Institutional differentiation. Models and the comprehensive institution

Abstract

The higher education sector faces challenges in the 21 century that institutions need to respond to. In South Africa current reforms emphasize the reality of a changing environment that one can expect institutions will respond to in different ways. The comprehensive institutions that have been created by current reforms face an interesting challenge to establish an institutional identity that creates a university on the one hand, but maintains the career-orientated focus of the academic programmes of their merging partners. The expectation internationally is that "... there will be much more variety in the landscape in the future" (De Boer et al., 2002: 52). Variations will emerge along certain dimensions such as different clienteles that are served, a focus on different missions, different geographical levels as operating domain, the use of different technologies, and trends to form coalitions/networks/consortia At the organizational level universities will experience stress to maintain the unity of functions that are associated with the university. The unity of research and teaching and the nature of the academic task can come under stress. The pursuit of excellence and the maintenance of some form of diversity can interact in interesting ways as well. In quality assurance the question can be raised as to the adequacy of the application of traditional fairly homogeneous academic standards to diverse institutions that respond to different stakeholder expectations. The article will seek to identify the dimensions along which diversity and institutional differentiation can take place and will look at some of the models that have emerged in distance education internationally, in the community college sector (an oft neglected sector) in the USA, and efforts at extending the traditional university model. Some lines will be drawn to the comprehensive institutions, the new kids on the block in the SA higher education system.