Describes strategies used by 10 academic medical centers to preserve missions in face of changing demands and declining resources. Strategies include balancing planning and opportunism, developing new approaches for faculty participation in governance, experimenting with organization of core functions, listening to the customer, aligning…

Although the president of the University of Chicago (Illinois) has resigned, the controversy over his planned changes for the institution has not abated. Proposed changes include reducing the number of core curriculum courses and expanding the size of the undergraduate population. Faculty, students, and prominent scholars are calling for improved…

A survey investigated college faculty and administrator attitudes on issues related to institutional governance. Results offer trustees several strategies for fostering institutional change: build on the overlap in attitudes about governance; foster dialog about teaching, research, and governance among board, faculty, and administrators; improve…

Critics have condemned the state higher education coordinating board model as excessively bureaucratic, unresponsive to market demands, and indifferent to legitimate campus aspirations. Systems that prevail are those that collaborate in setting a statewide agenda; earn political support; present clear, meaningful missions; manage and resolve…

The evolution of the Mt. Hood Community College (Oregon) effort to analyze institutional policies affecting high-risk students is chronicled from the early 1980s to the present, from the initial findings of program ineffectiveness to program improvement. Chronicle includes successes and limitations of several early-change strategies, and factors…

Ways in which specific pieces of scholarship can be useful to college and university administrators, planners, and policymakers are discussed. Five journal articles and portions of books on research universities, strategy-making for complex organizations, leadership, collegiality, and institutional research are examined in relation to how they…

Discusses leadership and governance issues in implementing curricular reform at eight medical schools participating in a large-scale medical curriculum development project. Attention is given to the definition of leadership, characteristics of successful leaders, management of resistance to change, the role of curriculum committees, the use of…

A study investigated the effects of 1988 changes in Australian economic policy on the reward structures and employment trends, particularly for women, at two Australian universities: Murdoch and Edith Cowan. Results suggest that the new policy has been beneficial for some women, particularly at lower employment levels, but that climbing this more…

Institutional responses to the fiscal crisis in American higher education, as well as state and federal initiatives, are pushing universities toward four interrelated structural reforms: institutional differentiation; shift from basic to applied research and development; increased interdisciplinarity; and a shift from department-based research to…

The head of a research university studio art program outlines the potential benefits and challenges associated with maintaining a first-rate program. Problems include high costs, a faculty merit review system, lack of faculty socialization to university norms or participation in campus affairs, lack of leadership incentives, a patronage mentality,…

Thirty-one downsizing survivors from both the private and public sector were interviewed to determine incidents that either helped or hindered their transition through 1 or more organizational downsizings. A critical incident technique was used to analyze and organize the data around themes that emerged, themes were represented by both positive…

This paper presents data gathered as part of an evaluation study of a grant-making initiative undertaken by a national organization involved with Jewish day schooling. The initiative disbursed grants to 30 established Jewish day schools for use during the 2002-2003 school year. The goal of the initiative was to encourage and support day schools to…

Organisational change in UK higher education has resulted in control of the student learning environment passing from specific disciplines such as psychology to central management teams and university-wide course frameworks. This poses the general question of how disciplines can exert influence upon broad pedagogic issues, when their control…

Policies of educational expansion are enhanced in most European countries. Little attention is, however, paid to skill utilisation at work, learning context and gender-related barriers at work. Oversupply and under-utilisation of skilled labour might create mismatch problems and frustration at the workplace. The aim of this article is to give an…

There is a supranational tendency in educational governance towards a "management by projects" policy, which substitutes democratic procedures and norm-based control in the materialisation of educational justice. The organisational level becomes crucial for the management of education and the pressure to conceive education as a…