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The Role of Governments in Shaping Governance of Higher Education Institutions in the Arab World
Abstract
The universities’ governance reflects society’s culture, its needs of promoting individuals’ well‐being, and public interests. Its evolution shows the importance of the governance and its institutional administrative objectives. The Arab historical traditions and the nature of governments’ role influence its advancement. Diversification and openness to international institutions answer the increasing youth population demand on education. The Arab central and negative controlling governments’ role shapes the higher education governance through laws, projects, and strategies: funding, policies’ clarity deficiency, research’s shortage, free citizens’ education, and social justice insurance. It intervenes in the details as centralized students’ enrollment system, and cadres’ appointment. The change is unsuccessful since higher education governance lacks stakeholders’ participation in decision‐making, reflecting the contradiction between its objectives and the nature of the political regime.
... The State-centered model is too conservative in terms of regulation. In this model, the government is responsible for coordinating different aspects of higher education, as higher education institutions (HEIs) are considered public institutions managed by the political system (Habchi, 2018). The self-rule model defines universities as organizations serving the government's objectives. ...
... The self-rule model defines universities as organizations serving the government's objectives. In this model, universities define their own research goals and objectives that carry their own intrinsic values independently of national and social interests (Olsen 2007, as cited in Habchi, 2018). The market-based model considers universities to be effective because of good relationships with market forces. ...
... The market-based model considers universities to be effective because of good relationships with market forces. Adapted to the liberal free-market system, universities function as financial corporations that compete to attract more students and financial resources (Habchi, 2018). ...
The issue of the university’s models of governance is of cardinal importance and provokes great controversy. Academic literature has referred to different models or classifications of university governance. In the case of Morocco, a few articles address the issue of governance models in Moroccan universities. Here, we aimed to highlight the governance model currently adopted by Moroccan universities, adopting a descriptive and analytical approach, through the reading and analysis of the legislative texts and official reports that govern higher education in Morocco. We found that the governance of higher education evolved with Law 01.00 of the year 2000, from a model of governance controlled by the State to a model of governance supervised by the State. As a result, the autonomy of universities has been strengthened and stakeholder involvement has been broadened. It is a mixed model that brings together, with different degrees, characteristics of the “academic” model, the “political” model, the “bureaucratic” model, and the “stakeholder model” to some extent. However, given the multiple challenges and pressures faced by Moroccan universities such as employability and funding problems, we believe that they must change the paradigm to adopt a governance model that combines respect for academic values with the contribution to the socio-economic development of the nation, a more flexible model, more inclusive, more participatory and more entrepreneurial, which encourages self-employment, having a global vision and a regional vocation, oriented towards local development. This research is one of the first attempts at understanding the Moroccan university governance models. It enriches the theoretical literature on the crisis of Moroccan higher education, mainly the issue of governance models, and opens the way to new studies that aim to improve the governance and the quality of higher education.
... One of the main reasons why the Arab universities lagged back behind world class universities is lack of research excellence [5], as the poor contribution of Arab universities to the production of knowledge affects their position in global rankings [32]. While several higher education institutions in the Arab world have progressed in size, their contribution to the scientific literature remains relatively modest [27]. ...
... More than 95% of educational decisions made by educational institutions in the Arab world are controlled by governments and specifically by the ministry of education. This type of centralized state model, with its lack of transparency, negatively affects institutions' ability to innovate and significantly reduces the capacity for innovation in the domain of research and development [32]. The state-dominated approach has led to numerous dysfunctions in the higher education system including stifled institutional autonomy, limited flexibility, rigidity of education and training programs, and more importantly, weak responsiveness to student demands, the needs of the labour market and national development goals [43]. ...
The purpose of the current study is to identify the challenges of international ranking of Egyptian universities as perceived by university academicians, and analyze the significant differences among the participants' responses based on their gender, position title, specialization, and experience. A 28 items survey covered the four areas of challenges of university rankings was used. A sample of 325 academicians in eleven Egyptian state universities was surveyed. Responses received only from 247 academicians, representing a response rate of 76 percent. The responses indicated that the most ranking challenges for Egyptian universities ascending by means were: 'Faculty Challenges', 'Research Challenges', 'Institution Challenges', and 'Quality Challenges', all of these challenges were in high level. There were no significant differences at the 0.05 level among the university academicians related to their gender, position title, specialization, and experience.
... The higher education system in the Arab world, despite all the efforts and government expenditure to improve higher education governance, reflects a deeper level of challenges and problems. Habchi [6]. ...
In recent years, the concept of university governance has become a determining factor in the quality of higher education in different countries and possibly has an impact on their economic and social development. The study aimed to identify the state of governance of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University according to the views of students. The researchers used the descriptive method in the study. The population of the study consisted of all the students of Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University for the 2017/2018 academic year. The study sample was random and had 947 members. The researchers used a questionnaire to collect the data to achieve the study's objectives. It was composed of (20) distributed elements in the fields of study. The results indicated that within the University of Fez, there is a very moderate application of the principles of governance, which may also be the case for other Moroccan universities. This may well be the source of the failure of our higher education system.
Massification, globalisation, and digitisation of higher education have substantially changed the nature and content of tertiary-learning programmes. Much greater percentages of school leavers now seek university qualifications as a means of improving their employability for future career roles, many of which are yet to be identified. To prepare students for this emerging professional and personal landscape of fluidity, higher-education institutions must also be open to change, as needed, the academic and applied content of programmes so that students graduate with qualifications that are relevant. Accordingly, the internal governance within individual institutions should have the autonomy to react in a timely manner to marketplace changes and effectively manage faculty academic freedom at an individual and collective level. For this to occur, external governance should be from a distance, through guidance rather than direction, and with autonomy balanced by accountability. Both internal and external governance across higher education will need to be flexible, inclusive, and anticipatory. The higher-education sector in the Arab world, in recent times, has lagged behind in external governance reforms, which has directly impacted the internal governance of universities and hindered their progression. This chapter examines the needed reforms and uses Jordan as a case study for illustrative purposes.
Higher education governance refers to the legal appropriation of decision making power within universities between the various governance structures (faculty, academic committees, senates, and boards) and administrative structures (departments, programs, presidents, and vice presidents). The purpose of higher education governance is to articulate common public interests and to realize their goals while determining the limits of authority in theory and in practice – who shall decide and what is at the focus of decisions. From the late 19th century until the early 1950s, university governance followed the principle of administrative autonomy, meaning that they were free to act and conduct themselves according to their own standards without bowing to the needs or demands of a funding government. However, the transition to a capitalist economy and society, in addition to the rapid rise in the number of students and the transformation of higher education into a mass commodity, required countries worldwide to seek new models of governance, with the aim of increasing academic order and efficiency. The different styles of governance can be charted along three main models, based on the mutual relations between market forces, the state, and higher education. The current paper reviews the various models of higher education governance and portrays the Israeli model. Finally, the strengths and weaknesses of each model are discussed, as well as the future of Israeli governance in light of local winds of change and global trends.
This paper describes the commercial provision of education goods (books, pedagogical software, etc.) and services (testing, evaluation, management consulting, etc.) and argues that a vibrant private sector is an essential ingredient for an efficient and high-quality public school system. It also describes the rising trade in education goods and services and points to areas of controversy associated with that trade. It concentrates on one ingredient of the overall picture, that of educational qualifications. It discusses how changes in technology and labour markets are forcing a shift in the debate over access to education. Some argue that education, chosen by the individual, is a human right. Others argue that education by nature is different from other public services justifying government prohibition of private and/or international providers. Central to the debate are the differences from one part of the world to another in how educational institutions are accredited and how graduates become certified to enter the professional workforce. However one may feel, these issues are destined to become an important ingredient of the international education debate over the next decade.
The American campus-state relationship typically is cast in terms of a fundamental, even paradoxical, tension between the dual demands of institutional autonomy and public accountability, or between the university’s right to regulate its affairs from within and the state’s authority (and responsibility) to regulate the university’s affairs from without (Bailey, 1975; Berdahl, 1971; Carnegie Foundation, 1982; Glenny and Schmidtlein, 1983; Graham, 1989; Hines, 1988; Millet, 1982; Mortimer and McConnell, 1982; Newman, 1987; Volkwein, 1987). Because neither absolute autonomy of the campus from the state nor complete accountability of the campus to the state is likely to be feasible, the vexing question confronting policymakers is where, precisely, the line should be drawn between campus and state. The dominant pattern of the twentieth century was one of increasing involvement and intervention by state governments in the higher education sector. A large volume of literature has amassed, around, the interactions between higher education and state governments, focusing particularly on the development and functioning of different governance arrangements for higher education and on the effects of these different arrangements upon various institutional and state policy outcomes.
This article examines the Bologna Process to explore some of issues that Euroland faces in its bid to construct the European Higher Education Area. However, the author's purpose lies elsewhere-namely, to lay bare some of the assumptions beneath the various major systems of higher education in Western Europe. The article examines some of the tensions certain assumptions have created in the ongoing saga of reconstruction, particularly those that relate to one of the basic issues in higher education: namely, the community to which the university is answerable and how it is answerable. Finally, this article examines changes between higher education and its referential community in Western Europe in terms of the Bologna Declaration. In place of the monolithic, territorially defined referential community-the nation-state-that evolved over the past 190 years or more, the power both of a superordinate community and of subnational units is growing.
In this article, we report the results of an analysis of legislatively enacted reforms in state governance of higher education from 1985–2000. Building on the state policy innovation and diffusion literature, we develop a new explanation for governance change, which we term the "political instability hypothesis." Using event history analysis, we then examine the proposition that reform is driven more by changes on the macropolitical landscape of the states than by state economic climates or by conditions within public higher education systems. Our analysis reveals strong support for the political instability hypothesis.
A historically informed analysis of the academic board or senate in Australian universities, and in the wider higher education environment, particularly the UK, indicates that the role and function of academic boards has fundamentally changed in the past 30 years. Within the context of universities being repositioned to serve global knowledge economies, a comparison between contemporary university governance structures and those from the 1960s and the 1990s provides evidence of a significant diminution of the power and status of boards relative to executive management, and a heightened focus on the functions of academic quality assurance. As Bourdieu would suggest, academic boards continue to hold more symbolic than real power, due to the rise of academic rather than intellectual capital. Consequently, academic boards have become a key site of struggle over the role and function of the multinational corporate university and academic work.
In this article we provide an integrated framework for the analysis of higher education governance which allows us to more
systematically trace the changes that European higher education systems are currently undergoing. We argue that, despite highly
insightful previous analyses, there is a need for more specific empirically observable indicators of policy change and inertia.
We therefore propose a systematic classification of empirical indicators of higher education governance. To do so, we look
at three historically entrenched and still highly relevant European models of higher education—academic self-governance, the
state-centered model and the market-oriented model. Based on these broader overarching models which reflect the tensions between
the state, market and academia, we develop three ideal-types that take internal university governance as well as the role
of the state and external stakeholders into account. Against this background, we derive empirical indicators with regard to
the institutional balance of power, financial governance, personnel autonomy and substantive matters. Our analytical contribution
shall enable scholars, and in particular political and social scientists, to trace ongoing patterns of change and convergence
as well as persistence and inertia in higher education governance arrangements.
KeywordsHigher education governance–Marketization–Analytical framework–Indicators
This article focuses on the steering of higher education systems in the light of political science and public management approaches.
It first recalls that an important part of the existing literature on higher education is focused on public policies in terms
of reforms and decision-making, while the other part is dedicated to discovering and understanding the policy network or the
policy regimes producing these policies. Both perspectives tend to look at higher education as a specific field. By contrast,
the authors state that the transformations experienced in higher education are similar to those experienced by other key public
services, an can be understood as a redefinition of the role of the nation state in the public generally. They therefore suggest
to look at the steering patterns in higher education by investigating the underlying ‘narratives’ of public management reform
and their variation or combination from one European nation state to another. Three main narratives of public services reform
are discussed: the New Public Management (NPM), the Network governance and the Neo-Weberian narrative. For each narrative,
the authors try to predict some ‘signs and symptoms’ that should be observed in higher education. Drawing on this reflection,
the authors finally suggest further research perspectives which could be developed.
Incl. bibl. Corruption was symptomatic of business and government interactions in Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union before and during the economic transition of the 1990s. Corruption is difficult to quantify, but the perception of corruption is quantifiable. Nations can even be arranged along a hierarchy by the degree to which they are perceived as being corrupt, for instance, in their business practices or in the administration of public responsibilities. Based on the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index for 2005, a world map shows how pervasive corruption remains in the public sector. According to this index, countries in the former USSR region, including Central Asia and the Caucasus, were among the most corrupt countries in the world in 2005. With the breakup of the USSR and decentralization, ministries and local governments operated more independently than under the planned economy. The central government's enforcement mechanisms weakened, and rent-seeking (using administrative position for personal gain) activity was not as effectively monitored as under central planning. The result, at least in the earliest years of independence, was an increase in overall corruption and inefficiency at many levels of government and administration, and the education sector was not immune from these forces. Ministry of Education officials began to demand bribes for accreditation and procurement. Administrators demanded bribes for admission, housing, book rental, grades, exams, and transcripts. Teachers demanded bribes for admission, grades and exams, and book purchases. This article illustrates the extent of higher-education corruption by citing student surveys in six countries--the Kyrgyz Republic, Kazakhstan, Croatia, Moldova, Serbia, and Bulgaria. These surveys suggest that corruption varies in accordance with the market demand for the subject of study, with higher frequencies of corruption found in the subjects in highest demand. Also, corruption is more likely to be found in local universities with local professional codes of conduct and less likely to be found in universities accredited in Europe or North America. [ERIC]
The aim of this essay is to contribute to an improved comprehension of the university’s dynamics of change, as part of a larger transformation of the relationships between society’s key institutions. A distinction is made between seeing the University as an institution and as an instrument, and four visions of university organization are outlined. These are: the University as a community of scholars , an instrument for national purposes , a representative democracy , and a service enterprise embedded in competitive markets – four stylized models based on respectively (i) constitutive rules, (ii) command and hierarchy, (iii) bargaining and majority votes, and (iv) market prices and competitive selection. The essay then attends to one important type of environmental change: the emergence of European-level debates and policy making processes that take University dynamics beyond the frame of single universities and nation states. Do these environmental actors and forces generate imperatives for universities or do they point universities in different directions? Next, the significance of University actors, structures, legacies and dynamics are considered. How much discretion is there, what are the dilemmas facing the University, and does the ideal of the University as a fiduciary arrangement dedicated to academic excellence and freedom have a future? The last part suggests that an improved comprehension of University dynamics may depend on a better understanding of how institutional success, confusion and crisis can be related.
Mission transformation, multiplicity, and complexity are analyzed. The medieval university emphasizes teaching. Thereafter, the early modern university adopts nationalization (service to the nation-state). The formative U.S. college advances democratization. Simultaneously, the German university promotes research. The modern American university elevates public service. Today's rapid globalization suggests a new mission: internationalization.
Historians of public policy, who typically share a conviction that historical analysis can clarify the options available to policymakers, have witnessed this decade's quickening debate over the role and control of American higher education with, in one of Yogi Berra's immortal phrases, a sense of “ déjà vu all over again.” Political leaders have continued, in a near vacuum of historical knowledge, to manipulate present variables and project them into the future with little awareness, beyond current political memory, of their past consequences, or of a legacy of political and cultural tradition that would constrain their manipulation. At the national level of debate, which is not where educational policy in the United States historically has been made, the level of historical awareness generally has been greater than at the state level. In the flurry of national commissions and foundation reports that probed the deficiencies of American higher education in 1984–85, the historical evolution of the college curriculum was addressed in reasonably informed historical terms.1 Even though the urgency of debate in the 1980s was fueled by the common pain of recession and post-baby-boom retrenchment, and also by fears of increasing vulnerability to oil boycotts and Japanese economic competition, the national elites who wrote the reports were mindful of the roots of Big Science in the Manhattan Project. Their ties to the academic establishment were intimate, and their historical memories embraced the wisdom of the liberal arts as well as the efficacy of land-grant agriculture and Silicon Valley.
The authors analyze the rapid worldwide expansion of higher educational enrollments over the twentieth century using pooled panel regressions. Expansion is higher in economically developed countries (in some but not all analyses) as classic theories would have it. Growth is greater where secondary enrollments are high and where state control over education is low, consistent with conflict and competition theories. Institutional theories get strong support: growth patterns are similar in all types of countries, are especially high in countries more linked to world society, and sharply accelerate in virtually all countries after 1960. The authors theorize and operationalize the institutional processes involved, which include scientization, democratization and the expansion of human rights, the rise of development planning, and the structuration of the world polity. With these changes, a new model of society became institutionalized globally-one in which schooled knowledge and personnel were seen as appropriate for a wide variety of social positions, and in which many more young people were seen as appropriate candidates for higher education. An older vision of education as contributing to a more closed society and occupational system—with associated fears of “over-education”—was replaced by an open-system picture of education as useful “human capital” for unlimited progress. The global trends are so strong that developing countries now have higher enrollment rates than European countries did only a few decades ago, and currently about one-fifth of the world cohort is now enrolled in higher education.
Mauriac, and probably several thousand other Frenchmen, have remarked that what worried them most about the United States and Russia was not the respects in which these countries differed but rather that they were fundamentally so much alike. If Mauriac had studied the history of the land-grant colleges and universities, he might have concluded that they were both the most Russian-like and the most thoroughly American sector of our education. Where else could one find schools so materialistically oriented or so (almost) successfully Jacksonian? To look at their history and their impact on American economic life over the past century is to examine a roaringly optimistic and an almost frighteningly successful endeavor to create the men—and the women—for a mass economy.
This paper assesses the adequacy, efficiency, and equity of higher education in Lebanon in both the public and private sectors,
while highlighting challenges that are specific to Lebanon. It concludes by discussing various approaches and strategies to
remedy the challenges facing higher education in Lebanon.
KeywordsHigher education finance–Political economy of higher education–Equity–Adequacy–Labour market–Lebanon
Graphs.Tabl. Incl. abstract, bibl. The paper takes the external quality assurance of English universities and colleges as an example of regulation in higher education as undertaken by the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). Regulatory scholarship generally has been largely disinterested in higher education and the paper applies a 'regulatory lens' to higher education quality assurance. It reports the findings of a research project on the role identities and perceptions of the auditors recruited by the QAA from the academic community for undertaking institutional audits. It suggests that such a group may be regarded as 'regulatory intermediaries', facing both 'upwards' to the regulator, and 'down' to those being regulated. As such, they have an important function in the delivery of external quality assurance regulation and the paper reports on how they mediate and understand a range of frequently conflicting pressures.
Incl. abstract, bibl. In recent years it has becoe commonplace to refer to the development of a "new regulatory state" in a number of advanced societies. For the most part the description has been applied to quite fundamental changes in the nation state, particularly those in Europe characterised previously by state-bureaucratic "welfareism". The growth of the regulatory state, and associated public policy reform, has given rise to an increasingly sophisticated regulatory scholarship, including of government itself. Surprisingly, regulatory scholarship has been largely desinterested in higher education compared to other sectors. Equally, analyses of higher education governance, although examining closely related notions of the "evaluative state" and associated concepts of market and professional self-regulatory forms of coordination, have yet to fully utilise the fiindings of regulatory theory applied in other fields. It is suggested that, using the findings of regulatory theory applied in other fields. It is suggested that, using the exampe of external quality asurance particularly, there is no intrinsic regulatory "exceptionalism" for universities and that analyses of the "higher education regulatory state" would benefit from greater application of regulatory concepts found more widely.
Incl. abstract, bibl. Most discussions and policy lessons about the commercial role in education have derived from the provision of private education programs in elementary, secondary and higher, and education and training. The private education industry includes two additional categories of activity which have not been the focus of attention. These are the private provision of education products and education services. But how large are these two activities? Do they involve international trade? Do they already attract the interest of private capital? Are these activities growing, and if so, what are their implications? This analysis will attempt to respond to these questions, and will be divided into four sections.The first section defines education products and services, and outlines the structure of the two sub-sectors. The second section describes the size of commercial activity and its trends. The third section reviews the challenges and opportunities for those who are interested in investing in this arena. The fourth section asks the question of whether the commercial provision of education goods and services is good or bad, inevitable or not; whether countries, unsure about the appropriate response, should welcome or resist these trends. [elsevier]
Also on CD-ROM (WOR 33): Follow-up to the World Conference on Higher Education [World Bank publications], 2003. Incl. bibl.
The key research and education policy decisions made by institutions of higher education are determined by the governance model in place. Classifying such models and analyzing their basic characteristics, along with studying how a particular model determines behavior in the educational market, are becoming key elements in analyzing an institution’s strategy. This is necessary to understand how a higher education institution should be organized to achieve certain goals. From our point of view, each model is characterized by a specifi c structure of the transaction costs encountered by various stakeholders within the institution. Trying to minimize these costs, the institution selects the model that is best suited for its market segment, external market conditions, and the resources at its disposal. To a signifi cant extent, governance structures determine how decisions are made, who makes them and for what
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