Strategy briefing for universities: No.1

Excellence is not enough 

How to develop better management strategies for sustaining academic excellence

Does management really matter?

Like many other value-led professions - medicine, social care and legal services - higher education (HE) has a problem with management.  For many people working in universities, academic excellence and business management are regarded as incompatible bedfellows.

Deep-rooted tensions between the champions of academic autonomy and those concerned with institutional viability are characterised by some as a 'battle for the soul of the university'.  For others, however, the real battles are faced outside the academe, and are about shaping sustainable responses to the seismic shifts happening in the world of higher education.