Global J. of Engng. Educ., Vol.I, No.2
Printed in Australia

 

Copyright 1997 UICEE


 

Universities in Change*


Hans Peter Jensen

Technical University of Denmark Building 101A,
DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark
 

 
 
Globally, universities are being faced with a set of major challenges due to new demands for accountability being made upon them, a changing student group, and new cooperative partners, all of which requires a redefinition of university objectives and goals. Such pressures have lead to the development of new strategies, a focus on quality aspects, and the identification of priority areas. In short, the ivory tower is being left behind through an increasing awareness of society’s demands in general, and a wish/need to be accountable.
 

 
 

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TABLE OF CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION

In the coming years, universities around the world, both in developing and developed countries, will face a number of challenges which will lead to a redefinition of what is understood by university activity, both with respect to education and research.

Changes in the student body

One major change is the composition of the student body, which is increasingly different from that which has existed in the past. For instance, student numbers are now much greater than was the case 20-25 years ago. In the early sixties in Denmark, only a very small fraction of a year group went to secondary school, 10%, and even less, 5%, went on to higher education. The situation was no doubt similar throughout Europe and the United States.

Today the situation is entirely different. In Denmark, almost half of any year group attains a secondary education, and 35% will subsequently end up attending some form of higher academic education institution. This certainly represents a challenge to universities in that they are changing from elitist institutions to institutions of mass education. The composition of the student body has obviously changed considerably with an increasing number of incoming students. Fifty years ago the majority of students at university were the children of academics, or those who could afford to send their children to both secondary school and university.

Further education today is available to anybody with the talent and motivation, and it can be more or less pursued without economic complications due to the various support schemes for active university students. Education in Denmark is free of charge, that is, students do not face tuition fee once they have been admitted into university. Also, for an active and successful student, the state will cover some part of their living expenses through a monthly allowance, which is approximately 2,000 DKK if the student lives at home, or 3,000 DKK if the student lives away from home. This obviously represents an advantageous situation for students, and it is one which is reflected in the general level of taxation in Denmark; but that is a subject outside of the scope of this paper. My general point is that the composition of the student body has altered considerably over the last 30-40 years.

Part-time students

Another aspect of the changing student body is the number of part-time students now studying at university. This has much to do with the desire of some to earn a living while they study, as well as the return to education, for various personal and/or professional reasons, of those who did not pursue further education in their youth. The latter, in particular, enter university as part-time students due, for instance, to financial family responsibilities as student allowances and the various financing schemes are inadequate to cover anything but minimum costs.

Finally, such developments as Open Universities and Continuing Education (lifelong learning) must be noted for their dramatic impact on the composition of the student body.

In summary, there is a move away from educating a small fraction of the youth in our society in institutions of further education towards a general responsibility for a lifelong learning process for a major component of the population.

STUDENT RECRUITMENT

Another aspect to the change in the behaviour of universities is the way in which students are now being recruited. This process is changing from being selective and rigid to one which is open and focused on qualification criteria. Again this has to do with the fact that we are now dealing with mass education, and also that we are taking in mature-age students, in which respect it is necessary to consider overall personal qualifications rather than simply academic qualifications.

An additional aspect of change is the competition which exists between institutions in their endeavour to maintain a given volume of students. This has been evident over the last 5-6 years in Denmark due in part to the decreasing size of year groups, which are now almost half the size of those existing twenty years ago because the number of children born in the seventies was the lowest this century. One obvious explanation for this is that the contraceptive pill became generally available in Denmark in the seventies as a form of birth control, allowing many young people to either choose not to have children or to postpone having children until their careers were well under way.

With much smaller year groups and the expansion of higher educational institutions to satisfy the relatively high demand for tertiary positions in the eighties, many institutions now try to maintain a certain number of students by advertising and competing with each other for enrolments.

In the Technical University of Denmark, for example, there has been a student intake decrease from around 1,100 to 550 per year in the Masters programme over the last five years. This is certainly not a desirable situation as declining student numbers mean a decreased budget and consequently a rationalisation of activities and staff. Competition is becoming more intense as a means of avoiding or at least easing this situation, the positive side of which is that institutions are forced to review and profile their activities. But it is also a difficult process in as much as laying staff off, for obvious reasons, requires much energy and discussion, particularly in public institutions, where a lot of conditions and rules are set by external bodies ie the state and unions.

THE IVORY TOWER

A positive consequence of this situation however is that the notion of the university as an ivory tower no longer exists. Universities need to be in contact with, and part of, the outside world so as to be understood by their partners. Only in the outside world can universities recoup some of the financial losses arising from the decline of state funding due to the general desire of states nowadays to limit taxation and promote at least partial user-pays systems to cover public services.

Such accountability to society is a healthy development as the institutions are then also responsible for the economies of their countries and for educating good citizens just as much as scientifically very qualified individuals.

It is pertinent to acknowledge that if higher education institutions were not purposefully changing in this regard, they would almost certainly be forced to by the community, ie ministers, parliamentarians, cooperation partners and taxpayers, all of whom today demand much of their universities. They want universities to be accountable and to deliver value for money. They sometimes want more value for less money; nonetheless if we seek more money, they certainly demand more in return.

EVALUATIONS

Accountability requires evaluations, and these are an integral part of the life of universities today. In Denmark, the state has created an Evaluation Centre with the responsibility for making evaluations of various subjects and areas. The process entails the preparation and presentation of an evaluation report by the various steering groups, following which the Ministry of Education expects the institutions to make necessary changes or to justify why they should not follow certain recommendations.

In short, like everybody else in the private and public sectors, universities are expected to be effective and productive, to be able to deliver quality and to further develop the quality of their products, ie both research results and graduates. If an institution fails to meet this expectation, it risks criticism, public scolding and downgrading to such an extent that students may not wish to pursue studies there, with the consequence of funding cuts and thus further degradation of services and facilities, a vicious circle. The importance of such evaluations and reports cannot be underestimated, signifying, as they may do today, institutional life or death!

Universities no longer live a secure life behind high hedges. They are exposed and indirectly controlled, making the managerial system of a university vital in ensuring both visibility, quality and the very life of an institution through the strategic choices of priorities.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

One element which alone is dramatically going to change both the curriculum and the structure of the universities is information technology and the various opportunities which are offered by this tool. The entire educational tradition at universities is changing to a situation in which students are able to interface with all types of databases, lectures, homepages etc through their personal computers, wherever they are situated, so that the educational world is at their fingertips, so to speak.

In many universities, on enrolment, students receive a study card with a magnetic code which automatically opens an account in the institution’s computing system and admits the student to the Internet. Young people today, at least in the west, are well qualified and better able than the older generation to use the electronic medium. The students’ demand of their professors can be very challenging, and will certainly change the way in which professors relate to the student body, such that, as the author has heard it expressed in conferences in the United States for instance, the professor shifts from being the sage on the stage to the guide on the side. This situation will require a greater flexibility from the teaching staff, with perhaps an immediate consequence that professors will need to be available for consultation in their offices, or at least to be present in front of their computers in order that students can get in contact with them when they need to.

This last point is drawn from the fact that students today expect more service from their supervisors than did prior generations. University management is very much focused on delivering this service to students in order to retain them and assist them in pursuing their academic career; teaching staff are thus being confronted with new demands in terms of the service they are expected to deliver, from both subject and pedagogical points of view.

How professors will supervise students in the future is obviously an open question, but first and foremost they must introduce students to the working process, taking them from the accumulation of data to transformation of data into information, information into knowledge, and finally knowledge into wisdom and such a state of mind that students know what they are supposed to do when they have forgotten what it is that they learned.

QUALITY ASPECTS

In the above discussion the key issue is that of quality. Whatever the number of the students and whatever the budget problems are, we must never forget that what we deliver must be quality products. Quality is a word that suffers from overuse in governmental contexts and also in relation to university businesses; we must handle quality in such a way that it can be both defined and measured. It is insufficient to merely state that one recognises quality when one sees it, and it is certainly inappropriate to claim that quality costs money, and the more money one receives, the more quality one can deliver. Obviously, quality requires money, but it does not necessarily follow that money begets quality.

Focusing on quality requires consideration, it leads to prioritisation and definition of success criteria, which is essentially what the game is about: focusing on quality, discussing quality, and setting priorities according to quality parameters.

Taking the Technical University of Denmark as an example, much thought and discussion has been invested in defining what constitutes quality in research and education. Research activities are evaluated according to a scheme with five success criteria, expanded into thirteen quantitative parameters. The 5 success criteria are as follows:

1. Research results must be published in international journals and some of the results may also give rise to a claim for patent.

2. Research groups must have extended exchanges and relationships with other research groups, nationally as well as internationally, and this should be reflected in various types of cooperation projects and invitations to act as guest lecturers and visiting professors.

3. Projects at universities should give rise to new products, new production methods and new companies as spin-offs.

4. A university should be able to attract a considerable amount of external resources within its strategic focal areas.

5. A university should be able to attract and retain a suitable amount of motivated and well qualified students.

When quality and achievements of research groups are to be evaluated, these criteria expand into the following 13 measuring parameters:

1. (1) Number of publications in refereed interna- tional journals.

(2) Number of publications presented at refereed conferences and printed in refereed proceed- ings.

2. (3) Number of EU-contracts.

(4) Number of PhD and postdoctorate exchanges.

(5) Other exchanges.

3. (6) Number and extent of cooperation agreements with companies.

(7) Number of industrial PhD-fellow projects.

(8) Other indicators of cooperation with compa- nies.

4. (9) Volume of external resources.

5. (10) Number of graduates from a specific group within a certain period, eg the last three years.

(11) Number of PhDs graduated from a specific group within a certain period, eg the last three years.

(12) Number of PhD students associated with the group.

(13) Number of postdoctorates and research as- sistants associated with the group.

A similar set of quality indicators is being considered for the education process, with an overall definition for quality as:

An education possesses quality when it is experienced by the students as being meaningful, developing and interesting, and when the graduates have acquired knowledge and qualifications which enable them to earn their own living with the diplomas as a platform.

With this as the foundation definition, more specific quality indicators and measuring parameters for the educational process will be developed for use in evaluating, prioritising and developing the teaching activities at the Technical University of Denmark.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, work on priority choices in universities is essential. It is imperative for management at all levels to be able to make choices both positive and negative and to make them in such a way that they are both seen, noticed and felt by the organisation.

Choices by priority which please everybody in the organisation indicate an unsuccessful process as change has not penetrated the surface and altered the organisation in an essential manner. To identify quality and to create and maintain groups beyond critical masses is a challenging job. It is frustrating and can even create enemies for the instigator of change, but the reward is the international competitiveness of the institution and its activities. The ultimate reward arrives when faculty return from conferences and visits abroad announcing that their organisation is at the cutting edge of modern research, and able to trade the most important product of all on an equal basis: information, knowledge and comprehension.

BIOGRAPHY


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