The Changing Ecology of U.S. Higher Education: An Organization Field Perspective
ISBN: 978-1-78560-831-5, eISBN: 978-1-78560-830-8
Publication date: 5 February 2016
Abstract
Media characterizations of the state of higher education in America often seem bipolar. They emphasize either the accomplishments of the most successful elite schools or the failures of colleges that are beset by problems and falling behind the performance of schools in other developed societies. A more complete understanding of higher education is obtained by embracing an organization field perspective, which recognizes the multiplicity of schools that exist – their varying origins, missions, structures, and performance metrics. This diversity is concretized by focusing on the evolving characteristics of colleges in one metropolitan region: the San Francisco Bay Area. The field perspective also calls attention to the support and governance systems that surround colleges and account for much of the stability of the field.
Organization fields are shaped by both isomorphic and competitive processes. Isomorphic processes have been dominant for many years, but now competitive processes are in ascendance. All fields are embedded in wider societal structures, and the field of higher education is richly connected in modern societies with the economic, stratification, and political spheres. Some of these interdependences reinforce within-field processes, some recast them, and still others disrupt them. The appearance of new technologies, new types of students, and changing work requirements have begun to unsettle traditional field structures and processes and encourage the development of new modes of organizing. Over time, the dominant professional mode of organizing higher education is being undercut and, in many types of colleges, supplanted by one based on market forces and managerial logics.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgments
This paper had its origins in work the senior author began as a part of the project, “Reform and Innovation in the Changing Ecology of U.S. Higher Education” funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Michael W. Kirst and Mitchell Stevens, Principal Investigators, Stanford University School of Education (Kirst & Stevens, 2015). It reports early findings from a follow-up study conducted by staff associated with the John W. Gardner Center for the Youth and Their Communities, Stanford University. This research is supported by the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation and LearningWorks, Michael W. Kirst, Principal Investigator. Brian Holzman and Bernardo Lara provided statistical support for the work reported.
Citation
Richard Scott, W. and Biag, M. (2016), "The Changing Ecology of U.S. Higher Education: An Organization Field Perspective", The University Under Pressure (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 46), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 25-51. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X20160000046002
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited