The Governance of European Higher Education: Convergence or Divergence? with Michael Shattock

Samantha Pufek: You're listening to the world of higher education podcast. Season three, episode 17.
Alex Usher: Hi everyone, I'm Alex Usher, and this is the World of Higher Education podcast. Higher education is famously isomorphic. Around the world, knowledge is divided into disciplines in almost identical ways. Around the world, students go through a largely similar bachelor's, master's, doctorate sequence. And around the world, higher education institutions are heavily stratified, mainly according to their research outputs. Higher education institutions aren't exactly homogenous. But the systems they live in, what they do, what they cover, et cetera, are substantially similar, except for one thing. Governance.
Governance can mean a few things in higher education. At the system level, it's about the relationship between institutions, both individually and collectively, and government. At the institutional level, it's about the nature of public oversight, if any. These two different varieties of governance vary enormously from one country to another, and I would argue, are at the root of the glorious level of disharmony, individuality, and sheer quirkiness we see across national systems today, despite all the drivers towards isomorphism.
The person who's possibly written the most about this topic anywhere, ever, is Michael Shattock. He's the former Registrar of Warwick University, a visiting professor at the University College of London's Institute of Education, and an Honorary Research Professor in the Department of Education at Oxford University. He's the author or co author of a number of books about university governance around the world, and he joined us for this episode to talk about one of his more recent books, published by Bloomsbury, called The Governance of European Higher Education, Convergence or Divergence, co authored with Aniko Horvath and Juergen Enders.
Europe has some very old and deep seated differences in the ways universities are governed. The French, German, and English systems, to take only three, have completely different ideas about what the relationship between the university and the state should be, not to mention some very contrasting notions about the role of the professoriate in institutional management. What practical impact do these differences have? Well, that's what Michael and I sat down to chat about a few weeks ago. I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Michael, in your book, you talk about there being three kind of grand traditions of European governance in Europe, a British model, an Anglosphere model, a French Napoleonic model, and a German Humboldtian model. How do those three styles or, or forms of governance vary when it comes to the relationship between universities and the state.
Michael Shattock: Well, I think I'd start by answering that I wouldn't see them as grand traditions. I think what they are now, at least, is a sort of underlying component to higher education policies. For example, the humble tradition started in 1810 and was of interest, interest across europe because it brought together research and teaching into one model. Whereas almost simultaneously napoleon was establishing a single university for the whole of France, but which was entirely to do with teaching. And of course, this led to the foundation of the Grande Ecole and so forth, which again, were about training. And if you turn then to the Anglophone tradition, these universities the universities in that tradition as it were, were founded by local communities and so forth and had no relationship with the state at all to begin with. So, the UK, system was of considerable autonomy, which only began to be reduced when they sought money from the state, and that was formalized in 1919. That changed again in 1946, when after the Second World War, the universities were without resources, and the government basically decided to cover the full costs of the universities.
Alex Usher: So one area where I think these three traditions or approaches to university state relations, where that's been most important in the last, well, say since World War II, has been in the way that different countries have expanded their higher education systems, either introducing new universities or introducing new types of institutions like fachhochschule, or the, in France, the Institut Universitaire de Technologie. You know, does one system handle massification better than the others?
Michael Shattock: Well, I'm a, a considerable admirer of Germany in this respect. One of the successes is that in the German constitution written in the 1940s, 1950s, is that there should be absolute homogeneity between different lender. And the second thing in Germany is that higher education is devolved to the lender. So what you have is 16 or 17 lender, each with their own higher education systems. And these systems are very closely intertwined they're controlled by the Conference of German Rectors by the lender themselves, who meet frequently, and of course, by the government, the Wissenschaft, and so forth. But the fact of the matter is that if you look at a particular lender, what you will find is that there is not the kind of competition that is created by an entirely marketized system. Where the German system is less successful is that the Germans, following Humboldt, of course, the Germans insist that all universities should also be research orientated as well as teaching orientated. And in the expansion, the fachhochschulen, founded since the war have not been allowed to undertake research. So you have a system in Germany now where three quarters of the student higher education population are in the universities and only one quarter are in the Fachhochschulen. But in terms of how you look at the German system, it's more equal across Germany, and it does have a very strong research and teaching principles of operation.
Alex Usher: Right, interesting. So, now of course, governance isn't just about relations between universities in the state. There's also the issue of how institutions govern themselves. How do we see, you know, the, these three big traditions, you know, how do they differ on that front?
Michael Shattock: Well, of course if you start with the Napoleonic tradition, and that covers not just France, but to a great extent, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. What you find is that, there is still a very strong state, controlling influence in the universities. Although they are theoretically committed to the state merely being a steering body. In practice, the system is highly regulated. So the first issue about how you deal with expansion is, does the state, as it were, go along with expansion and does it plan its resources accordingly? Whereas if you look at the UK, there is a tacit belief that if you have the appropriate qualifications, you should be able to find a place in higher education. So the money theoretically follows the students, though what we found in the last five years is that we get the students, but the money doesn't follow. Secondly there has been a great debate in Brussels or rather originally in Lisbon for the Lisbon declaration that continental European universities should match universities in the United States. And there have been a series of reports and some excellent research by Professor Aguillon who has argued that the great difference between the continental universities and American universities was the existence of a lay run governing body. And so the, principle of having a governing body as distinct from simply having an academic body has been discussed in every country and every country has come up with a different solution. You have the extreme solution in Hungary where you have a governing body of only five members of the leading political party. And this has been objected to in Brussels. Whereas in Norway, the governing body has, two, three, four, five lay people, but the rest of the governing body are academics. And in Norway they've abolished the Senate because they feel they don't need it anymore. So there are very striking changes in the, as it were, the top, top committee of universities.
Alex Usher: We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back.
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Alex Usher: And we're back. Michael you state early on in your book that you, that, you know, that European systems have been dealing with three big challenges this century. And the first is the Lisbon declaration around making Europe the most innovative society in the world. And the second is the Bologna process, and the third is the growth of international rankings. How have systems in Europe changed you know, in response to these big three drivers, I guess? Has it been a uniform set of responses or have different systems tried to cope with these challenges differently?
Michael Shattock: Well, if you'll recall, my book has a secondary title Convergence or Divergence. And I think the expectation, after Lisbon was that there would be considerable convergence. But higher education was not part of the Treaty of Rome and so formally speaking, the EU has no entree to higher education. You would have thought that after Bologna and the identification of a model 3 2 3 system for higher education, three years for first degrees, two years for master's degrees and three years for PhD, you would have thought that there would be a great deal of convergence in the running of the universities. That has not been the case. And in fact, the book argues strongly that divergence, has overcome convergence, that there are elements of convergence, but uh, for the most part, you have divergence, and that reflects national, well, national preconceptions, and, as it were national resources.
I mean, if you look at Portugal, we selected in the book, because as representing universities, in the south of Europe. And Portugal, had universities in the coast in in, in Lisbon in Porto and in Coimbra, but it had no universities out in the countryside. And so one of the big efforts in Portugal has actually been to establish institutions, in the countryside. Not wholly successfully, but it's been an important part of the of their higher education program.
Alex Usher: So you talk about the divergence is overcoming convergence, but sometimes, you know, those are two, because people are starting in different places, they might have divergent reactions, which still leads them to converge on a single model. And I'll give you an example here, and it's the way that research and teaching are treated. You know, I think in, in the Anglosphere model and the German model, where you know, those activities as you have been thought of as related, at least for a few decades now, the tendency seems to be driving those two apart, right? Mainly through institutional, stratification, right? And I think that's a point that you'd made in there is that is, you know, certainly within the English system, some institutions becoming a lot more research intensive. Are we actually, at least at the level of how academic culture and academic work habits, in terms of those two things, are we actually coming to a convergence across Europe?
Michael Shattock: Well, I don't think it's a convergence, but you will remember going back to Lisbon, the accent placed on the need for a greater commitment to research in the university systems. What that has brought about is considerable change in the structure of higher education systems. So that in Britain, for example, in the UK, research is actually handled by a different department of state. So the Department of Education looks after, in effect, teaching, and the Department of Industry and Innovation looks after research. So you have the money for universities coming from two separate pockets. In portugal, We we came across a very curious situation where the government felt it had to put more money into research, and it suggested, or the university suggested, that you should take research out of the main campus and establish it in small off campus situations where polytechnics with, some good researchers could join in with researchers from established research universities. The problem there is that these research campuses are becoming more and more independent from the universities themselves. Rectors find that they don't know what's going on in, in the research campuses. So instead of strengthening the polytechnics tended to turn the university campuses into teaching only campuses. And that is a, a backward step I think. Where the EU has come in now, even though it doesn't have a formal role in higher education, is in the, horizon program where very large sums of money are put up to be bid for by academics within the European Union. Britain has just negotiated itself back into horizon uh, after, you know, Brexit. And so there it, you could draw the conclusion that the EU formerly very concerned about undergraduate teaching as demonstrated by the Bologna uh, process is now putting all its money into higher education, into research, through the Horizon program. So universities are being pulled in different directions and in different ways country to country.
Alex Usher: Michael, I enjoyed your discussion of student participation in university governance. It seems to me that, you know, in continental Europe anyway, you've got, situations where students have a very large. share of institutional decision making, but they tend to use it for fairly technocratic ends.
Have student movements been co opted? What's the trend with student organizations in Europe?
Michael Shattock: Well, I I think the cultures are different, you know, between different countries. I mean, if I start off with Germany, the German higher education system suffered enormously from student activism in the eighties and nineties. And what's left after all that is students having, a major involvement in the Senate. A, an involvement which pretty striking in that, a selected candidate, for a professorship will go to the Senate for approval, and the student members of the Senate have as much right as challenging or applauding the appointment as any of the academic members of the Senate. Students become part of the internal negotiations within the university. Rectors will play off students against groups of academics. You know, they are a core element in the governance of the university. Now, in Norway and also in Portugal, the student organizations, the national student organizations, are powerful within the government of the country, but they also, play a very large part in what you might call the domestic social side of universities, provision of accommodation, careers advice, all those kinds of services. Which, you know, might in the British system and I think the Canadian system would all be handled by the university themselves. So students might be concerned and are concerned about certain academic issues. But they play very little part, I think, in the running of the university.
Alex Usher: Interesting. So this isn't your first book on, on writing about university governance. You've written books about university governance in Britain, and you wrote one about a decade ago on international trends in university governance. And I'm curious with this new book on Europe, is Europe heading in a similar direction to the rest of the world, or is it swimming in a different direction?
Michael Shattock: Well, the global trend is greater state involvement and concern about higher education. know, even in countries like Japan, they have attempted to move from a government and management relationship with universities to a steering relationship. But actually, of course, the government still has an enormous grip on the university system. And I think if you look across Europe, you'll find different approaches to state controls. You've mentioned in one of your earlier questions, Hungary. And there in Hungary, what you see is a situation where the state, has really taken over the running of the system. The state imposes chancellors drawn from other public services to sit on the governing body and sit by the rector and have control over finance. Whereas I think you would find in Norway and in, in, well, in, in Germany as well, you would find that the state tends to hang back. Some states believe, and I think Germany is one of them, that university autonomy is extremely important to university success. Whereas in Britain, we tend to say that, but we don't do it. And we are very concerned about league tables, and you know where britain stands in the league tables, equally in Germany. And a further element of change has been the beginning of a belief that universities are in a way anchors in their community. In other words, the place of a university is particularly important in relatively small towns and so forth that it universes have a kind of social impact on the population and that again is something which is different and new from what we'd have seen 25 years ago
Alex Usher: Okay. So let's, let's not talk about what happened 25 years ago. Let's think about 25 years in the future. How many of these trends do you think will continue? If you think if you wrote this book again in 2050, would you be seeing more convergence or divergence, do you think?
Michael Shattock: Well, I really was afraid that you'd ask me that question and I thought a bit about it. In simply I think that in europe, divergence will continue. I think that the nation state You at the moment in Europe, will, as it were break the attempt by the EU to modernize and converge systems.
Alex Usher: Michael Shattock thanks so much for joining us today.
Michael Shattock: Pleasure.
Alex Usher: And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany McLennan and Sam Pufek, and you, our readers, listeners, and viewers for tuning in. If you have any questions about today's episode or suggestions for future ones, please don't hesitate to contact us at podcasts at higher ed strategy. com. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Never miss an episode of the world of higher education. Join us next week when our guest will once again be Javier Botero, who joins us to talk about recent developments in Colombian higher education and how the government's financial challenges are affecting policies around tuition and student financial aid.
Bye for now.