Managing the Duals:
The role of manager-academics working in a dual sector institution
Bruce Macfarlane, Ourania Filippakou, Liz Halford, Arti Saraswat
Thames Valley University
Institutional context
Challenges and responses
Attitudes to duality
2004 - Thames Valley University (TVU) merged with
Reading College and School of Arts and Design creating a
‘dual sector’ institution in England
Cultural differences
Traditionalists
Are the aims and values of ‘further’ education
compatible with those found in ‘higher’ education?
See further and higher education as representing
distinct entities with different educational values,
purposes and cultures
2005-2008 – A research project based at TVU funded by
HEFCE entitled ‘Managing Change and Collaboration in
Dual Sector (FE-HE) institutions
‘…if you have more FE students than HE students then
you run the risk of the university not being a university…’
What is a ‘dual sector’ institution?
‘[It] creates a problem, that you’ve got HE students
mixing with FE students, the cultures are different, the
ethos is different’
A post-secondary institution that includes substantial
elements of both ‘further’ and ‘higher’ education.
There are a number outside the UK in Australia (eg Victoria
University), Canada (eg Thompson Rivers University),
South Africa (eg Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University)
and New Zealand (Unitec)
Duals also include Mixed Economy Colleges of Further and
Higher Education in the UK
Geography and communication
Integrationists
How does duality improve the student experience, if at
all? Does it make progression easier? Should structures
be integrated or separated?
HEFCE Leadership Governance and Management
project
‘where it works [ie duality]…is where the FE and the HE
is separated out on the campus’
Stage 1
National and international comparison
Stage 2
Interviews with manager-academics at TVU
‘I was an external examiner for an institute that was
predominantly an FE college, they had separate buildings,
separate common rooms, tutorial systems – they gave their
FE students something to aspire to’
Stage 3
Management development
http://www.tvu.ac.uk/research/1centres/create_proj1.jsp
Email: bruce.macfarlane@tvu.ac.uk
Culture
‘In terms of resources there’s a perception that the library is
very much an FE library [at Reading campus]’
To widen participation by creating ‘seamless’ opportunities
for student progression within and between further and
higher education
Project contact details
Main rationale
Can a large, multi-campus institution with 65,000
students bring together further and higher education?
Improving the student experience
Semi-structured interviews with middle ‘manageracademics’ called heads of subject, directors of study,
programme and curriculum leaders at Thames Valley
University.
Want to protect the identity of own sub-brand of the
merged organisation arguing that existing structures
are better understood in the educational marketplace
‘FE is a much more regulated environment…..HE is more
relaxed…’
What is the purpose of a ‘dual’?
Interviews with ‘manager-academics’
Protectionists
Development and identity
How does duality impact on the self-identity of
academics and the institution? What are the
implications for the development of staff?
‘There are some people in further education who are not as
academically qualified….and I think they now feel slightly
inferior’
‘I am not sure it [ie the merged institution] is really
understood…how we market ourselves and how we promote
what we do and make it understood is quite critical..’
Traditionalists
Structural
preference
Combined
Separated
Intersectionists
Protectionists
Systems
Intersectionists
Favour two separate but strong further and higher
education parts of the merged institution as a more
effective means of achieving student progression
and managing the demands of external funders and
quality agencies
Integrationists
Favour integration of cultures of further and higher
education to improve student progression arguing
that boundaries between further and higher
education have already blurred