Managing in the comprehensive university:
boundaries, identities and transitions
Bruce Macfarlane, Ourania
Filippakou, Liz Halford and Arti
Saraswat
SRHE Annual Conference
2007
Background
 Merger between Thames Valley University and
Reading College (2004)
 HEFCE LGM project funding (2005-2008)
 Dual sector/post-secondary comprehensive
institutions in other national contexts
HEFCE LGM Project
Stage 1:
National and international comparison
Stage 2:
Interviews with manager-academics at
TVU
Stage 3:
Management development
programme
The middle ‘manager-academic’
 Someone with a primarily academic identity
carrying a managerial role (Deem, Clegg, etc)
 Challenges oversimplified collegiate/managerial
dichotomy
 Interviewees: Heads of subject, Directors of
study, programme and curriculum leaders
Managing the comprehensive university
BOUNDARIES IDENTITIES
TRANSITIONS
Managing the comprehensive university
Systems-focused
Lecturer-focused
BOUNDARIES IDENTITIES
TRANSITIONS
Student-focused
Managing the comprehensive university
Teacher accreditation
frameworks
Systems-focused
Faculty
organisation
Lecturer-focused
BOUNDARIES IDENTITIES
Governance
issues
Funding &
Quality audit
bodies
TRANSITIONS
Student-focused
Boundaries
• System focused
‘FE is a much more regulated environment, there is
Ofsted inspection regime…..you are much more closely
monitored ….its about targets, attainments, goals,
those sorts of things whereas HE is a more relaxed
environment and the presence of research culture
makes it different as well’ (Head of Subject)
• Systems and identities
‘We don’t need a pink version of red and white’ (Anon.)
Managing the comprehensive university
Career
progression
Systems-focused
Lecturer-focused
BOUNDARIES IDENTITIES
Staff development
Role of
research
TRANSITIONS
Student-focused
Contractual
issues
Identities
‘a university is a post 18 institution, which has a
focus on scholarship … an FE institution, by its
very nature, is about skills’
‘your university may not be a university for very
long …. It’s an issue where you have more FE
students than HE students then you run the risk
of not being a university’
‘a university is a community of scholars … Is
an FE college, within that sense, a community
of scholars?’
Managing the comprehensive university
Systems-focused
Lecturer-focused
BOUNDARIES IDENTITIES
TRANSITIONS
HE
‘Environment’
Buildings/Social Student-focused
facilities
Curriculum
design/innovation
Progression
‘ladders’ Programme
‘nesting’
Transitions
‘I think if you want progression to work and that
seems to be one of the major, major issues we
have is getting the students to aspire and the
only way to get them to aspire is to give them
something to aspire to….Where it works the
most successfully, and again this is from talking
to staff at other institutions, is where the FE and
the HE is separated out on the campus so
there’s an HE building that you aspire to go
to…’
(Programme Leader)
Conclusion: key points
• Boundaries are not regarded as easily
permeable
• Identities are firmly entrenched in cultural
assumptions
• Location and student aspiration are seen as
more central to transitions than curriculum
structures
• Different views on ideal organisational form:
‘intersectionists’ and ‘integrationists’
Contact
Bruce Macfarlane: bruce.macfarlane@tvu.ac.uk
Ourania Fillipakou: ofilippakou@ioe.ac.uk
Liz Halford:
elizabeth.halford@tvu.ac.uk
Arti Saraswat:
arti.saraswat@tvu.ac.uk
www.tvu.ac.uk/research/1centres/create.jsp