In this essay, I introduce the term "governance inversion" to describe a situation in which a university administration repositions a governance body in such a way as to limit its legitimate governance function. Structural conditions might make governance inversion more likely, but narratives might also be deployed to make the inversion…

This paper explores the evolution of autonomy in Hungarian model-changing institutions, focusing on how reforms have altered governance dynamics. By examining both the university's distance from the state and the degree of self-governance of the academic community, the study employs property rights theory to analyse how governance rights are…

Student participation in higher education governance is low in most countries. This is puzzling especially in countries like Czechia that have established radically democratic academic structures open to student involvement. This article therefore seeks to explain the determinants of student turnout (an important form of student participation) in…

Globally, there has been a campaign to promote participation of females in the entire development agenda in general, but specifically in the higher education sector. Public universities in Uganda have attempted to ensure that female stakeholders are given a platform to participate in leadership and governance of their respective universities,…

Recent shifts in university governance have relied on increased autonomy. Within this context, the enhanced role attributed to governance boards at the expense of academic bodies and the role of external stakeholders has gained momentum. With the aim of understanding the extent of the influence of external stakeholders at the institutional level,…

The Pembroke Undergraduate Research and Creativity Center's council assists the director in making funding decisions for the Undergraduate Assistant Scholarship (USA). A rubric was developed to guide the council's decisions. After the council members have reviewed and rated the USA proposals using a five-point rubric, the proposals then are ranked…

Tertiary institutions are citadel of learning that are expected to provide solutions to personal, socio-economic and political problems that the home and other institutions cannot resolve. These institutions in Nigeria are beginning to subscribe to pressure of ethnic influence, a condition that tends to plague the nation as issues of national…

Academic governance is an important dimension of institutional self-governance. This paper reports on the findings of a new study of university senates (academic councils) in Canadian universities in order to analyze changes in structure and in senate members' perceptions of the structure and role of senates over the last decade. Following the…

Colleges and universities across the United States have, over the centuries of their existence, gradually developed the systems of governance that we see today. Typically, this has taken the form of a governing board comprised of individuals with some connection to the institution. Although major restructuring of institutional governance may seem…

Following the design of a similar study in 2000, the authors conducted a study of university senates (academic councils) to assess the current state of academic governance in Canada's universities. An earlier paper presented and analyzed the data that were gathered about senate size, composition, structure, legislative authority, and work, and…

Researchers examined the potential of Presidents' Councils on Diversity (PCDs) to position advancing diversity and inclusion agendas at 11 higher education institutions. Researchers investigated strategies and the degree that PCDs set up agendas through the mobilization (i.e., creating vision and setting priorities), implementation (i.e., creating…

This article draws on Bourdieu's theorisation of domination and Gramsci's notions of hegemony within the context of a larger empirical study of Australian university academic governance, and of academic boards (also known as academic senates or faculty senates) in particular. Reporting data that suggest a continued but radically altered form of…

In Canada, only 44% of members of academic governance bodies at universities feel that their boards are effective decision-making bodies (Jones, Shanahan, & Goyan, 2004). In this study, we examined the views of senators at a British Columbia university regarding their senate's effectiveness in decision-making, including structures, processes,…

In the early 2000s, several post-communist countries launched reforms of university management and governance marked by the influence of a "modernization agenda" for higher education governance, which was promoted by the World Bank, the OECD and the European Commission. However, this "modernization agenda" was employed…

Despite considerable international literature acknowledging issues associated with the effectiveness of university academic boards (also known as academic senates or faculty senates), there is little current empirical research exploring why difficulties might exist and what (if anything) might be done about them. This article reports the findings…