innovation, profit and the common good in higher education: the new alchemy – by john harpur

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Shattock, M. (2010) Managing Successful Universities. (Second Edition)Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill, Society for Research into Higher Educa-tion & Open University Press. 225 pp. ISBN 978-0335237432 pb;£28.99.

Brown, R. (Eds). (2011) Higher Education and the Market. London:Routledge. 231 pp. ISBN 978-0415991681 hb; £24.99.

Ask any United Kingdom (UK) academic about their own workplaceand conversation will soon turn to a discussion of managing, orbeing managed, within an increasingly market-inflected universitysystem. Reading these two books against each other, and in the lightof the contributions to this special issue, one has an opportunityto see whether and how experiences of the academic workplace areechoed in the literature on management and ‘marketisation’ ofuniversities.

Despite differences in politics, tone and purpose, the volumes aredriven by the personalities and experiences of Brown and Shattockwho have both combined extensive managerial experience with aninterest in studying higher education systems. Brown was formerlyVice-Chancellor of Southampton Solent University and ChiefExecutive of the Higher Education Quality Council, before it wasreplaced by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Educationin 1998. From a career in policy making, Brown has become atrenchant critic of government quality assurance and the introductionof market mechanisms in recent higher education reforms. Shattock’strajectory has been less confrontational but equally influential. Duringhis own highly successful management career in the University ofWarwick, holding the role of University Registrar for 16 years, hechampioned innovative and entrepreneurial approaches to manage-ment and close collaborations between academics and administrators.Shattock’s concern about higher education management led himto launch a now renowned Masters programme at the Institute ofEducation.

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Higher Education Quarterly, 0951–5224Volume 66, No. 2, April 2012, pp 218–224

© 2012 The Authors. Higher Education Quarterly © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4, 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

How do the two volumes carry forward their respective projects?One adopts a tone of pragmatic optimism and aims to be a compre-hensive manual on managing British universities today. The other ismore abstract, combining a critical literature review with a series ofnational case studies on the impact of markets in order to imagine amore ‘balanced’ future that integrates ‘market’ and ‘non-market’approaches. This review summarises and discusses the key tenets ofeach volume, before hinting at some of the convergences in theauthors’ thinking.

Shattock’s writing exudes the confidence, authority and wisdom of aseasoned university administrator and the first edition of this volume waspublished in 2003 to widespread acclaim. Managing Successful Universi-ties is underwritten by his abiding belief that success depends on insti-tutions finding ‘ways of getting a lot of relatively small decisions rightover a long period’ (p. 2–3). Far from being a populist managementmantra promising quick fixes or singular solutions, this is a blueprint fora holistic management style and for understanding and attending all thedifferent aspects of management that can ‘create a momentum in whichsuccess reinforces success’ (p. 277).That said, the book draws heavily ona range of influential management texts and is closely attentive to theways in which university cultures resemble, but also differ from, those ofsuccessful businesses.

In an age where university reputations and futures are increasinglydefined by national (and global) league tables, it is fitting that Shattock’sfirst chapter starts by discussing UK university performance over the lastthree decades as measured by successive Research Assessment Exercises,newspaper rankings and media guides. What does he conclude aboutthose universities (such as York, Warwick and the London School ofEconomics) that have climbed to the top of these league tables? Drawingon his own knowledge of this history, he suggests that they all share a‘strong organisational culture, a strongly competitive approach bothinternally and externally, a willingness to take bold decisions, a conserva-tive approach to finance . . . and a collegial approach to decision-making’(p. 26). Despite the fact that ‘the market’ in an abstract sense is rarelymentioned in his book, Shattock is keenly attentive to the importance ofcompetition and to the ways in which institutions respond (or fail torespond) to the pressures that they face.

Shattock expands on his vision of ‘institutional management in itsbroadest sense’ (p. 28) through ten subsequent chapters. Each focuseson a different aspect of management: strategy; finance; academic lead-ership; research and teaching; governance; knowledge exchange and

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© 2012 The Authors. Higher Education Quarterly © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

fundraising; reputation; ambition; entrepreneurialism; and ‘turninground failure’. Each attends to the messy everyday realities of manag-ing UK universities in a complex, mercurial and fast-shifting policyenvironment and each uses a range of helpful examples. In the sevenyears that have elapsed between the first and second edition, centralgovernment steering, competition and funding pressures have allgreatly intensified and Shattock rightly questions any ‘passive accep-tance of funding council formulae’ (p. 32). Instead, the focus has to beon ‘flexible evolutionary strategic planning’, ‘encouraging bottom-upapproaches’ and ‘incentivising performance and not control’ (p. 36).There is a great deal of practical advice here for senior managers,leavened with some salutary cases. Shattock emphasises the impor-tance of focusing on the ‘core business’ of teaching and research, ofcultivating collegiality and entrepreneurialism, sustaining links betweenacademics and administrators, and the need for financial sustainabilityand good governance. At the centre of this blueprint is the ‘strength-ened steering core’ of key figures on the university council and theirworking relationship.

As befits its title, the book adopts an upbeat and ‘can-do’ style and,whilst Shattock does acknowledge the challenges of working with scep-tical staff, he is rather more reticent about the many critiques that havebeen mounted of ‘audit culture’ or ‘new public management’ and theirexcesses. Perhaps unsurprisingly, systems for performance managementare more important than scholarly reflections on the new subjectivitiesfostered by a culture of performativity.The themes of academic mobility,insecurity and ‘hyperprofessionalism’ that dominate this special issue arenot his concern.

Under Brown’s editorial hand, Higher Education and the Market leavesbehind the nitty-gritty of managing the UK’s universities to attempt ascholarly overview of the pressures to make higher education systemsinternationally more market-like. Written in three parts, made up ofthirteen chapters, his contributions book-end nine excellent country casestudies that make up the middle section.

Brown is also sole author of the three chapters that make up the firstpart, in which he sets out to present a ‘balanced’ review of the existingliterature on markets. Chapter two begins with a normative categorisa-tion of a market-based higher education system. Chapter three is simi-larly decontextualised, offering a cost–benefit analysis. The benefits,responsiveness and efficiency, are dealt with in the space of two para-graphs and the rest of the chapter focuses on the limitations. It drawsheavily on perspectives from political economy to point to examples of

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deleterious consequences of ‘marketisation’, including growing stratifi-cation, decreasing system diversity and the social contract that existsbetween universities and society. However, the concept of the ‘market’ islargely taken for granted and its different manifestations, histories andmeanings within national systems are not discussed. The concepts of‘public’ and ‘private’ are also left unexamined.

The next part consists of nine detailed national case studies, each ofwhich seeks to flesh out Brown’s skeletal conceptualisation. Writtenby experienced scholar-administrators, the cases are apposite and well-chosen, offering insight into the different national flavours of the‘marketisation’ dynamic. The first is on the US competition for under-graduates and the complexity of its ‘multiple markets’. Moodies’ chapteron the emerging student market in Australian higher education similarlypoints to the challenges of moving to a pure market model, suggestingthat ‘quasi markets’ (p. 72) are the best that can be expected. Thepressures of the hardening ‘reputational hierarchy’ (p. 82) within the UKsystem that Locke describes in his contribution are borne out in severalof the papers in this special issue. Subsequent chapters on Holland,Germany, Portugal, Finland and Japan highlight the particular localresonances of each national debate and make clear that Europeansystems are still heavily regulated and that marketisation is proceeding atvery different rates.

The book’s prevailing ethos is captured in the title of Brown’s lengthyfinal chapter: ‘Taming the Beast’. In it, he suggests a set of ways forgovernments to use public policy to ‘steer’ institutions within a marketenvironment. Here he sees a key role for public policy in sustaining adifferentiated system, through research funding and quality assurance,and has a number of insightful proposals.

What brings the two volumes together, apart from the long lists ofbullet points littering both texts? Despite their different political persua-sions and intellectual purposes, Brown and Shattock share a commit-ment to protecting the ‘core functions’ of universities and academicautonomy. Shattock takes for granted the changing institutional andpolicy environment shaping universities, seeing the job of universities asresponding, whilst ensuring dialogue and consensus with academics. ForBrown, the answer lies in regulating markets. Both are advocating whatBrown calls ‘a balanced university system’ (p. 196). Where they woulddiffer is in their definition of this term and who holds ultimate respon-sibility for sustaining this balance.

David Mills, University of Oxford

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Harpur, John (2010) Innovation, Profit and the Common Good in HigherEducation:The New Alchemy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 310 pp.ISBN 978-0320537873 hb; £55.00.hequ_519 222..••

The title of Harpur’s book is made up of a series of powerful andcontested terms in higher education: innovation, profit and the commongood. However, the second part of the title: ‘the new alchemy’ immedi-ately forces the reader to consider the relationship between these.Echoing this, the cover of the review copy shows what looks like a metalin a state of change, flux and recombination. This metaphor of alchemyis sustained throughout this scholarly and detailed work exploringthemes of ethics, the economy and higher education innovation policiesin the post-industrial age.

In his preface, Harpur rejects the conventional binary of the academicversus vocational university, arguing that they are now in some respectsindistinguishable, due in part to the Bologna process of recent years. Hefocuses on governments’ desire to see higher education contribute toeconomic prosperity and considers how this impulse has become a majordriver of research and funding, examining the resultant effects on allaspects of the university and its mission. In doing so he refers to his keynotion of alchemy: the attempt to turn ‘stuff’ into gold; knowledge intoeconomic growth.

In his prologue, Harpur sets out the predominant schools of thoughtsurrounding the relationship between the university and commerce,pointing out the typically binary or oppositional nature of the debate(such as Marxism versus capitalism) and the host of questions it raises.In particular, he highlights the resultant fixation on ‘innovation’ andassociated discourse of inevitable change and the need for constantreinvention on the part of universities. In discussing this, he raises theissue that knowledge is in fact non-rivalrous and cannot be held by onebeneficiary, leading to a disincentive for firms to invest in the outcomesof research and development. This critical, questioning stance is main-tained as he throws out a series of challenges to received wisdomsurrounding the relationship between research and development, com-mercial activity and the development of the ‘knowledge economy’. Indoing so he also critiques the underlying motivations driving educationaltechnologies and e-learning, citing these as also forming part of a drivetowards the wider commodification of higher education. He also exam-ines widening participation as a further force driving change, going on toexamine the resultant management fetishisation of the notion of changeitself and resultant sense of endless churn in the sector. He completes his



scene setting by pointing out the increasingly troubled relationshipbetween science and society, due to commercial pressures and contem-porary social perceptions of all-prevalent risks associated with techno-logical advances.

It is in this complex, multifaceted, contemporary context that theuniversity has to continue to make and remake its relationship withsociety and the market, while still retaining its role as a public good witha focus on education. Harpur reminds us of the urgency with whichUnited States (US) policy makers focused on technological dominationin the context of emergent Asian economies, critically examining theimpacts of neoliberalism on policy orientations towards academia. Healso provides a comprehensive historical overview of the growth ofmanagerialism and quality assurance in the sector and the influenceof business and entrepreneurialism on the management of highereducation. In doing so he draws out the significance of the liberalisationof patents in the US via the Bayh-Doyle Act of 1980 and its impactsfurther afield in mainstreaming commitments to technology transfer. Ina fascinating section, he then likens policy formation to a form ofmyth-making or story-telling where it is believed that there will inevitablybe a happy ending, going on to ask questions of the ethics of universitiesoperating as semi-private enterprises. He returns to the notion ofalchemy in a subsequent discussion of whether the ontological status ofthe university is set to change—to be fundamentally altered in itsnature—and points out the ideologically-slanted ‘utopian seed’ inherentin the twin notions of the ‘knowledge economy’ and the ‘informationsociety’ (p. 26).

The rest of the book explores these themes in some detail. The firstsubstantive chapter deals with the commodification and export ofhigher education, the economic motivations for globalisation of highereducation policies and the positioning of students as consumers withdetailed discussion of the ramifications of adopting a marketised modelin the sector. The third chapter focuses in detail on both the historicalbackground and also recent developments in Irish higher education inparticular. This comprehensive chapter provides a great deal of histori-cal and cultural insight and will be of particular interest to specialistsin the field of Irish higher education, past and present. He concludeshis review by pointing out Ireland’s vulnerability to the vicissitudes ofinternational policy trends, and the amplifying effect of the small scaleof the nation, and draws out the often ambiguous effects of researchand development initiatives and the need to retain the focus on coreacademic mission.

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Harpur brings the reader back to the notion of alchemy and transfor-mation in the fourth chapter, which focuses in more detail on therelationship between science, profit and the university. In this discussionhe again highlights the host of ambiguities associated with this area ofhigher education practice in ethical terms. He provides a rich, thought-provoking critique of some idealised assumptions made about scienceand scientists of the past and a detailed discussion of how science hasbeen considered from various theoretical standpoints, followed by con-sideration of the funding of science and its role in society. The fifthchapter concerns itself in more detail with what he terms ‘the newalchemy’ in the ‘furnace of innovation’ (p. 164), drawing on growththeory as a means of understanding the entrepreneurial university. In hisfinal chapter, intriguingly entitled ‘Secrets—the Future of the FutureUniversity’, Harpur confronts what he calls ‘a new fundamentalism’ inhigher education (p. 210): the belief that higher education should be amandatory experience for all school leavers. He challenges the notionthat higher education is necessarily the key to economic competitivenessand argues that there may be an over-supply of graduates. The chaptergoes on to explore various tensions that Harpur perceives surroundingmassification.

This is a volume with a very broad scope, a wide-ranging set of themesand multiple reference points to theory, history and culture. As such, itis difficult to do it full justice in a short review. Due to its broad frame ofreference, at times I felt the book would have benefitted from a ratherstronger statement of structure and intention, in order to draw togetherand focus the core argument, drawing more tightly together a widerange of historical and critical threads.The focus felt occasionally a little‘scattergun’; such as the brief and rather wholesale dismissal of post-modernism as a theoretical influence in the academy. Additionally, somemore explicit links to related research and literature might have helped toanchor it more firmly in existing scholarship and thought.

However, these are minor caveats and perhaps inevitable outcomes oftackling such an ambitiously large and complex set of topics. Harpurprovides a fresh set of perspectives on these issues, constantly challeng-ing orthodoxies, asking questions and drawing together and recombiningelements in order to make something new. In that regard, this bookperhaps retains a whiff of the alchemist’s workshop: experimental, ques-tioning, occasionally haphazard but ultimately working to put familiarelements together to create something new and valuable.

Lesley Gourlay, Institute of Education, University of London



innovation, profit and the common good in higher education: the new alchemy – by john harpur

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