On the Very Model of a Modern Major Manager:The Importance of Academic Administrators in Support of the New Pedagogy

Abstract

The shifting nature of organizational practice within higher education (HE) is such that the contemporary university may, at this stage of its evolution, be completely unrecognizable from the haven of liberal education first described by Cardinal Newman in the early nineteenth century (see, e.g., Senior et al., 2017a). Unlike these small elite institutions, the modern day university is more akin to the pluralistic “multiversity” first described by Charles Kerr in 2001. This model for an effective institute is one that is immediately recognizable as a modern day enterprise with a diverse portfolio of large-scale research activities informing an equally diverse portfolio of large-scale academic programs (Kerr, 2001). One only has to spend a short period of time in any modern day university to realize that Kerr’s model for a university is very much the dominant design within the global HE sector. Such diversity breeds a new psychology in the individuals who govern HE institutes and needs to be considered to ensure that despite its complexity HE is still delivered effectively.