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Changes in the freedoms of individual academics and universities have been gathering apace across the western world since World War II (e.g., Altbach, 2001; Karmel, 2003, p. 2). Such changes have compelled the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to alert the world community to the link between freedoms experienced in the university sector and those in wider democratic systems. In 1998, UNESCO held a World Conference on Higher Education with a specific focus on academic freedom and university autonomy. An international charter resulted, detailing mutual rights, obligations and monitoring mechanisms. The International Association of Universities (IAU), the group responsible for convening the UNESCO debate, emphasised that academic freedom and university autonomy were essential to be able to transmit and advance knowledge:For Universities to serve a world society requires that Academic Freedom and University Autonomy form the bedrock to a new Social Contract – a contract to uphold values common to Humanity and to meet the expectations of a world where frontiers are rapidly dissolving. (cited in Ginkel, 2002, p. 347)

This paper aims at identifying perceived factors and measuring opinions about the factors' impact on academic staff development (ASD) at Tay Nguyen University (TNU), Dak Lak, Vietnam.

The research used the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) method, the multiple regression model (ordinary least squares (OLS)) and a five-point Likert scale questionnaire. A sample of 70 managerial staff, 374 lecturers and 512 students of TNU was surveyed to obtain data.

The EFA showed that opinions concerning university autonomy (UA) and university social responsibility (USR) were positively correlated. With the above two factors united as responsible autonomy (RA), the OLS indicated perceptions that RA and internal driving factor (IF) had significant and positive impacts on the ASD, while external driving factor (EF) was found to have a perceived negative influence on ASD.

The results indicated that there appears to be a close relationship between UA and USR, and these can be considered as a factor that has apparent impacts on the ASD of the university.

The degree of UA and USR of TNU should be enhanced through awareness of the university's academic staff, the application of a suitable evaluation system and the efficiency of university's regulations. In addition, efforts should be made to improve internal factors such as the dissemination of educational philosophy, the suitability of strategic plans, the development of key performance indicators KPIs and the building of organizational culture – all of which will help to heighten the university’s ASD. At the same time, TNU should endeavor to quickly transform aspects of administration and management to meet the shifting requirements of the autonomous environment and competitive features of the market economy. In particular, there is a need for the academic staff themselves to have increased capacity to adapt to these changes.

The authors' results have a broader application to not only the case of TNU but to other situations in developing countries where universities are in transitional stages as governments assign increasing autonomy and responsibility to them.

This paper suggests that the academic staff of TNU should be provided with both professional autonomy and adaptive capacity to foster research and educational innovation in the market-based higher education system of Vietnam. More generally, if true, the paper suggests that an increase in the degree of UA and USR should be combined with the efforts to improve the internal environments such as disseminating educational philosophy, mission, vision and strategies and building organizational culture.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the practices of financial autonomy and control the emerging issue of agencification in the higher education sector.

The practices are investigated using case studies from seven semi-autonomous state universities in Indonesia. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 17 respondents including university officials, policymakers, and experts. The interview results were analysed using an inductive-deductive approach.

This research highlights an unstable balance between financial autonomy and control practices in the universities. Autonomy supports agencification mainly by simplifying financial procedures and control is seen by university managers to be overemphasised compared to in the other state universities. Despite successes in introducing a business-like atmosphere within bureaucratic universities, questions about balancing financial autonomy and control remain.

The small number of cases implies limited generalisability. The two characteristics used, size and parent ministries do not represent all university variabilities.

Agencification has become a key reform practice for state universities. Rather than using a “one size fits all” approach, the government needs a repertoire of models for these institutions.

This study provides empirical evidence of agencification in the higher education sector with an emphasis on the financial dimension of autonomy and control in a developing country setting.

At best, university research policies on autonomy can support an open legal, contractual and social environment for research collaboration and publication. For the individual, they can protect the publication of unpopular, contentious or speculative findings from undue interference. For the university, the policy framework sets the direction and guards the production of knowledge as a resource for its own reputation and income. As Trowler (2001) argues, the set of intentions codified in university policies generate their own reality and values that the university usually pursues with requisite authority. For the university system, the policy framework reflects the extent to which the university is able to set its own ground rules. University policy is not created in a vacuum but, rather, reflects governmental and other constraints, and is further bounded by international, national and regional priorities (Kleeman, 2003). This chapter explores explicit policy statements on research autonomy taken from a selection of Australian universities in order to examine the effect of recent governmental changes on research.

This paper aims at understanding teachers' (the authors refer to “teachers” in higher education as lecturers or senior lecturers) professional autonomy in the context of the current university English teachers in France.

The authors present here the preliminary results of the test-questionnaire the authors have made to gather main tendencies on the topic (the results were presented orally at the SAES national conference held in Paris from 20 to 22 May 2011, http://saes.univ-paris3.fr). This paper is organized in three different themes that correspond to the three main parts of the test-questionnaire.

The authors first show that the current degree of professional autonomy is both satisfying and an essential factor of self-development. The data underline the fact that teachers' professional autonomy is indeed a very important aspect of teaching as a job within the organizational university context. Then, the authors distinguish individualism from autonomy; stressing the fact that team-work does not entail less professional autonomy, contrary to what people may often think. Finally, most colleagues who participated in this first study have expressed concern that organizational constraints, such as the size of the groups, the obligation to conform to an overly constraining curriculum, the obligation to reach some success quotas or employment quotas, etc. could reduce or even threaten their professional autonomy and self-development.

Many books have been written on learners' autonomy and teachers' role on this aspect. Teachers' professional autonomy at university level on the other hand is a much less studied topic. Often taken for granted, this autonomy now appears to be questioned because of the implementation of new organizational systems.

This article studies the tensions between universities' accountability and autonomy in response to the demands of public steering mechanisms coordinating higher education institutions.

Demonstrating the tension between accountability and autonomy, the impact and relevance of public steering mechanisms coordinating higher education are studied via a survey with selected representative Finnish universities. The response rate was an exceptionally high 94%. In addition to the statistical analysis of the survey, open-ended questions were also analyzed to give a more in-depth understanding of the findings. The study uses paradox theory and institutional complexity as its theoretical lenses.

The empirical analysis of this study shows a considerable gap between the experienced impact and the experienced relevance of the steering mechanisms in higher education. The authors’ further analysis of the open-ended data shows that indicator-based funding allocation has undermined the perceived university autonomy. The authors highlight the paradoxical tensions of university autonomy and higher education institutions' steering mechanisms' requirement for accountability. Finding an acceptable balance between accountability and institutional autonomy plays an important role in designing higher education policies.

The authors found that even if a steering mechanism is experienced as impactful, it is not necessarily considered relevant. One of the key aspects in understanding the reasons behind this mismatch is related to university autonomy. Most impactful steering mechanisms become considered less relevant because they also endanger institutional autonomy. In this sense, it could be expected that steering mechanisms should better balance accountability and autonomy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the governance system of autonomous universities in an emerging economy, i.e., Thailand. The authors examine the degree of freedom that Thai autonomous universities enjoy and the process that they follow in instituting their governance system.

The authors use case study method of research where units of analysis are 16 public autonomous universities. Data are collected directly from the Universities and available documents and through interviews with ten informants from five universities. Data are analysed using the triangulation method before presenting findings.

The authors find that Thai autonomous universities had different degree of readiness when they were granted autonomy status by the government. According to their Acts, the universities can specify their own governance pattern, leadership recruitment, revenue management, budgeting and personnel management. With the strengthening role and accountability, the university councils have enjoyed wider space of actions in institutional governance. Size and composition of the councils differ. Big and more mature universities tend to have more members and their councils comprise more outside experts than the small ones. Thai autonomous universities’ governance structure is in the pattern of corporate-like structure. Participatory process is applied in the university decision making. Big universities are strategically directed towards being research universities, while small and newly established universities are striving to expand to health science education. In academic governance, there is an academic board which helps the council to handle academic standards and give academic related recommendations. The launch of Education Criteria for Performance Excellence Framework to standardise the country’s higher education system has become controversial and is said to lessen the universities’ degree of academic freedom. In financial autonomy, the study finds that most universities are still dependent on government budget.

This case study depicts the governance system of autonomous universities in Thailand, which is one of the emerging countries. Taken into account that existing literature regarding university governance, especially in the emerging countries is limited, the study, which eventually proposes recommendations for lifting these universities’ governance performance, should be able to contribute fruitful knowledge in the area.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how an Higher Education Institution’s (HEI) choice of undergoing a voluntary reorganisation, motivated by its own interest of increasing its autonomy, whilst also having to satisfy the government in order to maintain the level of public funding, impacts on the HEI’s accounting.

The paper draws on the institutional logics perspective to present a single case study of a German HEI that chose to be reorganised from a public into a foundation university. Data were obtained using multiple data collection methods.

The findings suggest that organisational characteristics, which act as filters for institutional logics, play an important role for HEIs’ ability to increase not only their de jure, but also their de facto autonomy through self-motivated, rather than government imposed, reform processes.

The paper is based on a single case study in a country-specific context, limiting the empirical generalisability of the findings.

Germany is not only one of the main nations exporting higher education, but its economy has also been recognised for its stability and development over the last decades. Nevertheless, Germany struggles in its transition to become a knowledge-based economy. Yet, research has so far tended to neglect educational reforms in Continental European countries, such as Germany. By addressing this gap in the literature, this paper is among the first to explore how reform processes shape accounting in German HEIs.

In the era of the knowledge economy, universities are expected to contribute to the economic development of their countries. Therefore, their research agendas must be relevant to the local context and geared, though not uncritically, to the national educational agenda. To do this diligently requires research autonomy. However, due to the low government investment in research on the African continent, universities have had to rely on other sources of funding, which usually come with strings attached. Our study investigates the case of Ghana, in particular, the University of Ghana, the leading research university in the country. We drew on resource dependence theory, which suggests that, despite external pressures on universities, they can enhance their autonomy through the implementation of strategic measures. Primarily, we analyzed documents such as research reports, journal articles and speeches in the light of Clark’s (1998) model of the “entrepreneurial university,” which, if adapted with care and in a localized form in Ghana, may contribute to the research autonomy of its universities. We found that, although research autonomy in Ghanaian universities is limited due to their over-reliance on external donor funding, it is likely to be strengthened if the government of Ghana follows through on plans to increase research funding and universities continue with measures to diversify their funding sources.

Academic freedom is of central importance in all kinds of activities of academics and students. Considering this, many reforms were made to secure and improve academic freedom in Turkey. The most important reforms and changes were made in 1933, 1946, 1960, 1973 and 1981, and they all coincided with significant social and political periods. But, the history of Turkey’s academic freedom is not bright. The past university policies pertaining to academic freedom had occasionally positive, but often restrictive, results in expanding academic freedom. Despite policies and reforms, illegal dismissals of faculty members, disciplinary inspections and penalties were experienced. Moreover, the restrictions also affected freedom of expression in the forms of censorship and self-censorship; freedom to learn, teach and conduct researches had limitations. On the other hand, the removal of headscarf ban and the abolishment of coefficient policy which disadvantaged some students in the university entrance examinations can be given as examples of improvement in academic freedom of students, both of which improved students’ access to higher education. When compared with other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, the rankings and various indicators present Turkey at lower end in terms of academic freedom. This shows that further steps are to be taken to improve academic freedom in Turkey.