V. Lynn Meek

The transformation of Australian higher education from binary to unitary system

The policies of the Australian federal government are clearly intended to bring about a fundamental transformation of the countrys higher education system. The Australian case, however, presents several paradoxes. Policy changes are being initiated by a federal government that has no legislative control over state chartered higher education institutions. While the federal government wishes to see a more diversified and adaptive higher education system, it seems to be implementing a reward structure for individual institutions and academics which encourages imitation of the elite universities. Although government claims that its new policy initiatives are designed to debureaucratize the system, a significant proportion of the Australian academic community claims that government is centralizing control. This article explores these and other issues facing Australian higher education, not for the purpose of resolving the seeming paradoxes, but to suggest a particular research agenda for investigating change in higher education.

Job Satisfaction around the Academic World

Higher education systems have changed all over the world, but not all have changed in the same ways. Although system growth and so-called massification have been worldwide themes, there have been system-specific changes as well. It is these changes that have an important impact on academic work and on the opinions of the staff that work in higher education. The academic profession has a key role to play in producing the next generations of knowledge workers, and this task will be more readily achieved by a contented academic workforce working within well-resourced teaching and research institutions. This volume tells the story of academics’ opinions about the changes in their own countries. The Changing Academic Profession (CAP) survey has provided researchers and policy makers with the capacity to compare the academic profession around the world. Built around national analyses of the survey this book examines academics’ opinions on a range of issues to do with their job satisfaction. Following an introduction that considers the job satisfaction literature as it relates to higher education, country-based chapters examine aspects of job satisfaction within each country.

The market as a new steering strategy for Australian higher education

In examining the concept of the “market” in relation to public higher education it is important to consider both its financial and ideological dimensions. In relation to the first dimension, an ongoing challenge faced by governments everywhere is how best to meet the costs of a mass system of higher education. A common policy response has been to pressure the higher education institutions themselves into seeking a greater proportion of their revenue from non-government sources through diversifying their funding base. To reinforce this shift in policy, governments have also sought to develop and implement mechanisms which can be used to differentially reward institutions on the basis of the amount of non-government funding secured. The second dimension of the “market” as it applies to higher education, is, however, far more complex, involving a re-definition of the basic ideological principles under-pinning the relationship between higher education and the state, on the one hand, and higher education and society in general, on the other. The resulting interplay between these financial and ideological dimensions are examined in the context of Australian higher education.

Scientific mobility and international research networks: trends and policy tools for promoting research excellence and capacity building

One of the ways in which globalization is manifesting itself in higher education and research is through the increasing importance and emphasis on scientific mobility. This article seeks to provide an overview and analysis of current trends and policy tools for promoting mobility. The article argues that the mobility of scientific labour is an indispensable prerequisite for building capacity and world-class excellence. Many of the newly emerging economies have been able to leverage themselves to advantageous positions in the global scientific economy through the skilful deployment of international research networks. Mobility is still a mixed blessing since scientific labour, like other scarce resources, has a tendency to cluster towards the centre. However, given advances in communication technology and the presence of good research infrastructure, a core group of networked researchers can go a long way towards helping a country with modest scientific resources achieve world-class excellence.

Academic Job Satisfaction from an International Comparative Perspective: Factors Associated with Satisfaction Across 12 Countries

In many ways, the academic profession is one of the “key professions” in the knowledge society. Academics hold central positions in the knowledge society through their traditional roles as producers of knowledge and educators of knowledge workers. Universities are also emerging as a key source of innovation and economic and social development, taking on responsibilities previously in the realm of business and government (Etzkowitz et al. 2007). However, the positive and opportunistic outlook of university-driven innovation is contingent upon individual academics successfully adapting to these new roles and balancing competing demands. Across a wide range of studies, job satisfaction has been shown to correlate significantly with job performance, with the strongest correlation found in jobs requiring complexity and autonomy (Judge et al. 2001). Change has always been a key feature of the university and the academic profession, but academics have rarely played a positive role in initiating or supporting institutional reform. Almost without exception, academics defend traditions and the status quo, regardless of whether such traditions serve the long-term interest of the university (Altbach 1980). The university’s durability can be partly credited to the conservatism of the professoriate. Conservatism protects the university from ill-advised change or change for the sake of change. On the other hand, conservatism can also obstruct desirable change. Undoubtedly, the rise of the knowledge society envisages changes to traditional academic roles, and a motivated academic workforce, satisfied with their reconstructed academic jobs, is most likely to produce the greatest benefit to research, innovation and society. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that stakeholders seeking to influence the university’s role in the knowledge society understand what motivates academics in their everyday work. This, of course, is equally true for those in charge of our universities, be they vice chancellors, deans, heads of school or research directors.

The changing nature of academic middle management: A framework for analysis.

The objective of this chapter is to present an analytical framework that encourages further research on middle management in higher education and that will help us to further understand how universities are being led and managed. It is argued that notwithstanding the contributions in this volume, in general, middle management in higher education is under-researched. Given that middle-management positions are becoming increasingly important because of a number of external and internal environmental changes, this in itself is problematic. To the extent that middle management in higher education has been the object of study, with a few exceptions, this has been done largely through case studies in an Anglo-American context. Drawing on the Competing Values Framework, a framework is proposed that could facilitate a more empirical research agenda linking leadership styles to organisational effectiveness.

Restructuring Higher Education. A Comparative Analysis between Australia and The Netherlands

Abstract It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful to success, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries, who have the laws in their favour; and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have actual experience of it. (Machiavelli) *A preliminary version of this article was presented at the 11th European AIR Forum in Trier, August 1989. We want to thank Peter Maassen and Frans van Vught for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Organizational change in Australian higher education: Process and outcome

Change and social order, along with the related concepts of homogenization vis-a-vis differentiation of organizational types, have long caught the interest of social scientists. Theories of change and organizational differentiation abound. However, there appears to be a need for more research on how change threatens fundamental social classifications and how actors manipulate classifications and social taxonomies to protect their interests and restore order. The recent restructuring of Australian higher education provides an ideal case for exploring the effects of classificatory variation for the process has challenged cherished ideas about the essential characteristics of higher education. The extent to which the challenge has been met and repulsed by those threatened is the subject of this paper.

The research grant application process. Learning from failure

Increasing competition for federal government research funds has resulted in a large number of good projects not being funded. This situation is unlikely to change in the near future and has generated uncertainty and frustration amongst many who are dependent on external funding for their research. In this context it is particularly important that the aims of federal government funding agencies are communicated effectively and that the procedures they establish to allocate research funds are seen as credible by the academic research community. This article reports the results of a survey which investigated the research grant process from the point of view of unsuccessful applicants from four universities for large 1991 initial Australian Research Council grants. The findings identify a number of limitations in the operations of the peer review mechanism as used by this Council and question the adequacy of the advice and instructions provided by the ARC to those nominated to review research proposals. The findings also raise questions concerning how the lists of external assessors are compiled as well as how these external assessors are later matched with individual applications.

The rise and fall of the binary policy of higher education in Australia

∗A Commentary on the Report of the Task Force on Amalgamations in Higher Education (Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1989).