Responsibility of Educational Institutions for Strategic Change

Abstract

The Spanish university is well into its nth reform process, this time for the purpose of improving its legibility for members of the European Union under the extended Bologna Process. The reform involves a structural change in plans of study, as well as a cultural change to the Europeanist discourse, which mixes mercantilist values and defence of a fuzzy social orientation as public service in a difficult balance. Goals such as professionalization of degrees, meeting social demands and requirements, and widening the student base to include professionals who wish to continue their education are being pursued in different ways and with different intensities by national systems and centres of higher education. Evaluation, as a decision-making instrument, plays a key role in innovation and improvement and determining the direction of the changes (the goals) and the rhythm of change (process control). Evaluation is inserted in a model of strategic thought or of directed strategic change, which requires discussion by system stakeholders to define the future of higher education institutions. Some results of a recent metaevaluation of the institutional evaluation system employed in Spanish Andalusian universities show the difficulties in strategic change, assuming instead a legitimist model, in which our approximation to the models of other European university systems is pursued with a pronounced isomorphic character.

Keywords

• metaevaluation
• strategic change
• Bologna Process
• higher education