The influence of new higher education professionals on academic work

Abstract

In Germany, as in many other European countries, governments have been withdrawing from close state control of their higher education institutions, thus, granting them more institutional autonomy with the expectation that this will enable them to react faster and more flexibly to external demands and challenges. The growing organisational autonomy with its increasing capacity for strategic decision-making also entails the expectation that institutional leadership should become more professional. These changes have been accompanied by another phenomenon: The growth in numbers of new groups of mostly highly qualified professionals to support organisational change and decision-making in universities. These persons are not primarily active in research and teaching themselves but are entrusted to prepare and support decisions of the management, establish new services or professionalise traditional ones, and actively shape the core activities of the organisation. We have called this group the new “higher education professionals” (HEPROs). This contribution first says something about the state of research, then presents findings from surveys and interviews with HEPROs in Germany as well as selected other European countries.