Institutional Variations in Faculty Demographic Profiles
Abstract
This paper proposes that many of the academic, financial and management challenges facing higher education are the result of a group of inter-related financial and demographic variables which are combining to produce a "ratchet" effect. Each twist of the ratchet reduces the institutional flexibility necessary for making adaptive responses with respect to revenue and expenses, renewal, and diversity which are required to avoid a further tightening of the ratchet. Another decade of decline may be ahead for Canadian Universities unless the dynamic interplay of the variables responsible for the ratchet can be reversed. Toward this end, the methodology of "institutional variations" is proposed, and is illustrated through an analysis of the faculty demographic profiles of nine Canadian universities. The proposed methodology requires focusing on collecting specific, descriptive information about individual institutions, rather than the usual strategy of collecting normative, aggregated information about higher education in general.
Metrics
Published
2017-05-03
Issue
Section
Articles
DOI
License
Copyright in the article is vested with the Author under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/. Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).