Public administration managers are confronted with new and highly complex challenges emerging at a rapid rate. This situation requires a reimagining of public administration education to prepare public administration managers to capably deal with these challenges. While the Master of Public Administration (MPA) is globally used as vehicle for…

Traditionally, civil servants and public officials are highly educated and have strong administrative expertise. Public financial managers have been regarded as 'guardians of the public purse', who have solid budgeting, accounting and auditing skills. However, the development of 'mega-trends' such as digitalization and e-government affect the…

Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is growing concern about increasing administrative burden within universities around the world. At the same time, the literature explicitly devoted to the issue of administrative burden within universities remains relatively scant. Drawing on various bodies of literature and reflections on the situation at…

In this paper, we engage with the Research Excellence Framework (REF) -- the UK government's national policy tool for competitive allocation of scarce research funding. Success on the terms of the REF provides guaranteed income for UK Universities for a 6- or 7-year period -- and as a result, we suggest that the REF operates as an asset-like…

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…

Excessive rationalization in educational governance leads to a lack of emotion and a range of problems. Family and school are natural allies in emotional education, and collaboration between the two will realize the holistic life development of students, the school's goal of comprehensive education, and the family's valuable function of providing…

With internationalization now an imperative for institutions of higher learning around the world, this article examines the specific case of how France's elite engineering and business schools, known as the "grandes écoles," have taken on this challenge. Mobilizing work on organizational allomorphism and the "glonacal"…

This article explores the increasing professionalisation of school business practitioners in the state school system in England. Often referred to a 'school business managers' or 'school business leaders', this cohort of the school workforce have been increasingly tasked with leading crucial site-based management functions in schools, such as…

This paper focuses on the tension between two political rationalities coordinating Danish higher education (HE) -- a nativist politics of belonging and that of status competition and its technologies of university rankings, citation indexes, and performance management, explored historically drawing on Gramscian conjunctural analysis. The paper…

Student participation has become a relevant topic in the international debate on education. However, the conceptions of the meaning of participation and its practical implications are very heterogeneous. This article reviews how educational policies have conceived student participation in Western countries. Having conceptualised student…

Through the lens of successive Department of Education and Science (DES) Statements of Strategy (1997-2021) the author considers the evolution of Irish education policy making from the perspectives of New Public Management (NPM) and the public value paradigm. In the context of changing international and national environments, the Strategic…

Higher Education staff in the United Kingdom (UK) work long hours to complete their duties. In a 2021 survey, staff reported a weekly average of 51 hours: a fact well understood to undermine health and educational quality. Yet, UK law sets a maximum working week of 48 hours, and failure to uphold this maximum is a criminal offence for employers.…

Courses and training in public decision-making have often disappeared from Public Administration curricula. This paper argues that this is unfortunate as skills therein are severely needed to steer developments towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Whereas some see this as a macro development that befalls countries, this paper argues…

New Zealand's state schools have been self-managing since 1989, with government agencies playing a more limited role in terms of support than in other countries. This radical change was intended to improve education and make it more responsive and equitable. These goals have not been achieved. In 2018, the Labour-led government asked for an…

What will it take to build high-performing, purpose-oriented public sector organizations in India? In answering this question, the voices of India's frontline officers--charged with delivering a vast array of public services to citizens--are dismissed all too quickly. Public debates on the Indian state generally view them as corrupt, apathetic,…