State-level postsecondary education governance has experienced a lull in successful reform efforts since the turn of the century. However, in 2020, the Utah System of Higher Education and Utah System of Technical Colleges were formally merged following a multi-year effort by state legislators and higher education officials. Framed by the theory of…

Forms of academic democracy, such as shared, collegial and participatory governance where students and staff have a substantive role in institutional oversight, have long been an aspiration at many universities and colleges worldwide. Yet, concrete efforts to realise self-governance often prove incompatible with the legal and fiduciary…

This College of the Atlantic (COA) story provides some answers to the questions about how democratic systems of governance in a small, experimental college have shaped the students and institutional decision making. Born during the turmoil of the 1960s, COA went on to survive 50 years with its progressive roots intact. Part memoir (I was a faculty…

The study used qualitative analysis techniques to examine knowledge management practices in Ethiopian public research universities. The study data were gathered through interviews with 18 key informants from public research universities in Addis Ababa, Hawasa, and Arba Mich. The collected data were analyzed using MAXQDA software. Thematic analysis…

The issue of work-life balance (WLB) has received rising attention globally. Academic leaders are said to have a compromised WLB situation as they juggle multiple roles involving a wide range of challenging factors in their work-life environment. Yet, academic leaders, particularly in the context of developing countries, have to deal with…

We examine the behavioural additionality effects of a wage subsidy in the form of a tax cut on R&D personnel's wages in a population of universities. How does university management use this wage subsidy? The wage subsidy is welcomed by universities as additional slack resources which are free to be used by university management. Its use…

Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is growing concern about increasing administrative burden within universities around the world. At the same time, the literature explicitly devoted to the issue of administrative burden within universities remains relatively scant. Drawing on various bodies of literature and reflections on the situation at…

Building a foundational approach for strategic enrollment management (SEM) is necessary to succeed in today's volatile higher education environment. It all begins with a mutual understanding of SEM and aligning the campus with the enrollment management organization. This article shares how to bring campus stakeholders together to optimize…

This study aimed to explore the lived experiences of female leaders in postsecondary education, focusing on how intersecting identities influence their leadership and decision-making processes. Using a hermeneutic phenomenological approach and the theoretical framework of intersectionality, the research explored the relationships between gender,…

Demographic challenges, increased competition, and many other issues have resulted in trying times for all campus leaders, but especially for those who hold leadership roles in enrollment management. While there are numerous leadership texts that can be helpful in navigating these challenges, the author details two texts that have been incredibly…

Higher education institutions (HEIs) face competition globally. Many HEI's were unable to respond to the changing dynamics amidst decreasing public funds, bureaucratic constraints, and the recent COVID-19 pandemic (Ivetic and Ilic, 2020; Philbin, 2015). This challenging environment contributed to low morale and high staff turnover. Survival in…

This Policy Note sets out the state of higher education leadership today. It reviews the backgrounds, careers and performance of university vice-chancellors. Drawing on a new dataset of 153 vice-chancellors from across the UK and at different types of institutions, it explores their tenure, their previous roles and institutions, as well as…

As US college campuses continue to be embroiled in demonstrations and internal conflict over the Israel-Hamas War more than one year after its outbreak, it is worth examining how the conflict initially boiled over into American higher education. To this end, the authors analyzed how university leaders chose to initially communicate with their…

Universities are increasingly perceived as strategic organizational actors that position themselves in the competition for reputation, resources, and talent. This study asks whether such positioning within the organizational field can explain variance in university governance structures. We quantitatively explore and explain the distribution of…

We study the pay of chief executives of higher education institutions in the UK, known as Vice Chancellors (VCs), over a ten-year period. As different institutions might have different missions and follow different performance objectives, we use the LASSO method in a novel way to choose which performance parameters are most strongly associated…