vienna, Pra‐gue, Graz, Innsbruck, and Salzburg. A detailed presentation of the biographies of professors teaching at these universities is combi‐ned with a critical history of the respective educational theories they advocated. The analysis of dissertations, Habilitationsschriften (postdoctoral dissertations), and further publications shows that up until the last third of our Century pedagogics as a “science” has led a shadowy existence. An essential cause for the regrettable lack of independent educational‐science theory con‐struction was the understanding of pedagogics as a practical “teaching of the art” ("Kunstlehre") of education. This was also one of the reasons why pedagogics, or respectively, educational science, has for some time been rejected by the social sciences in general as an independent science in its own right.

     

The psychological contract of science students: social exchange with universities and university staff from the students' perspective

Considerable research has been undertaken involving the student experience and depicting undergraduate students as consumers of education. This construction of the relationship between students and universities is based primarily on notions of economic exchange. In this paper, using the construct of the psychological contract, we show that social exchanges can also occur. In a study sponsored by the leaders of a university's science faculty, 10 student-researchers recorded their experience of being a science undergraduate student using an innovative video data collection method called VideoVoices. We present a case study using the data recorded by one student-researcher that shows that students can have more complex conceptions of their relationships than that of passive consumer with respect to their reciprocal obligations to their university and lecturers. Psychological contract theory has been widely used in management and organisation studies literature, but the use of this theory in the context of higher education is much sparser. We argue that psychological contract theory, besides encouraging a more useful and complex view of students at university, has the potential to suggest future research directions and strategies to improve relationships between students and universities.     

Management of Research Funding

This paper was delivered to the Association of Commonwealth Universities’ Congress at Penang, August 1986. It commences with a discussion of the purposes of universities, and emphasizes the tension between the internal mission of the university ‐‐ the preservation, transmission and extension of knowledge, implying scholarly autonomy in academic decision‐making ‐‐ and the external forces requiring a responsiveness to community requirements and national objectives. This tension is never fully resolved, but a variable point of balance between opposing forces results. The polarity of the internal mission of universities and the external forces acting on them is mirrored in the debate about research management. Five major issues in research management are considered: selectivity in supporting individuals, the role of national objectives, single versus pluralist funding, pure versus applied research, concentration versus dispersion. Finally, the importance of universities maintaining priority in undertaking disinterested fundamental research is stressed.     

欧洲大学智力资本报告制度及其启示

在欧洲博洛尼亚进程中,欧洲大学借鉴产业领域的智力资本管理和报告理论,开展大学智力资本理论研究与报告活动,以增加高校透明度,提升大学管理水平。欧洲一些国家的大学实践探索值得我国高校学习,而奥地利政府的有力推动更值得我国借鉴。     

A portrait of Canadian higher education

In his book,More Than an Academic Question, Cameron offers a framework within which to understand the relationship between universities and government. He presents a thorough summary of the development of universities across Canada, exploring both public policy and changes in the governance and management of universities. Focussing on the transformation of universities from post World War II to the 1980s, he discusses the evolution of direct federal involvement in the core funding of universities, the reforms within the internal governing structures of universities, and faculty unionization. Although he presents suggestions regarding a more deliberate selection of membership of university governing boards, on the whole Cameron does not offer resolutions to the issues he raises, but rather lays the foundation for discussion.     

University governance: Governing bodies as providers and users of annual reports

Where members of governing bodies of universities stand in relation to their institution’s annual reports is discussed in the broader context of trends in university governance. Data were collected from members of the governing councils of New Zealand’s eight universities using questionnaire surveys in 1993 and 2001. During this interval, a marked improvement in the quality of these institutions’ reports occurred (Coy, D. and Dixon, K. (2004). British Accounting Review 3, 679–106). Issues explored include information used to govern and the equivocal roles of council members juxtaposed as they are between university participants and stakeholders. They are cast as strategic decision makers, holders of university senior management and other participants to account, and annual report publishers, and so publicly accountable persons. Findings include that annual reports provide valuable information for members to make decisions and hold their universities accountable; and that some shortcomings discerned by members in report qualitative characteristics and contents persist, despite seeming to be within the discretion of councils to address. Speculations about why this might be so are advanced, including for further investigation; and other suggestions for further research are put forward.     

Placing Students at the Centre of the Decolonizing Education Imperative: Engaging the (Mis)Recognition Struggles of Students at the Postapartheid University

Misrecognition of South African university students is at the heart of this article. Misrecognition refers in this article to the exclusionary institutional discourses and practices of this country’s universities, which continue to prevent the majority of their (Black) students’ from achieving a successful education. It is a conceptual account of the ways in which these misrecognized students develop a complex educational life in their quest for a university education. The article argues that at the heart of students’ university experiences is an essential misrecognition of who they are, and how they access and encounter their university studies. I suggest that gaining greater purchase on their (mis)recognition struggles may place the university in a position to establish an engaging recognition platform to facilitate their educational success. Divided into four sections, the article starts with a rationale for bringing the institutional misrecognition of students into view. This is followed by a theoretical consideration of the notion of recognition, which opens space for what I call the recognitive agency of the education subject, who remains largely unknown to the university. The third section provides an account of the nature and extent of Black students’ survivalist educational navigations and practices in their family, community, school, and university contexts. The final and concluding section of the article presents a normative argument for developing an education platform for facilitating a productive encounter aimed at animating students’ educational becoming. This, I argue, should proceed on the basis of a decolonizing knowledge approach, involving curriculum recognition, which would accord students the conceptual tools for developing the epistemic virtues necessary for complex decolonized living.     

WOMEN'S CAREERS IN SCIENCE AND RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

This introductory article by the Chairman of the Special Committee for Humanities of the Austrian Commission for UNESCO introduces the conference, the proceedings of which follow. The author gives a brief history of one of the co‐sponsors, the Institute for East and South‐East European Studies of Austria, following it with a few references to the admission of women to selected European universities in the mid‐nineteenth century. The question asked is whether or not a good university education suffices for a woman to be able to undertake a successful career in research and development (R&D).     

Language games: University responses to ranking metrics

League tables of universities that measure performance in various ways are now commonplace, with numerous bodies providing their own rankings of how institutions throughout the world are seen to be performing on a range of metrics. This paper uses Lyotard's notion of language games to theorise that universities are regaining some power over being placed on league tables by creating narratives that manipulate their rankings to promote their own strengths. This paper examines the findings of a study involving university responses to global rankings throughout 2016 produced by two major ranking bodies, Times Higher Education and QS Top Universities. The existing literature has established that ranking tables can be used as a vehicle for humiliation and can produce terrors for all those involved. Thus, the significance of this study's findings is in new ways of theorising university responses to appearing on league tables at a time when academia is a high‐stakes activity where institutions’ abilities are measured and reported on at a global scale.     

Reinventing Governance: The Role of Boards of Governors in the New Austrian University

In the last decade, the university sector in many European countries has undergone manifold changes in relation to the design of governance structures and processes. Accordingly, a board of governors with far‐reaching competences was implemented by the latest reform of the Austrian higher education system in 2002. Drawing on an empirical research project, this paper contrasts the basic ideas of this reform with insights into the concrete practice of the new governance structure. The results show that board members’ personal factors such as personality, experience, and their attitude towards the multi‐faceted nature of university governance, strongly influence the boards’ identity formation and actual work. It is concluded that such factors must be regarded when implementing governing boards in universities by means of university reform.     

Universities,knowledge and pedagogical configurations: Glimpsing the complex university

This paper elaborates a typology of universities in which each university is characteristically associated with (i) diverse missions, (ii) different ways of producing knowledge and (iii) contrasting pedagogical configurations. Four university forms are identified, analysed and illustrated, namely the expert university, the non-elite university, the entrepreneurial university and the revolutionary university. It is suggested that the typology and the analysis of university forms offered here provide insight into the current positioning of universities in relation to the wider world and have potential in prompting new forms of university for the twenty-first century. The paper further advances another possible university for the future, namely the complex university. The complex university is part of and respectful of diverse ecosystems. It creates new frameworks to understand the world and, in that way, supports social transformations.     

Knowledge management as a mechanism for technological and organizational change management in Israeli universities

During the last decade, the higher education sector has experienced many pressures and changes (Hanna, Educause Review, 38(4), 25–34, 2003; Scott, Educause Review, 38, 64–80, 2003; Waterhouse, The power of e-learning: The essential guide for teaching in the digital age, 2005). Universities around the world are facing the need to adapt to a rapidly changing educational and social landscape, in which technology is both the main cause of change and a tool for dealing with the change. This study examines the organization-wide technological changes that have infiltrated every aspects of life at all universities that are part of the higher education system in Israel during the last 7 years: the introduction of on-line instruction, e-learning and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) technology for university work processes The research findings show that there is a mechanism for managing organization-wide technological changes at Israeli universities but it is not a rational one. This study proposes a model for managing organization-wide technological changes in universities on the basis of the existing mechanism, using knowledge management strategies for the purpose of change management: KM-M-CM (Knowledge Management as a Mechanism for Change Management) Implementation of this model will make it possible to realize the challenge of transforming the university from a "knowledge institution" to a "learning institution." It will come life to the extent that the higher education system in Israel, its leaders and decision-makers understand the need for a permanent mechanism to manage change and adopt this rational model in order to establish it.     

The Japanese academic profession

The historical background to the emergence of the Japanese system of higher education is described, attention being drawn to the link established between national aims and those of the university and to the system of gakubatsu (a form of patronage for graduates of a particular university). Post World War II expansion brought junior colleges (tanki-daigaku) into the sphere of higher education as well as universities (daigaku). Though formally and legally these classes of institution are equal they are in fact ranked according to the old system. Within universities there is also a ranking which is reinforced by gakubatsu. This ranking limits mobility in the academic profession; academic staff are likely to spend all their careers, undergraduate, postgraduate and as faculty members, at the same university. This system prevents Japanese scholars from taking posts abroad though it must also be pointed out that many Japanese academics go to great lengths to remain fully acquainted with western scholarship.