Financial challenges in higher education: community college leadership style and ranking

A large number of new community college presidents will be hired in the next 5 years due to vacancies. New leaders must be prepared to lead their institutions through the challenges facing community colleges. Forty-one community college presidents in North Carolina participated in our research (70.7% response rate). We found that community college presidents’ perceptions of their management styles all fall within the “team management” orientation according to the Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid (Blake & Mouton, 1964). We then examined the financial management challenges faced by community college presidents and found empirical evidence regarding how community college presidents rank six of the most critical financial challenges identified in the literature. Presidents’ rankings of the six most critical financial challenges showed that the three most pressing concerns are maintaining student access during times of increasing educational costs, managing enrollment during times of decreasing state funding, and lowering costs without damaging academic quality.     

Responding to crises in transnational education: new challenges for higher education

This paper is based on a case study of an Australian university involved in the delivery of transnational programs in an educational environment that has been increasingly characterized by commercial considerations. The researchers conducted focus group interviews with both general and academic staff to ascertain the personal, academic and administrative issues affecting the delivery of educational programs in Asia that arose as a result of one particular crisis in 2003: the SARS epidemic. The findings indicate that both administrative and academic staff felt personally and professionally challenged by the complexity of the issues involved in interrupting the pattern of transnational teaching. Potentially conflicting rationales emerged through the focus group discussions, with administrative staff expressing concern with maintaining services, while lecturers articulated a preoccupation with the safeguarding of assessment standards.     

New challenges for higher education: global and Asia-Pacific perspectives

With rapid socio-economic changes, twenty-first century higher education is facing major challenges to its governance systems, curriculum, mission focus, external relations, research, and financing. A theoretical framework to analyze these post-massification challenges is suggested, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region as well as global issues. Five main topic areas provide the basis for the theoretical framework: massification, privatization, accountability and governance, internationalization, and ranking and world-class universities. Some discussion of the possible effects of the financial crisis that commenced in 2008 is provided.     

Working toward transformational leadership in higher education

Before colleges and universities can develop leaders, they must develop a coherent vision of what leadership is. A reflection on James MacGregor Burns's concepts of transformational leadership suggests where that discussion might begin.     

中国高等教育的国际化:挑战与对策

国际化是世界高等教育发展的一大趋势,也是高等教育跨越国界的交流、合作与竞争过程。在经济全球化的背景下,中国经济的高速发展急需各类具有国际意识和能力的高素质人才;然而,我国高等教育在培养目标、课程设置和教学方法等方面都尚未完全适应经济发展和社会转型的需要。我国宜采取"自上而下"政府主导、院校参与的高等教育国际化战略,既需要政府部门通过法律、政策等手段引导和规范,同时也需要高等院校以提高学生"全球能力"为核心进行系统改革以促进国际化水平。     

Institutional change and higher education

Institutional change includes the supplanting of the old model of production with a new one, the elimination of old markets and the emergence of new ones. As higher education around the world shifts from national markets to an integrated transnational market, and possibly toward a virtual market, Christian higher education, like other market sectors, will have the opportunity to redefine its market niche. Emerging opportunities linked to new institutional rules will challenge higher education in ways that may not yet be obvious to its present managers and faculties. How the university in its portfolio of options might negotiate the elimination of old markets and the creation of new markets is the subject of this essay. A general set of principles and recommendations is offered.

Strategies for change in higher education: Three political models

This article describes three models which give insight into the factors that promote or inhibit change in institutions of higher education: a structural model; a social model; and a personal model. Although each offers a distinctive perspective, a number of recurrent themes are identified where the models support and complement one another. The usefulness of the three models in practice is illustrated by analysing how they might help in a possible innovation - the rapid expansion of Continuing Education in a traditional university.This is a revised and extended version of a paper presented at the Sixth International Conference on Higher Education, University of Lancaster, August 28–31, 1984.     

Issues in short cycle higher education

If a transition from elitist to mass higher education is to be brought about, traditional universities will not be able to do the job alone; new types of higher education will have to be developed to cope with increasing numbers and more diversified student needs. One possibility is expansion and appropriate reforms of short-cycle higher education and OECD's Education Committee has been exploring the problems involved in setting up such institutions or programmes and integrating them into the educational system and the society at large. These problems and some of the solutions envisaged are described in the following article.This article first appeared in the OECD Observer, February 1972.     

Innovating in higher education: contexts for change in learning technology

This paper draws on three research projects (undertaken in 1997–99, 2002 and 2004–05) that have examined innovation in learning and teaching methods in UK higher education. The first two of these focused on such matters as departmental and institutional cultures and the factors that have either enabled or inhibited change. The third has begun to monitor the impact of the process of establishing Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. The prospects for introducing innovations in teaching and learning in higher education are considered in relation to these wider contexts in terms of policies, structures and cultures.     

Framework and operationalisation challenges for quantitative comparative research in higher education

The increasing availability of data on higher education systems, institutions and their members creates new opportunities for comparative research adopting a quantitative approach. The value of future studies crucially depends on the capability to recognise and address some major methodological challenges existing in quantitative comparative research in higher education. The higher education context presents in fact specific features that can hinder comparisons, and political and social processes occurred in recent decades further enhanced complexity. This article aims to discuss key challenges that are currently met in quantitative comparative research in higher education while developing the conceptual framework and in research operationalisation, to discuss possible solutions and the value of configurational and multilevel analytical approaches in identifying meaningful objects of comparisons, to take into account the complexity of the higher education context and in identifying causal relationships.     

Strategic change in Swedish higher education

Organizational fields, in theory, are held to become increasingly isomorphic and standardized over time. At first sight, Sweden's system of higher education is an illustrative case. In its major post-war event, the radical 1977 reform, a variety of means was introduced to pave the way for goal-driven planning and management. The intentions were overall homogeneity and rationality. This is quite in accordance with the theory of organizational fields. Yet, despite intentions, homogeneity remained a rather thin veneer, unable to prevent various forms of disparity from breaking through. Reality, therefore, was more on par with Trow's and others' theses of differentiation in mass higher education; isomorphism taking the place of a formal, inconvenient façade. Effects of four principal reform aspects are discussed in the present article: admission, instruction, institutional classification, and organizational framework. In the analysis of the last-mentioned aspect, a theory of planning cultures is introduced. Further changes in the wake of the reform are also touched upon. The results are discussed in a final section, where alternative re-reform measures and outlines for further research are put forth. Intended and unintended consequences, including dysfunctional ones, are subjects of attention throughout the article.     

Working for change in higher education: the possibilities for collaborative research

This paper explores the potential for conducting collaborative and critical research in higher education which problematises the role and practices of the academy in maintaining exclusion. It begins with a brief discussion of UK government discourse on widening participation, and contrasts this with the research literature which indicates the persistence of exclusionary practices in higher education, particularly in relation to social class. It then utilises a retrospective account of a small‐scale participatory research study undertaken between 1996 and 2003 with a group of adult students from working class and minority ethnic backgrounds, to explore the possibilities for research which seeks the collaboration of those who, in other traditions, are constituted as research ‘objects’. The paper discusses some of the lessons from the research process and explores the challenges for academics conducting research within the academy – challenges arising from their social positioning and their location in the academic field, but also from the ‘scholarly gaze’ which they ‘cast upon the social world’. The paper advocates research which shifts the focus from deficit discourses around students, turns a critical and reflexive gaze towards academia and academics, and directs its efforts towards challenging existing power structures within higher education.     

Zones of alienation in global higher education: corporate abuse and leadership failures

Tertiary Education and Management - Worldwide, academic ecosystems suffer from the industrialization of creative work and evaluative hegemony. Managerial obsession with growth has corroded...