“If maintenance of the status quo is the goal,” observes Brian Rosenberg, “higher education has managed to create the ideal system.”
In his 2023 book Whatever it is I’m against it: resistance to change in higher education, Rosenberg dissects the structural and cultural features of the US higher education system that led him as a long-serving college president at well-regarded Macalester College in Minnesota to conclude that he ultimately achieved “nothing much” during his tenure.
Rosenberg’s point is not that he is uniquely ill-equipped to lead a higher education institution, but that there are key structural features of higher education systems that actively disincentivise institutional leaders from effecting meaningful change and make it enormously difficult for them when they try. Vice chancellors continue to recommend Rosenberg’s book as a reference for UK higher education leadership, not because there is a straightforward read across from the US to the UK context – though there are valuable parallels – but because the core problem of structural orientation towards the status quo is one that many have encountered in their own contexts.
While it’s easy to blame “change resistant academics” for the tendency of higher education institutions to spend vast amounts of resource and cultural capital on even the most seemingly anodyne of adjustments to the way things are done around here, Rosenberg’s analysis points to system-wide structural factors. These include the reputational currency of higher education and its relative detachment from actual indicators of academic quality or impact; higher education’s emphasis on consensus building in strategy development, and inclusion in governance, which tend to dilute any more radical propositions in favour of ideas the majority can tolerate; the sheer range of interest groups – local partners, alumni, employers – who are invested in past and current iterations of the institution; and the dominance of disciplinary cultures as the organising framework for academic work, more so than institutional mission and strategy.
Arguably, aside from the reputational economy, which owes more to history than any other factor, these structural features continue to exist for good reasons that are intimately linked with institutional purpose. Structured bodies of knowledge were what the university as an institution evolved to protect and steward. Inclusive and shared governance, including the formal divide between corporate and academic governance, is designed to facilitate the free and fearless pursuit of knowledge. The breadth of interest groups and stakeholders speaks to education and research as holding public value and importance.
It’s important for those seeking change in higher education to understand and respect the reasons why higher education institutions tend to be organised in this way, and, specifically, the reasons for why it might be organised in their own institution. This means that leading change in higher education is about far more than overcoming resistance. It requires leaders to understand how people, place and practices influence leadership: how power, identity and relationships shape what is possible; how institutional history, regulation and culture create constraints; and how everyday practices of decision-making, governance and consultation either accelerate or inhibit change. This is where collective leadership can make a difference, not as a generic good, but as a set of choices about when to widen participation, when to build shared interpretation, and when to create sufficient alignment for action.
Higher education leadership in context
As higher education comes under political, financial and reputational pressure – summarised succinctly in a recent report for UCL’s Policy Lab – there is a greater need for institutions to be able to change and transform, and for higher education leaders across their institutions who can enable and deliver that change.
In relatively benign times, when student demand was relatively predictable, and higher education enjoyed political favour with the funding settlement to match, leadership could be framed as stewardship. Stewardship involves the careful maintenance of longstanding cultures and ways of doing things.
In leaner times, as funding reduces, student demand shifts, and politicians’ allegiances change, leadership frequently becomes about taking the tough decisions to ensure institutional survival. Academic and business imperatives may come into conflict through processes of portfolio rationalisation or funding cuts to research. Leaders may be accused of sacrificing public good on the altar of commercial interests by one set of stakeholders – and failing to take sufficiently radical action on balancing costs and income on the other.
But even when the first order of business for higher education leaders is to achieve a sustainable institutional operating model, questions of mission and purpose are never far away. The goal for institutions founded to advance knowledge and spread the benefits of education for individual and public good should not merely be survival. Rosenberg argues that higher education – specifically those systems operating under the auspices of Western educational traditions – need a much deeper reckoning with the limitations of the current model to achieve those missions.
Specifically, in Rosenberg’s view, the high-cost, low-flexibility forms of higher education that continue to predominate ensure that there is a socio-economic ceiling to the numbers who can realistically engage, with the associated assumption that (public) higher education remains a relatively elite, rather than a mass, pursuit. Rosenberg urges, in the first instance, a greater focus on experiential learning, less disciplinary rigidity, and more emphasis in the classroom on issues that matter to students, employers and the wider community.
Other analyses are available as to what ails higher education and what the opportunities are for realising the mission in new ways. We are concerned here less with the specific form of transformation required in the coming decades than with the implications for thinking about the qualities the sector might wish to foster in its pipeline of emerging leaders. This is especially important given the range of external voices bearing down hard on what higher education “ought” to look like – more skills-focused, more technology-enabled, more “just in time.” Some institutions may evolve in this way – but we will need people who can imagine a wider range of alternatives, and offer counter-proposals that confront some of the powerful actors who have a stake in those particular possible futures.
The risk is always that the current generation imagines that the next generation will require the same qualities as their own. Current heads of institutions “came of age” as leaders at a time of institutional expansion and increased commercial competition, but are now operating with much more constrained funding options, and new expectations of coordination and collaboration. There’s no reason to assume that the current policy and funding framework will last much beyond the current government, but the question of what comes next remains unanswered. If the current generation of leaders does its job well, the next generation will inherit a sector that is more financially secure – but there will also be a reckoning with the implications of the tough decisions that were taken. Far from a return to business as usual, the imperative to reimagine and reinvent – and to lead transformative change – will be greater.
Leaders of the future
There are two pressing implications of this proposition. The first is that many of those emerging academic leaders – heads of department, deans of faculty, associate pro vice chancellors and their equivalents, must be equipped to deal with the implications of current change, including reduced resources, changes in responsibilities and workflows arising from restructure, and uneven staff morale. Our 2024 research with Advance HE on leading change in turbulent times found “middle managers” torn between the knowledge of the necessity of change and their own direct exposure to the impact of change agendas on colleagues. Rather than allowing a “coping” discourse to bed in as a core expectation of leadership, the sector needs a positive agenda around the idea of change and to equip current leaders with the tools to deliver it in and across their areas, in anticipation of them being ready to achieve it at institution level and, working together with others, in their regions and nationally.
The second is that the structural factors that can inhibit change appetite and disincentivise leaders to embark on change agendas, seem unlikely to disappear any time soon, and so leadership must be prepared to work within these constraints, and to shape them towards productive ends in the future.
Higher education’s reputational economy is not totally within the gift of leaders to influence. University rankings remain a powerful strategic driver, though offering little insight as to what any given institution has to offer any particular student by way of learning experiences and curriculum. But it is entirely possible for institutions to differentiate themselves and to flourish through delivering for their designated constituencies, building reputation where it matters. Many UK HE institutions do this every day, regardless of where they sit in the league tables. Leaders at all levels need to be ready to work through the ramifications of this and be bold enough to pursue the metrics, mission and purpose that matter to them and their communities.
The range of stakeholders if anything is only set to become more expansive and more vocal – increasingly requiring leaders who are skilled at building strategic alliances and developing shared sense of purpose with diverse interest groups. Higher education will likely continue, of necessity, to be a highly regulated space in which the creation and assurance of defined processes for delivering quality outcomes remains paramount for retaining public trust. As such, leadership must be able to work with the grain of the regulatory imperative (without needlessly gold plating every last requirement) and, where possible, influence the shape of regulation to allow space for innovation and strategic change.
While the degree to which governance and strategy development are genuinely inclusive in UK higher education is certainly contestable, most can point to the phenomenon in higher education of meetings or consultative processes at which more heat is generated than light – or action. Rosenberg wryly suggests that there should be an “Immutable Law of Strategic Planning: the number of people involved in creating the plan is inversely proportional to the amount of actual strategy it contains.” But, arguably, narrowing the field of those who get to engage with governance or determine the strategic direction of the institution won’t necessarily lead to better strategy either and it certainly won’t decrease resistance to change. The critical thing is about effective process design and meaningful attention to the capabilities of, and support offered to, those who are taking part.
Emerging leaders therefore need to become skilled designers of institutional process, not just participants in it. They need to clarify what is open to influence, surface disagreement productively and connect local deliberation to institutional decision-making. Higher education needs leaders at every level, not least to enable the pipeline for future heads of institutions – and future leaders need the capability to oversee complex systems of delegated oversight and local accountability for innovative thinking, whilst enabling cultures that promote change positivity and readiness.
Perhaps the most complex structural factor for the next generation of leaders is likely to be the shape of the disciplines and the academic practices that surround them. Without suggesting that future leaders should be prepared to set about dismantling this architecture, they will need to be able to hold deep disciplinary knowledge, practice and identity, in combination with the ability to view the disciplines and their evolving role in the institution through a critical perspective, to see how they might be deployed in different ways. Advance HE’s Framework for Leading in Higher Education offers one way of making this visible, connecting individual attributes with organisational needs, leadership practices and the institutional contexts that enable or inhibit impact.
The above represents some initial thoughts into how we might think about the role of emerging leaders in institutional change – both as actors in change agendas here and now, and as future leaders of transformation. In the current academic year, Wonkhe and Advance HE will be exploring in greater depth how emerging leaders theorise change and develop their sense of their professional role in change agendas, and what the implications might be for higher education futures. We’ll be holding discussions with emerging and senior leaders, and reporting the findings in the summer.
If you fit our profile of an emerging leader – a head or deputy head of school or faculty, an associate pro vice chancellor, or someone who reports directly to the registrar, provost or COO – and would like to join one of our upcoming discussion sessions on this topic on 28 May and 3 June, you can find out more and sign up here.
This article is published as part of a partnership with Advance HE.
