This paper briefly describes a higher education reform movement underway in Sweden and offers, respectively, the text and a summary of two policy-forming memoranda. A 1977 legislative decision on all postsecondary education gave the government authority to set education policy, and based the entire university and university college system on…

This report presents findings of an 18-month study to find out how state political and education leaders gauge the performance of citizen boards of trustees and to assess the overall condition of academic governance. The study included interviews with more than 250 state officials and education leaders, site visits to seven states, and an…

This paper presents a holistic conceptualization of the school as an autonomous system. Two major scientific paradigms, reductionism and holism, are outlined and their impacts on educational administration are discussed. Findings of a study that investigated the participation of the governing bodies of independent schools in the schools'…

Approaches to decentralization of public vocational education and training in New Zealand, New South Wales (NSW), and Victoria (Australia) were compared. The national training reform agenda and establishment of the Australian National Training Authority (ANTA) provided the national context for and influenced the direction of developments within…

This paper argues that changes in educational administration in Poland must be seen in the context of the enormous social and political changes that have occurred in that country in recent years. Centralized bureaucratic planning of social and economic programs has been discarded. The changes have impacted the system of educational administration…

A study was conducted to determine the location of authority in multi-unit two-year colleges. Inquiry forms listed 84 practices categorized as general (e.g., accreditation), business, curriculum, instruction, administrative personnel, teaching personnel, non-teaching personnel, research, services, student development services, and relationships…

The way that the participation of trustees in the processes of voluntary accreditation can help them in overseeing institutional autonomy and integrity is discussed, based on the work of a subcommittee of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. In addition, recommendations for board participation in institutional and…

Conditions and management procedures used in Dutch universities are discussed. Attention is directed to: (1) the structure of higher education in the Netherlands -- especially the University of Utrecht, its administrative procedures, and decision-making process; (2) the nature of the problems the university faced and the ineffective way in which…

Educational improvement can occur if school decisionmaking is shifted from centralized, "top down" administration to individual school control cooperatively directed by the principal, the staff, and parents. Site-based management allows the school a high degree of autonomy by placing the responsibility and authority for decisions at the school…

This audit assesses implementation of the University Operating Flexibility Act by the State University of New York (SUNY). The legislation was designed to give SUNY more autonomy to make daily operating decisions, in order that SUNY could better compete with other major higher education institutions nationwide. The legislation empowered SUNY to…

The relationship between amounts of state regulation and changes over time in faculty quality, student quality, and external funding success among public Ph.D.-granting universities was examined. Attention was also directed to the possibility that: campus flexibility has the greatest benefit for colleges that are poorly funded; or the possibility…

Two case studies of states that illustrate innovations in higher education budgeting are presented, based on a project of the Education Commission of the States. The two states, Colorado and Minnesota, took different approaches. In Colorado, the impetus for change came from key legislative members interested in providing greater autonomy to the…

Government policy on public support for private schools in Sweden, the United States, Australia, Hong Kong, The Netherlands, France and Malta, and Canada is reviewed. In Sweden virtually all schools are government schools funded by local and national grants; only a handful of private schools exist and they receive no government funds. The United…

Previous analyses of higher education policy in Sweden are addressed to examine the nature of the major tradeoffs between values. In addition, a set of value categories relevant to higher education policy in general is suggested. Values identified as particularly relevant to the analysis of higher education policy are equality, excellence,…

The origin of deregulation of higher education in Colorado, its effects, and implications for other states are discussed. In "How and Why It Happened," Thomas G. Tancredo traces the development of a new budgeting process, called MOU (memorandum of understanding). Under MOU each governing board is responsible for setting the expenditure…