The future of research universities…towards a post-modern university?

Via Scoop.it – Dual impact of research; towards the impactelligent university

The paper considers the future of the research university and finds that it is unlikely to continue adherence to a business model in which strategy is determined and directed from the top. A Mode 2 perspective suggests that the sector will contain a variety of forms, the characteristics of each shaped by the performance of centres of excellence and relevance.   One of the conclsions of this paper: For research universities, the key challenge is to diversify and recombine its components, both cognitively and institutionally, into what we have called the ‘post-modern university’. Such a university will have overlaps and/or alliances with centres (of excellence and relevance), public laboratories of various kinds (which are themselves on the move), and various private organizations managing and performing
research. Within such a post-modern university, individual departments (faculties, institutes) are relatively independent and can follow their own trajectories by emphasizing certain areas in response to external developments, and by developing new combinations of research and training. In the strategically important middle
layer in the university, now occupied by faculties and centres competing among each other for resources and favours from the top, an entrepreneurial element is introduced which will increase the flexibility of the institution as a whole. Traditional disciplinary departments and Fakultäten may well disappear in the end, but that is not inevitable; they can remain as one part of this heterogeneous milieu   Source: (2011). The future of research universities. Prometheus: Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 443-453. Arie Rip, School of Management and Governance, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Via www.tandfonline.com

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