Reforms of higher education and research in the Nordic countries: global trends and Nordic models in Academia

In the second half of the 20th century, the majority of the population in many industrialized nations, including the Nordic countries, gained access to higher education. Simultaneously, the university system’s importance to economic development became emphasized. As universities have evolved from small academic islands of minor economic significance into vast systems of higher education that are expected to be engines of growth, the incentives for the state to get more directly involved in university governance have increased (Berman Popp, 2012; Delanty, 2001; Jarvis, 2001). The ambition to democratize society has been another driving force behind government attempts to reform the system of higher education (Fägerlind & Strömqvist, 2004). Since the 1990s, higher education reforms have been inspired by New Public Management ideals, which have borrowed governance models from business management. However, the ideals of academic freedom and autonomy of universities and collegial government by faculty are still alive. In fact, these ideals have to a large extent been, if not invented, at least recruited in opposition to perceived threats against their status and independence. For example, Barrow (1990, 168– 169) has shown how in the early 1900s faculty at US universities rallied around an ideal of collegiality that was ‘an amalgam of myth, real history and wish fulfilment’ as a counterstrategy against the proletarization that threatened them at the time. European universities have traditionally been closer to the mythical ideal of faculty governance than their US counterparts. In several Nordic countries, academic freedom or university autonomy are enshrined in the constitution. These freedoms might conflict with attempts at government control and with an increasing number of external members on university boards, which has been noted in recent decades (Degn & Sørensen, 2015; Öberg Ahlbäck et al., 2016; Gerber, 2001; Karran, 2007). When doing research about higher education, academic scholars are by definition involved in their object of research. The demarcation line between opinion pieces about the threats against academic freedom and academic research on university governance therefore tends to get blurred. This results in systemic bias in single country studies of higher education governance that lends to the situation of all countries being portrayed as equally dismal. One straightforward method for overcoming the problems involved in single country studies is to conduct direct comparative research. International comparative studies of higher education is an established research field (Karran, 2007; Mir, 2013; Musselin & Teixeira, 2014; Schugurensky, 2013). A classic in the field is Clark’s (1983) international investigation of higher education systems, which described different authority systems in university governance. Since the publication of Clark’s book, university systems around the world have been brought in closer contact with each other through globalization of management models and ranking systems as well as internationalization of teaching, research, and student migration. However, recent comparative studies reveal enduring differences in how structural educational policy reforms are implemented around the world (European Commission 2016; de Boer et al., 2017). Existing research also emphasizes that international governance ideas are received differently depending on national contexts (Bleiklie et al., 2017; Degn, 2015). This special issue focuses on how university governance has evolved in the Nordic countries, influenced by international trends but building on regional and national foundations. The perspectives are both historical, tracking developments that have led to the present situation, and comparative, analysing national differences and similarities between countries in the region.