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Leading the Post-bureaucratic University

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Enacting the University: Danish University Reform in an Ethnographic Perspective

Part of the book series: Higher Education Dynamics ((HEDY,volume 53))

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Abstract

This chapter explores how, in order to realize the government’s ambition for effective and responsive universities, the 2003 University Reform prioritized the role of visionary and transformational leaders. In a major break with history, rectors, and their faculty deans and heads of department would be appointed by the governing boards of the universities rather than through internal elections. This chapter examines early recruitment patterns amongst university rectors and, using ethnographic material, explores the challenges these ‘heroic’ individuals encountered in enacting their positions in institutions shaped by a competitive market place for higher education and a growing raft of accountability measures. These figures were not acting alone. Senior management groups emerged as a pervasive but often invisible layer of executive control, further insulating university decision-making from the concerns of academic staff and students, in effect acting on their behalf. This ‘leaderism’ connects individual ambition and motivation, university mission and social purpose, consolidating universities into deep networks of neo-liberal governance in the service of new understandings of the public good.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Whilst not one of the three case-study institutions chosen for this research (as explained in Chap. 6), this university was nevertheless one we followed closely as it attempted to interpret – and lead - the new political landscape of higher education reform.

  2. 2.

    The distinctions between leadership, management and governance have been well-rehearsed elsewhere (Middlehurst 1999). For the purposes of this chapter the focus is on leadership defined in terms of the 2003 University Law which identities specific areas of responsibility for Rectors, deans of faculties and heads of department.

  3. 3.

    What was envisaged by the term ‘external collaboration’ was not made clear.

  4. 4.

    Academic staff at the University suggested to me that the use of ‘snævert’ could also mean a restricted, narrow or intimate alliance; something many were concerned about.

  5. 5.

    I was assured by staff present that this was not racist language, only an ‘old-fashioned colloquial Danish way’ of emphasizing a point in dramatic terms. Nevertheless, it was a controversial word choice as it happened just a few months after the previous leadership had been criticized for over-charging foreign students during the so-called ‘Chinese students case’ (Nielsen 2011).

  6. 6.

    The academic council was created to provide a context where staff within universities could ensure academic quality and could continue to inform university strategy, albeit in an advisory capacity. Most are faculty-based (for example at Copenhagen University, Aarhus University, Aalborg University and the University of Southern Denmark), meaning that there is no body like a senate at the centre of the organisation to ensure that strong academic deliberations have to be taken into account by the governing board. In smaller universities the academic council is institution-wide (for example at Roskilde University, the then Danish University of Education, the then LIFE sciences university, and the Danish Technical University). The 2003 Law defined the academic council as having a number of advisory ‘tasks’. It should ‘make statements’ (‘at udtale sig’ in Danish) to the rector regarding the internal distribution of funds. It should also advise the rector on ‘central strategic research questions and educational issues and plans for knowledge exchange’. The academic council is also empowered to ‘make recommendations to the rector’ on the composition of academic appointment committees, to ‘assess’ applicants for such positions and to award PhD and doctoral degrees. The Law also states that the academic council has a duty to discuss scientific issues presented to them by the rector and ‘may make statements on all scientific issues of substantial relevance to the activities of the university’(emphasis added), but the law does not require the rector to respond. In response to a critical international evaluation of the 2003 University Law, an amendment to the University Law in 2011 authorised governing boards to widen the powers and functions of academic councils.

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  1. Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

    Stephen Carney

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  1. Stephen Carney
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Correspondence to Stephen Carney .

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Carney, S. (2019). Leading the Post-bureaucratic University. In: Enacting the University: Danish University Reform in an Ethnographic Perspective. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 53. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1921-4_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1921-4_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-024-1919-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-024-1921-4

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