Trial lecture - time and place
Adjudication committee
- 1st opponent: Professor Linda Wedlin, Faculty of Social Sciences, Uppsala University, Sweden
- 2nd opponent: Professor Mats Benner, Lund University, School of Economics and Management, Sweden
- Chair of committee: Professor Berit Karseth, Department of Education, University of Oslo, Norway
Chair of defence
Professor Anne Line Wittek, Department of Education, University of Oslo, Norway
Supervisors
- Professor Bjørn Stensaker, Vice-Rector for Education, University of Oslo, Norway
- Professor Peter Maassen, Department of Education, University of Oslo, Norway
Summary
For many decades, quality has been a key policy issue in the governance of higher education at the national, regional and global levels. This concern is evident in Norway, where quality improvement has been one of the main policy goals concerning higher education, and the public authorities have implemented regulatory, financial and cultural oriented governance for this purpose. The research question in this thesis is “How is the quality of Norwegian higher education governed?”.The thesis aims to deepen our understanding of how dialogue-oriented multi-level “soft governance” of quality is developed and formulated at the national level, how it is negotiated between public authorities and higher education institutions (HEIs), and how this governance is perceived and acted on at the individual staff level.
The thesis builds on three articles which all are published in international scientific journals. At the national level, the analysis of a policymaking process for a white paper on quality culture found that stakeholders who align with the preferences of public authorities informed the policy outcome (Article 1). At the institutional level, the analysis of the negotiations for new governance documents between the Norwegian government and HEIs, where quality is a key topic, found that “soft governance” allows HEIs to align national policy signals with institutional strategic priorities, thereby asserting their institutional autonomy (Article 3). At the individual level, the analysis of how different staff groups in HEIs reason when they conduct quality work, found that academic staff engage with governance on educational quality by communicating and legitimising their unique approaches to this work (Article 2).
Empirically, the articles draw on a document corpus from the policymaking process,
interviews with representatives from staff groups involved in quality work, and documents and interviews on the negotiations for the new governance documents between HEI representatives and Norwegian public authorities. Methodologically, the thesis comprises thematic analysis of interviews and content analysis of documents. Theoretically, the framework is discursive institutionalism (DI), and autonomy and legitimacy serve as core analytical concepts.
The findings of the thesis illustrate how public authorities incorporate both stakeholder and institutional priorities when developing governance for educational quality, while HEIs and academic staff maintain autonomy in their interpretations and implementations of this governance. The actors involved at these different levels appear to regard the diversity of approaches to the governance of the quality of higher education as legitimate, possibly because the governance does not interfere with core academic activities or affects institutional or individual academic autonomy.
The thesis provides an account of how Norwegian academic institutions and staff actively utilise the governance process on educational quality, and the opportunities for dialogue that accompany it, to advance their strategic institutional and individual approaches to quality. The thesis explores how soft governance represents an opportunity for HEIs and academic staff to strengthen their autonomy. However, the efficacy of soft governance in steering quality in higher education is problematised.