Towards New Actors in Higher Education Governance

Abstract

Due to the New Public Management based higher education reforms in the past decades academics have lost their status as key actors in collegial university governance to a high extent. In response to these changes, academics in Europe started creating and collectively participating in cross-disciplinary action platforms against the reform initiatives in order to reclaim their position as influential actors within the higher education governance systems. This paper focuses on these new forms of collective responses in the UK, Netherlands, and Belgium-Flanders since these organizations emerge as new political actors in the system of higher education governance in all three countries, whereas the extent of disciplinary variety in joining such movements varies across policy contexts.