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Introduction

The writing of this book requires us to place our study of the collegial tradition in context: the social, economic and political forces with which it interacts, thus reshaping its identity. There is, however, an additional context within which this book has to be located, that is the literature attempting to understand – describe, analyse, evaluate and prescribe – the concept of collegiality. It is the presentation of this framework, composed of the pertinent literature, that forms the central purpose of this chapter.

This chapter has three interrelated tasks. First, it will present a broad overview of the literature that dissects the collegial tradition. At the outset, however, it is important to stress that this is not meant to be a comprehensive review. To take this approach would push the book in a direction that we do not wish to follow. The book is not intended as an all-encompassing study of collegiality, that is its principles and practices in all its forms. While it will review different interpretations of the idea of collegiality, the primary focus is upon the pressures to which it is exposed and how, consequently, the idea of collegiality is being reshaped. What role does it have to play within the present-day governance of higher education and perhaps more importantly within the individual institutions of higher education? There is a particular, although far from exclusive, reference to the English model of higher education. At the outset, it should be said that we believe collegial values need to be embedded into the governance and administration of institutions of higher education. We can debate the extent, depth and form of that commitment but underwriting the book is the conviction that if higher education institutions are to fulfil their core concerns of teaching, learning and research, they need to have embraced collegiality.

The literature review takes the form of presenting different approaches to the study of collegiality. There is a necessary degree of arbitrariness about this dissection: there is no definitive list of categories into which the approaches can be placed, the categories are not sharply defined, and authors and their research more often than not fall into more than one category. In other words, we have exercised our judgement in these matters. However, the reader will be able to see what decisions we have made and reach his or her own assessments as to their appropriateness. If the process should appear somewhat arbitrary (which, undoubtedly, it is) then in our defence we can only plead the need to impose some sort of order on a large body of literature and re-iterate the point that this overview is not meant to be a systematic literature review.

The second task is to outline the direction of our book in relation to this categorisation of the literature. The purpose is to show the book’s own focus while demonstrating how it ties into the established canon. This is a straightforward descriptive task, which should not only draw the reader’s attention to topics that may be of particular interest but also show the scope of our work. The third and final objective is the most difficult, but the most interesting. If the second task addresses the scope of the book, the third presents its intellectual purposes. A convincing case can be made out for an in-depth study of the collegial tradition in its own right, and we will make that case. However, it is part of the rationale of this book that our analysis of collegiality should both throw light upon developments in national – and more particularly the English – systems of higher education and present a model for the analysis of change in higher education. The collegial tradition is integral to a particular idea of the university and its evolution therefore presents an opportunity to interpret the process of change in higher education.

Studying Collegiality

The second chapter of this book examines in some depth different interpretations of the collegial tradition. It is our contention that, although there is frequent reference in the higher education literature to the concept of collegiality, there is not a great deal of systematic investigation of its meaning. More often than not meaning is implied with the assumption that a familiar concept is being introduced to the readers who share a broad understanding of its nature. As an aside, it is interesting to ponder why so much attention has been devoted to analysing the idea of the university while – in comparison – there has been so little systematic dissection of the various models of higher education, including the collegial model. Part of the purpose of this book is to suggest an alternative analytical route: that to commence with the comparative dissection of different working models of higher education provides a more meaningful approach to understanding the idea of the university.

The book draws a broad distinction between the expression of collegiality within the collegiate universities (of which Oxford and Cambridge are currently – and perhaps always have been – the best exemplars) and the manifestation of the collegial tradition within varying national systems of higher education. Can the values of collegiality be sustained only within collegiate universities with federal structures of governance? Does the idea of collegiality take a particular, perhaps narrower, path, within non-collegiate universities? Is it possible that the collegiate universities, while maintaining their formal allegiance to collegial values, in practice operate in ways that in fact suggest these values are being abandoned slowly rather than consistently embraced? Within the latter situation, is it possible for the collegial tradition to be more deeply entrenched in non-collegiate than the collegiate universities?

The literature review follows the structure of the book – first the analysis of the collegial tradition within Oxford and Cambridge with the focus then shifting to its manifestation more broadly within Britain and then overseas (the United States and continental Europe). But, to re-iterate a previous warning, the categorisation acts as a means of organising a complex range of material and is far from watertight.

The Collegiate Universities

It is doubtful if there is a single institution of higher education in the world that is without a record of its own history, even if it should be no more than a short website overview. Moreover, biographies and autobiographies of the university-educated invariably contain reminiscences on the blessings and/or trials and tribulations of undergraduate days. And the wide range of popular – in literature, film and television – manifestations of collegiality should not be forgotten (Tapper & Palfreyman, 2000: 4–8). To this mass of material is to be added those archives that periodically either the universities themselves or the public authorities consider they are obliged to produce – the official enquiries. What is true of higher education institutions at large is particularly true of those universities, which include Oxford and Cambridge, with both national and international reputations. This may reflect the tendency to indulge institutions that arguably are already too self-indulgent but it is perfectly understandable given the purported significance of those universities in terms of their contribution to both scholarship and the shaping of state and society.

The Historical Overview

There is an abundance of histories of the two English collegiate universities as well as their respective colleges. These tend to be descriptive chronologies exhibiting varying degrees of analytical depth. In an insightful, if overly generous, observation Sheldon Rothblatt has claimed that

Institutional histories proper vary considerably in purpose, scope and content. Some are relatively straightforward, impressively detailed and pioneering narrative studies or descriptions of university growth in terms of faculties, facilities, curricula and numbers of students, with additional miscellaneous information (Rothblatt, 1981: 17).

With particular reference to Oxford and Cambridge, Rothblatt goes on to argue that the histories tend to fall within one of two broad camps. First there is the Whig history, which includes ‘the many notable volumes D.A. Winstanley produced on Cambridge’, and second there is ‘…the class conflict or class interest theory … which may be derived from strands of labour history or from a general theory of social change in industrial society’ (Rothblatt, 1981: 17, 19–20). The Whig historians focussed upon the political dynamic that drove the process of change, which they interpreted essentially in positive terms, as Oxford and Cambridge responded – or were required to respond – to the shifting balance of political authority within society at large. As the nineteenth century unfolded, English society at large and its two ancient universities were more closely aligned. For the class theorists, although broadly in sympathy with the Whig interpretation of the course of historical change, this was far from a benign development. Oxford and Cambridge, along with the public schools, were enveloped in the process of class accommodation between declining gentry and emerging bourgeoisie. It was the poor but talented potential scholars who paid the price as access to scholarships was restructured to squeeze out the needy in favour of those who had been privately educated.

This historical polarisation can be refined in various ways. The very title of Rothblatt’s masterpiece The Revolution of the Dons forcefully reminds us that it was an internal revolution that shifted sharply the balance in Oxbridge’s role from ‘church’ to ‘scholarship’ while securing for the college teaching fellows the dominant stake in the newly regenerated colleges – an internal political process with a vengeance. Halsey, unsurprisingly given his sociological training, has been to the fore in interpreting the socio-cultural terms on which the revolution was achieved. In the struggle to reshape the socio-cultural identity of the two universities, it was Jowett’s idea of the cultivated man that prevailed (Halsey, 1992: 27–33; Tapper & Palfreyman, 2008: 306). In the words of Perkin, a new model of the gentleman (obviously building on Newman’s contribution) was created: ‘… efficient, responsible Christian gentlemen rather than effete aristocratic rakes and loungers’ (Perkin, 1989: 367). It was not that the increasingly influential German model with its emphasis on inculcating expertise and enhancing research (which, in his later years, was so attractive to Mark Pattison) was rejected but that it had to coexist – essentially as a minor partner – in universities that continued to stress the importance of undergraduate teaching – of a certain style – as their primary purpose.

A further refinement that we have suggested (Tapper & Palfreyman, 2008: 303–318) is – like Rothblatt and Halsey – to look inwards but to see the changes as essential to institutional well-being – as reflected in the need to resist the burgeoning challenge of the emerging English civics along with the Scottish universities (in this respect note in particular professional, and more especially medical, education) and thereby to broaden their appeal to the upper echelons of the expanding bourgeoisie. A sophisticated interpretation of this thesis is to see the institutional changes as driven in part by the wider academy, including developments in research and scholarship in continental Europe. The implication is that without a positive response to ‘the scientific revolution’ both Oxford and Cambridge would have become increasingly irrelevant as centres of research, scholarship and learning (for a powerful presentation of this thesis, see Ashby, 1966). Thus the Whig historians and class theorists are by-passed while both Rothblatt and Halsey’s interpretations are incorporated within an essentially Weberian perspective: there are shifts in the balance of power amongst internal interests, which are responding to broad societal change (social, economic and political) incorporating critical developments in the idea of the university. This is the basis for institutional regeneration in the nineteenth century that was vital to securing the long-term reputations of Oxford and Cambridge.

Of course, the very nature of some historical overviews makes it impossible to discern any clear-cut interpretations of the evolving persona of the collegiate universities. The best example of this genre is the massive multi-volume ‘official’ The History of the University of Oxford with a range of authors contributing to each volume with (and inevitably so) no consistently discernible internal intellectual position within each volume and no standard range of research themes from volume to volume, although certain topics (for example, portrayals of ‘college life’) appear regularly.

Within both the edited collections and many journal articles, it is specific developments, even puzzling problems, which the authors set out to unravel. Two very interesting examples of this are Howarth’s Science Education in Late Victorian Oxford: A Curious Case of Failure? (1987: 334–371) and Macleod and Moseley’s The ‘Naturals’ and Victorian Cambridge: Reflections on the Anatomy of an Elite, 1851–1914 (1980: 177–195). While both articles of necessity relate developments within the university to wider social change, they draw the balance between the two very differently. Howarth’s article is more introspective – to explain how the collegial character of Oxford, with comparative reference to Cambridge, retarded the development of its departments of natural and applied sciences, so delaying the creation of a thriving research tradition in these fields. Macleod and Moseley also analyse the context within which Cambridge established its Natural Sciences Tripos (NST) but their focus is more upon the impact of external developments – the growth in the sciences and scientific medicine at Owen’s College, Manchester and University College, London and the concomitant expansion of a national scientific elite.

It is the studies of developments at Oxbridge in the nineteenth century, and more specifically from 1850 onwards, that throw into sharpest relief the distinctiveness between the in-depth studies of the changing universities and those examining broader social change into which developments within the collegiate universities are incorporated. On the one hand, there is the scholarly Rothblatt (1968) and the more workmanlike Engel (1983) analysing on the basis of careful research ‘the revolution of the dons’ in response to those social changes. On the other hand are to be found Anderson (1992) with a broad focus on the universities and elite formation in Britain, Perkin’s research into the rise of the professions in England (1989), Coleman’s careful analysis of the cultural influence of the collegiate universities and the public schools upon Victorian society (Coleman, 1973), and in a similar vein – but with more sweeping generalisations – the claims of Barnett (1972) and Wiener (1986). It would be wrong to polarise the different approaches too sharply, but a distinction can be drawn between an approach that moves from the changing socio-cultural structure and its concomitant values towards Oxbridge and the public schools, as compared to an in-depth analysis of the latter from which wide societal implications can then be drawn (with contributions to Stone’s edited two volumes The University in Society, 1974, containing both approaches).

Contemporary Analysis

Much of the historical literature has the embedded assumption that Oxbridge was ‘exceptional’ and analysed how that quality was reshaped in the context of broad societal change and how in turn Oxbridge exerted its influence upon the emerging social order. The contemporary literature (with 1945 as a convenient starting point given that from this date onwards the two universities, if not all their colleges, are increasingly dependent upon public funding) has a somewhat different focus. The emphasis is upon the relationship of Oxbridge to the wider system of higher education in Britain. In terms of its presence within the higher education system, it is in decline and, although it may continue to sustain its relative prestige (Halsey & Trow, 1971: 213–225), it has had few formal privileges in terms of its relationship to the funding council and the state apparatus. Indeed, there is considerable questioning of its peculiar qualities. The broad ranging overviews (Rose & Ziman, 1964; Tapper & Salter, 1992; Brooke, 1993; Brock, 1994; Soares – with reference to Oxford – 1999; Tapper & Palfreyman, 2000) illustrate various aspects of this decline in their unique character – the colleges are less monastic; recruitment of undergraduates is driven more by meritocratic criteria than by social considerations; there is a relative expansion of research, graduate students and the sciences; and Oxbridge has to demonstrate its continuing excellence rather than live contentedly on its laurels.

Much of the contemporary analyses centre on a number of perceived key problems with a frequent stress upon how these should be addressed by the collegiate universities (for a reasonably composite overview of this approach, see Kenny & Kenny, 2007). The most commented upon are undergraduate admissions (evoking more or less continuous scrutiny and undoubtedly receiving the most public and political attention, which is likely to continue given the broad political acceptance of the widening participation agenda), the governance and administration of the two universities (which has been a central issue for the internal reports, see University of Oxford, 1966 – the Franks Report; University of Oxford, 1997a – the North Report; University of Cambridge, 1962 – Bridges Syndicate; University of Cambridge, 1989 – the Wass Syndicate) and funding (with respect to the augmentation of overall income, how to distribute public resources to meet the respective needs of the universities and colleges and the distribution of college endowment income).

It is scarcely surprising that much of the analysis of the issues either swiftly degenerates into an attack upon Oxbridge’s so-called peculiarities or manifests an inherent sympathy for the two universities even if (as is certainly true of the internal official reports) there is a perceived need for reform. Thus, to give a concrete illustration, in social terms Oxbridge remains grossly unrepresentative of the country at large even though access may be more determined essentially by meritocratic criteria (Ball, 2003: 88–92). But Halsey and McCrum (2000) inform us of The Slow but Certain Arrival of Equality at Oxford University. In terms of governance and administration, the Treasury’s Lambert Review of Business-University Collaboration comments:

Responses to the review have, however, also shown a general sense of unease about the direction of both universities. Despite its successes, there is a view that Cambridge, for example, could have done even more to build dynamic industry partnerships if it had been better organised while it is agreed that universities should not be regarded as businesses, there is a view that both Oxford and Cambridge would benefit from being more business-like in the way they run their affairs (Treasury, 2003, paragraph 5.15).

This was followed by the recommendation (Recommendation 7.6) that ‘In 3 years’ time, the vice chancellors of Oxford and Cambridge should take stock of the progress of reform, and agree with the Government what further steps will be necessary for the two universities to sustain their global position.’ In concrete terms, the subsequent struggle has evolved around the representation of lay members on the two universities’ Councils (in each case the central, if not ultimate, governing body), with a fierce and public struggle at Oxford in which the proposal to give lay membership of Council majority representation has been defeated.

In terms of the question of funding, there are both important internal divisions within the two universities and the need to respond to an external perception that views Oxbridge as receiving overly generous public funding. Both Oxford and Cambridge would see the greatest threat to their global positions as not dependent upon their structures of governance and administration but rather a consequence of their relative poverty in comparison to other so-called world-class universities. Thus, in conjunction with British universities in general, there has been a concerted attempt to be more entrepreneurial, to secure more resources in the marketplace. The internal struggles in part centre around the need to distribute public resources between university and college. What are the mechanisms that will secure not only a fair college–university divide but also an equitable distribution amongst the colleges? The other big financial issue is college endowment resources. Should these be used solely at the discretion of the colleges to which the endowments have been made? Or should endowment income be pooled and then distributed on the basis of either a formula or some criteria of need? Kenny and Kenny (2007: 64–74, 86–88) present an excellent overview of these issues with respect to Oxford, although their support for ‘an appreciable redistribution of wealth’ over and above the current arrangements would meet fierce opposition.

The internal focus on the essentially technical issues of wealth generation and the internal distribution of resources is juxtaposed to an external view of Oxbridge that at times comes close to a moral critique, which considers them to be institutions in receipt of disproportionate amounts of public funding but unprepared to make an equitable contribution to society. A very recent re-iteration of this view is found in the interview that Brian Roper, the then Vice-Chancellor of London Metropolitan University, gave to Times Higher Education in which he is reported as saying:

The money could be better used in places which transform people’s lives rather than serving as rather superior finishing schools, which is what these other places are about (Attwood, 2008: 4).

This is not the occasion for an analysis of this perspective, but rather the purpose is to point out that Roper’s views reflect a position within British higher education that has some support. Whereas it is possible to argue that there was a central focus to the historical interpretations of the collegiate universities (that is the adjustment of the two universities to Victorian England) the contemporary analyses have been issue oriented and demonstrate highly polarised positions. However, it should not be forgotten that there were also bitter conflicts as those nineteenth century histories unfolded (note, Mark Pattison’s very jaundiced view of collegiate Oxford – Pattison, 1868; Sparrow, 1967; Tapper & Palfreyman, 2000: 11).

The Wider Impact

In view of the comparative embrace of this book, it is important to examine the impact of the collegiate universities – actual, imagined and hoped for – upon models of higher education more generally. While the concept of collegiality in the broad sense is viewed positively, the evaluation of the influence of the collegiate universities is more ambivalent. Amongst the most ardent admirers was Woodrow Wilson who in a letter to his wife wrote, ‘Oxford is enough to take one’s heart by storm … I am afraid that if there were a place for me here, America would only see me again to sell the house, to fetch you and the children’ (as quoted in Duke, 1996: 82 – see also Tapper & Palfreyman, 2000: 59).

But it is one thing to infatuate a future American president and quite another to construct a viable collegiate model in a not altogether sympathetic social context. As Duke goes on to note:

If the American research university was recent, revolutionary, bureaucratic and impersonal, the English college was ancient, intimate, and, in the best Whig tradition, the product of an inevitable march forward. If the product of the teutonized American university of the present was an expert and a specialist, the product of the anglicised university of the near future would once more be a gentlemen and a scholar (Duke, 1996: 63).

Indeed, a key part of Duke’s book is his cataloguing of the repeated failure to establish little more than residential colleges in American universities, although the fascination is far from dead as witnessed by Clark Kerr’s 1960s high hopes for the Santa Cruz campus of the University of California. In the words of Rothblatt,

The Swarthmore ideal of liberal education with a stress on ethical conduct remained with him forever, best illustrated by his dream of making the new University of California at Santa Cruz, which he founded, into a west coast version of a collegiate Cambridge University. What he had in mind was a publicly-financed ‘Swarthmore under the redwoods’ (Rothblatt’s obituary of Clark Kerr).

And it is no secret that Santa Cruz, as part of the research-driven University of California, has found it difficult to sustain its identity as a collegiate experiment devoted to quality undergraduate education (see pp. 119–121 for a review of the experiment).

Where apparently the collegiate universities have had an impact upon the academic culture of other institutions, it has not always been perceived as a benign influence. In a general historical overview, Barnes essentially concludes that the English civic universities lost confidence in their ability to establish their own tradition of higher education and ‘… as the twentieth century progressed, Manchester along with the rest of the civics appeared to forfeit the sense of confidence and purpose which had initially sustained them’ and there was a need to investigate what happened between 1900 and the 1930s that led ‘… contemporaries and historians alike to point accusingly to the civics’ failure to become anything other than pale imitations of Oxford and Cambridge?’ (Barnes, 1996: 272). A strong theme of Davie’s scholarship on Scottish higher education (The Democratic Intellect, 1961; The Crisis of the Democratic Intellect, 1986) is the extent to which that powerful tradition was undermined by English (for which read ‘Oxbridge’) values. This is not the place to examine the claim (for a discussion of the issue, see Slee, 1987: 194–197; Paterson, 1998: 459–474; 2003: 67–93) but to note that the idea of the residential college as a central pivot within the collegiate model of the university is not always perceived as the most perfect expression of higher education.

The Collegial Tradition

Whereas there may be divided views of the Oxbridge model of higher education and of the wisdom of trying to create collegiate universities (especially in alien cultural territory), there is no such equivocation regarding the collegial tradition. It is almost universally seen as an intrinsic component of any higher education institution that wants to call itself a university. But the literature focuses overwhelmingly on the issues of governance and administration and tends to ignore the wider socio-cultural and pedagogical dimensions of collegiality. Furthermore, it is a literature that sees these more limited (but arguably the more important) dimensions of collegiality as threatened by the expansion of a managerial ethos, which is invariably presented as a mode of conducting institutional affairs that enshrines values antithetical to the collegial tradition (for a good overview of the managerial ethos as a ‘cultural challenge’, see Bargh, Scott, & Smith, 1996).

Like the collegial tradition precisely what is meant by the managerial ethos is open to interpretation. Based on his study of organisational change in four British universities, Taylor encapsulates concisely the ‘spirit’ of managerialism:

The new arrangements developed in all four universities represented a key change in the role of academic staff within the governance and management of their institutions. Widespread consultation was replaced by short decision-making procedures; committee structures within a framework of Senate and Council found their powers eroded and replaced by more executive bodies and individual managers; involvement and participation was replaced by devolved responsibilities and accountability. In this sense, the supremacy of the academic body in university governance and management had been reduced beyond recognition (Taylor, 2006: 271).

And, not surprisingly, there have been some interesting attempts to construct models of universities as organisations. For example, Dopson and McNay, on the basis of interrelating ‘tight’ and ‘loose’ control of policy definition and policy implementation, arrive at four models, which they term collegium, bureaucracy, corporation and enterprise (Dopson & McNay, 1996: 25, and for a wider discussion, see Tapper & Palfreyman, 2000: 19–20).

However it is defined, the emergence of the managerial ethos within higher education is clearly a critical development. What is of importance for this book is to gauge its impact upon collegial values. In the conclusion to his article, Taylor records that, ‘… in all four universities the changes were agreed and implemented with remarkably little dissent’ (2006: 271). But in a telling observation, one young lecturer commented, ‘… I am not bothered if I am not involved directly in management. My concern is my teaching and my research; others are better equipped to worry about running the University’ (2006: 272). But, as we argue, running the university inevitably involves making policy decisions about both teaching and research. Initiating and implementing research and teaching programmes may be made at the level of the department and/or research centre, but between initiation and implementation there could well be a range of issues to be resolved – most notably involving the commitment of institutional resources. Who will make these decisions and how are they to be made?

In his Managing Successful Universities, Shattock (2003: 85–91) has devoted a few interesting pages discussing ‘Collegiality or Managerial Direction’, which is a model of ambivalence. Collegiality is perceived as virtuous, but higher education institutions also need leadership and management. Moreover (in similar vein to Taylor’s ‘young lecturer’), collegiality is required for the delivery of teaching and research, but there also needs to be ‘managerial direction’. Furthermore, there is an explicit attack on ‘the cosiness’ of Cambridge ‘…which weakens accountability and results in a serious loss of authority in carrying out the essential legal requirements of corporate governance’ (Shattock, 2003: 107).

If Shattock’s position can be described as ambivalent, there is no shortage of hostile interpretations of the managerial ethos, which see it as an explicit attack upon the collegial values that supposedly were embedded in British higher education. However, it should be said that those who believe this to be so can have scant knowledge of how those institutions that acquired the university label after 1992 traditionally functioned (for a solid overview, see Pratt, 1997: 274–304). In an unrelenting (if not very reflective) attack upon what they term ‘the new managerialism’ in British higher education, Deem, Hillyard and Reed conclude that, ‘Though collegiality has had its problems, a more collective approach to managing and leading higher education may still have much to offer’ (2007: 187). But this ray of hope is no more than a glimmer:

We have also extensively illustrated the hold of neo-technocratic Managerialism over UK universities and government policy on higher education. Though we have also observed that there is resistance to this from academics, support staff and some manager-academics themselves, there is little sign that this resistance has produced any new ideas about how to manage universities, that would set aside the tenacious grip of NM (Deem et al., 2007: 189, stress added).

Is collegiality within British institutions of higher education in its death throes as this research would have us believe? Or are we witnessing a restructuring of university administration that redefines our understanding of collegiality? And in this respect note Hardy’s positive evaluation of collegial strategies in the management of retrenchment in Canadian universities (1996: 183–184). However, the conceptual difficulty, which all analysts (including ourselves) have to address, is that collegiality is a socially constructed concept, and thus its meaning is always problematic. What has to change or be sustained before we can evaluate its strength? Does it make sense to retain the idea of collegiality in the context of senior management groups, the commitment to strong institutional leadership and speedy decision-making?

Our Focus: Intellectual Concerns and Empirical Directions

At the outset we should say that this is a study of collegiality exclusively within the context of higher education, where we believe it has been expressed in its most developed form, to the point that it has been widely perceived as intrinsic to the idea of a university. Although the focus is very much upon contemporary developments, it is impossible to consider the present in isolation from the past. This is particularly true when much of our current understanding of collegiality was forged in the past, with the latter half of the nineteenth century being especially important for the English collegiate universities of Oxford and Cambridge. What are the pressures upon this legacy? How is this heritage being reshaped and what does this mean for our understanding of collegiality?

There is a body of literature, which we have already noted, that views the prospects for collegiality very pessimistically (indeed we ourselves are the authors of Oxford and the Decline of the Collegiate Tradition). But the stress in this book, driven very much by the recognition of the inevitability of change, is upon reformulation, although we recognise this may take a form which some would argue means the abandonment of core collegial values. To explore this process we examine collegiality in different institutional settings. Within the British context we commence with the ancient collegiate universities of Oxford and Cambridge; next we examine the pressures upon federal structures of governance in the belief that, although federalism and collegiality are not synonymous, federalism is central to the definition of a collegiate university; and then we turn to universities that have residential colleges but are not collegiate universities (a proposition that needs to be analysed). Thereafter we examine the rise of the managerial ethos with reference to five British universities, consider the form it has taken and its challenge to the collegial tradition. The final part of the book will draw upon the US and continental European traditions of higher education that are different (even very different) from those prevailing in Britain to explore whether they can be said to have a collegial tradition.

Our intellectual interests, as expressed in this book, are very diverse. Although we present a basically sympathetic interpretation of the two ancient English collegiate universities (perhaps too sympathetic for many) as well as the broader idea of the collegial tradition, we think of ourselves as reflective and sympathetic insiders and by no means advocates for a cause. Second, we believe we are presenting an in-depth study of the meaning of collegiality. There may be an enormous literature that draws upon the concept but there are few sustained attempts to define what it actually means. In this respect we are returning to, while elaborating quite substantially, the first chapter (‘Collegiality Debated’) of our Oxford and the Decline of the Collegiate Tradition (Tapper & Palfreyman, 2000: 1–28). We would see our contribution as attempting to parallel the work of Rothblatt with particular reference to ‘The Idea of a College’ in his The Revolution of the Dons (1968: 209–247). However, the differences are also very clear-cut: his focus is Cambridge, it is placed in a particular historical context, and it emerges out of a much deeper research basis.

Halsey used his stylish The Decline of Donnish Dominion (1992) to present an overview of the development of British higher education mainly from the Robbins Report of the mid-1960s onwards. To some extent we have done the same, although our remit is both wider (the international dimension) and narrower (with the concept of collegiality constituting the central thread). Donnish dominion is an element in the traditional understanding of collegiality and undoubtedly its influence has been truncated, at least in the past 25 years. However, even more central to the idea of the collegial tradition is that institutions of higher education are independent corporate bodies (autonomous institutions is the usual descriptive phase, although autonomy has always been partial and conditional) and it is the steady undermining by state and market of this ability of universities to manage their own affairs and so steer the course of their development that constitutes the most significant battleground in the recent history of British higher education. Thus the decline of collegiality, because of its particular reference to how universities go about their affairs, provides a potentially more fruitful base for the analysis of the development of higher education in the United Kingdom than ‘the decline of donnish dominion’, with a focus upon the declining authority of one particular set of interests. In certain respects, therefore, this book will present a picture of the shifting character of British higher education. But, given that the collegial tradition is an internationally shared legacy, it also casts a wider light upon developments in higher education.

For better or worse, the study of higher education sucks in different disciplinary approaches. It is impossible to analyse collegiality without drawing upon intellectual history (explaining the interpretation of key concepts), sociology (access, cultural values, elite socialisation and recruitment), politics (the dynamics of external and internal pressures in the process of change) and pedagogical debates (the tutorial as a mode of teaching and the idea of a liberal education). To a greater or lesser extent this book genuflects in each of these directions but its central focus is to interpret how the idea of collegiality has evolved over time and how this evolutionary pattern is to be explained. The sociological and pedagogical issues are therefore incorporated into the broader debate – politics responds to new ideas while in turn the political process determines how those ideas are translated into policy. Ideas, therefore, are a resource that aids and resists change while the politics, rather than the intrinsic quality of the ideas, determines which path will triumph.

We agree with the historians that the process of change cannot be fully understood without considering the input of those who are on the receiving end of the process. In Rothblatt’s elegant phrase it is ‘the revolution of the dons’. However, it is not surprising that our more pronounced social science perspective leads us to give greater stress to the impact of the broad contextual pressures emanating from state and society as opposed to the policy role of individuals within the institutions. It is an interactive process and some institutions are better placed to respond to those pressures on terms more under their control. We need also to think in terms of conflicting institutional interests, which are represented by differing internal parties. Whose views will prevail and what are the patterns of accommodation? Moreover, what is the process through which these matters are determined? In The Revolution of the Dons Rothblatt wrote a history that would address itself:

… to the perennial distinction between what a particular historian thinks about the past and the actual historical experience itself, between the patterns that the past seems to offer the trained historical mind … and the past as it might have appeared to those who were its principal actors in a dramatic action to be related (Rothblatt, 1968: 4).

As must already be clear to the reader, this is a book with an interest in dissecting the meaning of analytical concepts. But it also contains implicit assumptions about the process of higher education development. The pressures for change – social, economic, political and cultural – impact upon the universities through a combination of state and market forces. This is not a neat and tidy process for these pressures invariably contain, if not contradictory, then ambivalent messages and policy implications. Institutional responses will be heavily dependent upon market position (some have more room to manoeuvre than others) and how these internal interests are mobilised to determine institutional responses. In some cases it will be a bottom-up response shaped by pluralist struggle, in other cases a top-down strategy formulated at the centre and by-passing an input from the grassroots. But in most cases it is likely to be a complex mix of the two. The focus, therefore, is upon adopting an analytical approach that allows for both differing modes of decision-making and the possibility of varying outcomes within a context that the actors cannot change but which they can interpret differently.