Can universities change?

Abstract

The article applies Lewin' theory of change to the question of change in universities which, it is contended, are peculiarly resistant to change. Illustrations are provided by analyses of an attempt to change academic staff through a conference and action programme, of the failure of inter-disciplinary courses to establish themselves, and of the effect of economic pressures on universities. It is argued that the structure of universities through single-discipline departments provides a powerful conservative influence and that a small but significant step towards making change more likely could come about through forms of staff development. In line with Lewin' theory, it is suggested that small earmarked grants to innovators are likely to have an effect out of all proportion to their size, as was indeed the case when the UGC gave a very small grant in 1972 for the improvement of teaching.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 21 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.