The Governance of British Higher Education - (Bloomsbury Higher Education Research) by Michael Shattock & Aniko Horvath (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Book of the Week, Times Higher Education

Forms of institutional governance critically shape the culture, creativity and academic outcomes of higher education. The book provides a new, updated and research based account of the changing face of the governance of British higher education. Historically, British universities were deemed amongst the most, if not the most, autonomous in Europe, with governance rooted in their collegial disciplinary structures. This assessment must now be decisively revised, although the belief systems deriving from it remain buried deep in university culture.

Drawing on the authors' investigation of the governance of higher education in the four UK nations, including extensive on-site interviews, and discussions with government policy-makers, the book shows how global, national and system level pressures have changed the face both of the external governance of higher education institutions and how universities govern themselves. Government priorities, new funding methodologies and marketisation have all played a part in this process. Since the mid-1980s, there have been drastic changes in the external environment, reinforced by the increasing diversity within the higher education system as a whole and between the national sub-systems. In addition a new private sector of higher education has been created. New forms of institutional governance are emerging which may have profound effects on research and teaching and on academic creativity and innovation. The study discusses the effects of a state regulated system compared with the more heterarchical system which preceded it. It offers a comparison of the effects of devolved governance to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland on the respective higher education systems and their impact on institutional governance. The study concludes that England is becoming increasingly an outlier, and discusses the long term implications for the coherence of a British higher education system.

Review Quotes

"Breaks new and important ground as the first major empirical study of governance in this new policy climate ... This book undoubtedly represents a landmark in the study of higher education governance." --Higher Education

"During the past thirty years there have been tumultuous changes in higher education policy and administration. No-one is better qualified through practical experience and academic research than Michael Shattock to chronicle and analyse these events. He and Aniko Horvath have written the definitive account of them and their implications for the governance and management of UK universities and the sustainability of 2019 arrangements. Their book will come to be seen as a classic of the genre." --Gareth Williams, Emeritus Professor, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK

"A superb overview of higher education across the four UK nations: broader, clearer and more coherent in its core argument than other recent works. It also creates a compelling picture of the global landscape in which the UK institutions sit, and focuses our attention on the curiously partial nature of their connection to that landscape. Without being at all strident or ideological, Shattock and Horvath have destroyed the premises on which contemporary UK policy is based - the assumptions that tighter state control, consumer markets and easy entry to commercial providers will somehow usher in a new flowering of quality, access, university autonomy and academic creativity." --Simon Marginson, Professor of Higher Education, University of Oxford, UK, and Editor of the Bloomsbury Higher Education Research series

"An admirable assessment of the changes in system and institutional governance during a critical period. It updates Shattock's own previous work with new empirical evidence, razor sharp analysis and wise conclusions." --William Locke, Professor and Director of the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne, Australia

"This book provides a sophisticated and comprehensive analysis of how British universities have been transformed, not always for the better, by government-led funding and management initiatives in recent decades. The comparison of the different countries of the United Kingdom and the discussion of the global environment are especially useful." --Philip G. Altbach, Research Professor, Founding Director, Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, USA

"A masterpiece using the British devolution as a laboratory for higher education analysis. The exploration of the process by which England, Northern-Ireland, Scotland and Wales diverging policies have led to diverging region-based institutional governance and academic experiences is illuminating." --Christine Musselin, Professor, Sciences Po, France

"Although this is a book about the governance of British higher education, it is perhaps even more a book about autonomy and why it matters - at both institutional and individual level." --Bjørn Stensaker, Professor and Director of LINK - Center for Learning, Innovation and Academic Development, University of Oslo, Norway

About the Author

Michael Shattock is Visiting Professor at the UCL Institute of Education, University College London, UK and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Education at the University of Oxford, UK. He leads the research programme on the governance of higher education in the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE) at the University of Oxford, UK.

Aniko Horvath is Assistant Professor in the Department of Organization Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and is Researcher at the Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE) at the University of Oxford, UK.