Academic Autonomy in a Rapidly Changing Higher Education Framework

Academia on the Procrustean Bed? Governance and management of universities The challenges for European universities in a steadily changing environment are manifold. Governance and management of universities are in particular affected, as they have to respond rapidly to a demanding environment. As states provide less of universities ’ core funding and market pressures increase, the need for governance and management of institutions to ensure an effec-tive and sustainable financial basis becomes even more apparent. New gov-ernance and management challenges are the result of both internal and external pressures. Internal pressures following a rapid growth in the volume of higher education activity—in terms of both student numbers and complexity of the student population—and research amounts are greater than ever. External pressures consist of scarce resources and a complex and highly competitive environment with demands for a quick response to a broad range of interests and stakeholders. Dr. Evanthia Kalpazidou Schmidt is an associate professor at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. Her main fields of interest are higher education and research policy, sci-ence and society, sociology of science, research environments and production of knowl-edge, knowledge management and capacity building, and comparative studies and evaluation. Dr. Kamma Langberg is a senior researcher at the University of Aarhus. Her main fields of interest are research management and labor market and empirical studies