University as corporation

In my university, Northumbria, the VC (who also bears, significantly, the title Chief Executive) has just completed a round of staff briefings to present 'Vision 2025'. I was intrigued to not that he and the governors have clearly been considering things in the kind of way that this article
Focusing a Corporate Lens on Global Universities - Planet Academe - The Chronicle of Higher Education envisages:

when universities overcome their natural resistance to comparing themselves to multinational corporations, they can think in new and useful ways. And learning to think differently is, after all, what universities are all about.

In particular these things from the article resonate:

Universities need to make it someone’s job to manage international partnerships, to sustain relationships, to make sure the institution and its partners are getting what they want from relationships

I think that 'we' can tick that box: over the last couple of years or so there have been appointments in this area in its various dimensions. Or at least so it seems to me.
And how about this? 

Universities, like companies, may need to make the transformation from being a national brand to being a global one.

This was, essentially, one of the big themes in the VC's briefing. Except that, perhaps, the leap is even bigger: from a regional to a global 'brand'. The demographics are a clear indicator of what needs to happen: today's 1-5 year olds will only number about 3.5 million in 2025, which is not a lot to share between 140 or so institutions as they exist today in GB. But look at the comparable figures for China, India, Indonesia and you'll see which are the big markets to reach for. Go figure...
And I think I discern the basis in the way that I hear university managers talking for this being taken seriously, especially as the university already has very good employability ratings and a big focus on professional education.

An organization, whether it is a company or a university, can identify two arrows. One is what people are looking for in jobs, and the other is what the institution has to offer. An organization that can find the intersection of those arrows can build powerful, long-term success.

And I suspect that the recent de-merging of Careers from Student Support and Wellbeing in the University -and it seems to be a very good careers service- may be about freeing them up to help in this process, but I may be over-interpretnig. If so, then it certainly won't harm the Uni to be doing this in the light of this remark.


Of course, the wider issue is how far we 'like' the idea of university as corporation, but it does seem that survival and thriving have a financial dimension and this does indicate that attention to matters that enable thriving in financial terms. The problems with the model are not at that level, but whether the mentality associated with the business model is compatible with or noxious to the main 'missions' of a university. I think that this is analogous to individual human beings experiencing some tension between various aims in life. We sometimes express this in phrases such as 'Am I eating to live or living to eat?" or 'Are we working to live or living to work?'. For a university, I suspect,  this may be something like 'Are we making money to learn and teach or are we teaching and learning to make money?' And, as with human individuals, it is easy to slip from the healthy  '-ing to live' to the soul-destroying 'living to -', so it may be be universities, I would suggest.


With human individuals we know or suspect that they/we have veered into the unhealthy relationship with work or money when relationships are damaged, physical health is compromised and mood falls into depression and irritability which may also show up in poor decision-making.


I would suggest that similarly with universities. Relationships with partners, employees, government and the environment are damaged (and this may involve fraudulent and abusive patterns of behaviour); organisational dysfunction becomes prevalent; employee satisfaction falls and morale plummets. Now those things need to be read off in terms of people being part of the enterprise of HE because they believe in something of the 'mission' of a university (and, theologically, I'd say that has something to do with the providential purposes 'under God' which is strongly related, I would suggest, to the vocation of an HEI) and that would have a relation to the issue of morale.


Hmmm. It'd be great if there were comments on what other uni's are doing, but I' don't know how many of my readers are likely to be in a position to do so...