Suchergebnisse

Perhaps the allusions and references contained in the first part of this article might not be readily intelligible to someone whose childhood was not spent listening to stories from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland or to someone not presently involved in the current debates about the finance of United Kingdom universities. Let me therefore offer a few words of explanation.Alice in Wonderland, and its companion Alice Through the Looking Glass, are children's stories which explore the limits of reason in most creative ways. Their author, the Reverend C. L. Dodgson, a nineteenth-century mathematician at Christchurch, Oxford who wrote under the name of Lewis Carroll, used the stories to discuss the nature of limit processes in mathematics, the phenomenon of relative size and aspects of the absurd. In the stories animals speak, playing cards come to life and the heroine, Alice, undergoes many transformations of bodily size. Since I regard the recent research selectivity exercise of the Universities Funding Council (UFC) as beyond the limits of reason, I have drawn upon the Alice stories by way of satire and I have tried to use some typical Carroll literary devices — plays on words, accounts of physical transformations and the like — to emphasize the relevant points.

Engagement is the vogue of relevant scholars into the twenty-first century. Yet there are concerns that scholarly objectivity requires detachment from society. The American experience with scholarly engagement comes from Land-Grant universities & extension. The Land-Grant principle emerged from the mandate to the Land-Grant colleges to improve the nation's agriculture. Agricultural science has been hugely productive because of the Land-Grant principle. The principle is general to all scholarship. The Land-Grant principle gives both intellectual & political power to engagement. Scholarship is made better substantially through the test of workability, a dimension of scholarly objectivity. The scholar is also made more skillful. The engagement making possible the test of workability makes the scholarship more relevant. Institutionalized access to the workable, relevant knowledge for those who need it generates substantial political power. At a time when universities, particularly public research universities, are seeking public support for more than their teaching, the strategies suggested by the Land-Grant principle are instructive. 1 Table, 29 References. [Copyright 2003 Sage Publications, Inc.]

A model for organisational development activity in universities of
other third level educational institutions is proposed. The model places
internal university organisational development within the context of a
strategic planning process and relies on change agents influencing this
development. The article develops a model on the basis of three case
histories of organisational development in universities, namely those at
Carnegie‐Mellon University, Dublin City University and the University of
Quebec.

This article sets out the principles that should govern university funding, outlines the extent to which current funding arrangements meet these principles, and examines alternative funding models that would encourage flexibility and diversity in universities.