Transcript Document

Innovating Academic
Management in Higher
Education Institutions:
For Whom? For What?
Morshidi Sirat
Institut Penyelidikan Pendidikan Tinggi Negara (IPPTN)
Seminar Pengurusan Akademik IPT 2008
22-24 Ogos, Hotel Bella Vista, Langkawi
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Objective of Presentation

To highlight that while innovating
and creativity is important in
academic management we must, in
the first instance, understand
changes in the spirit and purpose of
higher education (and higher
education institutions), which
managers (of various generations)
tend to take for granted.
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I n s t i t u t e
Underlying Ideas



While we are rushing to innovate and be
creative in managing academic matters we
should not loose sight of what higher
education is all about!
We need, in the first instance, understand
the nature of HE and HEIs that we are
dealing with (as social institution or as an
industry?)
Can we have both under one roof?
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I n s t i t u t e
Readiness?
Creativity
Innovativeness
Determination
Commitment


Creativity and Innovativeness without
Determination and Commitment to Serve?
Issue of “self-serving”
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I n s t i t u t e
Earlier vs. New Generation of
Academic Managers

Earlier generation: higher education as
social institutions

New generation: higher education as
an industry (corporatisation,
marketisation policy of higher
education, commercialisation of
academic programmes)
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I n s t i t u t e

“Reformatted generation”: Trying
to understand how a social
institution could be an industry

Need to bring Earlier, Reformatted
and New Generations on a common
and practical platform
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I n s t i t u t e
Different Generations of
Academics
 Differentiated
demands
 Different levels of pressures on academic
managers
 Earlier generation of academics and
managers = OK
 Younger generation of academics managers
= OK
 Earlier-Younger, recipe for trouble
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I n s t i t u t e
Tensions and Conflicts

Earlier generation of academics
being managed by newer generation
of academic administrators or
managers (with different philosophy
and approach)
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I n s t i t u t e
Academic Managers Responses to Changes

Embracing “efficiency” and “flexibility” as priorities
(impressive indeed), but unfortunately very
troubling.

“impressive” because such adaptive responses
just may help public higher education survive an
era of unprecedented competition and public
scrutiny

“troubling” because of the potential damage to
public higher education as an intellectual
enterprise, the further erosion of knowledge as
an end in itself and the narrowing of academic
offerings for different segments of student
populations
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I n s t i t u t e
New Developments

Before this simple bureaucracyprofessionalism dualism characterised
academic organisations

Now, research universities have become
more entrepreneurial through increased
“academic capitalism”; research
universities have become more
managerial in their governance and the
division of labour
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I n s t i t u t e
Implications of New Developments


Academics have become “managed
professionals”
Middle-level administrators have become
“managerial professionals.”

More authority to academic managers
(need for flexibility to adapt swiftly and
a concomitant need for discretion over
resource reallocation and programmatic
investment).
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I n s t i t u t e
Understanding Higher
Education and Higher
Education Institutions
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Legitimasing Ideas of HEIs
(i) moving away from the idea of
higher education as a social
responsibility, and moving
toward the idea of higher
education as an industry
(Fact or Fallacy?)
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I n s t i t u t e
Legitimising Ideas of HEIs
(ii) what is expected, appropriate,
and sacred, as well as the
converse.
(Do you know what are these?)
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I n s t i t u t e
As Social Institution or Industry:
Implications

What is valued?

What is problematic?

What is in need of improvement in
both public and private higher
education?
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I n s t i t u t e
Higher Education as Industry

HEIs are seen increasingly as a sector of
the economy;

a corporate model of production – to
produce and sell goods and services, train
some of the workforce, advance
economic development, and perform
research (applied in nature).
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I n s t i t u t e
As Industry: Implications

Economic challenges and competitive
market pressures warrant better
management (swift programmatic
adjustment, maximum flexibility, and
improved efficiency in the direction of
greater accountability and thus customer
satisfaction).
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I n s t i t u t e
As Social Institutions: Implication

HEIs must preserve a broader range of
social functions that include such
essential educational legacies as the
cultivation of citizenship, the
preservation of cultural heritage(s), and
the formation of individual character and
habits of mind.
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I n s t i t u t e
Decision?

What is the nature of your institution?

Which one will you opt for? Social
institution or Industry?

Decision in some way will be reflected
based on your training. Sciences?
Technology-based? Arts and Humanities?
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I n s t i t u t e
Tensions
A
concern that higher education’s inability or
unwillingness to adapt will result in a loss of
centrality and perhaps ultimately a loss of
viability
A
concern that adaptation to market forces
gives primacy to short-term economic
demands at the neglect of a wider range of
societal responsibilities, thereby jeopardising
the long-term public interest including the
notion of knowledge as a public good
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I n s t i t u t e
Higher Education as Industry

View higher education as having not just one
major marketplace, as determined by type of
student served, or geographic location, or
degrees granted.

Several types of markets at work
simultaneously – not only for obtaining
students, but for placing graduates, hiring and
retaining faculty, obtaining research funding,
establishing collaboration with industry,
maintaining endowments, sustaining and
extending alumni giving and other fundraising
sources.
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I n s t i t u t e
Success…

The major barometer for managers is to
read the market for constraints and
opportunities relevant to the viability of
their niche; if done well, a higher
education organisation can capitalise on
untapped demand, allowing it to supply
the educational product at a higher price.
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I n s t i t u t e

The decision to add an academic
programme could be seen as a strategy to
position HEIs to attract new customers
and thereby increase revenue.

Hence, programmatic changes can be
seen as prudent market corrections.
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I n s t i t u t e
Higher Education as Social Institution

Educational organisations devoted to a wide
array of social functions that have been
expanded over time:




the development of individual learning
and human capital
the socialisation and cultivation of citizens
and political loyalties
the preservation of knowledge
the fostering of other legitimate pursuits
for the nation-state
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I n s t i t u t e

Educating the masses, advancing
knowledge through research, contributing
to economic development by employing
and producing workers, and developing
industrial applications.

Shifts in societal imperatives reshaped
expectations for higher education and
redefined what activities are or are not
recognised as “higher education.”
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I n s t i t u t e
Issues

Has public higher education taken on principally
economic functions, abandoning the more
comprehensive institutional mandate of
performing not only educational but also
socialisation and political functions?

Or has it become commonplace to speak of
higher education in industry terms, in common
parlance expecting of HEIs a set of objectives
that are economic (e.g. human capital,
workforce training, and economic development)?

Or is it both?
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I n s t i t u t e
Where Are We Now?

Legitimising idea of public higher
education that has come to
dominate is that of an industry
(rather than that of a social
institution)
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I n s t i t u t e
Why?

Existence of three interrelated
mechanisms



Academic management
Academic consumerism
Academic stratification
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I n s t i t u t e
Academic Management

Managers are expected to monitor the
organisation-environment interface,
determine appropriate strategies, and
develop effective bridging and
buffering mechanisms.

Attend to both resources as well as
resource relationships
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I n s t i t u t e

The need to manage challenges
positions higher education
administrators in the central
mediating role of determining the
potential costs and benefits of any
course of action (or non-action).
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I n s t i t u t e

While the need to manage resources and
resource relationships and the need to
reduce resource dependence provide a
compelling post-hoc rationale for an
expanded managerial domain, the role of
faculty within academic governance
should not be overlooked, particularly
when restructuring the academic
landscape of programmes offered.
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I n s t i t u t e
Academic Consumerism

Consumer interests as paramount
considerations in the restructuring of
academic programmes and the
reengineering of academic services.

The needs and interests of several types of
consumers… However, it is most commonly
the student-as-consumer of public higher
education, and particularly the student as
potential or current employee who seeks
workforce training or economic security.
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I n s t i t u t e
Academic Stratification

A re-stratification of academic
subjects and academic personnel,
based upon the increased use-value
of particular knowledge in the
wider society and exchange-value in
certain markets.
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I n s t i t u t e

Higher education primarily as a “knowledgeprocessing” system in contrast to the
conventional view that characterises higher
education as a “people-processing” system
in which goals, structures, and outcomes
support students undergoing personality
development, learning skills, and acquiring
credentials that may enable upward
mobility.
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I n s t i t u t e

As knowledge is seen as a source of wealth,
it is increasingly constructed as a private
good rather than a public good.

The commodification of knowledge proceeds
alongside negotiations over the ownership of
knowledge and is refined in policies for
intellectual property rights and
responsibilities.

Market consciousness of knowledge outputs
and property rights is bound to constrain
teaching and research, and perhaps even
thinking, in public higher education.
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I n s t i t u t e
Tensions and Balancing Act

The central balancing act in
contemporary academic restructuring is
that of adequately responding to
seemingly irreconcilable expectations,
when to make gains in one dimension
may mean loss in another.
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I n s t i t u t e
Scenario 1

Achieving strategic positioning in new
knowledge markets may yield
immediate gains for a campus in
generating resources but a loss of
moral legitimacy, core purposes and
values such that it is no longer
recognisable and identified as the
entity that it was expected to be.
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I n s t i t u t e
Scenario 2

Alternatively, a campus could have
all the legitimacy it can muster and
no revenue, and thereby go out of
business.
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I n s t i t u t e
Realities

Organisational repositioning is a complex
matter, not reducible to strategic
prescriptions or technical manipulation.
Particularly for public HEIs, repositioning with
respect to contemporary environmental
demands is difficult – not only in terms of
determining how to reconcile conflicting
demands, but also in terms of determining
the extent to which the organisation can
respond to demands that threaten its
survival.
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I n s t i t u t e

The question of whether or not the
organisation can respond should be
preceded by the question of whether
or not it should respond to whatever is
demanded by the resource
relationships on which it depends, for
an entirely different kind of
organisation may result.
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I n s t i t u t e

Managing legitimacy challenges cannot be
reduced to a simple calculation or
weighing discrete tradeoffs.

Acknowledging public higher education’s
institutional legacies, the full range of
expectations must be considered along
with their moral import.
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I n s t i t u t e

Consider for example, the commonlycited array of demands on public higher
education: To reduce or contain costs,
to improve teaching and learning, to
remain technologically cutting edge,
and to expand access.
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I n s t i t u t e

The demand to reduce or cut costs can
be achieved in several ways – by
streamlining, budget discipline,
elimination of programmes that are not
cost-effective, not investing in expensive
ventures, or trying to achieve economies
of scale.
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I n s t i t u t e

Improvement of teaching and learning
may be achieved by reducing class size,
providing more faculty attention to
individual students, obtaining more
state-of-the-art equipment, or enhancing
the learning environments.
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I n s t i t u t e

Similarly, upgrading technology may
entail major overhauls of the
organisational infrastructure and access
to information systems in addition to
providing students and faculty with the
training to use it.
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I n s t i t u t e

Finally, expanding access may involve
admitting students who are academically
under-prepared and in need of expanded
and extensive remedial programmes
across subject matters.
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I n s t i t u t e

Accomplishing any one of these four
would be an outstanding feat, while
achieving two or more in a resource
constrained environment is unlikely. The
demands in themselves are not at crosspurposes, but the strategies for
responding to them simultaneously may
be costly and in conflict.
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I n s t i t u t e
Conclusion

The “confrontation” between the past
and the future results in a tension that is
so profound that the current era is “the
greatest critical age” for higher
education in many higher education
systems. This confrontation is
characterised by a simultaneous call for
protection and for redefinition.
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I n s t i t u t e

There is a call to protect: How can higher
education protect its legacy, including
decades of public investment in an
enterprise whose strengths must not be
diluted or deteriorated for short-term
market demands?

There is a call to respond: How can higher
education redefine itself to attend to the
signals of those it is supposed to serve?
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I n s t i t u t e

Before you proceed to innovate and
be creative, please be mindful of the
arguments which I have outlined and
check in the first instance the basics.
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I n s t i t u t e
Check your readiness for…
 Determination
to serve
 Commitment to serve
 Service purpose
 Service target
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Thank You
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