Agreements between national public authorities and higher education institutions serve as a governance instrument in many European countries. In Norway, these agreements are currently undergoing change, as the state now invites the institutions to propose their own goals and parameters in the agreements. This study seeks to understand the…

The Finnish financial autonomy reform pushed university leaders and academics to a juncture where they must navigate through increasing competition dynamics. Enabling the two types of organisational players -- foundation-run universities and universities under public law -- to become more autonomous and competitive was the major element of…

Autonomy in governance is an inevitable trend in universities. With this, the involvement of faculty members is essential. The landscape of the Vietnamese higher education system comprises a wide variety of institutional types, including National, Regional, Public, Non-public, and International Universities. This investigation aimed to understand…

Abundant research has shown the influence of social background on university dropout. However, there is little research that considers the different progression options for analysing the structure of the decisions that students make. This article explores the possible alternative decisions of: (1) continuing the initial degree course chosen; (2)…

The purpose of this article is to describe the effects of university governance on campus management based on the examples of the Netherlands and Poland. The study connected theory on campus management with a concept of five dimensions of university governance (autonomy, management, participation, accountability and transparency) into an…

Theoretical literature on institutions emphasizes the importance of logics -- shared rationalizations -- in determining many aspects of organizations. In this literature, universities are often discussed as an example of an institution with a particularly strong and cohesive logic, one rooted in notions of academic excellence and the pursuit of…

Due to global influence and local demand, Taiwan's higher education system has experienced great changes in policy agenda and system reform over the past few decades. After President Tsai took the presidential office in 2016, the Ministry of Education (MOE) shifted its focus towards universities' autonomy and social responsibility, which…

The topic of governance is much discussed in the higher education literature. Corruption is less discussed, and mostly in general and cautionary terms. Yet there are important relations between the two. The current article critically examines the literature on governance in higher education and underlines the relationship to forms of corruption in…

This article addresses the governance relationship between the ministry responsible for higher education and the sector agencies against the backdrop of comprehensive sector reforms. The relationship is examined based on autonomy and capacity, which are argued to be decisive in negotiating areas of responsibility. The Austrian and Norwegian…

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,…

Within the expanding climate of academic capitalism, the public university faculty's professional true to self-authenticity is diminishing. For faculty, professional true to self-authenticity is a genuineness embedded within an absolute, natural and core self-expression of academic professionalism. In this current study, a research platform…

Since the launch of the Lisbon Agenda, European higher education systems have gravitated towards a common policy blueprint for governance that concentrates power in the hands of executive authorities and increases accountability to external stakeholders. The Polish system remains an outlier, providing an informative case study of a clash between…

International competition drives research universities to find ways to anchor globalization for academic productivity and innovation through cross-border collaboration. This article examines the case of pre- and post-colonial Hong Kong and how its universities transited from undergraduate institutions to highly ranked research universities within…

This introduction to three papers presented at a one-day conference on scholarship, research, and teaching notes the complexity of issues facing higher education, the difficulty of relating decision making at the national level to what actually happens in the lecture room or laboratory, and the centrality of curiosity and commitment to both…

This paper argues that, using Eric Ashby's writing on academic freedom and autonomy and Burton Clark's essay on different modes of coordination, the British government has unnecessarily terminated the University Grants Committee and, in its overreliance on market forces, is threatening the future academic integrity of British universities.…