This article examines the case of academic drift, as an example of a theory developed and applied within higher education research. It traces the origins and meaning of the term, reviews its application by higher education researchers, and discusses the issues it raises and the critiques it has attracted. It concludes that academic drift is at the…

This study stems from research on the "Standing Conferences of Rectors and Vice-Chancellors of the European Universities" (1948-), an experimental initiative for co-operation among European universities, emphasising the reformative ideal that appeared in international circles in the years following the Second World War. These conceptions…

This paper analyses shifts in the representation of history and physics as named organisational units on Australian university websites over the last 15 years in the context of broader questions about the production of knowledge in contemporary times. It derives from a broader project concerned with disciplinarity, changing university contexts and…

This short account of R.J.W. (Dick) Selleck's career and research suggests how he reoriented study of the history of education in Australia. Using a historicist method, he examined educational theories and practices to elucidate the educational purposes they were intended to serve. Through major biographies of leading educationists and…

The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham in England, launched in 1964, highlights contested issues of knowledge production in relation to the disciplines in modern universities. It constitutes a fascinating example of the social formation of configurations of knowledge that can be subjected to historical…

Significant challenges confront many Westernised institutions of higher education. Financial pressures, the increasing commodification of higher education and the insistent demands of the global marketplace, have changed the configuration of academe. One of the immediate consequences has been that the role of the professoriate has altered through…

When Geoffrey Sherington and I set out on our project on the Australian Public University, which culminated in "Sydney: The Making of a Public University" (2012), we wanted to move away from the emphasis of conventional institutional history on chancellors, vice-chancellors and governing councils in order to explore the university as a…

William Taylor's 1969 chapter provides a springboard to reflect on how what he termed administrator training has developed since the 1960s. Responding also to Baron's insistence in the same volume that education be viewed as political, the article adopts a critical perspective, focusing on leader preparation programmes and exploring how…

"Educational administration and the social sciences", the landmark text coedited by Baron and Taylor in 1969, represented the study of educational administration as an applied interdisciplinary field. George Baron's own academic career reveals the struggles involved in the construction of this new field and the resistance and…

One social science base for educational administration proposed in the Baron and Taylor collection was organisation theory. In the event this expectation turned out to be over-optimistic. Organisation theory was much too contested and insufficiently pragmatic for the British taste. Major developments in this field occurred mainly in the USA.…

I want to use this essay -- basically a commentary -- as a context for some political reflections on what is happening to the governance and the labour processes at universities internationally. In the process, in addition to my critical reflections on the neoliberal impulses affecting universities, I want to do two other things. First, I shall…

This paper argues that the "Times Higher" provides a powerful tool for understanding the changing character of UK higher education (HE) and can usefully be seen as representative, and in some ways constitutive, of that changing character. Drawing on an analysis of a sample of stories from the "Times Higher," it documents the…

This paper revisits the thesis of a 1980 paper that suggested a new approach to educational administration based upon the New Sociology of Education. In particular it updates answers to the six key questions asked by that paper: what counts as knowledge; how is what counts as knowledge organised; how is what counts as knowledge transmitted; how is…

The American Historical Association's (AHA's) Commission on the Social Studies was a compilation of prominent scholars who, from 1929 to 1934, investigated social studies education in American public schools in order to provide some cohesive recommendations for teachers. The AHA Commission had a controversial ending, with one of its members,…

This paper argues that the "Times Higher" provides a powerful tool for understanding the changing character of UK higher education (HE) and can usefully be seen as representative, and in some ways constitutive, of that changing character. Drawing on an analysis of a sample of stories from the "Times Higher," it documents the changing policy…