Entreprenurial Universities

Taking EAD805 Higher Education Administration was a great start for my graduate work. I made strong connections between the material and my professional work. Birnbaum(1998) provided four excellent lenses into the dynamics of a higher education institution. I was able to frame the way departments and faculty peer-groups operate differently then operational wings of the university. These ideas were most useful in committee and project work where more than one social form is in play at once. I also found myself to be more perceptive of each individual's biases and driving motivations based on their specialized role within the institution.

The group of students I studied with also provided a rich backdrop for conversation. We had an interesting cross-section of education professionals from admissions and athletics on down with some K-12 administrators thrown in for good measure.

The assignments provided adequate flexibility to leverage the materials introduced in assigned readings towards an area of interest. Because of flagging state support and a long standing tuition guarantee, my time spent at MSU working on online education frequently involved creation of new programs or enabling expansion of MSU's instruction into new markets. I had been struggling to simultaneously focus my attention on common-good and revenue generating initiatives which frequently seemed at odds. I persuaded my teammate, Brenda K. Wills, to help me research current literature that might explain the tensions I was sensing. We researched governance structures, decision-making, and leadership behavior relative to entrepreneurial activities within the university. We co-authored a paper which I've linked to this page (see link below) based on our review of literature.

Writing the paper didn't provide me all the answers I was looking for, but it afford me a greater understanding of how the multiplicity of purpose that a modern research university embodies creates political and ideological tensions. The university's many purposes create a great number of specialists, or at least people that operate with very different dominant behavioral standards and normative values.