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Conceptual Definition of Two Key Terms: Governance and Higher Education

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Abstract

In etymological terms, the origin of the word “governance” comes from the ancient Greek verb kybernein (κυβερνεĩν, infinitive) or kybernao (κυβερνάω, first person) that meant steering, guiding, or maneuvering a ship or a land-based vehicle, and was used the first time metaphorically by Plato for depicting the governing of men or people (people would be here the modern application). This etymological component of “steering” also is being reflected in the prefix of “cyber” (for example, in words such as “cybernetics”). In the modern English language, “governance” is related to “government” and to “govern”. Cybernetics deals with feedback and regulatory systems. If this close link between government and governance be continued conceptually, then a definition of governance may be: governance describes how a government governs. One may also say, alternatively: governance addresses how government governs based on feedback.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Compare also with the Wikipedia entries in English and German (retrieved January 1, 2011):

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance

    http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance

  2. 2.

    The analytical quality glossary (Harvey 2004–2009) defines tertiary education as: “Tertiary education is formal, non-compulsory, education that follows secondary education”, also referring to the term of “third-level education” (http://www.qualityresearchinternational.com/glossary/tertiaryeducation.htm).

  3. 3.

    Pasternack (2008, p 20) asserts that Wilhelm von Humboldt himself did not use the phrase of a “unity of research and teaching” in a literal sense, but that this wording was created later in the process of interpreting the work and scholarship of Humboldt. According to Pasternack, Humboldt emphasized two aspects in reference to the understanding of that phrase: first, to define the sciences as an ongoing research process; second, to distinguish between teaching (and education) at schools and at universities.

  4. 4.

    See here also the research work of Professor Jasminka Ledić and of her Croation research team

  5. 5.

    See on the OECD website: http://www.oecd.org/document/2/0,3746,en_2649_39263238_48634114_1_1_1_1,00.html.

  6. 6.

    See also on the OECD website: http://www.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/adv_search.asp?CID=&LANG=EN.

  7. 7.

    As a systematic estimator for public financing of R&D in HE we only refer to “government” (the category government combines “direct government” and the “general university funds, (GUF)”). This probably underestimates the public funding share, because in the funding category of “funds from abroad” there are also public components: for example, other national governments, the European Commission and international organizations (see OECD 2011a, 2012). Only in the case of the UK, we corrected our calculations for this bias of an underestimation of the public in the funding resources from abroad (see again the Figs. 2.4 and 2.6).

  8. 8.

    See later in Sect. 3.2.3 our discussion on the “public management perspective” in context of the “new public management narrative” (Ferlie et al. 2009).

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Correspondence to David F. J. Campbell .

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Campbell, D.F.J., Carayannis, E.G. (2012). Conceptual Definition of Two Key Terms: Governance and Higher Education. In: Epistemic Governance in Higher Education. SpringerBriefs in Business. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-4418-3_2

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