Compliance and Creativity: Dilemmas for University Governance

Peter Scott

European Review, 2018, vol. 26, issue S1, S35-S47

Abstract: The contemporary university is subject to two, apparently contradictory, forces. The first is the drive towards the modernisation of its governance and management, often in ways that reflect corporate structures more familiar in the private sector (and other parts of the reformed public sector). This drive has been accompanied by the growth of performance management, both of institutions and individual teachers and researchers; the more prescriptive identification of goals and targets (at the expense, perhaps, of traditional notions of autonomy and academic freedom); and more explicit – and intrusive? – forms of audit, accountability and evaluation. The other force is the development of new modes of learning, a more open curriculum and more distributed patterns of research. Examples include the popularity of (technology-enhanced) self-directed learning, the growth of massive open online courses (MOOCs), the spread of open-source publication and greater emphasis on the impact and application of research. Both forces reflect deep-rooted changes in the nature of modern higher education and research systems, and it would be misleading to see them as always or inevitably in conflict. However, they do pose new dilemmas about how to maintain an appropriate balance between the necessary management of the large, complex and heterogeneous organisations that modern universities have become and their capacity for innovation and creativity.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:eurrev:v:26:y:2018:i:s1:p:s35-s47_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in European Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().