Internal governance in West African universities is faced with considerable government participation in the performance of their traditional functions. External governing relationship is a function of government policies of the institutions and their commitments to stakeholders. The pressure to "deliver the goods" in good quality as well…

The Committee of Vice-chancellors and Principals (CVCP) was a leading collective body for British universities for most of the twentieth century, yet there has been very little historical study of its organisation and work. Brief references tend to be dismissive of its effectiveness, although some authors have been more favourable. This article…

Historically, the university was an alien establishment for Russia, reflecting the political ambition of its leadership, not the organic impetus of Russian society. In Soviet academia, the notion of university education was replaced by the concept of vocational-technical training. As a creation of the Soviet government, Soviet higher education…

The 1988 University Autonomy Act conferred Portuguese universities with a considerable degree of autonomy and designed a governance system based on collegiality. Strong participation of academic and non-academic staffs and students in decisions became the rule and democratic elections of all individual or collective governance bodies were the…

In 2009, the Finnish parliament passed a new Universities Act that aimed to strengthen the institutional autonomy of the country's universities. But why and how did the idea of autonomy come to frame the reform agenda in the overt way it did? In analysing a sample of authoritative policy and strategy papers by the key stakeholders in the higher…

The ongoing social changes taking place on a global scale have made universities respond to these new challenges by offering new study programmes, implementing modifications of study plans, taking up new research focus as well as by broadening the offer of adult education. These changes necessarily require modifications in terms of the structure…

This article investigates the changing state-university relations in Japan and Malaysia. Its main objective is to identify and examine possible lessons for Malaysia, based on the Japanese experience. Notably, since the late 1970s, Malaysia has been looking towards Japan as a model for socio-economic development (the "look-east" Policy)…

It is generally known that the general goals of universities are to produce high-quality graduates for the job market, to continuously advance the frontier of knowledge in all the disciplines, and ultimately to advance human civilization. There can, however, be numerous specific goals which differ from one university to the other. Whatever it is,…

Discusses problems of economic management in higher education and suggests solutions indispensable for economic autonomy and independent planning. Changes in management methods include incentive systems, transparency in functional goals and performance, and more clarity, rationality, and fairness in appraisals. (Author/KC)

The "Times Higher Education Supplement" of 9 February 2006 briefly reported that the Privy Council, tasked with approving the statutes of universities, was now going to leave their internal arrangements in their own hands. These underlying policy directions need to be set in the context of the important change of emphasis from…

The composition, mandate, and activities of the Council of Universities of Quebec since its origin in 1969 as an advisory board to the department of education are described and characterized in terms of university autonomy and government responsibility. It is found to be, by its nature, unstable in its authority. (MSE)

The transition from an elite university to a mass university has characterized modern university life. The purely quantitative development has been accompanied by a number of changes in the decisionmaking system in higher education. No systematic comparative studies exist of the development of the decisionmaking system. A project is under way at…

This paper analyzes and compares two 1994 reports on the state of higher education in developing nations, the World Bank's "Higher Education: The Lesson of Experience" and the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) "Policy Paper on Change and Development in Higher Education." It examines…

This paper examines changes in values and practices that are emerging in Mexican higher education, reviewing recent trends and policy dilemmas affecting colleges and universities in Mexico. It argues that the educational reforms carried out in the early 1990s indicate the movement away from a social welfare model of higher education, built around…

The management crisis within higher education in developing countries reflects the wider crisis in educational management and public administration. The contemporary management context is further threatened by narrowing management capacity and capability due to the continued dwindling of already scarce resources and the increasing across-the-board…