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In recent decades, many higher education systems around the world have been exposed to institutional mergers. While the rationale for mergers has often been related to issues of improved quality, effectiveness and/or efficiency at the institutional level, fewer studies have analysed how mergers may affect institutional diversity within the higher education landscape. Focusing on institutional missions, the current study analyses the strategic plans of both merged and non-merged institutions in Norway. The key finding is that mergers may not necessarily reduce system level diversity, although mergers indeed may affect the organisational mission of individual institutions.

Higher education institutions embed a large variety of organizational practices regarding how to organize, plan, and implement managerial decisions and processes. This variation is amongst others related to the multiple relationships the institutions, disciplines and professions have in their networks, formal agreements, and practical cooperation with the actors and agencies of surrounding societies. Here, we focus upon the challenges and contradictions experienced by leaders of educational programmes within teacher education, engineering and health and social care. The professional educational programmes have increasingly been under pressure to strengthen their research capacity. At the same time, these programmes are characterized by strong relationships with the community of practitioners. How does leadership of these programmes seek to solve the challenges and contradictions between on the one hand catering for the relevance of the programmes and on the other hand strengthening the research capacity of the programmes?

Public sector reform tends to harbour competing ambitions, problems and solutions. Reforms in higher education policy are no exception. They are often multi-faceted phenomena, partly because higher education institutions are complex organizations with wide-ranging expectations and demands from a variety of stakeholders. This chapter argues that higher education institutions cannot ‘organize away’ competing objectives, but rather aim to create organizational designs which help complex institutions to live with complex reforms. The chapter examines the ‘Structural Reform’ in Norwegian higher education and how higher education institutions responded. Launched in April 2015, it resulted in a large-scale organizational redesign of the higher education landscape through merger processes between university colleges as well as between universities and university colleges. As with other reforms in higher education, the Structural Reform focused on several desirable but competing objectives such as high- quality education and research, regional development and world leading academic environments. 

As international and domestic policy initiatives continue to sweep over higher education, it is of utmost importance to study how those responsible for the implementation of the many initiatives taken perceive and respond to the many expectations about change and renewal. Through three different analytical perspectives — a managerial, a disciplinary, and a stakeholder perspective — the current article offers insights into how educational leaders responsible for the management of study programmes at micro-level interpret external expectations and how they prioritize between them. Based on data derived from a representative sample of Norwegian educational leaders, the current article finds — somewhat surprisingly — that the managerial perspective is less relevant for understanding the sense-making of educational leaders and how they prioritize between different tasks in their daily work. Disciplinary and the stakeholder perspectives are in this respect more relevant for explaining the practices related to programme management. The study provides indications of a (continued) gap between macro-level policy-making and its implementation at micro-level. In the conclusion, the findings are reflected upon and implications for policy and practice are outlined.

Governments in Europe have emphasized the development of more autonomous public universities over the last couple of decades. Often, the aim of these reform policies has been to stimulate to a more competitive and agile higher education sector, where increased formal autonomy is perceived as a key condition to strengthen the strategic capacity of universities. These reforms have resulted in considerable shifts in the internal governance models of some universities, while others have kept their traditional governance models. In this article, instrumental and cultural perspectives derived from organizational theory are used as lenses to compare how universities with different internal governance models organize and structure their strategic development processes. Our findings suggest that internal governance models have little impact on the design and organization of strategic processes. In conclusion, it is argued that changes in internal governance arrangements alone are not enough to drive transformation in higher education institutions, and the issue of formal institutional autonomy is intimately linked to how various policy instruments at the system level are designed and coordinated.

While the establishment of quality assurance has been seen for decades as the most significant instrument to secure and enhance the quality of teaching and learning in higher education, the concept of developing more specific learning outcomes has in recent years attracted much interest, not least due to the creation of national qualification frameworks. In this article, we compare the perceived relevance of the traditional quality assurance approach with the new learning outcomes approach – as seen from the view of the academic staff. Using data from a representative survey among Norwegian academic staff, the study indicates that learning outcomes are perceived as more useful and relevant than traditional quality assurance approaches. The article discusses this finding in light of the current ways quality assurance procedures are functioning in higher education, and points to possible implications for the enhancement of quality in universities and colleges.

Et av målene med sammenslåingene av høyskoler og universiteter som fulgte av Strukturmeldingen i 2015, var å bedre utdanningskvaliteten. På tross av dette finner vi ingen tegn til at nyutdannede fra fusjonerte læresteder har blitt mer tilfredse med utdanningen. Tall fra Kandidatundersøkelsen viser snarere en midlertidig, marginal nedgang i tilfredshet sammenlignet med kandidater fra ikke-fusjonerte læresteder. Resultatene kan derfor tyde på at eventuelle positive gevinster av sammenslåinger for denne dimensjonen av utdanningskvalitet, kandidaters tilfredshet, lar vente på seg.

In 2015 a large-scale restructuring of the Norwegian higher education sector was launched, resulting in a number of merger processes leading to more comprehensive institutions than before. The merger processes are complex organisational processes which arguably have impact on key organisational features such as information flow, communication, engagement, collaboration, organisational culture, commitment, leadership and organisational change. Based on data from a 2021 survey among academic staff, this brief compares six of the institutions merging between 2016 and 2017 (INN, NORD, HVL, USN, UiT and NTNU) with a sample of 15 other higher education institutions in Norway. The tendency is that academic staff at the merged institutions in general are less positive with respect to organisational features of their institution than those in the group of other institutions. Both the type of institution and subject fields do play a role in staff reflections on organisational features as well.

In 2015 a large-scale structural reform was introduced in Norway, aiming at improving the quality of higher education. Through mergers between institutions, reform objectives such as high-quality education and research, robust academic communities, proper access to education throughout the country, regional development, world leading academic communities and efficient use of resources were to be achieved. A 2021 survey among academic staff allows us to gain insight in the teaching, research and third mission activities of academic staff and to see some perceived impacts of the structural reform. Teaching and research activities were quite similar across the sector, with some differences between subfields, merged institutions versus non-merged institutions and across institutional types. In contrast, involvement in third mission activities differed significantly. Also here there were marked differences by subfields, merged/non-merged institutions and institutional type. Regarding the level of change experienced, we found that across all reform dimensions respondent very often did not witness much change or did not know. Overall, the impact of the reform appears to be – according to the respondents – limited.

Indikatorrapporten har utviklet seg både i form og omfang siden den første gang ble utgitt i 1997. 2021-utgaven er den fjerde nettbaserte utgaven (www.forskningsrådet.no/indikatorrapporten/). Et hovedpoeng med rapporten er å presentere et bredt tallmateriale om norsk og internasjonal forskning og innovasjon og se dette i en større sammenheng. Rapporten bygger på FoU- og innovasjonsstatistikken, men trekker i tillegg på mer enn 30 ulike datakilder.

Indikatorrapporten har utviklet seg både i form og omfang siden den første gang ble utgitt i 1997. 2021-utgaven er den fjerde nettbaserte utgaven (www.forskningsrådet.no/indikatorrapporten/). Et hovedpoeng med rapporten er å presentere et bredt tallmateriale om norsk og internasjonal forskning og innovasjon og se dette i en større sammenheng. Rapporten bygger på FoU- og innovasjonsstatistikken, men trekker i tillegg på mer enn 30 ulike datakilder.

De fleste fusjonerte institusjonene har valgt en modell for faglig organisering som i stor grad reflekterer den fakultetsstrukturen som eksisterte før fusjonen. Valget av ny struktur er dermed preget av kontinuitet, heller enn innovasjon. En gjennomgang av de fusjonerte institusjonenes styrepapirer i perioden 2016-2020 viser at alle har som mål at den faglige omorganiseringen skal skape institusjoner med sterkere fagmiljøer og en tydelig faglig og strategisk profil. Hvordan de vurderer dette målet, og hvilke prioriteringer de legger til grunn i denne prosessen, er derimot forskjellig mellom de ulike institusjonene. Dette gjenspeiles i deres valg av fakultetsmodell, som varierer fra en tradisjonell «disiplinmodell» med bred fakultetsstruktur til en smalere fakultetsstruktur basert på en «profesjons-» eller «tverrfaglig» modell.

One objective of the Structural Reform introduced in Norwegian higher education in 2015 is to promote high quality of research and contribute to more academic environments performing at a high international level. Higher education institutions differ with regard to research capacity and in the volume of research carried out. This is reflected, amongst others, in the amount of funding and in the number of academic staff and scientific and scholarly publications. During the period between 2011 and 2019, NTNU, HVL, HINN, USN, Nord Univ and UiT all increased their publication volume, both when measured in number of publications and in the number of publication points. The general pattern is that the largest institutions have the lowest growth rates. Several of the smaller institutions have very high growth rates, which may reflect increased research ambitions and time devoted to such activities at these institutions. Furthermore, the institutions differ in terms of discipline profile and specialization. Scientific productivity is also very skewed at the level of individuals. In 2019, one quarter of the publishing personnel published more than 1.5 publication points and there were only minor differences in this proportion across institutions. In terms of citation impact, all the examined institutions contribute to high impact research, but overall, the figures are lower than the national average. Large differences prevail at the level of subject fields.

I dette notatet belyses utviklingen i studieprogramprofilen ved de fusjonerte institusjonene. Institusjonene har fått en tydeligere fagprofil målt som andel studieprogram innen ulike fagområder og også styrket mastergradsprofil, men dette skyldes i stor grad den pågående overgangen fra fireårig til femårig lærerutdanning. Det har også vært en økning i antall studenter per studieprogram. Institusjonene har større regional spredning av studietilbudene, men studentene søker i større grad til noen av studiestedene enn andre. Data er hentet fra DBH.

In April 2015 the Norwegian government launched a large-scale re-organisation of the Norwegian higher education landscape. A key characteristic of the 2015 Structural Reform is not the basic policy solution per se, but rather how this solution was put forward and the extent to which the higher education institutions involved were included in shaping the specificities of the merger processes in which they were involved.

Som følge av Strukturreformen er flere norske UH-institusjoner nå midt i omfattende omorganiseringsprosesser. I dette notatet presenterer vi resultater fra en intervjubasert undersøkelse om fusjonsprosessen ved Høgskulen på Vestlandet. Fusjonsprosessen har vært tidkrevende, og spesielt den administrative omorganiseringen har vært forsinket. Forsinkelsene har bl.a. resultert i et høyt arbeidspress for de ansatte ved høgskolen. Utfordringene kan i stor grad relateres til implementering av campusovergripende fakulteter og institutter, ingen stedlig ledelse og store geografiske avstander. Undersøkelsen viser også at det i stor grad er en felles virkelighetsforståelse på tvers av de tradisjonelle skillelinjene i akademisk virksomhet (ansatt–leder, fag–administrasjon). Notatet framhever et behov for bedre prosesskoordinering, et mer effektivt kommunikasjonssystem, arbeid med ledelse i en ny organisasjon, samt behov å også ha fokus på de uformelle aspektene av en ny organisasjon.

Underdalutvalgets forslag til ny stillingsstruktur og nye karriereveier vil kunne gi bedre forutsigbarhet og mer attraktive karriereveier for ansatte i norske universiteter og høgskoler. Men utvalget svarer ikke på den største utfordringen: Hvordan man kan lage attraktive karriereveier for det store flertallet med fersk doktorgrad – de som ikke skal jobbe ved universiteter eller høgskoler.

This note on methodology describes the questionnaire, sample and data gathering process of a survey conducted by NIFU in connection to the Re-structure project, a four-year project funded by the Research Council of Norway through the FINNUT programme. The survey “Working conditions in higher education” has three objectives: To operationalize the reform goals, to investigate changes in core activities in order to measure change in the HE sector, and to measure institutional integration.

Høgskulen på Vestlandet (HVL) ble etablert 01.01.2017 etter fusjon mellom Høgskolen i Bergen, Høgskulen i Sogn og Fjordane og Høgskolen Stord/Haugesund og er et av flere nye læresteder etablert i etterkant av Strukturreformen i 2015. Følgeevalueringen av fusjonen viser at den formelle organiseringen er i ferd med å finne sin form, men det gjenstår arbeid med å utvikle felles kultur og god kommunikasjon i en mye større organisasjon med til dels lange vertikale linjer og geografiske avstander. På tross av en krevende fusjonsprosess har HVL flere gode resultater innen forskning, utdanning og samhandling. Denne rapporten presenterer funnene fra en forskningsbasert følgeevaluering som ble gjennomført i perioden august 2018–januar 2020.

Akademiske karrierer, rekruttering av vitenskapelig ansatte og forskeres mobilitet har fått større oppmerksomhet etter stortingsmeldingen Kultur for kvalitet (2016–2017). Ikke minst er det en sentral politisk målsetting at akademiske karrierer skal være attraktive. I den forbindelse har Kunnskapsdepartementet ønsket en kartlegging av søkning, rekruttering og mobilitet i universitets- og høgskolesektoren. Resultatene av kartleggingen presenteres i denne rapporten.

The higher education sector is increasingly important to society and national economies. Recruitment to academic positions, academic career prospects, and working conditions are critical issues in this regard. Importantly, academic career structures are characterised by different principles for organising academic careers which show distinct national variations. Currently the Norwegian academic career system is under discussion and the Ministry of Education and Research has appointed an expert committee (the Underdal committee) to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the Norwegian academic career system, whether changes are necessary, and to provide recommendations for improvement.