Leading a university in a time of change is not easy. Leaders need to know what aspects are and what can be changed. Strong social pressures on higher education institutions have a major impact on the need for rapid change in universities or colleges. Ignoring change can reduce the performance of universities or colleges. What pressure should be expected? In my view, there are many things that university leaders should pay attention to in connection with these requirements. Among the change requests can be identified:
First, societal pressures in society require universities to “change their status.” The status quo of the conventional universities we practice today needs to be changed to a business-run university. In several discussions, there is a tug of war between maintaining the traditional form of the university and the university that conducts educational approaches using business management methods. This approach, of course, justifies the profits, the surplus that remains, so universities are trying to build “wings” of institutions that can create a center of academic excellence at the university. Universities are busy creating “for-profit wings” or institutions that run “revenue generation”.
Second, changes in students ’faces or looks’ also need to change. Students entering universities today are very diverse, multilingual and even multicultural. Not only homogeneous high school graduates but relatively heterogeneous high school graduates predominate among those entering the university. Especially when the university opens its capacities to students graduating from abroad. This change is very important and inevitable. Our education market is mixed with the international education market. We are one of the countries that needs to open up its market in education services. This involvement is the real result of globalization.
Third, there has already been a major shift in the relationship between university institutions and the education market. In the past, universities were “more dominant” in market regulation (admission of students), now students decide to enter the university of their choice. The relationship between future students and universities providing education is more rational, they need each other. Universities are no longer as powerful as they used to be. Universities have to recruit potential students through tough “competition”. Competition for “brand image”, competition for “advertising quality”, competition for incentives, competition for financing education.
Changing relationships also changes the leadership pattern at the university. Changes in “university governance” from a centralized to a pluralistic centralized university governance structure, so that the division of responsibilities becomes a necessity. University governance needs to be developed in a more decentralized, independent and autonomous way.
Universities have recently been trying to find a way to tackle the “global problems”, where the boundaries between universities are unclear, where accountability for university administration is required and where transparency is sought. institutional governance is needed, where autonomy and decentralization are the mainstream. change. University leaders must therefore look back on their “core business”. Universities need to diversify in a “funding-based” perspective. Culture also changes for this work.
The main slogan is that there is no day without change, no matter how little change is needed. The changes cause the future of the university to change. Change itself has become the future itself. In the meantime, we are still covering the mystery of future residence. But this future is also what we want. We are striving for such a future. May we be secure in our quest for the future.
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