University Restructuring: The Role of Economic and Political Contexts

Abstract

Within the study of higher education, restructuring is a term commonly used to characterize contemporary university responses to financial stress. While the study of responses to fiscal challenges has been prominent in the higher education literature since the 1970s, this chapter proposes that the substantive focus in the literature must shift from studies of retrenchment and cost containment to analyses of university repositioning and selective reinvestment in light of changing environmental demands (Gumport and Pusser, 1997).