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Excellence of analysis to diversity of advocacy: The multiple roles of the Leverhulme study into the future of higher education

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Abstract

The Leverhulme programme of study into the future of higher education is an impressive analytical effort carried through with expediency and allowing for wide participation. However, the programme is not only an ambitious exercise in policy analysis and unorthodox planning. It also involves processes of bargaining and policy advocacy. But the demands of these different roles have not been openly examined. Thus the programme has unnecessarily rendered itself open to criticism. In particular, many of the recommendations echo a consistent plea for new institutional arrangements for central co-ordination and top-down management and control. These recommendations, however, have received little or no underpinning and are actually at odds with some of the most qualified studies of the Leverhulme programme itself. Furthermore, the programme has tended to neglect two of the most urgent tasks of policy analysis, namely to outline a range of available options - rather than to produce a broad consensus view - and to clearly spell out major value tradeoffs involved - rather than to assure that there are no significant drawbacks attached to the options being advocated.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Group for the Study of Higher Education and Research Policy, University of Stockholm, Sweden

    Björn Wittrock (Chairman, Visiting Scholar)

  2. Comparative Higher Education Research Group, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

    Björn Wittrock (Chairman, Visiting Scholar)

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  1. Björn Wittrock
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Prepared when the author was a Visiting Scholar of the Comparative Higher Education Research Group, University of California, Los Angeles. The author is indebted to the Director of the Group, Professor Burton Clark, for incisive comments on some of the issues raised by the Leverhulme Programme and to Dr. Gary Rhoades of the same Group for helpful comments on a previous draft of the article.

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Wittrock, B. Excellence of analysis to diversity of advocacy: The multiple roles of the Leverhulme study into the future of higher education. High Educ 13, 121–138 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00129488

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