How a Century-Old Family-Like University Responds to the Neoliberal Agenda: The Case of National University of Tainan

Abstract

The globalization talks form the neoliberal agenda in higher education. When the changing governance for responding to the neoliberal agenda is put into a context for examination, critical space is created for rethinking the role and meaning of higher education beyond being economized, marketized, and privatized, especially views from institutional practices in those unconventional cases. This belief supports this study by examining the National University of Tainan (NUTN), Taiwan, that experienced a transformation from a century-old family-like teacher education status to a comprehensive university, to show how the neoliberal agenda affects its institutional practices. The study adopted a documentary analysis for data collection. The main findings reveal that the neoliberal agenda had mixed impacts on the NUTN, surely more rhetoric than practices, due to its family-like organization culture favoring the collegiality. But the governance in the NUTN case reflects the collegiality-bound bureaucracy with greater accountability over the corporate practices. Thus, being forced to move out of the government monopoly, it is high time for NUTN to use the external neoliberal agenda wisely and strategically to make collegiality-bound bureaucracy governance model responsive to increasing external demands and changes.