Changing values and norms in Portuguese higher education

Abstract

The main objective of this paper is to identify emerging changes in the values and norms related to governance and management in Portuguese higher education and to identify how different kinds of stakeholders perceive these changes. The University Autonomy Act (1988) and the Polytechnics Autonomy Act (1990) by transferring greater responsibility to higher education institutions for the management of institutional life pushed institutional governance to the front stage of the debates on Portuguese higher education. These laws were introduced as instruments of political steering in the framework of the transformation of the relationship between the state and higher education. Some 15 years after those laws were passed, there was an apparent transformation of the opinions about higher education governance and an increasing perception that the autonomy laws provoked some unintended effects, new changes being necessary to increase institutional efficiency. This paper intends to identify what is the content of this transformation and its implications for higher education, and also how different kinds of stakeholders have a perception of these changes. The opinions of former ministers of education, rectors of universities, presidents of polytechnics, administrators of universities and polytechnics, academics, students, unions, professional associations and other stakeholders, are used to analyse how traditional higher education values are being transformed. In some quarters, a change in the norms and values is visible, for instance as an emerging explicit criticism of the collegial values based on the traditional Humboldtian narrative and as a desire for more efficient and effective governance mechanisms. However, in spite of appellative discourses on the rise of academic managerialism and market friendliness, there are groups of stakeholders, including students that offer resistance to the changes of traditional academic norms and values, while academics present a more fragmented perception of these changes, some of them clearly supporting a more managerialist model.