Chapter 3 When Excellence Meets Relevance

Challenges and Tensions Facing Higher Education Institutions

In: Sustaining the Future of Higher Education
Authors:
Rómulo Pinheiro
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Iyad Abualrub
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Abstract

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are increasingly pressured to enhance teaching and research excellence whilst ensuring their relevance to society. These demands, combined with changing structural and ideational dynamics across the sector, are resulting in a set of new tensions and dilemmas at multiple levels. We posit that the ways in which HEIs are responding to these challenges are, to an extent, a function of the models and ideals they have embraced historically in the form of specific ‘ideal type’ models or archetypes of HEIs. These provide local actors with a template, not only for organising internal tasks but also for helping to resolve emerging tensions and dilemmas, such as what tasks to prioritise and under what circumstances. In this chapter, we first identify such tensions and dilemmas and second investigate how these are being addressed across the board against the backdrop of the excellence–relevance interplay and in the context of the multiplicity of tasks and values characterising contemporary HEIs in Northern Europe.

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Introduction Sustainability of Higher Education in Uncertain Times
Chapter 1 Sustaining the European Higher Education Area
Chapter 2 Striving for Research Excellence by Understanding Institutional Rationalities
Chapter 3 When Excellence Meets Relevance
Chapter 4 Student Driven Innovations
Chapter 5 Experiences of Academic Leadership in Ireland 2008–2014
Chapter 6 Using Innovative Observation to Improve Teaching and Learning
Chapter 7 Using Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) for Building Youth Consciousness on Democracy in Everyday Life (DIEL) in India
Chapter 8 Linkages between Academic Culture and Management in Polish Higher Education
Chapter 9 Exploring the Impact of Student Mobility and Extracurricular Engagement on Academic Performance and Graduate Outcomes
Chapter 10 Can the New COVID-19 Normal Help to Achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4?
Chapter 11 The Roles of Higher Education Managers in Germany
Chapter 12 The Incomplete PDCA Cycle in the Research, Development and Innovation Activities at a Finnish UAS
Chapter 13 Organisational Change in Student Affairs

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