How Commitment to Public Service Shapes Reforms and University Leadership Responses: A Qualitative Study in France

Structural changes in European universities have been the subject of a significant body of research analyzing how governance is affected by external stakeholders such as states, markets, and other academic institutions, and the influence of internal stakeholders such as faculty and students. As state-imposed reforms interact with national objectives and transnational goals across Europe, two spheres of research emerge: what factors affect institutional leadership structures, and how are institutional leaders responding to those factors? Few studies have looked at the effects of a national-level reform, such as that undertaken by France since 1968. This study takes a qualitative, multi-site approach using an analysis built on coding descriptions of semi-structured interviews; documents and observations; and a review of key external indicators. A proposed framework was developed to analyze the findings based on two theoretical models of governance tensions between state, academy, and market (Clark, 1983) and governance dimensions around educational arrangements, financial autonomy, and personal autonomy (Dobbins & Knill, 2017). The findings from interviews with university presidents, senior government officials and NGOs, as well as senior consultants and experts in the field of governance, revealed that the state/university relationship in France remains very strong, even though a stratified system is observed by participants. Compiled results based on external outputs in key indicators including scholarly publications (research), university rankings (pedagogy and training), and student enrollment (public service) demonstrated how little sway the market appeared to hold. Leaders, though they identified 75% of the factors influencing their institutions as external, also recognized that there is an internal component centered on individuals. These internal influences can be framed as organizational factors, but participants referred to them most often as a manifestation of people sharing a common conviction built through a collegial approach. The core of the concern expressed at the time of this study remains to identify the role of the university in meeting France’s espoused societal values, as shared across all participants