6. Working in universities and colleges: more than just a job?

Life for university and college professors has changed considerably. ‘Working in universities and colleges: more than just a job?’ examines academics’ working life in the modern university and college along with their sense of professional identity. Many have experienced a loss of status despite retaining their special benefits of academic tenure and freedom. Are academic subjects or disciplines now giving way to interdisciplinarity as the guiding concept for academic organization and working life? Are professors now just managed professionals, their academic autonomy and power vastly reduced? Are organizational structures of the university and college changing, along with the processes of teaching and learning, and also academic identities?

7. Futures for the university and college

What are the mission and shape, structure and culture, purposes and ambitions of the university and college to be? What is it to be a university and college now—what are they seen ‘to be for’? What might change by 2050? Is it a matter of steady evolution, careful adaptation, gentle re-invention? Or a future of instability and disruptive innovation, radical change, absolute transformation? ‘Futures for the university and college’ considers these questions and suggests that—given the university and college’s role in human capital formation, and the sifting and signalling processes, both hard to replicate without a national higher education structure—it has a relatively assured future.

5. Students: getting in, getting on, getting out

Universities and colleges are, overwhelmingly, about students and in most countries, they are a pretty diverse group, with varying aspirations. ‘Students: getting in, getting on, getting out’ considers the student journey from the admissions process, through induction, to the main part of the student journey involving day-to-day work on the academic programme, assessment, and then moving on to further study or to a graduate job. It asks whether students are partners or customers in the university/college–student relationship and explains how the picture has changed in recent years with the expansion of higher education, moving from an elite system to a mass system, and the introduction of student tuition fees.

4. How universities and colleges work

‘How universities and colleges work’ considers how the university and college actually work in terms of their structures, funding, governance, and management. Universities and colleges are complex operations trying to fulfil a multitude of potentially conflicting tasks and expectations, with a wide variety of demanding stakeholders. Despite facing numerous challenges today, universities and colleges continue to predominantly focus on teaching and research. Many also contribute, through consultancy and the exploitation of intellectual property, to their local economy, pursuing ‘civic engagement’. The balance of power or influence within the triangle of academic staff (faculty), managers (the executive), and lay-members (the trustees) varies greatly from one university and college to another.

3. Global patterns of higher education

‘Global patterns of higher education’ looks at the different types of education system globally. Although virtually every country has its own national higher education system, and each of these national systems has its own peculiarities (and most national systems contain considerable variations within them), scholars of higher education have defined a number of system types: the Humboldtian model, which emphasizes the integration of teaching and research; the ‘Napoleonic’ model of France; the Anglo-Saxon model; the US’s Ivy League and intensive research model; and an emerging Confucian model in Asia. The relationship between the state and the university and college is also considered along with the Bologna Process of international convergence.

1. The enduring idea and changing ideal of the university

The model for the modern university and college began its long evolution c.1,000 years ago in medieval Western Europe. The ‘12th-century renaissance’ saw the emergence of universities and colleges at Bologna, Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge drawing on earlier Hellenistic learning, sustained by ‘the Golden Age of Islam’ and added to during ‘the Dark Ages’ of Western Europe. ‘The enduring idea and changing ideal of the university’ explains how medieval universities were, essentially, businesses delivering concrete skills and competencies through education to fee-paying students. Distinctly utilitarian and vocational, they opened a door to professional life for their students. Now we talk of them crucially contributing to the ‘knowledge society’.

2. What do universities and colleges do?

‘What do universities and colleges do?’ explores just what the modern university and college do—their teaching, research, consultancy, and wider civic engagement. For most universities and colleges, worldwide, their main task is teaching high-school leavers to first-degree level: usually regarded as their least prestigious academic work. The other two main functions of universities and colleges are research and postgraduate teaching: the higher status academic tasks. Despite many differences between universities and colleges worldwide, it is remarkable that the Bachelor–Master–Doctor classification of academic achievement is truly global. The emancipatory model of higher education is described, with the general structure of universities and colleges into departments, schools, and faculties.