Governance of Higher Education in Britain: The Significance of the Research Assessment Exercises for the Funding Council Model

This article uses the political struggles that have enveloped the research assessment exercises (RAEs) to interpret the UK's current funding council model of governance. Ironically, the apparently widespread improvement in the research performance of British universities, as demonstrated by RAE 2001, has made it more difficult to distribute research income selectively, which was supposedly the central objective of the whole evaluative process. Whilst enhanced research ratings may be seen as a cause for celebration in the universities, the failure to anticipate this outcome and, more significantly, to plan for its financial implications is seen in political circles as a failure of higher education management. The article explores the alternative models of governance that are likely to emerge as a consequence of this crisis and, in particular, whether the funding councils can have much freedom of action, given the tighter political control of policy goals and their critical dependence upon the academic profession for the conduct of the evaluative process.     

The impact of past experience on people's preference: the case of university researchers' dependency on funding sources

How much does a successful collaboration between a university researcher and a funding source affect the researcher's future preference of that source? To examine this relationship, another crucial variable is added, namely, the individual's level of dependency on funding sources. It is hypothesized that given a low level of dependency, if researchers have had a satisfactory experience with a funding source, they will be more likely to prefer collaboration with that source than if they did not have a satisfactory relationship. Given a high level of dependency, past experience will not make a difference on preference. The effects of past experience on people's preferences are examined based on a survey of American university researchers. The data show that past experience has a strong impact on one's preference, but this effect is true for all researchers, regardless of their level of dependency on external support. Implications for funding sources, and social scientists using resource dependency as the theoretical framework are discussed.     

To what extent is the culture of a university department supportive of equal opportunities for women?

Most British universities now have equal opportunities policies but the extent to which these policies have brought about real change in university departments is not clear. Management theory suggests that when trying to implement change in an organisation it is important to understand that organisation's culture. Opportunity 2000, a business initiative to try to increase the number of women (especially managers) in the British workforce stresses the importance of cultural change. However, there has been little attempt to 'measure' culture in relation to gender in university departments. This article explores the findings from an attempt to use Johnson & Scholes's cultural web to 'measure' the culture in a business studies department in an 'old' British university     

Ratings in the Research Assessment Exercise 2001 – the Patterns of University Status and Panel Membership

Ratings awarded to university departments in the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) 2001 were analysed to determine whether they were influenced either by the status of the university (pre‐1992 or post‐1992) or by whether the university was represented on the panel that determined the ratings. There was little evidence that panel membership has any effect on ratings, but an analysis of covariance also showed that, among universities not on the panel, pre‐1992 universities were more favourably assessed, relative to post‐1992 universities, than would be expected on the basis of their ratings in the 1996 RAE. This finding, along with the preponderance of pre‐1992 universities on all panels (even those where the majority of the research is conducted by post‐1992 universities), is used to urge strongly that in future RAEs, panel membership should be made much more representative of higher education in general and of the institutions submitting the research considered by each panel in particular.     

Protecting academic freedom in changing times: the role of Heads of Departments

In changing times for higher education that are dominated by a neoliberal ideology, we set out to uncover how Heads of Departments (HoDs) perceive their role with respect to supporting their staff and their academic freedom. Freedom to pursue academic research is seen as key to the generation of new knowledge yet it is potentially constrained by funding regimes and university accountability systems. As HoDs operate at the interface between university systems and individual academic projects, how they perceive their role can have a profound influence on the working environment of their departmental staff. The research study is located in two successful departments in a research intensive university in England. The study shows that the HoDs were not captured by the neoliberal discourse and aimed to protect their staff so they could ‘get on with their work’. In so doing they interpreted university demands to the best advantage of their departments but were not active in challenging university driven changes, thus raising questions about the effects of accommodating to change, so risking incremental change, and of how less successful departments might be able to protect their staff and their academic freedom.     

Researching emotion and affect in the history of education

This exploratory paper was prepared for a symposium held at the 2011 ISCHE conference in which participants were asked to envision future challenges in the historiography of education, to predict where the field was moving, and to imagine what innovations and new interests would arise in the subsequent 30 years. While the paper is playfully written from the vantage point of 30 years in the future and pretends to offer a retrospective review of what happened in the field over that period, its primary purpose is to seriously suggest a number of ways that historians of education might engage with the history of emotion and affect in their work. The first section of the paper describes the consolidation of the history of emotions as a field of historical study and discusses the importance of a ‘governmentality' approach. It is then suggested in the second section that historians of education increasingly drew on the concept of ‘affect' and developed ‘affective histories' of education that both built upon and departed from earlier histories of emotions. The third section of the paper discusses some of the ways in which historians of education incorporated into their work insights from neuroscience into consciousness and choice-making as well as an increased awareness of the object-mediated body.     

Does external funding push doctoral supervisors to be more directive? A large-scale Danish study

Around the world, changing funding policies have pushed for university departments to find increased external project-based funding. While this trend is widely acknowledged, mixed views exist about implications for faculty members’ academic practices. Regarding doctoral education, researchers have raised concern that external funding will push doctoral supervisors to be more directive in their supervision of doctoral students’ research projects. However, the empirical evidence supporting such concern is limited. The aim of the current study was, first, to develop and validate a scale allowing us to measure the degree of supervisor direction. Second, the aim was to examine the hypothesis that directive supervision is more likely to occur when the doctoral student’s research project is supported by external funding secured by the supervisor. A total of 1690 doctoral students at a research-intensive Danish university participated in the study. Three scales, including a directive supervision scale, were developed and validated by means of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Our hypothesis could be confirmed for the health sciences, but not the natural sciences. Results from the humanities and social sciences were ambiguous.     

University continuing education in a neoliberal landscape: developments in England and Aotearoa New Zealand

This paper explores the impact of changing higher education policies and funding on university adult and continuing education in England and Aotearoa New Zealand. It discusses some of the contextual factors contributing to sustaining continuing education in New Zealand, against the tide of developments elsewhere, and in spite of its subjection to the influence of neoliberal policies since the 1980s: an ethos of public knowledge dissemination, acknowledgement of the universities' role as ‘critic and conscience’ of society, a broad commitment to educational equality and a strategic as well as pragmatic approach. The paper describes developments in one New Zealand continuing education department as it experiences institutional and political change. The author concludes that, in spite of demonstrating considerable resilience, the structures and activities of continuing education departments in New Zealand are as fragile as they have been in England. ‘Radical hope’ is advocated as the university‐based adult educator's response in difficult times. It involves challenging the assumptions of neoliberalism, and reaffirming the political nature of adult education.     

The Future of Graduate Education in the Sociocultural Foundations: History

Numerous and much needed scientific and scholarly improvements have occurred in physical education since the 1960s. The increased specialization, while absolutely necessary for advancing knowledge, has at times been accompanied by the attitude that only certain subdisciplinary areas are important. In general, history and social science areas have been neglected within departments of physical education. Many leading historians have looked to other social sciences, and occasionally to the biological sciences, for insights into the past; an increasing number have written on topics that fall within sport and even within physical education history. The tendency to assign history classes in departments of physical education to faculty who are not themselves productive researchers is criticized. Because so few departments of physical education offer graduate research degrees in history, this subdisciplinary area is in jeopardy. An inadequate understanding of the intellectual origins of professional physical education may also contribute to what seems to be an inability to resolve the specialization/fragmentation issue.     

History of education and the struggle for intellectual liberation in post-Soviet Baltic space after the fall of the Berlin Wall

This study on a “new” history of education is written from the perspective of a participant in the process of discarding Soviet intellectual and physical boundaries. The fall of the Berlin Wall has, over the past two decades, become a continuous process in post-Soviet societies, when the now liberated historians of education were faced with a new challenge, namely integration into the newly opened world. The only allowed theory, Marxism-Leninism, reduced historians of education to superficial methodology and its trivialisation. However, the collapse of the USSR did not immediately result in new theoretical concepts, because historians were busy discovering fresh facts in newly accessed archives and libraries. Soon, topics on the history of education were being addressed by social scientists, who had succeeded in learning the latest theories, enabling them to present historic material to the general public in a global context. “Acts-and-facts history” slowly lost its place in university courses. Similar to the Revisionists of the 1960s in the West, today historians of education in the Baltics look to the common narratives and borrow theories from the social sciences. Current research in Latvia focuses on the Soviet legacy, internationalisation of education and the stories of those “whose voices have not yet been heard”.     

The Power of the City in Defining the National and Regional in Education. Reactions against the Urban: Universities in Regional Australia

Australian higher educational history illustrates the tensions that exist between the city and the country over the provision of university education. While for many non-Australians the nation appears as the land of the outback the reality is that Australia is dominated by the city where the majority of the population live and where governments and their policy advisers are located. This article compares the attempts of two of Australia's historic rural cities to establish universities. These cities are Armidale, New South Wales and Bendigo, Victoria. Their attempts illustrate a persistent theme in Australia's educational history - namely conflict over equitable educational provision for Australia's rural residents. The proposal to establish a university at Armidale represented a major departure from the traditional Australian policy of universities in capital cities only as it was the first time that an Australian rural city was chosen as the site of a university. However, the establishment of Australia's first rural university was later used to thwart the establishment of additional country universities. In 1938 when it succeeded in establishing its university Armidale was a small inland city of 10,000 inhabitants economically reliant on agriculture. Armidale depended on the efforts of a former farmer and now influential member of state parliament, Drummond, who faced opposition from capital city based state governments, to establish a university. The Armidale campaign for a local university was driven by powerful rural discontent, which stressed the economic and social importance of Australia's primary industries and their associated country towns while simultaneously arguing that metropolitan cities dominated Australian life and politics. Armidale's university campaign was based on the typical Australian philosophy of a "fair go" for country people. Drummond relied on the support of the citizens of Armidale and their defensive loyalty to the country. Many of their beliefs irrationally extolled the virtues of the country, the wickedness of the city, and the conspiracy of governments against the country. Drummond fully realized that the majority of Australia's population lived in the capital cities and the commercial, financial and cultural affairs of the state originated there. However, he realized that this also led to an attitude that assumed that nothing good could come out of the country. Bendigo with a population of 46,000 made its attempts to secure a university in 1970. Located in country Victoria the city originally derived its wealth from gold mining but now depended on its role as an administrative and service center for an agricultural community. Bendigo leaders were influenced by state government policies of the time, which aimed to create towns and cities throughout the state where living conditions would be similar to those in the capital city. Just as at Armidale previously, Bendigo leaders realized that to secure decentralization of services in the state attractive educational facilities, including a university, were essential. Bendigo leaders used arguments reminiscent of those previously used in Armidale in their efforts to establish a local university. They spoke of the quality of life in smaller communities, the social advantages of decentralization, the necessity of equitable educational provision for all Australians, the lack of university facilities outside the Melbourne metropolitan area and the loss of country population to the city because of a lack of educational facilities in the country. However, their campaign also met with strong and almost hysterical resistance from the state's university leaders who noted that the concept of a country university was educationally undesirable. Very importantly the citizens of Bendigo confronted a much different educational system to that of their earlier Armidale counterparts. Of most importance the who now had full responsibility for funding of university education would not support the establishment of a university in Bendigo. Reasons for this reluctance included the lack of potential students in the Bendigo area and fear that the establishment of country universities would lead to a reduction in funding for city based universities because small campuses were seen as more expensive to establish and operate than large city ones. There were also fears that establishing a university in Bendigo would lead to the destruction of the Australian binary system of higher education. In any case it was argued that it was simply unfeasible to provide the same degree of access to university facilities for country students as was available to their city counterparts as it was not economically and educationally possible. It is likely that governments used the university at Armidale to argue against the establishment of a country-based university at Bendigo. They reasoned that the University of New England illustrated that country universities were small, second rate, had difficulties in attracting staff (who were diffident about going to country locations) and were especially expensive.     

试论欧洲中世纪大学的特征与历史地位

西欧的中世纪被历史学家称为“黑暗时代”,然而,正是在这一封闭、落后的时期萌发了人类文明史上的娇艳之花——大学。欧洲中世纪大学在教育理念和课程内容等许多方面,继承了古代东西方,特别是古代希腊、罗马及阿拉伯世界的教育遗产,形成了早期大学的特征。这对世界近现代大学和高等教育机构基本原型的构成产生了深远的影响。文章试图通过对欧洲中世纪大学特征及其作用的阐述和分析,客观评价早期大学的历史地位。     

Funding in English Universities and its relationship to the Research Excellence Framework

The purpose of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) is to judge the quality of research in the UK and on that basis to apportion to universities, in a transparent manner, differential shares in the UK's £1.6 billion pot of research funding. However, the funding process is anything but transparent! While the REF process was known years in advance and remained constant throughout the assessment exercise, the mechanisms for the subsequent award of quality‐related research (QR) funding in England were opaque and ‘adjustable’. The financial outcomes were put in the public domain following publication of the REF outcomes, but the calculations still remain a ‘black box’ even for experienced university administrators. The funding factors were not revealed in advance and dramatic changes were made to the formula once the REF results were known. This paper explores the intricacies involved in university QR funding and looks at the correlations between it and various REF outcomes. It discusses the tactical implications for academics and university administrators, and whether simpler alternatives that are just as effective can be developed in time for the next iteration.     

Edifying Youths. The Chambers of Rhetoric in Seventeenth-Century Holland

For the early modern period, historians have primarily looked at institutional forms of education when investigating the intellectual molding of youths. With the exception of the wealthy, their conclusions have often been one-sided. However, youths of the middling sort in the Dutch Republic were more resourceful. Youths that could not afford a formal education at a Latin school or a university resorted to alternative resources such as chambers of rhetoric. For historians of education, chambers of rhetoric are not an obvious terrain to excavate. Traditionally, the chambers have been studied for their public literary and theatrical activities. However, those incidental public performances were only a fraction of what took place in private. In this essay we will probe into the literary activities of the chambers' private weekly meetings and illustrate how the Dutch chambers of rhetoric in the seventeenth century played an important role in edifying youths from the middling sort into a cultural elite.     

Circular: Funding for Specialized Secondary Schools (1986)

Education commissions, higher education bureaus, education departments (bureaus), and finance departments (bureaus) of the various provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities directly under the central government, and independently planned cities, as well as the various relevant ministries and commissions under the State Council:

With the reform of China's economic structure and the separation of the administrative organ from the enterprises, changes are taking place in the economic relations between many business departments and the enterprises under them. These changes have affected, to some extent, the funding for specialized secondary schools affiliated with these departments. The jurisdiction of some of these schools has also been adjusted accordingly. Under the circumstances, we need to further clarify the issue of funding for specialized secondary schools.     

关于李大钊论历史学性质问题的探析

历史学的学科性质,是艺术,还是科学?在20世纪初期,中国史学家就这一问题展开讨论,李大钊很早就开始关注与思考这一史学理论中最基本而且很重要的理论问题。在近代中国,李大钊是对于历史学的学科性质问题论述较早,也较为成熟的史学家。李大钊关于历史学特有性质的论述,是他史学思想中的一个重要内容。否认历史学不具有科学性的一些人,往往是从否认历史发展无规律可循立论的。李大钊关于历史学性质的论述也是对这一不正确的认识的积极回应。李大钊坚定地指出:"史学之当为一种科学,在今日已无疑义。"李大钊在坚持历史学的学科性质是科学的同时,也承认在具体的历史研究过程中存在艺术性的工作。历史学研究含有艺术性的工作和历史学是艺术是两回事。历史研究中所体现的这种艺术性是工作层面的事情,并不等同于学科层面。     

新建校区对高校生均收入的影响——基于教育部直属高校的实证分析

1999年高等教育大规模急剧扩张以来，高校办学资源日趋紧张，很多高校难以达到“生均一分地”的办学标准，不得不建设新校区以拓展办学空间。新建校区的出现对高校经费运行系统造成了强烈的冲击。本文基于1998—2016年教育部直属高校经费数据的研究发现：第一，虽然新建校区高校的生均总支出和生均总收入均显著高于非新建校区高校，但生均总收入的增长速度略慢于生均总支出，无论是财政性的基建拨款还是自筹收入都跟不上基建支出速度，且尚有较大规模的银行贷款收入和还本付息支出未纳入统计，收支不平衡为高校债务危机埋下了隐患。第二，新建校区高校的经费筹措规模整体扩大，但未能实现经费来源渠道多元化，其中财政拨款主要为教育事业费和基建拨款，自筹收入主要为事业收入。第三，新建校区对不同高校生均收入影响具有异质性，“985工程”院校生均总收入显著高于非“985工程”院校，统一入驻当地大学城能显著缓解高校经费筹措压力；相较于年级型，学院型布局模式会加大高校经费筹措压力。因此，建议我国高校一方面要进一步提高经费自筹能力，积极开拓经费来源渠道，减少对政府经费和事业收入的依赖；另一方面应尽可能优化新校区建设模式和布局模式，从降低成本角度减缓经费筹措压力。     

现当代史学史视野下的李大钊史学论著

对于李大钊有关史学方面的论著,包括著作、文章、讲义等,应该放在现当代史学史的视角下来考察,分析其产生的社会背景、学术背景、思想内容、社会影响等,了解其跌宕起伏的发展过程,并从历史的角度认识它在当代史学中的价值。对于过去及现今种种质疑的某些论点做出必要的回答。要学习李大钊重视历史教育的精神,专业史学家也应写出雅俗共赏的史学作品。     

The visible hand of research performance assessment

Far from allowing a governance of universities by the invisible hand of market forces, research performance assessments do not just measure differences in research quality, but yield themselves visible symptoms in terms of a stratification and standardization of disciplines. The article illustrates this with a case study of UK history departments and their assessment by the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and the Research Excellence Framework (REF), drawing on data from the three most recent assessments (RAE 2001, 2008, REF 2014). Symptoms of stratification are documented by the distribution of memberships in assessment panels, of research active staff, and of external research grants. Symptoms of a standardization are documented by the publications submitted to the assessments. The main finding is that the RAEs/REF and the selective allocation of funds they inform consecrate and reproduce a disciplinary center that, in contrast to the periphery, is well-endowed with grants and research staff, decides in panels over the quality standards of the field, and publishes a high number of articles in high-impact journals. This selectivity is oriented toward previous distributions of resources and a standardized notion of “excellence” rather than research performance.     

The Shift from Teaching to Learning: How Well Designed for the Shift are University‐level History Teacher Training Programmes?

The author, the President of EUROCLIO, a major association of European history teachers, considers the present state of history teacher preparation in the universities of Europe. Her primary complaint is that university programmes that are intended primarily for the training and preparation of future historians may neglect the needs of students planning to teach history in middle or in secondary schools. Typical university undergraduate history programmes tend to be overly academic, failing to provide enough in the way of pedagogical training. Thus the author recommends a strong dose of pedagogical methods courses as well as practical training for future history teachers. Other European organizations, particularly the Council of Europe and the European Union, are taking an interest in the ways in which history is being taught in the schools of their member states. The article ends with a survey of some recent conferences sponsored by these two organizations as well as by EUROCLIO on pedagogical and topical aspects of history teaching.