The many faces of research profiling: academic leaders’ conceptions of research steering

The article examines academic leaders’ conceptions of research profiling. Global science policies, including the Finnish governmental policy, promote the identification of areas of research excellence and recommend resource concentration on them. However, as active agents, leaders may have competing, even conflicting views on the pros and cons of the institutional norm of selective research excellence and research steering. Drawing on the ideas of micro-level institutionalism, this study seeks answers to the following questions: What kinds of conceptions of research profiling do the academic leaders have? How are these connected to the goals that the leaders are trying to achieve with profiling? The data comprised 15 interviews with leaders at different organisational levels in two Finnish research universities. Two general conceptions of research profiling were identified: profiling as an instrument of strategic management and profiling as symbolic management. The conceptions were connected to various rationales, such as strengthening research and communicating to the external environment. By emphasising the variability and incoherence of leaders’ conceptions and the underlying rationalities, the study contributes to understanding how academic leaders make sense of the complex issues they face and how they cope with various demands.     

Resource asymmetries and cumulative advantages: Canadian and US research universities and the field of global health

Global health is becoming an important area of inquiry and learning in North American research universities, stemming from on-going and new commitments to the field by multiple governmental and non-governmental agents. External demands for research and education in global health require enhanced inter-disciplinary, inter-sectoral and international collaborations, all perceived as growing trends but often not easily accommodated in universities. This paper investigates how four leading universities in Canada and the US have entered the field of global health, exploring the relationships among national contexts, academic structures, and institutional strategies. Content analysis of institutional records is triangulated with data from sixty interviews with academic leaders and researchers at Harvard, Johns Hopkins, McGill and Toronto. Resource asymmetries emerge as an important differentiating factor shaping the emergence of global health in the American and Canadian institutions. Domestic sources of support and previous academic structures provided important cumulative advantages to the US campuses in claiming national and international leadership in the field.     

Patterns of recruitment of academic leaders to Australian universities and implications for the future of higher education

This paper reports on research conducted to understand key factors impacting the recruitment and selection of senior academic leaders in Australian universities. A key finding emerging from this research was an increasing reliance on executive search firms when recruiting senior academic leaders. This reliance is driven by a range of factors including an ageing and contracting pool of potential academic leaders, growing competition domestically and internationally and the declining attractiveness of academia as a sustainable career in the context of increased casualisation of the academic workforce. Concurrently, workforce planning and succession planning have not been a high priority for many universities. As a result, Australian universities are finding it increasingly difficult to recruit senior academic leaders without the use of executive search firms. These findings have significant implications for the higher education sector in Australia and warrant further research.     

Is There a Need for a European Institutional Research?

Recent changes in European higher education have accompanied a strong desire and need by national ministries to have comparable data across institutions and a growing recognition from campus leaders that effective planning and decision-making requires reliable institutional data and analyses. This has induced changes and restructuring of duties and roles of administration, administrative staff and academic staff. In North America, internal institutional data analysis is often referred to as institutional research. We examine the roles and functions of institutional research within North America and how the changes within European higher education have created a purpose for institutional research. Specifically, we explore the topical areas of institutional assessment, data management, institutional governance, as well asthe changing identity of academic professionals within European universities. Within our examination, we explore in-depth one European country’s higher education system to demonstrate how history, culture and legislative changes manifest into a need for institutional research.     

Transitions in the manifestations of the research culture of Spanish universities

Universities must adapt to the challenges of social competitiveness and its new demands but there is still little evidence of how these changes are perceived by the academics. This paper provides insight on this matter and analyses the research culture of five Spanish universities from the perspective of the different academic bodies. A qualitative methodology was employed in the study based on 43 in-depth interviews with institutional leaders (vice-rectors and managers), responsible for research activity, (directors of research centres) and individual researchers (doctoral and postdoctoral researchers). The results point to a clear change in the institutional mission that moves from an institutional model where teaching and research cohabitate together towards another where research activity intensifies. The manifestations of the new research culture is characterised by the quest for efficiency and competitiveness at all levels and bodies. Despite the changes in the university model, participants perceive that the traditional and new models coexist and affect the university structure, the functioning of the centres and departments and the dynamics of the research teams which causes dissatisfaction of the researchers that in this context have to deal with the increasing pressure to publish and obtain external funding to assure ‘survival’. The research culture is also characterised as one that moves towards the scarcity of support measures for training, the confusion perceived between the political discourse and academic practice and the attempt to reposition the university in a social context, through redefining its role and fostering transfer activities.     

美国院校研究的价值取向及其对我国的启示

院校研究的价值取向是院校研究中的一个重要理论问题。从美国院校发展的历史来看,院校研究的价值取向和院校的发展目标是一致的,学术质量和办学效益是美国院校研究的价值取向。我国院校研究起步较晚,这是和我国高等教育的发展特征相联系的。我国大学同样面临着学术质量和办学效益两个重大问题,院校研究必然需要围绕这两个重大问题来展开。     

Understanding the real barriers to technology-enhanced innovation in higher education

Background: Academic staff have a key role to play in the innovation efforts of universities aiming to exploit the potential of web-based learning technologies. Although learning technologies are an important building block of educational innovation, the eLearning adoption rate of European academic staff appears disappointing. The majority of curricula in European universities are stalled in the traditional pedagogical model of knowledge transmission, which continues to dominate teaching and learning.

Purpose: This conceptual paper explores underlying structural and cultural barriers to technology-enhanced innovation in higher education.

Sources of evidence: Starting from the underdeveloped state of eLearning in European universities, the paper challenges arguments that visible barriers such as technical issues, budget constraints or lack of interest in technology amongst academic staff represent the actual reasons for the slow advancement of learning technologies in university curricula.

Main argument: The paper argues that the lack of faculty interest and engagement for eLearning are visible symptoms for deeply rooted causes, which hinder current innovation efforts of universities. It explores theoretical viewpoints for structural peculiarities of universities, motivational and habitual traits of academic staff, and long-standing cultural values in the academic community in an attempt to understand their impact on technology-enhanced innovation in higher education.

Conclusions: The real dilemma for eLearning innovation is caused by macro-level influence factors that even committed universities can hardly overcome at institutional level. University leaders have to take the underlying innovation barriers into account when they try to engage academic staff for the use of learning technologies. With a realistic view on existing limitations, institutional eLearning adoption efforts have to be tailored to serve real learning needs and motivations of academic staff; and they have to consider specific goals and contexts within different universities.     

地方高校实行学科带头人制度探究

学科建设是高等学校建设的核心,为提升学科建设水平,实行学科带头人制度是地方高校学科建设的发展趋势.但是地方高校与中央直属高校相比,各种资源劣势明显.鉴于此,地方高校可采取在优势学科中先行试点,集中力量引进和培养高层次人才,积极争取学科建设经费,明确学科带头人的责权利和为其配备学科秘书等一系列措施推行学科带头人制度.     

The Role of Institutional Research in Higher Education: Enabling Researchers to Meet New Challenges

Based on a survey of 243 New England colleges and universities, this article is designed to contribute to an understanding of the current and projected roles of institutional research and to discuss the implications of these roles for the education and training of future institutional researchers. Results from this study reveal the strongest relationships between the institution's size and the scope of the institutional research function, the reporting relationship, and the size and the qualifications of the institutional research staff. Multivariate analysis identifies the size of the institutional staff and the qualifications of the institutional director as significant predictors of involvement in planning and policy studies. These data indicate the need to enhance the presence, qualifications, and level of activity of institutional researchers in order to enhance the contribution to institutional decision making particularly among small institutions. Recommendations are offered to achieve these goals and prepare the institutional research profession for the challenges confronting higher education now and in the 21st century.     

Diversifying the faculty across gender lines: Do trustees and administrators matter?

Our paper focuses on the role that the gender composition of the leaders of American colleges and universities - trustees, presidents, and provosts - play in influencing the rate at which academic institutions diversify their faculty across gender lines. Our analyses make use of institutional level panel data that we have collected for a large sample of American academic institutions.     

University Leaders’ Strategies in the Global Environment: A Comparative Study of Universitas Indonesia and the Australian National University

In a global environment in which global, national and local nodes relate freely within common networks, all research universities must pursue strategies for building global capacity and facilitating cross-border staff and student movement and research collaboration. The study compares readings of the global environment, global and international activities and relationships, and global capacity and strategy, in two leading national universities, one in a middle level developing country (Indonesia) and the other in a middle level developed country (Australia). The main tool of investigation was interviews with parallel groups of institutional leaders and leaders of academic units and research centres, in conjunction with study of the national and local contexts. It was apparent that in both cases, while global elements are increasingly important in university strategy, mission and identity, resource capacity remains highly dependant on national government and students. This belies the romantic myth of the ‘stand-alone’ corporate university in the global marketplace. The two cases also differ in some respects. While both universities are peak national institutions, and each respects the other, the Australian university is more strongly placed in the global environment and practical dealings between them are asymmetrical. The study helps to illuminate the dynamics of global stratification and hierarchy between developed and developing nations and institutions in higher education.     

Sponsored Research Versus Graduating Students? Intervening Variables and Unanticipated Findings in Public Research Universities

This article examines the relationship between sponsored research monies and the graduation of undergraduate students at 22 public research universities. Using institutional and student characteristics for 59,982 students at these universities, we conducted chi-square, cross-tabulation, correlation, and hierarchical nonlinear modeling (HNLM) analyses to determine the relationship between our principal independent and dependent variables, and among them and other individual and institutional variables, including SAT (individual and institutional mean), gender (individual and percentage), underrepresented minority (individual and percentage), and graduate academic program rating. In contrast to a basic premise of most policymakers and academic managers, our findings suggest that an institution's sponsored research expenditures are positively related to undergraduates' graduation. We also find that mean SAT has a powerful impact on student graduation, although at the individual level gender is a more powerful correlate of graduation than is SAT score.     

美国研究型大学学术管理体制与运行机制探析

美国研究型大学雄厚的研究实力和丰硕的研究成果,使其成为技术文明时代的骄子。其成功得益于按照管理和教育规律建立起以董事会管理模式、二元权力结构、学院制组织架构为特征的学术管理体制和由教授终身制、教师聘任制、经费分配制度、教师评价制度构成的运行机制。这为我国进行一流大学的建设提供了有益的启示和借鉴。     

终身教育视野下大学老年教育的责任

大学开展老年教育,既是积极应对社会老龄化的重要举措,又是大学职能充分发挥的良好机遇,也是构建终身教育体系和建设学习型社会的重要内容。大学的老年教育责任包括共享大学教育资源、设置老年教育专业、开发老年教育课程、依托大学的继续教育机构和联合社会力量合作举办老年大学。当前,大学承担老年教育责任已具备相应的条件,但尚不成熟,主要受以下几方面的影响：对大学主体缺乏统一客观认识;老年学历教育有所欠缺;老年教育资源共享整合度低等。大学应以更加开放包容的姿态融入终身教育体系,优化大学老年教育资源结构,将老年学历教育视为己任,不断产出高水平的老年教育科研成果。     

Global crisis management and higher education: Agency and coupling in the context of wicked COVID-19 problems

Campus crisis management remains an understudied topic in the context of COVID-affected higher education. In this paper, we contrasted the ability to tame the wicked problems brought by the pandemic of COVID-19 in private and public universities in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Colombia, India, Kazakhstan, Uganda, and Ukraine. The cross-country analysis and diversity of institutional types allowed us to consider a wide range of challenges faced by academic leaders and their institutions during the global pandemic. By drawing on institutional policy reviews and interviews with university administrators, we have examined tensions between the human and institutional agencies on these crisis-stricken campuses given differing institutional coupling, sizes, resources, and missions. The focus on agential co-dependencies and institutional coupling lays the ground for conceptualizing campus crisis management as a culturally specific construct in the context of higher education affected by the global pandemic.     

Leading and managing learning and teaching in higher education

This paper outlines the findings of a study that examined the conceptions of academics regarding the nature of ‘leading’ and ‘managing’ learning and teaching in six Australian universities. These data were considered in the light of institutional systems and documentation regarding the leadership and management of learning and teaching and the contemporary literature on leadership and management, particularly in higher education. The research found that there was congruence between academic conceptions of the roles of leaders and managers in HE and those found in other contexts. In contrast, there was considerable variance and significant gaps between these conceptions and HR and professional development practices. The paper reports findings that have significant implications for more systematic and explicit professional development for University leaders and managers of teaching and learning. In addition, it argues that changes are required to the prevailing approaches in the current HR systems and policies in order to effectively develop, support and recognize effective leadership and management practices as they relate to learning and teaching.     

Trends and transitions in the institutional environment for public and private science

The last quarter-century bore witness to a sea change in academic involvement with commerce. Widespread university-based efforts to identify, manage, and market intellectual property (IP) have accompanied broad shifts in the relationship between academic and proprietary approaches to the dissemination and use of science and engineering research. Such transformations are indicators of institutional changes at work in the environment faced by universities. This paper draws upon a fifteen-year panel (1981–1995) of university-level data for 87 research-intensive US campuses in order to document trends and transitions in relationships among multiple indicators of academic and commercial engagement. The institutional environment for public and private science is volatile, shifting in fits and starts from a situation conducive to organizational learning through high volume patenting to a more challenging arrangement that links indiscriminate pursuit of IP with declines in both the volume and impact of academic science. The pattern and timing of these transitions may support an enduring system of stratification that offers increasing returns to first-movers while limiting the opportunities available to universities that are later entrants to the commercial realm. Unpacking the systematic effects of university research commercialization requires focused attention on the sources and trajectories of profound institutional change.     

论高校科研团队的建设

组织壁垒、利益分配不公、缺乏有凝聚力的学术带头人以及学术腐败之风是严重影响高校科研团队健康发展的重要原因。促进我国高校科研团队的健康发展,需要采取坚持自主结合的原则,优化内部组织结构,重视科研团队带头人的选拔,改革科研团队分配制度,加强科研团队的文化建设,完善科研团队管理制度等一系列措施。     

从学者治理、学校治理到学术治理 ——高等教育普及化时代的研究型大学治理

从精英阶段、大众化阶段到普及化阶段,研究型大学的治理发生了较大变化,主要特征是从学者治理发展为学校治理再发展到学术治理。治理变迁与研究型大学的内外部动力机制变化密切相关：单一外部机制和静态内部机制造就学者治理,多重外部机制和稳态内部机制要求学校治理,多重外部机制和动态内部机制催生学术治理。当前研究型大学的治理普遍面临内部自由探索与外部问责张力加强、全球规范机制与本国实践矛盾加深这两大时代挑战,中国研究型大学要回应好普及化时代的挑战,先要涵育理性、自主的现代品质。