Collegiality Revisited: Continuity, Rejuvenation or Demise?

Abstract

It was never our intention in writing this book to construct a nostalgic portrayal of the collegial tradition in higher education or to glance back into the past and to lament that the world of higher education is not what it used to be. In the past 25 years most national systems of higher education have changed out of all recognition. We have used the idea of the collegial tradition to throw a spotlight on those changes. We have done so partly because this is a concept that we have grappled with in much of our writing. But it is more than a conceptual love affair. The collegial tradition represents a powerful idea of the university that embraces its purposes, how it should conduct its business and what its outcomes should be. Furthermore, in our analysis of the collegial tradition we have argued that it is a concept that is embedded not only in the collegiate universities but also has embraced higher education almost universally.