Mergers in Higher Education -- Success or Failure?

Tertiary Education and Management - The demands for greater efficiency, higher quality and reductions in public budgets have meant that continually more countries are looking closely at the...     

The importance of geography and culture in mergers: A Norwegian institutional case study

Internationally the mainintention of merging higher educationinstitutions has often been that theestablishment of larger units should result inacademic and administrative economies of scale.This was also the case in the Norwegian StateCollege Reform. This article focuses on howgeographical distance, as well as culturaldifferences between sub-units at TelemarkCollege, influence the degree of attainment ofacademic and administrative goals. By usingnetwork theory and a cultural approach, we havestudied the merger processes as well as theoutcomes of the amalgamation. In theconclusion, lessons to be learned from thiscase study are highlighted.     

Research in the non-university higher education sector – tensions and dilemmas

This article analyses the increasing emphasison research in the non-university highereducation sector in Norway as an importantfaculty task in addition to teaching. Thisdevelopment is an interesting example on thetypes of tension and dilemma that may emergewhen institutions and individual staff memberstry to imitate the research profile of theuniversities. A central dimension is thetension between traditional professional andvocational norms for education and R&D work,and academic ideals. Based on a survey amongfaculty members at the state colleges, eightpolicy dilemmas faced by these colleges intheir internal allocation of resources for R&Dare illustrated.