New Management, New Identities?
Danish University Reform in an International Perspective
Aim of the Project
This project studies the Danish university reforms as a prism through which to view the worldwide frenzy for such changes.
Research questions Our central questions are:
How did these reforms come about and what are their intended effects on Danish universities? What changes do university managers,
academics and students perceive in their own roles and identities?
From their enactment and contestation of different visions of the university, what image of a future university is emerging?
Project design
Initially the project was designed to study the 2003 University Law (which introduced new governance and management systems, and financial and education reforms) from the different perspectives of policy makers, managers, academics and students. However, a torrent of further reforms followed, including university mergers and a
globalization strategy, and culminating in the (short-lived) plan to establish private universities in Denmark. The project design therefore changed so as to place the provisions of the 2003 University Law within the wider context of university reforms.
Fieldwork projects (see publications overleaf)
Danish/international policies for university reform
University governance and management
Academic identity
Figure of the student Results
The results are geared to academics interested in large-scale processes of transformation and to the higher education policy community.
Ethnographic studies provide a reflexive space for students, academics and managers to imagine and realise their room for manoeuvre in actively creating the university of the future.
Book – currently being written
Enacting the University: Danish University Reform in an International Perspective
by Susan Wright, Stephen Carney, John Benedicto Krejsler, Gritt Bykærholm Nielsen, Jakob Williams Ørberg.
Publisher: Springer
Project team
Project leader: Prof. Susan Wright, DPU, Aarhus University
Associate Professor John Benedicto Krejsler, DPU, Aarhus University Assistant Professor Gritt Bykærholm Nielsen, DPU, Aarhus University Associate Professor Stephen Carney, Roskilde University
Former Research Assistant Jakob Williams Ørberg, DPU, Aarhus University
Funding and duration
The project ran from 2004 to 2009, supported by the Danish Council for Independent Research in the Social Sciences with a grant of 3.200.000 DKK.
Publications
University reform
Susan Wright and Jakob Williams Ørberg (forthcoming, 2011) ‘The double shuffle of university reform – the
OECD/Denmark policy interface’ in Atle Nyhagen and Tor Halvorsen (eds) Academic identities – academic
challenges? American and European experience of the transformation of higher education and research, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholar Press.
Susan Wright and Annika Rabo (guest editors) 2010 Anthropologies of University Reform special issue of Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 18 (1).
Susan Wright and Jakob Williams Ørberg 2009
‘Paradoxes of the self: self-owning universities in a society of control’ in Eva Sørensen and Peter Triantafillou (eds) The Politics of Self-Governance, Ashgate, Farnham, UK, pp. 117-136.
Susan Wright and Jakob Williams Ørberg 2009
‘Prometheus (on the) Rebound? Freedom and the Danish Steering System’ in Jeroen Huisman (ed.) International Perspectives on the Governance of Higher Education, London: Routledge, pp. 69-87.
Susan Wright 2009 ‘What counts? The skewing effects of research assessment systems’ Nordisk Pedagogik/Journal of Nordic Educational Research 29: 18-33.
Susan Wright and Jakob Williams Ørberg 2008 ‘Autonomy and control: Danish university reform in the context of modern governance’ Learning and Teaching:
International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences (LATISS) 1(1): 27-57.
Susan Wright and Tor Halverson (guest editors) 2008 Special Issue: the Bologna Process. Learning and
Teaching: International Journal of Higher Education in the Social Sciences (LATISS) 1 (2).
Ørberg, Jakob Williams 2007 ’Frihedens incitament? – forskningsfrihed og de moderniserede universiteter’ Dansk Pædagogisk Tidsskrift 2: 82-89.
Susan Wright, Debbie Epstein, Rebecca Boden, Rosemary Deem and F. Rizvi (co-editors) 2007 Geographies of Knowledge, Geometries of Power: Framing the Future of Higher Education, World Yearbook of Education 2008, New York: Routledge.
Susan Wright, Don Brenneis and Cris Shore (guest editors) 2005 Universities and the Politics of Accountability special issue of Anthropology in Action 12 (1).
University managers
Carney, Stephen 2007 ‘Reform of higher education and the return of “heroic” leadership: the case of Denmark’
Management Review Special issue on managing higher education 18 (2): 174-186.
Carney, Stephen 2006 ‘University governance in Denmark:
from democracy to accountability?’ European Educational Research Journal 5 (3 & 4): 221-233.
Carney, Stephen 2006 ’"We don't need another hero": Den danske universitetsreform og spørgsmålet om lederskab’
Dansk Pædagogisk Tidsskrift 4: 21-30.
Academics
Krejsler, John B. and Carney, Stephen 2009 ’University academics at the crossroad?: Continuity and transformation in Danish university reform’ European Education: Issues and Studies 41(2): 76-92.
Krejsler, John B. 2006 ’Discursive Battles about the Meaning of University: the case of Danish university reform and its academics’ European Educational Research Journal 5 (3 &
4): 210-220.
Krejsler, John B. 2007 ‘Discursive Strategies that Individualize:
CVs and appraisal interviews’ International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 20 (4): 473 – 490.
Students
Nielsen, Gritt Bykærholm (forthcoming 2011) ‘Peopling Policy: on Conflicting Subjectivities of Fee-Paying Students’
in Cris Shore, Susan Wright and Davide Però (eds) Policy Worlds: Anthropology and the Analysis of Contemporary Power, Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Nielsen, G. B. (forthcoming 2010) ‘Timing Students' Freedom.
On paradoxes of efficiency and accountability’ in Kristensen, J. E., Raffnsøe-Møller, M. & Nørreklit, H. (eds) University Performance Management - The Silent Managerial
Revolution in Danish Universities. Copenhagen: DJØF-forlag.
Nielsen, Gritt Bykærholm 2010 ‘Student Figures in Friction.
Explorations into Danish University Reform and Shifting Forms of Student Participation’, PhD thesis, Danish School of
Education (DPU), Aarhus University, September.
Working Paper Series on University Reform:
www.dpu.dk/epokeWP
EPOKE (Education, Policy and Organisation in the Knowledge Economy) Research Programme Department of Education, The Danish School of Education, Aarhus University
Tuborgvej 164 – DK-2400 København NV, Tel: +45 8888 9000. www.dpu.dk/epoke
