This week, HESA is hosting a conference in Toronto on the subject of Differentiation of University Missions. We’re focusing on this because we think there are a host of factors both inside and outside academia that are pushing institutions towards isomorphism. In a word, there’s a danger that institutions are becoming clones of one another, robotically following the same script – rather like the placid ladies of Stepford.

There are obviously a lot of facets to this issue, but broadly, I think we can point to three factors which (in no particular order) dovetail with one another to put pressure on institutions to homogenize themselves:

1) Government Incentives.  In most countries, governments don’t really incentivize institutions to behave differently from one another.  In Canada, we present almost no incentives for institutions to do anything other than publish more and accept more students. Given the current array of subsidies, where is the incentive for institutions to pursue excellence in teaching, or to do a superb job in regional development?

2) The Preferences of the Professoriate.  Let’s not kid ourselves; nobody is happier about the increasing research-intensitiveness of Canadian universities than academics themselves. When middling universities tell their staff they have to teach less in order to keep up with the big boys and girls of Canadian academia, who complains, exactly?

3) The Prestige Race. I’m not entirely convinced this third reason is actually conceptually separate from the second; however, some very smart people who I respect a great deal (like conference guest Ellen Hazelkorn) do, so it seems apposite to include it. Basically this argument is that the pull of major rankings systems – especially the big international ones like the Shanghai Jiao Tong rankings – have queered the definition of excellence to the point where institutions have no choice but to privilege their research missions of over all other.

What can we do about this? What other models are there out there to encourage diversity? Who gets to decide what missions institutions can or can’t have? These are the questions we’ll be dealing with this week, both at out conference and in this blog. Feel free to join in the discussion.