To Örebro University

This paper focuses on ’formation’ in higher education.   In the international context of competitiveness, internationalization, ‘entrepreneurialism’ in ‘research intensive’ environments, how do universities conceptualise ‘formation’ and how are such images communicated on institutional websites and in strategic plans? This paper is an exploratory analysis of such re-presentations in five highly ranked universities.  

Governments and stakeholders increasingly measure institutions’ capacity to stimulate economic growth and meet the needs of knowledge societies in a climate of financial crisis (Stensaker & Harvey 2011). Institutions must be  ‘marketed’   to students and  external stakeholders to  secure financing, increasingly from the private sector whose purses respond to  ‘ranking’ criteria (see www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/). An international market has been generated for students, funding academic staff, overlaid with performance indicators, quality reviews and performance-based funding (Tremblay, K., Lalancette, D. & Roseveareet, D. (2013). Does such international competitiveness further civic engagement or contribute to the formation of  a new ‘creative class’ that lives in   ‘neighbourless neighbourhoods’, preoccupied with themselves where they ‘bowl alone’!? (Florida, 2002, 2005; Putnam, 2000). How do selected institutions re-present or ‘market’ and  ‘brand’ themselves in such climates and contexts and is it possible to predict the impact of such formulations on programmes and their content as well as staff and student experiences?

This paper will provide a critical analysis of how this is done in a purposive sample of five Universities, four European, and one US. The theoretical framework deployed is summarised in table 1 where the logic of responsibility regards a moral dimension as essential to formation, while the logic of accountability marches to the beat of NPM. However, we see these logics (and languages) as creating tensions, sometimes incompatible, while part of the purpose of the analysis is to establish how institutions respond to, reject or otherwise deal with these competing world views as a framing of formation