Centre for East Asian Studies (CEAS) VC Initiative, University of Bristol
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The Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) South West Higher
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Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol
35 Berkeley Square, Bristol, BS8 1JA
PRESENTATIONS
Markets and Management
Professor Roger Brown, Liverpool Hope University
Managing the Student Experience in the Quasi-Market: the UK
Experience
Professor Ian Jamieson, University of Bath
The Management of Individual Research Performance in the UK
Professor Rebecca Boden, University of Wales in Cardiff
The Realities of University Reform in Japan: why is it difficult for
university presidents to take the initiative?
Professor Shinichi Yamamoto, Hiroshima University
Higher Education Reforms in South Korea: towards ethnocentric
internationalisation or global commercialisation of higher education
Dr Terri Kim, Brunel University
Privatization and Change of University Management in China: a
combination of Leninism and Capitalism?
Dr Li Wang, University of Bristol
CHAIRS: Dr Lisa Lucas and Dr Fumi Kitagawa
To reserve a place please contact Fumi.Kitagawa@bristol.ac.uk.
SWHE Co-ordinators: Dr Lisa Lucas (GES, University of Bristol); Dr Rajani Naidoo (ICHEM,
University of Bath); Professor Ann-Marie Bathmaker (BRILLE, University of the West of
England, Bristol).
ABSTRACTS
Professor Roger Brown, Liverpool Hope University
Markets and Management
It seems clear that the marketisation of higher education is reinforcing the internal differentiation
of universities that is already occurring as a result of changes in the structure of knowledge. This
differentiation is comprehensive, covering purposes, activities, structures, norms and personnel.
This presentation will enumerate these pressures and consider how institutional managers should
respond to them. I shall argue that in spite of all the pressures, a collegial approach is still the
correct one, but, paradoxically, we may need enhanced regulation to bring it about.
Professor Ian Jamieson, University of Bath
Managing the Student Experience in the Quasi Market: The UK Experience
The quality of the student experience is firmly on the agenda of UK higher education. This is the
result of a confluence of factors underpinned by the growing marketisation of the sector.
Government, Universities and students are responding in different ways, some of them with
positive consequences for the student experience, some of them negative. The role of University
management and leadership is fundamental. The resulting heterogeneity means that it is probably
no longer possible to talk of the UK higher education experience.
Professor Rebecca Boden, University of Wales in Cardiff
The Management of Individual Research Performance in the UK
Research knowledge has traditionally been advanced within and through epistemic peer
communities in which peer review plays a central role. In the context of a more marketised and
commoditised higher education system, the UK has experienced the deployment of new
managerialist technologies aimed at purposively shaping and directing the research activities of
academics. This has brought traditional professional academic judgement as to what constitutes
‘quality’ in research into conflict with neoliberal policy and management regimes of control.
Research quality evaluation exercises, such as the RAE, have hitherto relied upon peer review.
These are now coming under pressure from more managerial indicator-based evaluation tools
such as citation indices and systems for ‘ranking’ journals. These purport to manage the direction
and (subjectively determined) quality of research towards ‘desired’ neoliberally-determined
norms. This work explores how and why indictor-based evaluation systems are being developed
and becoming embedded, exploring both organisational trends and also the manner in which
individuals (i.e. those whose performance is being measured and managed) imbricate themselves.
Such transformations, it will be argued have profound implications for the nature of knowledge.
Professor Shinichi Yamamoto, Hiroshima University
The Realities of University Reform in Japan: why is it difficult for university presidents to
take the initiatives?
Since the beginning of 1990s, Japanese universities have been involved in a storm of reform and
various kinds of measures have been taken by the government to make universities become more
active, useful and accountable. It is the government and students who have taken initiatives but
not university presidents and professors. Before 1990s the formers had no big voice for reform
because of strong university autonomy and also because of little interest of people in the
outcomes of university education. However, due to the progress of globalization and knowledgebased society, the role of universities has been changing toward more intensive relationship with
economy and society. In addition, political situation changed in early 1990s and the government
has succeeded to get a grip for university reform. University presidents did not positively respond
to the new situations, rather they have been forced to passively accept the new framework such
as national university corporation, national university accreditation, competitive mode of funding,
and so on. In my presentation, I will deal with my several findings that may be helpful for deeper
understanding of the new relationship among universities, government and the general public.
Dr Terri Kim, Brunel University
Higher Education Reforms in South Korea – towards ethnocentric internationalisation or
global commercialisation of higher education?
This paper examines higher education reforms in South Korea over the last two decades. It
attempts to articulate a long-standing characteristics of Korean higher education development.
The role of government in the development of higher education in Korea has been typically as a
direct regulator rather than a coordinator. However, the global trend towards neo-liberal market
principles and internationalisation began to be influential in Korea during the 1990s, which
eventually led to a shift in higher education policies. The article critically reviews the current
government’s political rationale for restructuring higher education against the backdrop of
‘globalisation’. It will be argued that despite such influences, the Ministry of Education (MOE)
has not shifted its approach to higher education. The fundamental relations of the MOE and the
higher education sector have not changed (Kim, 2008) and in consequence, the directions of
higher education reforms in South Korea are at a crossroads of ethnocentric internationalisation
and global commercialisation of higher education.
Dr Li Wang, University of Bristol
Privatization and Change of University Management in China: A Combination of
Leninism and Capitalism?
The primary aim of the paper is to examine the change of university autonomy as a result of the
adoption of privatization practices in the higher education sector in China. Data for this article
came from fieldwork conducted in China, including a small scale survey and in-depth interviews,
in 2008. The article consists of three major parts. An overview of freedom of the higher
education system in China was presented in the first section, analyzed from the perspectives of
both providers (i.e. universities) and consumers (i.e. students and parents). It then probes into
institutional autonomy in relation to regulative rules and correspondents’ opinions. The unique
state-party controlling mechanism is also examined to reveal how institutional structure facilitates
and/or limits university management. This is followed by a discussion on shifting university
identify and its influence on university control. It concludes by arguing that the co-existence of
the dual controlling mechanism and the neo-liberal practices indicates an innovative scope of
state capacity on higher education governance.
PRESENTER BIOGRAPHIES
Professor Roger Brown is Co-Director of the Centre for Research and Development in Higher
Education at Liverpool Hope University. He was previously Vice Chancellor of Southampton
Solent University, Chief Executive of the Higher Education Quality Council, Chief Executive of
the Committee of Directors of Polytechnics, and Secretary of the Polytechnics and Colleges
Funding Council. He was previously a senior civil servant and local government officer. He has
served on many national committees and boards. He has written a book Quality Assurance in
Higher Education: The UK Experience since 1992 (2004) and many articles and lectures on different
aspects of HE policy. His second book Higher Education and the Market will be published in
summer 2010. He is currently a Visiting Professor or equivalent at London Metropolitan
University, Edinburgh Napier University, Thames Valley University and the Open University. He
is the Chair of Barton Peveril Sixth Form College, Eastleigh and a Board member of the
Southampton Education Trust. He was elected a Vice President of the Society for Research in
Higher Education in 2007.
Professor Ian Jamieson was Pro-Vice-Chancellor for learning and teaching and the student
experience for over 10 years at the University of Bath, UK. He is now a visiting Professor in the
School of Management, University of Bath. He founded and edited the Journal of Education and
Work. He has been an auditor for the Quality Assurance Agency for England and Wales and has
carried out numerous university audits both in the UK and overseas. He sat on the HEFCE
body, which oversees quality assurance and the student experience in England and Wales for
three years. He has published five books and some 90 journal papers.
Professor Rebecca Boden is Professor of Critical Management at UWIC. Working within the
critical tradition, she addresses the role of management generally and accounting/finance in
particular in sites of knowledge creation, such as laboratories and universities. Over the past ten
years she has undertaken an extensive critique of the effects of neo-liberal ideology on higher
education globally. She works across disciplinary fields with fellow scholars in sociology,
education and science and technology studies in this work, as well as with a collective of
colleagues at UWIC as HERC:ULES (Higher Education Research Centre: Universities,
Learning, Economy and Society). Particular collaborations have been/are with Dr Maria Nedeva
(University of Manchester, on publicly-funded science and on employability), Professor Debbie
Epstein (Cardiff University, on managerialism and creativity in HE), Professors Debbie Epstein
and Joanna Latimer (Cardiff University, on research ethics), and Professor Susan Wright (DPU,
Copenhagen on Danish HE reform). She is the co-editor, with Debbie Epstein, Rosemary Deem,
Fazal Rizvi and Susan Wright of the World Yearbook of Education 2008: Geographies of
Knowledge, Geometries of Power – Framing the future of Higher Education. She is currently
working with Dr Maria Nedeva and Dr Yanuar Nugroho (University of Manchester) on research
performance evaluation.
Professor Shinichi Yamamoto is Director of the Research Institute for Higher Education,
Hiroshima University in Japan. His main concern is the analysis of various functions of higher
education system, including university research, administration and management.
After graduation from the University of Tokyo in 1972, he served for the Ministry of Education
(Monbusho) for 17 years, where he got administrative experiences in school education, university
and research management, and international affairs. He stayed at National Science Foundation of
the United States as a research fellow in 1988-89. He was involved in OECD's activities,
including research training, university funding, at CSTP (Committee on Science and Technology
Policy) in 1992-2003. He was a member of the Overall Review Committee for Program II and
Program III of UNESCO in 2006-2007. He has been serving for Hiroshima University since his
move from the University of Tsukuba in 2006. He was the President of Japan Association for
Higher Education Research in 2007–2009.
Dr Terri Kim is a specialist in Comparative Higher Education and currently works as a full-time
lecturer at Brunel University in West London and Associate in the Centre for Higher Education
Research and Information (CHERI), The Open University and in the Centre for Higher
Education Studies (CHES), Institute of Education, University of London. She gained her PhD at
the University of London, Institute of Education in 1998, and previously worked as a research
consultant for OECD; a Visiting Research Scholar in International Relations at LSE in London; a
Brain Korea 21 Contract Professor at Seoul National University in Korea; and a Visiting Scholar
at the Collège de France in Paris. She has published one book and over 30 articles internationally in
the field of higher education, and her continuing work includes Higher Education policy,
governance, management, transnational academic mobility, knowledge and identity capital,
interculturality and cosmopolitanism, across Europe and Asia.
Dr Li Wang has recently received her PhD from University of Bristol and obtained her bachelor
in public management from Qingdao University, China. She currently works at the Centre for
East Asian Studies (CEAS). Her main research interests are social exclusion and privatization
related to education policies and reforms in China. She has published several journal articles and
conference papers on education inequality in China.