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5: Conclusion [Next Chapter] [Previous Chapter] [Contents] |
Mass higher education systems require professional management if they are to fulfil their functions and meet the expectations of the different stakeholders. However, there is little evidence to indicate that the higher education management paradigm is acceptable to all parties concerned. Supposedly, such a paradigm existed in the past in the form of a 'dynamic of consensus in a community of scholars'. While the collegial approach to running universities is under challenge by what some have termed the 'new managerialism' in higher education, it certainly has lost none of its normative potency as a defence of past practices. On the other hand, dramatic changes in higher education institutions, not the least of which are growth in size and complexity, have made many past management practices obsolete if not indefensible. But whether a consensus will emerge on how the modern university should be run remains to be seen.
As with any transition, changes in higher education management have produced a number of tensions. These tensions are evident both within and between institutions as well as in the relationships between the higher education sector and the government and private sector. Within institutions, much of the tension centres on the collegial versus the managerial approach to running the enterprise. In terms of external relations, a good deal of the debate involves institutional autonomy versus new forms of government control through quality assurance and other accountability measures. As pointed out in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3, the conflicts and debates are far more complex than the terms - collegial, managerial, autonomy and government control - used to label them would imply. While there is some doubt about whether a consensus on higher education management 'best practice' can or even should be reached, one conclusion to be drawn from this study is that much more rigour needs to be introduced into the debates themselves if they are to be productive.
This report has attempted to examine some of the complexities of higher education management both in terms of what appear to be more or less universal themes and pressures, and those brought about by Australia's particular approach to higher education reform. In some respects, what has happened in Australia is merely a variation on international trends:
However, in other respects, the Australian experience is somewhat divergent. In reforming its higher education system, Australia chose to abandon the binary distinction between universities and Colleges of Advanced Education (CAEs) in favour of the Unified National System (UNS). While the United Kingdom adopted a similar approach to higher education reform, the formal distinction between different types of higher education institutions have been maintained or further entrenched in such countries as Germany, Canada and the Netherlands, and is presently being introduced in other countries, such as Finland.
It is beyond the scope of this report to comment on the wisdom of the abolition of the Australian binary system of higher education, except insofar as to note that it is a contributing factor to the complexity of higher education management. The institutional mergers-fostered on the sector as much by institutional ambition as government policy (Goedegebuure and Meek 1994) - stimulated by the formation of the UNS, created a number of very large and complex institutions, some with multiple campuses spread over large distances. Where mergers occurred between older universities and former Colleges of Advanced Education, higher education managers have had to cope with combining staff with different cultures, traditions and experiences of academe. The new universities formed through CAE/CAE combinations have had to compete with the older universities for research funding and students. As was noted in Chapter 4, the majority of higher education managers have doubts about whether many of the benefits of the UNS and the creation of a smaller number of much larger universities through amalgamation claimed by government at the time have been realised. But had government chosen to keep the binary system intact, most of the pressures requiring changes in management practices would have occurred regardless (e.g. growth in student numbers and declining public budgets).
It has been stressed throughout this report that the pressures placed on higher education institutions to be more efficient, effective and publicly accountable are part of a broader public sector reform agenda. In Australia as elsewhere, the public sector is being 'privatised' and forced to compete more directly in the market place. One aspect of this reform agenda for higher education institutions is that the knowledge they produce is now treated as much as a commodity as a social good. At the centre of much of the debate over the management of higher education is the management and control of knowledge. Traditionally, universities have been regarded as professional bureaucracies where management, at least in part, is based on the professional authority of staff. This is now under challenge. At the same time, it is generally recognised and often stated in official statements (for a recent example, see the Higher Education Management Review 1995) that the greatest asset which universities posses is their academic staff. The governance and management survey results support what has been claimed elsewhere (e.g. Boyer, Altbach and Whitelaw 1994; McInnis 1992) that for the most part, academic staff morale is alarmingly low.
The low morale of academic staff cannot be attributed to any one factor or easily resolved. It is probably an inevitable consequence of the dramatic changes which the sector and most individual institutions have experienced in recent years. But it is an issue that must be taken seriously if Australia wishes to continue to recruit the best of its intellectual talent to its universities. In many countries, the academic profession is no longer as highly esteemed as it once was, or as highly renumerated. But Australia is more dependent on its universities for the production of knowledge than most OECD countries, with over half of the nations research effort taking place in the higher education sector. In this sense, maintaining the morale of academic staff and the esteem of the profession is in the national interest.
As stressed throughout this report, the management of Australia's universities is on a scale of complexity equal to that of large corporations in the private sector. What emerges from the survey results is an impression of how remarkably well academic managers are coping with a most difficult task.
There is little indication of any critical problems with decision making structures or with the devolution of decision making within institutions. A good deal of the decision making appears to already be highly devolved to the faculty or departmental levels, although there is an indication of support for shifting decision making even further to the faculty-department level in certain areas. There appears to be rather strong agreement that managers at the three primary levels - department, faculty and executive - are providing effective leadership and that generally procedures for developing academic policy are adequate, though there is an indication that there is room for improvement with respect to policy implementation. The effectiveness of academic boards, however, is left in some doubt. But as indicated, several institutions are in the processes of rethinking the role of their academic boards.
The majority of respondents to the governance and management survey indicate that their institutions are quite active with respect to various matters associated with both research and teaching. Also, respondents indicate a fairly positive approach to the introduction of new technology in course delivery. The provision of adequate infrastructure to support teaching, however, is in some doubt. As indicated in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, this is an area requiring more detailed investigation, particularly with respect to how institutions are coping with the new demands of market competition.
At present, regular staff performance appraisal seems to be concentrated on the lower levels of administrative staff and on academic staff. But the overwhelming majority of respondents indicate that regular appraisal of staff performance should be extended to all staff categories, including those at the Senior Executive level. Performance appraisal is an important aspect of higher education industrial agreements, though it is often maintained that its effective implementation has been blocked by negative staff attitudes. This certainly does not seem to be true of the academic mangers responding to the governance and management survey. It would be useful in this context to investigate whether all academic staff share similar views.
At both the national and State levels, concern has been expressed about the effectiveness of university governing bodies. While the survey results are equivocal neither way, there does appear to be some scope for governing bodies to be more active with respect to representing the interests of their institution in the broader community, including the private sector. But as cautioned in Chapter 3, reconstituting university councils to resemble an ideal model of governing boards in the private sector may not be an effective solution for higher education. The academic managers who responded to this survey are quite adamant that councils should not be more active in the day-to-day institutional management.
The recent history of Australian higher education has been one of transfer from State to Commonwealth control. While in most instances, the States retain legislative responsibility for higher education, the Commonwealth is clearly the dominant policy actor. The Hoare Committee (1995) indicated a more prominent role for State governments in higher education, particularly with respect to labour market planning and regional development. While this may be desirable, it is fairly clear that at the moment State governments have very little influence on higher education.
The two problems noted consistently in the responses to the survey are inadequate finance and what the managers perceive to be undue government interference in institutional affairs. The former is not only a problem for Australia. Governments in most OECD countries are finding it exceedingly difficult to fund the cost of higher education expansion. This has forced higher education institutions into the private marketplace, with various consequences. What will be the long-term results of enhanced market competition in higher education is not clear. But as mentioned earlier in the report, market forces are now shaping higher education as much as government policy.
The problem associated with perceived government intervention in institutional affairs and the preservation of institutional autonomy has many facets. In part, it is the result of the dual pressures of deregulation and market competition and government demands for increased accountability and performance measurement. Policies concerning deregulation and enhanced accountability are not necessarily inconsistent, but as argued earlier, too much emphasis on the latter can undermine the policy intentions of the former. What might be beneficial is less intrusive accountability/performance measures. For example, responses to the survey highlighted DEET demands for information as a highly significant burden for institutional managers. The Hoare Committee (1995: 67) also found that:
The current level of reporting by universities is substantial. The Review Committee believes that an examination is warranted of the extent to which all information provided by universities is essential or important. The Committee notes that a joint Statistics Committee made up of representatives from the AVCC, DEET, ABS and HEC, has been examining this issue but that little substantive progress has been made to date. It believes that a more focused approach to this matter is needed.
The government has a mandate to ensure accountability for the large sums of public money that it expends on higher education. But there appears to be room to improve and streamline the mechanisms by which institutions report to DEETYA. As the Hoare Committee implies, this is probably more than a technical matter and requires greater dialogue between the principal parties. On the other hand, it also should be noted that the survey indicated that there is room for improvement with respect to institutions' own management information systems. Of course, the two issues are not mutually exclusive.
Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 examined the managerial push in higher education both in Australia and elsewhere. For a number of reasons, expansion being one of them, corporate style management practices are being introduced into higher education institutions nearly everywhere. The survey results suggest that this is happening in Australia too. There is a fairly clear indication that executive management priorities and practices take precedent over collegial decision making. The majority of the respondents agreed that the trend toward central management is at the expense of collegial processes; that the values of staff and management goals are in conflict; and disagreed that collegial decision making takes precedence over executive management in their institutions. However, a majority of respondents also agreed that academic staff are kept well informed about major issues and development, and even more importantly, a great majority of respondents agreed that it is academic staff who determine teaching and research directions. These results support those of research on higher education management in other countries (cf. Boyer, Altbach and Whitelaw 1994). For example, de Boer and Goedegebuure (1995: 46), in their study of higher education management in seven west European countries, conclude that:
the results ... reflect the continuing domination of professional expertise, especially where the primary processes of teaching and research are concerned. At the same time, also it is clear that the role of the central institutional administration is an important component in higher education governance and management, especially for what we can call the 'non-primary process' issues, such as financial management.
The collegial model, according to Moore and Langknecht (1986: 1):
has very clear implications for the nature of institutional leadership. The collegial leader is, at most, a 'first among equals' in an academic organisation run by the faculty [academic staff]. Consistent with what John Millett has called the 'dynamic of consensus in a community of scholars', the collegial leader is expected to only facilitate the process of decision-making by consensus and not to lead, direct, or manage anything.
In Australia, as probably is the case elsewhere, universities are no longer run entirely by a community of scholars-if indeed they ever were. The current circumstances demand that managers of higher education institutions, particularly executive officers, deans of faculty, and heads of department, lead, direct and manage a great number of things. But despite the introduction of stronger corporate styles of management practices into higher education institutions, it appears that it is the scholars who still determine the direction of the primary higher education processes of teaching and research. The evidence does not suggest that strong institutional management threatens academic control of teaching and research, and, in fact, strong management may be the only thing that protects these core activities.
Attempts to locate university management and governance within the broader context of: public sector reform; government policies and practices; industrial relations; and market forces, are few. However, this report has sought to address such influences in its investigation of the current operations of the higher education sector using a range of information sources covering the professional literature, government policy statements and a national survey of higher education institutions. Not surprisingly, the report raises more questions than it answers, and in the body of the text a number of issues requiring more detailed research are identified. But hopefully, the results of the governance and management survey have also helped dispel some popular 'myths' about inefficiencies in higher education management, such as entrenched resistance to change and to performance appraisal, and established a framework for a more rigorous, rational and systematic debate about higher education management issues and practices. This report will have achieved much if it does no more than stimulate more systematic and methodical investigations and debates regarding the governance and management of higher education institutions and systems.