Redefining University Leadership for the 21st Century

This chapter looks at the negative headlines that currently dominate the public image of universities. In a climate of increasing graduate unemployment and underemployment and ever-increasing fees, the public is questioning the real value of a higher education. The crisis in college costs is eroding the democratic promise of higher education.

This chapter looks at the manufactured excellence of universities which are based on league tables and ranking metrics. Success in these rankings lulls universities into a false sense of security and complacency. Societies are beginning to feel that universities which run as businesses and are obsessed with growing revenue cannot pursue real learning. There is declining confidence even within the higher education sector. Such negative sentiments have wider implications, as politicians can use them as an excuse in cutting government funding and attacking universities and experts.

Ballooning administrative costs in universities are a huge impediment to college affordability and access. Not only is over-bloated administration bad for institutional morale, it is sapping the energy and vitality of universities. Excessive administration poses the greatest threat to the existence of universities.

Universities value research above teaching due to its influence on ranking tables. Many universities tend to offer high-margin programs in order to channel teaching surpluses towards funding research. Mediocre researchers are valued over inspiring teachers, who are often passed over for promotion. The existence of a research-teaching nexus is questionable when most researchers hardly teach. Despite the proliferation of research publications, groundbreaking research has actually decreased in the last few decades. There are claims that most published research is false, and that there is a crisis of credibility due to the inability to replicate many experiments.

The marketization of knowledge has led to an oversupply of PhD graduates, as it does not follow the economics of supply and demand. While industries continue to complain that PhD graduates lack appropriate knowledge and skills, universities exploit their PhD students as cheap labor for teaching and research activities. PhD students have become part of the flexible workforce to meet the universities’ temporary workforce needs on a part-time and casual basis. As a result, universities tend to take on an excessive number of PhD students.

Human capital is a crucial element for industrialization. The post-industrial world relies heavily on knowledge as a vital part of economic growth. The supply of highly skilled workers trained through higher education is of increasing importance to the development of a nation’s economy. A university education not only provides significant economic and non-monetary private benefits to students, it contributes substantial social and public benefits to society and future generations. However, critics argue that as decades of increasing access to higher education have not resulted in higher economic gains, the benefit of higher education could be in “signalling”. Therefore, the critical question is whether the increasing social costs of higher education have produced a corresponding increase in social benefits. There is an ongoing debate among educational economists between the “signalling” effects versus the “developmental” effects of university education.

In their zest for marketing, universities tend to over-promise and underdeliver. They are now being accused of short-changing their students. Studies have shown the falling value of a university degree. It has found a disconnect between employers’ and recent graduates’ perceptions of workforce preparedness.

Neoliberal reforms have resulted in educational consumerism. But recent labor market data shows that increasing the number of university graduates is not producing corresponding economic success. Many graduates now work in nongraduate jobs. Nevertheless, universities have expanded their global student markets as they see the growth of international students as a panacea for the decline in domestic students. But the reliance on a limitless flow of fee-paying international students cannot be maintained, as their home countries’ universities are growing their own capacities.

Universities in the West cannot afford to be complacent. They must look towards Asia to understand the future of universities. The meteoric rise of China’s university rankings has established the country as a global higher education superpower. China has embarked on another ambitious plan to further strengthen its higher education system. The Double World-Class Project is aimed not only at creating world-class Chinese universities; it is part of a broader plan to build its impact and influence in the global higher education landscape. The dominance of the West is diminishing. China’s scientific ambition is to be the global science powerhouse.

So far, universities have been able to avoid disruptive innovation. Instead, they have grown bigger and better, albeit by charging high tuition fees and incurring hefty student debts. Now, with local student demand flattening and graduate employability declining, some universities find themselves in financial stress. Escalating tuition, rising student debts, the unbundling of higher education services and the rapid advance of learning technologies mean that higher education is ripe for disruption. In their race to expand and pursue ranking excellence, universities have driven up costs and lost focus on their academic mission. They are now unsustainably over-extended, and unaffordable for most of the population. The commodification of higher education in the last century has made universities more vulnerable to disruptive competition.

What is the unifying thread of this centuries-old institution? How university as an institution which has undergone so many transitions through the centuries still remain strong as a higher learning institution? Throughout this narrative, the purpose has been to search for the quintessence of the idea of a university, the core principle which has enabled it to endure. One of the more coherent concepts is that of “understanding”. In this context, “understanding” encompasses a broader concept – from enquiry, critical debate, self-understanding, self-discovery, self-reflection and self-knowledge to the pursuit of truth. As such, “understanding” has the ability to bind all those who believe in the search for truth and in the idea of a university, to be believers through the quest for knowledge.

This chapter looks at the concept of a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) environment brought on by politics, society, economy and the environment. To counter uncertainty and ambiguity in this environment, internal organizational simplicity is needed to enable an institution to be agile and responsive. It requires a different focus on strategy and leadership development – one which focuses on vision, understanding, clarity, and agility.

This chapter looks at the current Fourth Industrial Revolution which integrates the basic sciences and technologies of physics, chemistry and biology, blurring the boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. The convergence of these technologies has created unprecedented breakthroughs - computations and algorithms based on the process of evolution are now applied in creating artificial intelligence and in genetic programming to simulate artificial neural networks. Advanced technologies will perform at a level higher than human experts in terms of accuracy and output. They will also revolutionise multiple industry sectors simultaneously. As such, the disruption of work practices and displacement of human workers occur at a much faster speed than in the past. Hence, the Fourth Industrial Revolution will make university-level education even more vital.

This chapter looks at the time horizon when AI would outperform humans in activities. Yet there are serious skills gaps and mismatch exist in many national economies. It is evident that there is an imbalance between the skills produced by the higher education system and the adoption of technology by businesses. Due to the unprecedented rate of change in current technological trends, it has been estimated that nearly 50% of subject knowledge acquired during the first year of a technical degree could be outdated by the time students graduate. This means that, in addition to technical and specific knowledge, students need to acquire stable core skills which are resistant to change and difficult for AI to program. These core skills relate to human characteristics such as judgment, abstraction, empathy, critical thinking, optimism, entrepreneurialism, cultural intelligence, association and system thinking: all essential abilities relevant across industry sectors.

This chapter looks at how a liberal arts and science education can prepare students for complexity and constant change. It cites examples to illustrate the importance of studying humanities. Humanities teach students critical thinking and help students to become adaptable, to learn and think independently. To prepare students for a successful career they need to develop the intellectual and emotional intelligence to cope with uncertainty and ambiguity. When students are exposed to liberal arts, they are likely to become more self-aware and self-disciplined, acquiring virtues such as empathy, compassion, resilience, and courage.

This chapter looks at the neglect on teaching by universities as a result of the research ranking exercises which consume a great deal of universities’ energy at the expense of their teaching. Now, with declining student satisfaction and deteriorating student outcomes, national governments are starting to turn their attention towards the teaching mission of universities. In an attempt to refocus universities’ efforts on teaching, a Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) was developed by the UK Government to recognize and reward excellence in teaching and learning, and also help inform prospective student choices in higher education. The chapter also examines the concept of Active Learning, and the benefits of neuroscience research to enhance student learning.

Universities in the 21st century have to pay more attention to the needs of students and help students understand the best intention of universities in facilitating their learning journey. They have to provide students with value for money and tangible outcomes. They have to be mindful of students’ wellbeing.

This chapter looks at the cross-subsidies between teaching and research to cover shortfalls in research funding, and the close link between student fees and research productivity in universities.

National governments are increasingly encouraging universities to focus more strongly on research impact: on the contribution that research makes to society, economy, health, and the environment, and not just its contribution to academia. An example of research impact is the control of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. The outbreak of Ebola was successfully conquered with the combined efforts of university, charitable foundation, industry and regulator.

Close collaboration with industries is key to university success. There is a trend of bringing industry to university campus to enhance student employability and technology transfer. The chapter cites many examples including: the Boeing Advanced Research Center on the University of Washington’s Seattle campus, IBM’s Research and Development Laboratory at the Melbourne campus, Microsoft’s global Station Q quantum at the University of Sydney, and Siemens’ Industry 4.0 “Factory of the Future” Swinburne’s Melbourne campus.

This chapter looks at the advances in learning technology to stimulate deeper learning in students. These include the use of artificial intelligence (AI), natural language processing, pattern and speech recognition, and robotics. AI can monitor class performance, provide personalized learning support to students, and create an immersive learning experience through the use of virtual or augmented reality. Augmented and virtual reality are useful in helping students understand situations which are difficult to visualise. Virtual reality (VR) can assist students to practice without physical limitations.

To pursue its academic goals, a university adopts a business model to fund its operation. This involves defining the university’s value proposition to society, its offerings to students, cost structures, and the revenue streams needed to run the institution. But universities are facing many challenges to their current value proposition. Students and employers are questioning the value of an expensive higher education. Universities themselves are also having financing and resourcing problems. Furthermore, the productivity and efficiency of universities are increasingly under scrutiny. Changing demand from local and international students, along with technology transformation and unprecedented competition from newcomers, makes a compelling case for universities to reimagine their business models. The impact of online learning, especially from the private sector, challenges the traditional business model of bricks-and-mortar public universities. The lower costs, flexibility and fast response time presented by MOOCs seriously threatens the traditional market of universities.

Corporate management is ill-suited for managing knowledge workers such as academics. Current generation of university managers are relying on antiquated command and control management methods. However, while work that are relatively structured may be relegated to AI, attention should be focused on non-standard creative work that does not lend itself to being managed.

National governments are reducing their financial support to universities and are determined to tame the tuition tiger. They want financial transparency and universities to control their administrative costs as a priority. Zero-Based Mindset is a novel way of looking at cost efficiency through four zero-based approaches. Universities have to go beyond financial sustainability and include social and environmental performance to account for the full cost in doing business.

While domestic student numbers are declining in developed countries, international student enrolments have grown and will continue to grow. But the source and destination countries will change based on capacity, political and economic factors. However, universities should not simply rely on inflow of affluent international students as home country governments are waking up to the outflow of financial and human capitals. Instead, universities should genuinely invest in enhancing internationalization of education and explore new models of partnerships for mutual benefits.

Crises can occur without notice, from anywhere at any time. They can pose serious threats to a university’s safety, reputation and community standing. Crisis leadership is becoming an important function of the university president. But crisis leadership cannot be delegated to subordinates, since critical decisions should rest with the university president who is ultimately accountable for managing the crisis. Crises are complex and dynamic, involving multiple stakeholders, and could have unanticipated flow-on implications for the university’s reputation. Crisis leadership comprises six distinct but interrelated functions: preparation which facilitates collaboration and coordination, effectively interpreting the complex context of the incident, decision-making for a rapid and targeted response, communication to stakeholders and constituents, and learning from the crisis.

This chapter looks at the leadership qualities required to guide complex organizations such as universities. But the unpredictable landscape demands a fresh approach as university presidents are increasingly subject to high resolution and three dimensional scrutiny. Instead of relying on last century’s old management mindset, university leaders have to build institutions that are agile and flexible which can learn continuously. They must engage effectively with staff to explain why this culture of flexibility and innovation is critical for institutional survival. The rapidly changing and turbulent environment brought on by politics, society, economy and the environment requires a unique style of leadership - one that focuses on authenticity, systems thinking, openness, organizational learning and agility.

This section examines leadership challenges in the case of the University of Hong Kong. Since the handover of the former British colony to the People’s Republic of China in 1997, Hong Kong has been governed as a Special Administrative Region (SAR) under the “One Country-Two Systems” policy, able to maintain politicaleconomic autonomy from the Chinese mainland. While Hong Kong enjoys the greatest degree of freedom of any city in China, its citizens are worried that this freedom could be eroded with mainland China’s rising influence. The Occupy Central movement, which originated in 2011, evolved into a movement to Occupy Central with Love and Peace by 2013. Its aim was to promote peaceful civil disobedience and protests, with the goal of persuading Beijing to allow Hong Kong to have what they consider as genuine universal suffrage in the election of the City’s Chief Executive. The University of Hong Kong, as the city’s oldest and largest higher education institution and symbolic of the colonial past, was on a political knife-edge. Some of the University staff and students were deeply involved in the Occupy Central with Love and Peace movement. At the same time, the University was experiencing low morale as result of recent changes in governance and management reforms. The University has been transitioning from a collegiate to a corporate model of governance structure, a move which has not been completely embraced by the faculty. Universities in Hong Kong are reviewing their governance structure, since the Chancellor of each university is by default the Chief Executive of the Government of Hong Kong (formerly the Governor of Hong Kong prior to 1997). There have been calls by critics and student bodies to remove the Chief Executive as the Chancellor of the universities. It is in this climate that Professor Peter Mathieson was hired as the University’s new Vice- Chancellor. Mathieson was the first British Vice-Chancellor recruited directly from England since Dr Kenneth Ernest Robinson’s time as the University’s ninth Vice- Chancellor (1965 – 1972). Initially, his appointment was greeted with open cynicism from the University’s community. However, the following chapter analyzes the change in community opinion, as Mathieson showed extraordinary leadership in guiding the University through a complex and delicate situation. Mathieson’s strong principles and close adherence to the fundamentals of the academic mission have stood him well. The chapter begins with an explanation of the governance issues in Hong Kong universities, the Occupy Hong Kong movement, and finally, the leadership of Professor Mathieson. The analysis was based on newspaper articles, videos and meetings with Professor Mathieson.