Maurice Kogan

Higher Education Communities and Academic Identity

The slippery use to which the word ‘community’ is applied in higher education studies and pronouncements makes it desirable that it should be better defined and related to more bounded assumptions about individual academic identity and relationships within academe. There is discussion of the academic communities of the invisible colleges and their modes of internal governance by elites and the communitarian implications of the changing pattern of institutional management. The relationship of academics and their institutions to the wider world of society and the economy is considered. It is concluded that external connections are not best pursued through assumptions of shared community but of acceptance of differentiation and exchange.

Modes of knowledge and patterns of power

The paper attempts to identify the extent to which modes of knowledge can be associated with different patterns of and assumptions about power.It discusses the meanings and scope of power itself, i.e. both within and beyond epistemic communities, as against ‘social robustness’ implying more democratic or inclusive forms of evaluation.It analyses the extent to which knowledge has shifted from an internalist perspective relying on the prestige of epistemic communities towards socially relevant assumptions resting within social contexts. It discusses the factors affecting types of power patterns, such as: the nature of sponsors’ objectives and the uses to which they might put knowledge; epistemic characteristics; the nature of the resource required, and the stage of finalisation reached. It sketches the range of models of sponsorship to which knowledge is subjected – from that of the free standing and autonomous individual through different patterns of sponsorship to the directly managed.It attempts to link these classifications to a range of empirical examples, including the power of knowledge in government and in crossing the boundaries between universities and industry.In discussing the reciprocal relationships between power and knowledge, it accepts that power affects the identification, use and transmission of knowledge. It is concerned, however, to question overdetermined perspectives of the relationships between knowledge and power whose mutual impacts may be strong but not easily predicted or defined.

Comparing higher education systems

This paper discusses the range of comparative studies which might legitimately be attempted. It considers the separate issue of whether they must necessarily be directed towards the testing of pre-constructed hypotheses. It describes how the Brunel-Gothenburg-Bergen international team is attempting to compare their three national systems and academic working within them.

Lifelong Learning in the UK

Lifelong learning appears in the literature and in UK political discourse in a variety of ways. It is stated to be an instrument for change in individuals, organisations and society. It is seen to be a means of increasing competitiveness and personal development; it is a policy to combat social exclusion by enabling the unemployed to enter the labour market; it is a way of promoting the professional and social development of employees and it is a strategy to develop the participation of citizens in social, cultural and political affairs (Coffield, 1997). Tight (1998) avers that it is also a form of social control. Our project1 definition was as follows:

Performance measurement in higher education

Performance measurement is a vital part of the new managerialism in higher education. Measuring inputs is relatively easy, but measuring outputs in a way that does justice to issues of quality is more difficult. Until those quality issues are resolved, performance measurement will be viewed by academics as an externally imposed constraint rather than the means by which they judge themselves.

Future Directions for Higher Education Policy Research

Although the general picture drawn in this paper is not wholly discouraging in terms of research receptivity, the potential lessons for researcher behaviour that might lead to a more positive receptor function are not easy to identify. The broad conclusion is in fact virtually a tautology — that attempts to secure a mutually fruitful relationship might produce a better relationship. Where reception is good it may also depend upon the accident of whether the research chimes in with the Zeitgeist and whether the receptors are recruited from those who are likely to be predisposed towards research.

The Treatment of Research

The recommendations of the Dearing Report concerning research organisation and content are critically examined. Many of them are seen to be benign and to adopt an appropriately pluralist approach to the objectives and working of the higher education system. The report is criticised, however, on several grounds. The Committee had a fragile grasp of the nature of knowledge and of its modes of production, and failed to remedy this by consulting sufficiently available international and national research. It is, therefore, inadequate as an example of the way in which research on higher education should be used in determining higher education policy. It takes for granted conventional wisdom on several key issues: the application of selectivity in research funding; the priority to be given to areas identified in the still largely unevaluated Technology Foresight programmes, and the relationships between uni- and multi-disciplinary work.

The impact of policy changes on the academic profession in England

The policy frame and resource base within which universities work in the UK have undergone drastic changes. Whilst the nature of changes at the governmental level has often been remarked upon, there is little empirical work on the impact of these changes on academic values and working. This paper reports findings from the English component of an Anglo–Norwegian-Swedish project nearing completion which gives an account of the policy changes and their impact on values, research agendas and criteria, and modes of creating and ‘delivering’ the curriculum. Whilst the research invites caution about overstating the discontinuities of policy over the last 20 years, it displays the considerable effects of policy changes which emerge, however, differently in different subject areas and types of institution.