7704
The applicability of management principles within university departments of adult education
Gwyn Harries-Jenkins, University of Hull
In examining critically the contemporary provision of university adult education in Great Britain, it is now almost de rigeur to draw attention to the effect upon provision of the ‘rapidly worsening financial situation within the universities and outside'[1]. The generally reached conclusion is that a persistent reduction in the allocation of resources to this sector of education not only puts constraints upon the provision of established adult education programmes but places at considerable risk any innovatory and experimental work. Adult Education in general, and university provision in particular, have always lacked resources but it is now very evident that a very real appreciation of the potential effects of a siege economy permeates this field. Faced, therefore, with the harsh realities of a situation in which resources are seemingly finite, this would seem to be an opportune time to review critically the contribution which education management can make to the easing of the difficult position by analysing the provision of alternative strategies and solutions.
That this is an opportune moment for such a review is also evidenced by the way in which during the last five years the provision of university adult education has been subject to an increasing amount of critical examination. The Reports of the Russell, Alexander and Venables Committees, public debate in the literature of adult education and the enquiries sponsored by SCUTREA and UCAE are symptomatic of a growing awareness that the traditional pattern of provision may not meet fully the educational and social needs of contemporary society. Yet notwithstanding the diversity of these discussions, a large part of this provision seemingly remains encapsulated in a traditional - and to many critics an anachronistic - educational ideology. University adult education repeatedly appears to be the prisoner of its traditions. Both descriptive and analytical accounts of developments in this sector of education bring out clearly the extent to which an evolved set of traditions seemingly dominate educational philosophy. In areas as diverse as the range of offered subjects, the adopted teaching methodology, the expected sense of individual commitment and the evaluation of success, a complex and persistent sub-culture has been developed. The concomitant identification of university adult education as a ‘movement’ with its own ethos and mores makes it even more difficult than in other sectors of education to respond to the postulated advantages of an association between management and education. Yet such an association has much to commend it and it is the purpose of this paper to explore more fully the advantages which may accrue from the application of management principles and the techniques to the provision of university adult education.
The Role of Education Management
In looking more critically at the merits or demerits of introducing education management into the framework of this provision, an initial area of controversy is derived from differing perceptions of the role of this branch of management. The underlying difficulty is the major but by no means novel problem that any form of evaluation in adult education is characterised by a high degree of subjectivity. In the past this has been clearly evidenced in debates about the ‘real’ objectives of university provision. Controversy about the goals of adult education has long been and is still with us. This has been clearly seen in sterile debates about standards, the polarisation of vocational and non-vocational aims, the dilemma of reconciling equality and excellence, and so on. In a similar way, any evaluation of the role of education management cannot escape from the effect of these subjective perceptions. But an awareness of the problems which are encountered in this area cannot justify any failure to consider the postulated advantages of education management. For departments within universities, a review of the function and role of education management is of critical importance in view of the stresses imposed upon departments as a result of movements within the parent society. More than most educational institutions, universities today face the very real and hard choice of allocation within constrained resources. Neither political prudence nor economic reality suggests that either universities or departments of adult education will enjoy vast new resources in the near future. If these departments are therefore to maintain, let alone increase, their share of existing allocations, then they must be able to convince the parent society of the utility of that which they do. If they fail to achieve this, if they are seen to be reluctant to examine critically traditional methodologies and curricula or if they are held to have used existing resources irrationally, then, almost by default, a greater share of scarce resources will be obtained by alternative agencies.
Given that any critical review of the function and role of education management must involve a high degree of subjectivity, it can nevertheless be argued that the principles of education management can be usefully employed as a means of analysis. It is not suggested that these principles are wholly objective in their nature. The concepts and techniques which have been evolved necessarily reflect individual ranking of different elements of management. Thus a preference for concepts which are concerned with interpersonal relationships within the organisation (the ‘human behaviour’ or ‘social system’ approach) rather than those concerned with cost-effectiveness (the ‘economic approach’) reflects a subjective choice. Even so, concepts and techniques derived from different sections of management theory are to be preferred as an analytical tool to those emotional and rigid feelings which have hitherto too frequently distorted critical analysis in this field.
This suggestion, however, does not ignore the other and more major difficulties associated with any attempt to introduce education management into departments of adult education. In common with workers in other sections of education, many university staff reject the applicability of management techniques and principles to this field of activity. Their reaction is reflected in a wide body of literature. Part of this is concerned with the general issue of the dissimilarity between educational institutions and economic organisations. Thus King writes[2]:
Whilst it is recognised that schools are like factories and offices in some respects (and churches and prisons too) a common sense view is that these similarities are less important than the things that lead us to regard schools as being different from other organisations.
Underlying this conclusion, there is, as Morgan points out[3], a belief that the activities of educational institutions are dichotomous in that on the one hand they are instrumental - to do with the acquisition of specific skills - and on the other that they are expressive - to do with conduct, character and manner. Management, it would seem, is particularly inappropriate in the latter area and the reaction of staff within departments of adult education is therefore held to be perfectly rational when adult education is identified with 'the provision of conditions for intellectual leisure, that is, the pursuit of intrinsically valuable teaching, learning and research’[4].
Arguments of this nature, moreover, draw particular attention to the allegedly uniqueness of the work being done within the educational institution. Katz and Kahn have cogently summarised this point of view when they write[5]:
The educational institution or the hospital is concerned with changing people who come within its boundaries and who become temporary members of the organisation. Human beings as objects of a change process require different organisational processes than materials transformed in a manufacturing plant.
With this conclusion, few educationalists would disagree. Educational Management, however, does not seek to change a department of adult education from a ‘people-processing’ to a ‘product-processing’ organisation. All that it sets out to do; all that it claims, is that its concepts and techniques have a considerable utility in that they facilitate the analysis of complex educational issues. There are considerable difficulties in using these concepts and techniques. The problem of goal ambiguity within educational organisations in general and within adult education departments in particular, is a classic example of the difficulties to be faced. Yet an acknowledgement of this ambiguity as a consequence of utilising the principles of education management, is a major advance in a situation in which, traditionally, goal consensus has been unquestioningly presumed to exist and in which any expressed preference for alternative goals has been identified as deviant and aberrant behaviour.
It is not, however, the purpose of this paper to describe the extent to which there is a convergence of or divergence between educational institutions and other organisations. What is suggested is that we are now faced with a situation in which there is a perpetual dilemma of rising demands and insufficient resources. Available resources always dictate the limits of policy choice but today contemporary social, political and economic constraints give rise to queries about purposes or objectives which in the past may have been taken for granted. The critical question that cannot be avoided in this context is whether a particular use of resources confers benefits commensurate with the costs in terms of alternative values foregone. Here departments of adult education and individuals working in this field have a discrete choice. If the interval between decisions is unduly prolonged or if the issue of choice is totally avoided, then individuals and departments are identified with the malaise of inertia. Consequently, resources are allocated elsewhere and however much this shift is seen to be unfair or unjust, a seemingly anachronistic posture justifies in the eyes of the parent society the exercise of a rational preference.
In this context, the role of education management is to facilitate the exercise of choice. It is the fear that this inevitably necessitates the adoption of a policy of ‘optimisation’ which leads many educationalists to reject the basic applicability of management techniques and principles. Choice, however, is not in this area necessarily associated with the search for an optimum, and the strength of education management is that its heterogeneous nature, exemplified in the diversity of the approaches which it encompasses, encourages a full review of the constraints which make some action unavoidable. In short, the role of management in this area is neither to focus exclusively on the analysis of activity in order to achieve sufficient quantity and quality of ‘product’ nor to emphasise efficiency in terms of the cost of production. Rather, the process analysis is supplemented by a concern with the social interrelationship which are present within departments of adult education. This suggests that education management is very much a psychological and sociological phenomenon in which concern with complex human relationships is a dominant characteristic.
The Elements of Management
The dimensions of this phenomenon can be more clearly discerned if we look briefly at the elements of education management, that is, at those primary and universal characteristics which are the core of management activities. The initial problem is that management has far from a standard meaning, although as Koontz points out, ‘most agree that it at least involves getting things done through and with people’[6]. Education management in common with more general management has been variously defined, the range of definitions frequently reflecting the subject interests of writers and theorists. A suitable definition which draws attention to the breadth of the area of concern is that put forward by Glatter[7]. He defines education management as:
The process of securing decisions about what activities the organisation (or unit of organisation) will undertake, find mobilising the human and material resources to undertake them.
Put in these terms, the notion of education management can be seen to be less revolutionary and innovatory than is often suspected. Indeed, this definition can be positively contrasted with alternative expressions such as that which stresses that: 'Education management is a dynamic system which seeks to make the most effective use of allocated resources'.
Here the notion of ‘most effective’ tends to engender a variety of emotional responses, for such a term implies an assessment of adult education only in terms of cost-benefit analysis or rate of return evaluation. But if the postulated definition is far from being radical in its format, it is nevertheless injudicious to conclude that it is simply a description of existing ongoing practice. It may reflect an attitude within some university departments to the problems which are faced today, but it has to be stressed that far too frequently the legacy of traditional practice continues to inhibit a critical assessment of what activities the organisation will undertake’ and thereby imposes constraints on the ‘mobilising of human and material resources’.
Table 1
Comparative course provision: 1975-76
Selected universities
University / No. of staffDES supported / UGC
funded / Total Courses / History / Economics
Industrial Studies / Physical Sciences
% / % / %
Cambridge / 14 / 4 / 312 / 15.06 / 1.28 / 1.60
Edinburgh / - / 6 / 261 / 25.28 / 0.76 / 6.51
Hull / 16 / 6 / 298 / 13.75 / 9.73 / 3.02
Leeds / 23 / 15 / 270 / 10.00 / 12.22 / 2.96
Leicester / 12 / 1 / 321 / 14.64 / 2.18 / 4.80
Liverpool / 14 / 23 / 337 / 15.43 / 1.78 / 4.15
Oxford / 12 / 5 / 250 / 4.80 / 23.6 / 0.80
Cardiff / 10 / 2 / 284 / 9.15 / 4.92 / 4.22
Totals / 2,333 / 13.63 / 6.60 / 3.51
National / Total / 9,665 / 10.71 / 5.51 / 5.57
Source: UCAE Annual Report, 1975-76
Clearly, this is a generalised conclusion. Many adult educationalists in universities would question its validity, but there is considerable evidence to support the contention that existing practices in many departments do not fit with the theoretical base of this postulated definition of education management. Initially, this can be seen if we consider more critically the basic issues of 'the process of securing decisions about what activities the organisation will undertake'. It is axiomatic that in all organisations there is a process of decision-making. The contentious point is whether this process should be governed by principles of education management or not. Leaving aside for the moment the issue of whether this process in university departments depends upon authoritarian, custodial, supportive or collegial forms of decision-making, the divergence between the management theory which should shape this process and what often happens in practice can be clearly identified.
A brief examination of the process of course planning exemplifies this point. The fundamental problem faced by many departments of adult education is the absence of any clearly defined organisational objective. The multiplicity of teaching tasks, reflected in the wish to provide courses in areas as diverse as liberal extra-mural studies, the theory of adult education and industrial studies, is paralleled by the varied interests of individual members of staff. The ambiguity of goals which this produces thereby encourages negative planning in which the criteria of choice that are implicit in a process of decision-making are rarely examined. So-called successful courses are perpetuated; unsuccessful ones eliminated. A ‘good’ course becomes an institutionalised feature of the departmental programme and the core of provision is a collection of those tried and proven courses which can be offered ad infinitum to a self-selecting minority audience. The cost of these courses in terms of the foregone alternatives is rarely an issue of concern, for the format of the adopted programme can be readily rationalised - and, if necessary, justified - in terms of a traditional ideology which does not raise the question of what else could have been provided.
Translated into practical terms, the effect of this can be seen in decisions about the type of courses to be provided by departments. Table One, derived from the 1975-76 UCAE Annual Report compares the provision of three courses - History, Economic and Industrial Studies and Physical Sciences - in those departments whose recorded total of provided courses ranges from 250-350. These three categories of courses have been chosen in that 'History' represents the traditional pattern of provision whereas 'Economic and Industrial Studies' is indicative of what Birmingham in its 1975-76 departmental report sees as a growth of demand[8],
connected with the increasing emphasis on schemes of worker participation and the consequent need for the workforce to have opportunities to understand the economic issues which affect a particular industry and the country in general.
The category of physical science has been chosen because although there has been a long tradition in the Extension Movement of providing physical science courses, it is evident that with some notable exceptions few departments of Adult Education have concerned themselves equally with the provision of the arts and sciences subjects. The dominance of the former is most marked, notwithstanding public and official concern with the need to stimulate courses in the latter. The wish to meet the needs of a 'white-hot technological revolution' is seemingly often subservient to a concern with the perpetuation of well-tried and traditional arts-oriented courses.
Not only do the recorded figures have to be treated with caution, but any interpretation of derived statistics is fraught with problems. The selected categories, for example, do not take into account the allocation of resources to the provision of complementary courses. Thus at Oxford 17.2% of provision can be categorised as ‘archaeology’, that is, courses which may be seen to complement the low percentage of history courses. Equally, at Leicester 19.3% of courses are recorded as ‘Biological Sciences’, this representing the largest single unit of provision within this particular department. Nevertheless, from Table One, it is possible to note trends in subject provision which serve as a comment upon the fundamental problems of decision making in course planning.
It is not suggested that variations in the relative amount of resources allocated by universities to specific subjects implies that one department is 'better' than another. The point which is being made is that the cost of allocating resources to a particular subject is the foregone alternative. This cost becomes particularly noticeable in a period of financial stringency when, as the UCAE Annual Report of 1975-76 stresses in discussing the final Report of the Working Party on Industrial Studies[9],
The Council has now the difficult task of implementing the Report and trying, in a period of financial constraint, to obtain more resources to ensure that the research as well as the teaching of Industrial Studies by University Departments of Adult and Continuing Education can be intensified.