Estrategia en la Universidad: ¿Cuestión de calidad, gerencialismo y relaciones político-financieras?

Abstract

European higher education has been under reform over more than a decade and because most of Europe is characterized as a public system, the state ministries are often responsible for transformation and change at the institutional levels. Changes have triggered a new distribution of power, and many state ministries have granted autonomy to the higher education institutions by creating governing boards, establishing performance contracts with the institution, and providing strategic objectives. These reforms have been accompanied by notions of new public management and managerialism, where managerial-orientated models have emerged from the range of policy development processes across countries. This new reality has not avoided controversy and has a direct influence on issues such as academic identity, the manager-academic link to the knowledge marketization, competition between institutions and the quality of educational services and is outcomes. All this has a direct impact on the development and implementation of strategy in higher education institutions. This article at one hand, introduces a theoretical reflection upon these problematic issues and at other, using a case study in a Spanish public university, from a strategy as practice perspective, reflects on existing practices in developing Strategy and the perceptions of the involved actors about the process. Finally, it draws on reflections about the linkage of strategy to the concept of managerialism, suggesting the need for deeper and larger studies in order to analyze the connection of the managerialism with the actual practice of the strategy in the institutions and their impact on the Spanish higher education system.