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What Is Academic Governance?

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Academic Governance in the Contemporary University

Abstract

This chapter synthesises the scholarly literature to introduce the concept of academic governance in a more general sense. It begins by placing this in context, acknowledging that academic governance within universities takes place at a number of levels, of which institutional-level processes and practices are only one. The chapter then considers traditional collegial governance, or what is sometimes described as academic self-governance. It later discusses common ways in which institutional-level academic governance has changed in recent years, incorporating brief discussions of academic freedom, institutional autonomy, tenure, the introduction of new academic governance regimes such as academic workload models and student participation in academic governance. The chapter concludes with some observations about challenges facing academic governance that are subsequently taken up in more detail in later chapters within this volume.

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Rowlands, J. (2017). What Is Academic Governance?. In: Academic Governance in the Contemporary University. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-2688-1_3

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