The struggle for professional voice in a tertiary education market

Nearly three decades of government agencies and institutional management trying to redirect the focus of tertiary education is creating a yawning gap between sector leaders and staff. This paper explores the tensions created by the different visions for tertiary education using a survey of 1006 New...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:New Zealand sociology 2018-01, Vol.33 (2), p.133-167
Main Authors: Sedgwick, Charles P, Grey, Sandra
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accountability
Administration
Aims and objectives
Capitalism
Chief executives
Curriculum planning
Economic growth
Education
Education reform
Education, Higher
Educational systems
Executives
Fund raising
Government agencies
Higher education
Higher education and state
ITP New Zealand
Labor
Learning
Lifelong learning
Management
Markets
Morality
Neoliberalism
New public management
Objectives
Planning
Politics
Polls & surveys
Postsecondary education
Professional staff
Public administration
Public sector
Respondents
Social aspects
Teaching
Unesco
Universities and colleges
Yawning
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Summary:Nearly three decades of government agencies and institutional management trying to redirect the focus of tertiary education is creating a yawning gap between sector leaders and staff. This paper explores the tensions created by the different visions for tertiary education using a survey of 1006 New Zealand tertiary education staff. The survey demonstrates the gap between the professional voice of staff, rooted in transformative learning and critical inquiry, and the direction of the sector set by successive governments and implemented by Vice-Chancellors and Chief Executives. Survey respondents spoke of a disconnect between their drive for transformative education and the narrow goals set in the dominant 'new public management' approach of meeting 'market targets' and contributing to ‘economic growth’. In questioning the very integrity of a tertiary education system rooted in a market model, staff remained resolute to seeing education as a transformative space. Survey respondents believed that the removal of metrics focused on narrow economic goals and a refocusing on teaching and learning by the management of institutions could turn around the failed new public management experiment.
ISSN:0112-921X
1173-1036
1173-1036