This book examines the impact of devolution on Scottish and UK higher education systems, including institutional governance, approaches to tuition fees and student support, cross-border student flows, widening access, internationalisation and research policy.
This book examines the impact of devolution on Scottish and UK higher education systems, including institutional governance, approaches to tuition fees and student support, cross-border student flows, widening access, internationalisation and research policy.
The marketisation of higher education is a growing worldwide trend. Increasingly, market steering is replacing or supplementing government steering. Tuition fees are being introduced or increased, usually at the expense of state grants to institutions. Grants for student support are being replaced or supplemented by loans. Commercial rankings and league tables to guide student choice are proliferating with institutions devoting increasing resources to marketing, branding and customer service. The UK is a particularly good example of this, not only because it is a country where marketisation has arguably proceeded furthest, but also because of the variations that exist as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland increasingly diverge from England. In Everything for Sale, Roger Brown argues that the competitive regime that is now applicable to our Higher Education system was the logical, and possibly inevitable, outcome of a process that began with the introduction of full cost fees for overseas students in 1980. Through chapters including: Markets and Non-Markets The Institutional Pattern of Provision The Funding of Research The Funding of Student Education Quality Assurance The Impact of Marketisation: Efficiency, diversity and equity; He shows how the evaluation and funding of research, the funding of student education, quality assurance, and the structure of the system have increasingly been organised on market or quasi-market lines. As well as helping to explain the evolution of British higher education over the past thirty years, the book contains some important messages about the consequences of introducing or extending market competition in universities’ core activities of teaching and research. This timely and comprehensive book is essential reading for all academics at University level and anyone involved in Higher Education policy.
Britain’s two recent referenda - on Brexit (2016) and on Scottish independence (2014) - have raised in the public mind fundamental questions about the future of the UK. It seems that for the first time, the public, the media and the political elite have woken up to the fact that in different parts of the UK, there are different histories, different aspirations and different imagined futures in relation to a whole range of vitally important political issues. But what the public debate often fails to recognise is that in many areas of public life – perhaps especially education – the UK is already a federal state and in key respects has been so for many years. The aim of this volume is therefore to take stock: to try and capture what the current state of educational policy and practice is across the whole of the UK. This has been achieved by commissioning two different papers from each of the four countries – Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England. The first is an overview, exploring the distinctive history, principles and current policies of each country. The second paper has been specifically chosen as a case study of a key policy that highlights the distinctiveness of each country – the Foundation Phase for Wales, assessment policy in Scotland, ‘shared education’ initiatives in Northern Ireland and higher education policy in England. Taken together these eight papers give an important insight into the complexities of educational policy and practice across the whole of the UK today. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Oxford Review of Education.
How has the system of governance changed? Do British higher education institutions still exercise autonomous control over their development? In this book, these questions are pursued through a three-pronged strategy. This book will have lessons for those examining higher education on a comparative/international basis. It is a serious piece of analysis i.e. it is purposefully non-polemical, and it is well-written, non-jargonised and accessible.
Across the world, higher education is witnessing exponential growth in both student participation and types of educational providers. One key phenomenon of this growth is an increase in student diversity: governments are widening access to higher education for students from traditionally underrepresented groups. However, this raises questions about whether this rapid growth may in face compromise academic quality. This book presents case studies of how higher education institutions in diverse countries are maintaining academic excellence while increasing the access and participation of students from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Including case studies spanning four continents, the authors and editors examine whether increasing widening participation positively impacts upon academic quality. This volume will be of interest and value to students and scholars of global higher education, representation and participation in education, and quality in higher education.
Book of the Week, Times Higher Education Forms of institutional governance critically shape the culture, creativity and academic outcomes of higher education. The book provides a new, updated and research based account of the changing face of the governance of British higher education. Historically, British universities were deemed amongst the most, if not the most, autonomous in Europe, with governance rooted in their collegial disciplinary structures. This assessment must now be decisively revised, although the belief systems deriving from it remain buried deep in university culture. Drawing on the authors' investigation of the governance of higher education in the four UK nations, including extensive on-site interviews, and discussions with government policy-makers, the book shows how global, national and system level pressures have changed the face both of the external governance of higher education institutions and how universities govern themselves. Government priorities, new funding methodologies and marketisation have all played a part in this process. Since the mid-1980s, there have been drastic changes in the external environment, reinforced by the increasing diversity within the higher education system as a whole and between the national sub-systems. In addition a new private sector of higher education has been created. New forms of institutional governance are emerging which may have profound effects on research and teaching and on academic creativity and innovation. The study discusses the effects of a state regulated system compared with the more heterarchical system which preceded it. It offers a comparison of the effects of devolved governance to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland on the respective higher education systems and their impact on institutional governance. The study concludes that England is becoming increasingly an outlier, and discusses the long term implications for the coherence of a British higher education system.
The nature of Higher Education in the UK has changed over the last three decades. Academics can no longer be said to carry out their work in 'ivory towers', as increasing government intervention and a growing 'target culture' has changed the way they work. Increasingly universities have transformed from 'communities of scholars' to 'workplaces'. The organization and administration of universities has seen a corresponding prevalence of ideas and strategies drawn from the 'New Public Management' ideology in response, promoting a more 'business-focussed' approach in the management of public services. This book examines the issues that these changes have had on academics, both as the 'knowledge-workers' managed, and the 'manager-academic'. It draws on a detailed study of academics holding management roles ranging from Head of Department to Vice Chancellor in sixteen UK universities, exploring their career histories and trajectories, and providing extensive accounts of their values, practices, relationships with others, and their training and development as managers. Drawing on debates around 'New Public Management', knowledge management, and knowledge workers, the wider implications of these themes for policy innovation and strategy in HE and the public sector more generally are considered, developing a critical response to recent approaches to managing public services, and practical suggestions for improvements which could be made to the training and support of senior and middle managers in universities. The book will be of interest to all teaching, researching, or managing in Higher Education, Education policy-makers, and academics and researchers concerned with Public Management, Knowledge Management, or Higher Education.
This book explores the way in which the twin pressures of globalisation and localisation play out in higher education across the developed world, often reflected in more specific debates on fees regimes, access and culture.