I recently had the chance to read a re-issue of Simon Marginson and Mark Considine’s, The Enterprise University: Power Governance and Reinvention in Australia. It’s a heck of a good read; among those currently writing about higher education, Marginson’s probably got the best turn of phrase around. Some of it – around managerialism and the role of research expenditure in cementing it – seems a bit dated now, in the sense that no one would any longer find it surprising. And the section on governing boards is a bit Australia-centric. But the chapter on institutional diversity is so brilliant that everyone in Higher Ed should read it. (Ministers and deputy ministers should read it four or five times.) It’s that good.
In this chapter, Marginson & Considine consider how diversity works in practice. In Australia – much like in Canada – there is a hierarchy of institutional prestige, based mainly on the order in which they were created within their state/province. We call it the G-5, they call it the “Sandstones”, but it’s basically the same thing. Then there are the “Redbricks” (roughly, the rest of the U-15, plus maybe York, Simon Fraser, and Guelph), “Gumtrees” (no real direct equivalent as a class, but think Brock/Laurier), “Unitechs” (Ryerson, maybe) and “New Universities” (the new-ish universities in BC and Alberta).
When the authors examined these institutions they found that, despite “vertical” diversification, there was no attempt to diversify horizontally – in fact, quite the opposite. As soon as Australian universities gained the freedom to control their own program mix, they all moved pretty swiftly to offer a pretty similar and comprehensive mix of programming. At the same time, all institutions were trying to become more research-intensive, with varying degrees of success.
(Is this sounding familiar yet? Good.)
Marginson & Considine note the forces of isomorphism at work: some of it comes from the fading power of the disciplines (considerably more advanced in Australia than North America), some of it comes from the incentives provided by funding formulae, and some of it stems from the model of prestige that serves to reinforce the existing power of the Sandstones. Basically, there’s no percentage in trying to be anything other than mini-Sandstones – which is why most institutional strategy in Australia is just a “simulacra” of strategy. It isn’t real, it’s just a hollow, low-risk attempt to copy what the big schools do (for an example of this in Canada, see Western).
That said – and this is the bit that I found fascinating – Marginson & Considine still found three ways in which Australian institutions managed to diversify and re-invent themselves, if only a little bit. One was by being the “entrepreneurial university” and engaging in some private fund-raising activities (e.g. commercial consultancies, bespoke training for companies, etc.), the second was by going big on globalization and international students (by which they mean not just attracting students from abroad, but also providing training or setting up campuses overseas), and third was specializing in distance education.
What’s fascinating about that? The fact that nearly all Canadian institutions have piled on the second one, leaving the first and third essentially untouched (yes, we have distance ed specialists like Athabasca, but they were set up as a specialist school – no one has tried to reposition themselves through greater distance ed efforts). The fact of the matter is that no school has ever felt threatened enough to do anything other than copy the big boys – to offer anything other than a simulacra strategy.
I wonder if that will change anytime soon?
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Hi Alex
On Distance Education, I don’t read it the same way you do . Look at the website for the Canadian Virtual University. http://www.cvu-uvc.ca/cgi-bin/cvu/cvuinfo.cgi?qn=institution&lang=en. 11 institutions appear and most appear to be doing a lot. That certainly sounds like differentiation/specialization to me. Perhaps the first of the three ways is relatively untouched but I don’t see that for distance Ed.
Amery
There are indeed lots of people dabbling in distance ed. But that’s not strategy. The question is: how many have made a deliberate move to make distance ed a core element of their identity and made investments to match that commitment? I’m going to go with zero (among institutions which weren;t founded specifically fpr that purpose, like Athabasca).
On distance ed, why would they “shift” to it? Their core mandate and their structure is around in-person delivery of a specific form. Which means they “add another channel” (distance education), not cut the original and shift investments.
I think a better analysis might be a bit more nuanced — for example, have they
(a) used satellite locations? Trent added locations in Oshawa, elsewhere, and that is not an insignificant investment for a small university;
(b) used TV or webcast?
(c) offered correspondence options?
(d) increased enrolment in any of those areas or steadily increased offerings?
For me, it is not “where did they suddenly launch a big initiative” but rather “where are they spending some discretionary funding”. You mentioned Athabasca, but UofM was doing it with the military for years before AU launched. It was how the military decided sometimes who to fund for the future — based on whether or not they had proven themselves capable on UofM correspondence courses.
I don’t disagree that many aren’t doing “a lot” and not on the scale of some of the U.S. institutions, but they do more than we think, including hybrids too (online and in-class).
PolyWogg
A certain comprehensiveness is built into the idea of the university: a highly-specialized teaching institution wouldn’t qualify at all.
I think the problem arises from the fact that here at least (and perhaps also in Australia) everyone confuses “high quality research” with “expensive,” and “research institution” with “graduate institution.” This is too bad, since a few eastern universities (SFX, King’s in Halifax, Acadia) do a very good job at undergraduate education and produce a fair amount of decent research, especially in the humanities. Good thing nobody’s ever decided to tell them to specialize, or demand that they look more like U of T.
I know that Royal Roads University would be considered to be rather young and might be considered to have been created to deliver education at a distance, but I would go further and describe its structure as a clear counterexample to your argument. Of course, it might be the exception that proves the rule. When Royal Roads was founded in 1995-96, it was deliberately designed to fill a niche in post-secondary education where no other institution was playing. And, while many universities in Canada have been copycatting various elements of the features that made RRU so distinctive when it opened, I think it’s fair to say that RRU’s aggregate of features–including its learning and teaching model, its blended delivery (pairing online delivery with short intense residencies), its practice of building cohort-based learning communities, its experiential and authentic learning strategies, its team-based learning approach, its outcomes-based curriculum, its significant reliance on faculty with professional experience, and its less compartmentalized integrative learning concept–allow this university to stand out as a model of distinctiveness in Canada’s sea of post-secondary sameness and wannabe sameness.
Hi Peter. Royal Roads is an interesting case, but I’d argue that it’s not an exception. My argument here is about institutions reluctance/refusal to alter the missions; Royal Roads has a very distinct mission, but it’s had one from the start. You see that over and over again in Canada, actually – Waterloo has a distinct identity, but has had one from the start; ditto Athabasca. Distinctness is only one dimensions of the issue – it’s the ability/desire to change, too.