I have just finished reading Volume 46 of the Emerald series “Research in the Sociology of Organizations”. This 500 page tome relates some 15 different academic perspectives on the pressures on the European and US university systems. It is a heavy but very well written analysis.
There are many conflicting ideas but fairly broad agreement on the nature of the pressures – many centred around funding. Have we been here before? Some say yes but others that “it is different this time”. How will it end? Seemingly not well, but not in the catastrophic way that others have predicted but more of the “boiled frog” way – with the university system slowly changing to a “sick industry” (slow decline and contraction) or “marvelous invalid” (waiting for it to turn around). History shows that universities are very robust and exhibit a “ratchet-like” response to change, expanding when the economic cycle is good and resilience (no contraction) when the economic cycle is poor
After all this reading, here and elsewhere as well as numerous university visits, discussions and reflections, pressures can be conveniently grouped under four main headings with some overlap:
- Financial – revenues and costs and the myriad of implications and responses.
- Isomorphic – normative (the academic profession is similar and therefore our institutions will tend to look alike), mimetic (I want to look like my segment leader), coercive (quality rankings, government policy, funding mechanisms are forcing us to be similar).
- Changing Society – students, government, public expectations, business expectations.
- Competition – shrinking pool, more players.
I am constructing a mind map to drill down on the symptoms and responses to each of these pressures which will hopefully help to decide what the appropriate responses might be.