Managing Higher Education: Introduction

Abstract

For various reasons, there is currently an extensive debate on the actual situation and the future perspective of higher education systems. Some authors have stressed the difficulties of preserving the university project in the presence of other agencies apparently more effective and profitable in producing knowledge. Others argue that the proliferation of establishments and institutions with capacities of professional instruction tend to reduce importance to the classic university, pointing out the limits of the historical model. Others still notice the difficulties with which the public university is faced, forced to work with a new generation of public policy in higher education. Finally, some recognize or reaffirm their confidence in the capacity of the institution to advance to the rate of the innovations and, still more, to generate the dowry of knowledge required to drive economic and cultural systems of innovation and creativity. The positive interaction that takes place among the increasingly knowledge base, productivity, and competitiveness is generally acknowledged. In developed economies, there is sufficient evidence demonstrating that sectors that systematically take advantage of scientific knowledge and a well-educated labor force grow more quickly and generate greater gains. The social recognition of the importance of making higher education systems into national models of growth and development and the value of knowledge and information as factors of productivity and competitiveness has given rise to an increased demand for university education. On the one hand, the modern sector economy requires professional competencies on a university level. On the other hand, young people and increasingly adults as well see in the university formation a privileged mode of accessing the limited opportunities offered by the most dynamic segments of the economy. A new wave of growth and expansion thus characterizes systems of higher education around the world today. In addition, multiple transformations of academic and organizational structures have been experienced. We can emphasize, in order of importance, the following: the diversification of institutions, functions and sources of financing; increase of the private supply in higher education; strategic alliances between universities, corporations and the public sector; international convergence and isomorphism of educative and organizational models; coordination at a national and regional level; major reforms of university government; new models of public resources allocation in higher education institutions; intensive interaction between universities and interest groups, professional organizations, and other representatives of the civil society; decentralization, regionalization and internationalization of public and private supply; administration and governance based on strategic planning, evaluation and accountability; accreditation and certification of programs, establishments and individual performance; methodologies of academic quality-assurance on the supply of higher education; curricular flexibility, educative models focused on learning and oriented towards acquiring professional competencies; systems of open and long-distance learning, lifetime learning, recycling of competencies, etc. Ultimately, transformations can be summarized in three major processes: the increasing importance of higher education as a development factor and competitiveness; the increasing demand of higher education from the productive sector and of the population; and the movements of adaptation of higher education systems and institutions to the new challenges of the global context. Alongside the academic debate, in most of the advanced countries there is a generalized perception on the necessity and advantages to move towards a stage of development described in terms of knowledge society. This notion, in spite of its ambiguity, has taken ground in the political arena. …