Administration Management / Administration Creating

Administration

management / Administration

Creating a vision for the modern university: A challenge for university administrators

Creating a vision for the modern university: A challenge for university administrators

Managing a university in today's competitive and economically-challenged environment presents many of the same administrative obstacles as managing a firm. Richard Dealtry's 2005 article "Achieving integrated performance management with the corporate university" from the Journal of Workplace Learning suggests taking a corporate approach to management in higher education. Dealtry suggests that the vision of an educational organization, like a business "has to be very clear and top management has to interpret and divine that vision in terms of the organization's intellectual purpose" (Dealtry 2005). The terms of the organization's vision must be "known and specified" and its intellectual practices must all be "timely, relevant and connected to its articulated purpose" (Dealtry 2005). Instead of having vague and future-focused ideological goals, Dealtry advocates universities adopting specific organizational benchmarks for achievement to effectively use scarce resources.

Critics might suggest that this approach limits departmental autonomy and overall organizational flexibility. But Dealtry states that administrators perform a necessary ambassadorial role between different competing organizational actors. Administrators create a cohesive image for the university and rally professors and students to support common objectives. The worse position for an administrator to find him or herself in is a copycat or 'me too-ism' role, following the approach of others and allowing self-interested lower-level actors to define the mission of the organization a whole. The diversity and complexity of modern universities demand strong leadership and an active, interventionist managerial approach.

Dealtry implies that a strong authoritative style is required to create a consistent brand for the university. Universities, however, are often subject to forces beyond their control, such as access to funding from state or federal legislatures for student loans, state control or financial pressures that determine enrollment levels, and the performance of their endowments. According to Jack H. Knott, and A. Abigail Payne's 2004 article "The impact of state governance structures on management and performance of public organizations: A study of higher education institutions" from the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management," state universities are forced to often deal with demands for them to satisfy seemingly incommensurate objectives. While state funding has declined as a share of total revenues, "policymakers and the public also criticize public universities for the continued rise in tuition above the inflation rate, which reduces access to higher education for low-income and diverse populations." However, states are often limited in terms of how much tuition they can charge and how many out-of-state students they are permitted to accept.

As a result, states have sought "greater autonomy to compete for students and resources more like private institutions" but the type of control that would allow them to create a unified vision and mission for a state university is often elusive (Knott & Payne 2004). Statewide governing boards often impose unified standards on university's admission standards, allocation of funds between departments, and other requirements that can make it difficult for a school to carve out a unique 'niche' for itself. In some states, these boards have a great deal of administrative power, while in other states universities have secured more power for themselves in decision-making.

According to Knott and Payne's data-driven analysis, more decentralized state governing systems of universities tended to have higher tuition costs, more out-of-state students, and higher admissions qualifications amongst students than those with less autonomy from state governing boards, and when university managers strictly govern the internal policies public universities. More autonomous state universities "tend to emphasize the academic values of research, publication, and external grants more than undergraduate education and low tuition" (Knott & Payne 2004).