Part II:

Case Studies of European Innovative Universities

 

2.  The Warwick Way: Transformation in an English Research University

The University of Warwick in the United Kingdom is a good place to begin a case-by-case analysis of entrepreneurial action in European universities. By the mid-1990s the university had acquired a strong reputation as a distinctive entrepreneurial place, a model for Europe and arguably other parts of the world. Whatever Warwick had done to shape its character had been accomplished in only three decades, since its establishment in the mid-1960s: a short time in the life of a university. Decisive character-forming steps on which we will concentrate were initiated in the early 1980s, establishing the following decade and a half as the time when critical pathways of transformation were devised and institutionalized. But the earlier years are not unimportant; certain character-shaping habits were established then. From the outset the Warwick road was not easy, and there were major bumps along the way. In the late 1960s, only a few years after it opened, for example, the university became a target of radical discontent and student disruption, producing for a time a public image that brought much criticism from both the Left and the Right. We find no simple story of initial clear mission, sustained sponsorship, and linear progress. Warwick is a study of struggle and triumph over serious obstacles - a study in self-determination.

Early Imprints

Much was upbeat in British higher education in the 1950s and early 1960s, the last time that resources and governmental attitude would give rise to a

11

12      The Warwick Way

general optimism in leading academic circles that well-guided gentle expan­sion could add a few more institutions and a few more students to extend the virtues of an elite, high-quality university system. Britain had long been care­ful about adding to the small list of recognized universities. Institutions developed into universities by first serving for an extended period as a college supervised by an old established place. When aspiring institutions were thought to be finally up to the mark of national standards, they were "upgraded" to full university standing. But in the optimism of the 1950s and with looming system expansion, the idea that perhaps some new universities ought to be allowed to develop from scratch gradually gained favor. The group of sup­plicants that worked their way through an elaborate political and educational process to the top of the "batting order" became seven in number, known as the Seven Sisters: Sussex, York, Lancaster, Essex, East Anglia, Kent, and Warwick. The seven became "a unique phenomenon: the only universities since London and Durham in the 1830s to leap into existence fully armed, with the whole panoply of first and postgraduate degrees, curricula designed from scratch, in brand new buildings on virgin sites, able to create themselves in whatever image they chose." (Perkin, 1991, p. 295) All were established outside cities, with student residencies, and became known as "green-fields universi­ties."

Given this special opportunity, the New Universities (as they became known) could not only serve the general expansion of British higher education but also test anew the possibilities and virtues of somewhat isolated communi­ties in which faculty and students would interact in small-group teaching and share campus pathways. "Interdisciplinarity" was much discussed in Britain and continental Europe at the time. Expectations were widespread in the University Grants Committee (UGC), the operational patron of the new universities, and in the planning boards established at the universities that the new institutions should give new life to general education for undergraduates: cross-disciplinary subjects organized by broad internal "schools" would replace, or triumph over, narrower departments. Small size would help. Although ambitious to grow, each held to about 3,000 students over the first decade. The University of Sussex, an early leader among the Seven Sisters, underway in 1961 and strongly led by John Fulton and Asa Briggs, took to a pattern of schools. As put by Briggs in a later reflection: "There was only one shared idea on paper which was there when we started our discussion in 1961. That was that we would get rid of departments altogether at Sussex and have 'schools' in their place." (Briggs, 1991, p. 321) The idea, or vision, was not to just "assemble a collection of distinguished academics and leave them to get on with it as individuals," but to stress "active teams." (p. 320)

But as Briggs also noted: "there was a different way of conceiving of a new university, best represented, I believe, at Warwick. Bring professors in and leave them free to get on with it." (p. 324) Not that this approach had clear sailing at Warwick. The inclinations of the UGC were well-known; the university's initial

Burton R. Clark       13

planning board was very interested in the schools concept; the strong first vice-chancellor, Jack Butterworth (1961-1985) was sympathetic to this approach. Local business and union leaders were also involved in early discus­sions, some as lay members of the planning board, and sought a "relevant" university. (Shattock, 1994b) But Butterworth was first of all committed to academic excellence and was willing to get good people and turn them loose in their specialties. He assembled ten foundation professors in eight subjects to constitute the leading staff on opening day in the fall of 1965.

Among the Seven Sisters, Warwick was the least given to overall planning. As put by A. Phillips Griffiths, initial Professor of Philosophy, in a 25-year retrospective:

The approaches of the New Universities were very different. Essex's plan arose from a quite different vision from that of Sussex; and these again were quite different from the more departmentally oriented universities. What attracted me about Warwick was not that it had a better, more appealing plan; it was that Warwick hadn't got a plan at all. (Griffiths, 1991, p. 335)

There was "only a universal agreement that a university should aim at excel­lence." (p. 336) Schools were tried, for example, a School of Literature and a School of Historical Studies (the latter threw french and philosophy together with history!), "but there had also to be some kind of structure related to what was actually going on: so we found that, in addition to Schools, 'Subjects' were referred to in official minutes. . . Each subject had a head, and its own budget." The subjects "became called what they usually are: departments. . . " (p. 339) Schools gradually disappeared. As happens in organizations generally, what was actually going on brought organizational structure in line or ignored it.

Griffiths also noted that the New Universities attracted staff with new ideas that had been frequently stifled in the older institutions. Not wanting to dictate to or impose on one another, "they were perforce involved in a conspiracy of tolerance, a practical libertarian academic contract. . . " (p. 342) And with the new faculty there came "an enthusiasm for research," which led virtually from the beginning, throughout the New Universities, to "a higher proportion of postgraduate [graduate] students." (Thompson, Sir Michael, 1991, p. 346) The UGC, to stress teaching and undergraduate education, wanted the universities to give research a low priority. But this was not to be. The New Universities would not become like "the small American undergraduate colleges which sup­ply the major universities with postgraduate students." (p. 349) Instead, teach­ing and learning would be research-led.

Thus, in its first decade, Warwick essentially laid down a discipline-centered academic base that would be strong on research. Steadily drifting away from interdisciplinary aspirations and blueprints, the university became a place for research-led departments built by faculty that came on board in disparate fields.

14      The Warwick Way

No new plan was offered, but the academic imprint early established was to wear well in later years.

Beyond this academic base the issue of relating to industry arose. Vice-Chancellor Butterworth was close to leading industrialists in the Coventry area and sought to instill a proindustry attitude at the university: it would be a "relevant university" as well as a discipline-led enterprise. It was his idea that a graduate business school was added to the list of new units to be formed around the initial chairs in some eight to ten fields, including engineering science. (University of Warwick, 1991, p. 20) Many public as well as private notables in the region wanted a relevant university - it could help out as an economic resource in its own right and in promoting regional economic development. But the deeply rooted "donnish" anti-industry attitude of British academics was still alive and well in the 1960s and 1970s. Associating with industrialists was problematic. For academic staff, getting on with basic research, finding good students, and building courses of study was enough to do. As assessed by an old-timer in interview, "the academic staff was very loathe to work with industry."

The matter perhaps could have been gradually and gently worked out, but student unrest hit the new university (only a few years old) quite hard in 1969, and ripped open the issue of university-industry connections. A major disrup­tion took place - one of the sharpest to occur in the UK. It involved occupa­tion of the administration building and the riffling of files in which correspondence with industrialists was found. The vice-chancellor and his immediate staff came under severe attack from some faculty as well as militant students, and the episode was capped by an expose-type book, written in a week and hurriedly published by Penguin, in which Warwick was depicted as a university captured by industry: it was "the business university." E.P. Thompson, the British historian who was then a member of the academic staff, edited the book, and it became known as his Warwick University Ltd (1970). For some British academics, especially those on the political Left, the book confirmed the belief that to relate in any way to industry was to be captured by industry, even to be dominated by "capitalism," and that Warwick had more than likely sold out to the devil. The public counterattack from the Right soon saw the university as "the Kremlin on the hill," at least as a newly implanted nest of snobbish dons and of radical students looking for the revolu­tion. There was "a lot of bad press"; much hostility was stirred up on all sides.

But institutional life went on. The vice-chancellor, who "was almost top­pled" in 1969-1970, regained his footing and primacy, and the 1970s saw the institution throw off its antibusiness attitudes and assume a much more outward looking focus. The physical plant was substantially enlarged by a second construction phase that filled in the central campus. Income went up from 267,000 pounds in 1965 to nearly 3 million in 1970, further rising to nearly 21 million in 1980. The student body steadily increased in size, from about 450 at the outset to approximately 2,100 in 1970 and 5,200 in 1980.

Burton R. Clark       15

Academic staff grew from about 60 in 1965 to four times that many in 1970 and to more than 500 in 1980. The university assumed the shape of a somewhat focused medium-size English research university, with disciplinary depart­ments offering work in the physical sciences, life sciences, social sciences, humanities and the arts. To these were added programs in engineering and business. (University of Warwick, 1991, pp. 91-94)

Toward the end of the 1970s, Warwick also began to develop relations with the local community, a role that had been little emphasized while the research focus was being established. A merger of the university and an adjacent col­lege of education in 1978 gave the institution a teacher-education relationship to the local area. Here was a "service job" that could help to fill a long promised commitment to be relevant to local need. A few years later, in the early 1980s, the commitment was extended by the development of extramural or continu­ing education, very much locally oriented, and the joint sponsorship with local authorities of a science park, features to which we later return. Thus, a second imprint was laid down, a door to community service that later was to be swung wide open.

By the end of its first decade and a half, in 1980, the university had grown internally confident about its quality but was unsure of its national standing. Like the other new universities, it projected a certain attractive quality associ­ated with residential student life. Like the others, its advocates could tell stories about bright students who, given the choice, had selected it rather than Oxford or Cambridge, let alone a civic or "redbrick" university. But the institution of that time was also still an immature 15-year old, with adolescent doubts - an institution that had spent much time and effort during the 1970s damping down the negative public image that followed from the student disruption and turning faculty sentiment away from an anti-industry stance. What the university had as major assets were a relatively young, enthusiastic faculty in a department-led research environment coupled with attractive "green-fields" conditions for student life. Financial support was heavily governmental along standard lines used across universities. A growing friendliness to industry and possible outside benefactors had also begun to pay occasional dividends by way of private or local authority support for new buildings and professorial chairs. This particular door to future development was ajar more often than in the other Seven Sisters, favored by location in the West Midlands, the center of the British engineering industry. A good thing too, one can say in hindsight, for the core support of British universities was about to be badly shaken. All were moving into hard times.

University Transformation

Unlike university systems on the Continent, the British system came into existence and developed outside the state; Oxford and Cambridge were established under ecclesiastical patronage and were able to fund themselves

16      The Warwick Way

from endowments and fees until the twentieth century; the nineteenth-century civic universities were founded by local and private endeavor. (Jones, 1988, Shattock, 1994b) It was not until well into the twentieth century that national government stepped in to pick up the tab and become the principal patron. It provided about one-third of overall funding between the two World Wars; after World War II it took over both recurrent and capital funding to the point of contributing over 90 percent of university budgets. In financial terms, nationalization was about as complete as it could be: reliance on a single patron had become nearly total.

The danger of such dependence became starkly clear in the early 1980s. Financial restraint had already become a serious matter for the universities during the 1970s, but at the end of the decade they could still hope that mat­ters would turn around - that the government would "come to its senses" and fund research and university education on an expanding scale. But the new reality was just the opposite. The Conservative (Thatcher) government came to power in 1979; by 1981 it had effected a first round of heavy budget cuts that across the university system approximated 17 percent over a three-year funding period. The University Grants Committee was permitted to distribute the reductions differentially, and did so over a wide range that extended as high as 20 and 30 percent reductions. Warwick's cut was ten percent, a not inconsequential slice. All the universities were faced with the problem of how to handle their immediate cuts and then especially how to face a future in which mainline funding was likely to continue to falter. This harsh step caused deep shock and far-reaching anger in the academy. A new hostile government was making threats of more to come. What to do? It was here that Warwick began a transforming process.

An idea came first. Warwick would cover the ten percent reduction by a "save half, make half policy" - make savings to eliminate half the shortfall and generate new income to cover the other half. Over the next three years it failed in the first part, saving very little, but surprised itself on the earnings part, which led to overall income "12% higher in real terms over what it had been in 1980-81 rather than 10% lower." (Shattock, 1994a, p. 2) A general idea that had been brewing in the registrar's office beginning in 1979 was now given a chance to be born and tested. In the pressure cooker of UK university finance during the early 1980s, it quickly became, for Warwick, a much valued institutional idea.

The idea was sharpened with a strategic decision not to generate new income by "fundraising - "we would not go begging for money" - but to actually earn it. The building of endowment from which interest income would flow, together with an annual passing of the hat among alumni and solicited supporters, was a road not taken. It was seen as too problematic in the English setting at the time. As put later by the much-involved registrar, Michael Shattock: "We had to find ways to generate funding from other sources; we did not see why people or companies would simply give us money so we decided to earn it." (1994a,

Burton R. Clark       17

p.4) Student tuition was largely out of the question, barred by national policy based on a long-standing commitment to subsidize students' academic costs. What Warwick turned to instead was an earning scheme within which various parts of the university - some old, some new - could be permanently put in a posture of paying for themselves and generating an annual surplus that could be used by the entire university. The idea became "an earned income policy." The institutional problem then became how to implement the policy to gener­ate significant income. If the government were to go on making cuts, or hold back on future funding increases, that additional income would have to be major. The policy pointed strongly toward entrepreneurial action. The gather­ing of funds would have to be done yearly; it would have to be systematized and administered; it would undoubtedly require some risky funding of new units; and it would require many, if not all, departments to behave in new ways. In short, it would require the elements highlighted in our analysis, developing over time in interaction with one another.

The idea of earned income was given organizational footing as it developed hand in hand with the creation and growth of a number of units at Warwick that were to compose an enlarged developmental periphery. Foremost in its unusual nature as well as its contribution to earned income has been the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG), set up in 1980 and directed ever since by a charismatic professor, Kumar Bhattacharyya, in the university's engineer­ing department, a group committed fully to research and development (R&D) in close collaboration with major industrial firms. Bhattacharyya started out in industry and drew his staff largely from the outside world. He saw the group's mission as working "with companies, predominantly in the engineering sector, to develop the people and technology for the change process." Not only would the group work directly on changes in products and manufacturing operations but it would also work to change the "change-managers" who must "understand the technology as well as the business environment" - that is, essentially product-oriented research and engineering-based management training, in contradistinction to business school training heavy on "manage­ment" but light on understanding "product" and production processes. (University of Warwick, 1994b) Enormously creative, if not an engineering genius, Bhattacharyya developed in the 1980s a track record of inventiveness and production problem solving that caused major firms to beat a path to his door to obtain tailor-made R&D and access to the group's training programs. Over 300 firms came to be linked to the group, including such weighty ones as Rolls Royce and Rover in auto design and British Aerospace in aircraft produc­tion: "Rather than a paper exercise in partnership, WMG amounts to a members-only R&D club." (The Economist, Nov. 11, 1995, p. 72)

Ever ambitious to promote "international best practice," especially for British industry, and with firms lined up to join the group, expansion became phenomenal. Overseas locations for the group's work - "satellite operations"-were developed in Hong Kong, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Calcutta, Nanjing,

18      The Warwick Way

and Johannesburg; together with local staff, training courses were given by Warwick-based staff on three-to-four-week visits. Many foreign students enrolled in the group's programs at Warwick, contributing to the university's income from foreign student fees. The group's work became so extensive at home that it has required a dedicated conference center in need of expansion every few years. New buildings have gone up in the form of an Advanced Technology Centre and an International Manufacturing Centre. The latter opened in 1994 and was extended in 1996. By 1995, the WMG, with a faculty-researcher staff of over 200, had over 100 doctoral students, over 1,000 masters students and over 3,000 company staff on diploma and other "postexperience" programs each year, where course work is equal to about one-half the masters requirement. (University of Warwick, 1995d)

In a 1995 full-page treatment, The Economist appropriately headlined Bhattacharyya as "the professor of product development." It noted his presci­ence in establishing a close link between university and industry long before it became fashionable, important in a country considered short on recognition for engineering and inclined to do manufacturing the old-fashioned way. Particularly taken as eye-opening news in the mid-1990s was the claim "that Europe's biggest postgraduate center for engineering research and develop­ment should be at a British university. . . " (The Economist, Nov. 11, 1995, p. 72) Biggest or not, the manufacturing group represents enormous outreach. Incorporating business firms as partners in its midst, the group operates so much as a boundary-spanning unit that we can see it in part as an independent body located halfway between university and outside industry, linking the two. But since it is formally located within the university's traditional engineering department, we can also see it as a part of the academic heartland that has reached to the outside in a vigorous entrepreneurial fashion. In this striking case, periphery and heartland are interactive, closely fused elements.

The business school at Warwick similarly reaches out and fuses developmental programs with heartland structures. Established in 1967, just two years after the campus opened, the school has grown greatly around a wide range of MBA and executive-training programs offered in Britain - full-time and part-time, on and off campus - and abroad. Outreach growth in the mid-1990s had led to almost 2,000 managers "currently studying for the Warwick MBA, either one year full-time or over several years on a part-time basis, through evening, distance learning or modular study." (University of Warwick, 1995b, p. 96) The research interests of the school also have great outreach: beyond five "teaching groups," the school is structured in eight or more research units that reach out, for example, to the promotion of small and medium-size firms, the reform of health services, and the improvement of local government. (University of Warwick, 1993b) With such renowned scholars of the business world and organizational behavior as Andrew Pettigrew and David Storey on board, the school's academic standing was high, with top ratings in the country's research assessments and a reputation as one

Burton R. Clark       19

of the best UK business schools. By the mid-1990s, it had grown to over 130 academic teaching and research staff and over 3,000 "full-time, part-time and distance learning students pursuing a wide range of postgraduate, undergradu­ate and post-experience programmes." (University of Warwick, 1994a) It awarded over 400 MBA degrees a year; doctoral students numbered 160, drawn from over 25 countries. The school finances much of its work: its foreign students studying at Warwick added substantially to the university's earned income from student fees.

Conference centers are a third major item in Warwick's developmental periphery. They related closely to the work of the manufacturing group and the business school, to the point where all three of the university's major centers are known also as "management training centers." WMG has full use of an ever-expanding Arden House; the business school carries out its local outreach largely in Arden House and Scarman House. Hosting conferences and visitors for all departments, and offering desirable office and training facilities for a few outside firms, the houses win national awards year after year as premier conference centers. Top of the line services are offered and prices are set to cover costs plus a contribution to the general pot of earned income. The national Committee of University Vice-Chancellors and Principals (CVCP) has met at Scarman, reportedly with its distinguished members duly impressed and envious. Even American universities, normally fast off the mark in such matters, may here find some instructive lessons: nowhere in the huge network of several hundred American universities, large and small, do we find a general conference complex of similar scope and quality.

With the manufacturing group and the business school leading the way, foreign students, defined as non-European Union as well as non-UK citizens, together constitute a major outreach component. Along with those who are regularly enrolled full-time students, many are taught in centers abroad and others come to the main campus for short-term course work. They total up as a major source of university earned income; they spread the name of the university far and wide, especially in the fast-developing societies of Asia. "Internationalization," a favorite cliche among universities, is here given very concrete meaning.

And then there is the major Warwick Science Park, a successful undertak­ing begun in 1984 (in the second wave of UK science parks, after Cambridge and Heriot-Watt). It embodies entrepreneurship in its own leadership and operational style. A combined effort of university, city, and county, physically located adjacent to the campus, the park operates independently under its own board. Barclays Bank helped immensely to set it on a successful path by tak­ing an equity position in the anchor incubator unit or venture center in place of a loan with interest. Barclays wanted a relationship to the university that would link the bank to high technology companies and their activities. The park, focused on high-tech firms, has steadily expanded around both start-up firms nourished by advice and space and the research arms of firms that want

20      The Warwick Way

a presence in the park and at Warwick. By the mid-1990s, some 65 firms, with 1,300 employees, were situated on a 42 acre site. Major firms, such as Computervision and Sun Microsystems, are tenants. A large number of the companies located in the park have a working relationship with the manufacturing group, either in product development or staff training or both. (University of Warwick, 1995e)

In 1995 the park's director, David Rowe, and board were busy looking for new opportunities and linkages. They stressed that a reexamination of strategy was warranted after a decade of development to take the park successfully into the twenty-first century. Items on the agenda included satellite parks in the nearby region, greater systematic linkage of potential investors with small, new technology firms, an expanded program to involve undergraduates in science-based firms, and collaboration projects, funded by the European Union, with institutions in France, Belgium, and Germany. The park had caught national attention: the London Times, in a major two-page article in late 1994, proclaimed "its remarkable success" as "Warwick's bold experiment to create a hothouse environment for the nurture of high technology companies." The park had an "image and reputation" that encourage firms to join its "balanced population of companies." (London Times, 1994, pp. 22-23)

The science park, together with the manufacturing group, the business school, and several other university units - for example, an Industrial Development Office - not reviewed here, have given Warwick a complex, well developed university-industry interface. A 1993 study by a German consulting firm for a French regional development agency compared the interface developed in six "best practice" institutions in six European nations. Based on recommendations from industrial managers, the institutions examined included such notables as the famous Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Switzerland, the Karlsruhe Technical University in Germany, and the Technical University of Compiegne in France. Warwick was the only research/comprehensive university nominated by industrialists for this study; all the others were known as technical universities. Warwick "came out first," judged "able to initiate and maintain business relationships more effectively than any other analyzed university," and thus served as "the outstanding example of how a university should interact with industry to accomplish the needs of both sides."The study took note of the influence of university govern­ance structures, pointing out that at Warwick - apropos of our element of strengthened steering core - that a "centralized strategy" involved central management in all major decisions. (University of Warwick, 1993a) The periphery at the university clearly contains an interface with industry that is world-class.

But the periphery is not limited to this interface. Facing outward on a large scale is an arts complex located at the heart of the campus, with a set of theatres, halls, and galleries for events in the performing arts (drama, music,

Burton R. Clark       21

dance, film, visual arts) that draw over 250,000 attendances a year. A well-developed Department of Continuing Education offers a wide range of courses for adults, a unit operating on and off campus that in the mid-1990s involved over 8,000 registered students and also carried out extensive research in its specialty. The university has aggressively pursued the establishment of outside services on campus, e.g., banks, barbershop, bookstore and news agency. All such services are self-supporting and appear on the ledgers of earned income. Warwick may be "green-fields" in its origin, but it has worked hard to make itself a part of "the community" as well as a university close to industry.

All the above outreach activities were assisted and advanced in their develop­ment by a strengthened administrative core that arguably is the most important of all the pathways taken to transform Warwick. In the balance between central control and departmental autonomy, this core is relatively centralized. As we shall see in later chapters, the other four institutions analyzed in this study -Twente, Strathclyde, Chalmers, and Joensuu - emphasized the decentraliza­tion of funds and administration to faculties or departments that constitute basic unit levels. The idea of decentralization has been a theme in reform in Europe during the late 1980s and 1990s, following the twin desires to break up State-led rigidities and to make more space at local levels for the leading role that specialized experts need to play in making judgments within increasingly complex bundles of knowledge. But Warwick has set its face against this theme, arguing instead that, yes, strong departments are needed - we have them and will nurture them - but we particularly want a strong center that will stand for the overall institutional interest and offer an effective guiding hand.

As part of this posture, the university has not created faculties as a strong form of organization between center and department: in 1995 despite increas­ing pressure from growth in size and complexity, faculty deans were notable for their absence. The institution prides itself on a "flat structure" of center and department. Departments have remained the building blocks of the university and their chairs have a significant role. The chairs relate directly to the vice-chancellor and such senior administrative offices as the registrar and finance officer. They also do not relate to a single apex committee, a structure we observe later in other settings, but to a set of interrelated central commit­tees, knitted together by overlapping membership, consisting of a small cadre of senior administrators together with a small group of professors elected by colleagues to play central roles. This web of interlocked central committees has become the heart of Warwick's capacity to steer itself.

During the first 15 years of the institution's life, the years before 1980, Vice-Chancellor Jack Butterworth, for reasons of personality and position as found­ing "V-C," often operated with a strong hand. But as we saw at the outset, he did not set up an overall blueprint, but instead set himself the task of finding excellent scholars and turning them loose to build various departments. Departmentalism soon had strong roots, while the center remained unelaborated. In retrospect, the critical step toward a different kind of central

22      The Warwick Way

core was the strong response to the Thatcher challenge Butterworth and Michael Shattock, the registrar, devised. They turned the earned income idea into the Earned Income Policy; the policy was soon put in the hands of an Earned Income Group formally established in 1984-1985. Strongly led by the registrar, the group became the gathering point for discretionary monies. It became the instrument for entrepreneurial action on adding revenue, the central place for the year-by-year hard work of finding and mining new veins of income.

After developing new sources throughout the 1980s, the group in the 1990s has garnered over 50 units on campus that pay their way and which, in nearly all cases, are expected to come up with a surplus. The group "top-slices" vari­ous incomes generated by the manufacturing group, the business school, and the conference centers. It expects a "profit" from the bookstore and the barbershop. Professional managers are hired to run the various units in a businesslike up-scale fashion, and can be fired, as in private business, when they do not do the job. An able deputy finance officer closely monitors the group's portfolio, on a 90-day basis.

To observe meetings of the Earned Income Group is to see a collegial form of crispness in university administration. The registrar, deputy registrar, academic registrar, finance officer, deputy finance officer, university treasurer (a lay member of court) are all there, joined by several senior faculty members who serve as pro vice-chancellors elected for two-year terms with a limit of six years. Accounts are closely studied for current performance against set targets. Various managers in charge of different operations may be called in; success­ful performances are praised, operations running "below the line" are queried on what has gone wrong and what remedial action is needed. Several accounts - an example is the one devoted to income from student residencies - are expected only to break even. But all the others must operate under the dictate of earning income.

The earned money, together with income from the more standardized governmental annual allocations, passes over to committees focused on overall budget review and internal allocation. As in other UK universities the com­mittees largely exist as spin-offs from Council and Senate, the two overarching bodies. Senior administrative officers are "in attendance" at meetings of all the important decision-making committees, those expected "to push the busi­ness forward." A key role is played by the Joint Council and Senate Strategy Committee, created in the mid-1980s that brings together financial, academic, and physical plant planning in one place, a place for macrostrategy. Membership includes the council's chairman, treasurer, and building (sub)com-mittee chair, all highly experienced business executives long committed to Warwick. Notably, the university has not had any "capital money" - money for construction of buildings - from the national government since 1984, forc­ing it "to pick it up" by going to a "private financing mode." Thus the linkage of recurrent and capital money has come together more tightly within the

Burton R. Clark       23

university, and then is linked to "academic things" in the remit of the Joint Strategy Committee. The committee became in 1988 the center of rolling-forward five-year planning ("finance-driven" rather than "academic-driven") in which decisions about how much money can be made available are made first, followed by hard decisions on what to develop and what to let go on the academic side.

A second key role at the center is played by a senate committee that allocates sums to departments and controls faculty positions. Vacated posts revert to the committee for reassignment or discontinuance. Heads of departments have to make their case for personnel directly to this "hands-on" central group that functions as a microacademic strategy body. The committee is chaired by a faculty member elected as a pro vice-chancellor. Three faculty serve as elected members from the three main subject areas of sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Three other faculty also come from these broad sectors as elected heads of area boards. In lieu of deans, professors who chair the faculty boards come to serve on this and other key central committees. The system depends on a gradually rotating cadre of professors who are willing to serve in such heavy-duty central assignments and thereby bring traditional faculty points of view into central circles that otherwise might be dominated by what faculty would view as the managerial outlook of administrative officers. By much informal as well as formal contact, the committees link faculty with administra­tion.

Without extensive decentralization to faculty and departmental levels, Warwick has effected collegial steerage by means of these central committees in which senior officers, some lay members of the council, and faculty members share responsibilities. With faculty clearly involved, hard choices can be made in supporting new initiatives and realigning traditional allocations of resources. The core incorporates the academic heartland into the center. In this structure, a university can be entrepreneurial without the CEO (the chief executive officer), the vice-chancellor in this case, necessarily being entrepreneurial. Warwick's second "V-C," Clark Brundin (1985-1992), was not: in effect, the committee system had taken on the role. The third and current V-C, Sir Brian Follett (1993-) believes he was selected not because he was an entrepreneur, nor did he seek the position to become one. With a strong academic background in chemistry and biology, and experience in national science councils and funding bodies, his personal mission emphasized the strengthen­ing of the sciences at Warwick. In short, steering capacity has been institutionalized in a committee structure that blends lay council members, elected academic representatives, and senior administrative officers.

The strength of Warwick's collegial central steerage was exhibited in the mid-1990s in the complete restructuring of the education faculty, which was made part of the university with the merger of an adjacent college of educa­tion in the late 1970s. A Faculty of Education with five internal departments

24      The Warwick Way

had become a special problem, particularly because of up and down govern­ment action on the supply side of teacher education. In this area of activity, the government had become notoriously undependable and the faculty had gradually undergone much downsizing. In 1995 the university closed the departments and abolished the faculty, and was able to say with justice it was all done with the consent of the involved academics: they voted to abolish and to take up a new residence as an institute of education within the Faculty of Social Studies. Early retirements helped out. The university was then also able to say, as proof of capacity to realign traditional structure, that it had moved from a four-faculty university to a three-faculty one. The reorganization could also be considered as "up-market."

As chartered and administered through the system of central committees, the earned-income approach at Warwick is muscled by a strong capacity to "top-slice and cross-subsidize." This capacity is the backbone of the ability to come to the aid of departments (and specialties within them) that cannot readily raise money on their own, and to back completely new ventures. As the registrar explained to European rectors in a 1994 conference (Shattock, 1994a, p. 4):

Some departments, e.g., the Business School and Engineering, are more obvi­ously capable of generating external income than say Sociology or the History of Art but because, once the departmental share is separated off, the university's share [the top slice] is simply pooled with government funds and allocated on academic criteria, all departments benefit. It is accepted that it is to the university's advantage that those departments that can generate income should support those departments that are simply unable to do so [the cross-subsidy].

Departments that regularly have monies taken away in this fashion are, of course, not always happy about it. The center then has to have the power and legitimacy to say "it is accepted" because this is the way we build the university as a whole.

The Warwick structure tests the limits of centralized decision making in a university that steadily grows larger and more complex. An in-house study of the "research challenges facing Warwick," carried out by Andrew Pettigrew and Ewan Ferlie in late 1995, probed faculty attitudes on centralization versus decentralization and the locus of decision making for new initiatives. (Pettigrew and Ferlie, 1996) Some faculty were critical of the existing system: "there is now the danger of Warwick becoming middle-aged and over-bureaucratized"; "the financial management system at Warwick is archaic. It's massively centralised. I would like to see large scale operational devolution to depart­ments plus a greater strategic thrust from the Centre"; "greater decentraliza­tion is needed. The Centre can't get involved with all the 1000 flowers - only the major ones that eventually matter"; "there are no clear decision making lines in the university. So one is shifted from committee to committee and eventually decisions are made out of committee in your absence"; "there is a lack of crispness of responsibility." (pp. 24-26)

Burton R. Clark       25

But others were still much impressed: "Warwick is a very good place to work because you can get on with doing the job"; "The university has been absolutely brilliant. . . We have had glitches but I cannot fault the university. In fact this is what has kept me going"; "The whole point of coming to Warwick was that the access to the Centre was there. It was very short, there were no trails of bureaucracy and hierarchy and faculties and schools and heads of this and that. . . . That to me immediately was the green light"; "Compared with other universities this one can make positive commitments to a new and innovative area" (p. 15).

The senior administrators and faculty most committed to Warwick's evolved steering core could still, as of the mid-1990s, take pride in its apparent role in the institution's success. They could stress that the governance and decision-making structure was surely not broken and hence did not need radical fixing. The structure had acquired a legitimized momentum difficult to disrupt. But growing size and operational complexity have increasingly threatened to overload it, especially with such large units as the business school and the engineering department. This leaves open the possibility down the road of greater decentralization to school or department level, coupled with selective, strategic steering from the center.

All that we have reviewed thus far about the power of the institutional idea of "earning our way," the extensive organizational periphery, and the power­fully centralized steering core relate to a fourth element, a richly diversified funding base. Warwick is at the cutting edge of a general trend in the financing of European universities: less governmental support as a share of the whole, more support from nongovernmental (particularly noneducation ministry) sources. To simplify: income streams for individual public universities take three main forms. Stream 1, mainline state allocation, is a standardized mode of traditional finance, with funds commonly based on some combination of numbers of students, faculty, and even physical plant space. Stream 2, funds obtained from governmental research councils, is a mode that differentiates among universities according to the degree their professors, departments, and research groups win and lose competitions for research grants and contracts; and Stream 3, income from all other sources, differentiates universities extensively as funds are or are not obtained from industry, philanthropic foundations, local, regional, and national government departments other than the main education-ministry source, and from the European Union, student fees, endowment income, and surpluses or profits earned on a variety of campus self-supporting operations. The worldwide trend, reflected in Europe in the cases that follow from The Netherlands, Scotland, Sweden, and Finland, shows income shifting from nearly total dependence on the first stream to greater reliance on an array of sources, particularly those here lumped together as a third stream. And the trend is accelerated by entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurial universities seek third-stream sources and actively reach out to them.

Warwick's earned-income policy has done precisely that. Early on it pushed

26       The Warwick Way

hard to raise monies that were not allocated by government. Its income figures for 1995 showed that in a total budget of approximately 134 million pounds, just 51 million (38 percent) came from the Higher Education Funding Council (England), together with grants for teacher training from a national Teacher Training Agency. Income from research grants and contracts came to about 15 percent, 9 percent from governmental research councils and 6 percent from nongovernmental sources. All other support, nearly 50 percent and increasing, came from additional third-stream sources. These included fees from overseas students (who pay full cost) and vocational/short courses, approximately 16 million (12 percent); and other income from sources noted in our discussion of the developmental periphery, totaling over 37 million pounds (30 percent), including management training centers, catering and conferences, and campus retail operations. The trend from 1970 on that led to these mid-1990 income shares is shown in Table 2-1: mainline government support dropped from about 70 to less than 40 percent during the 1980-1995 years; third-stream sources increased as a share of the whole from about 20 to nearly 50 percent; second and third streams together had become about two-thirds of all income.

TABLE 2:1. Sources of Financial Support, Warwick University, 1970-1995 (millions of pounds)

Core Support       Research Grants    All Other Sources and Contracts*

Total

 

Year	Amount	Percent	Amount	Percent	Amount	Percent	Amount	Percent
1970	2.0	69	0.3	10	0.6	21	2.9	100
1975	5.1	69	0.7	9	1.6	22	7.4	100
1980	14.6	70	2.0	10	4.3	20	20.9	100
1985	21.5	60	4.8	13	9.8	27	36.1	100
1990	36.0	43	14.6	18	31.9	39	82.5	100
1995	51.3	38	19.7	15	63.0	47	134.0	100

*Includes research grants and contracts from both governmental and nongovernmental sources;   e.g.,   in   1995,   the  governmental   source  was   about   nine   percent,   the nongovernmental totaled about six percent, making a total of fifteen percent. Source:   trend  data  gathered  by  Paul  Anderson,  Assistant  Registrar,  Warwick University

The Earned Income Policy began as a way to fill the gap left by the state when it started systematic reduction in support in the early 1980s. Earned Income has done that and more. It has provided the means for new initiatives. It has provided the funds for cross-subsidy to academic departments and subjects that bring in little or no extra money but are viewed as institutionally worthy of continuing support and enhancement.

But more income is always needed: universities are expensive and good universities are very expensive. In the mid-1990s, Warwick decided to adopt the

Burton R. Clark       27

step it had shunned in the early 1980s when it voiced the doctrine that we will go out and earn money rather than beg for it. Oxford and Cambridge, with their towering prestige and unmatched well-to-do alumni, had just shown that major sums could be secured through organized "fundraising." Warwick decided in 1995 to commit to a long-term effort along this line: it now had an estimable reputation and loyal alumni. The effort would entail short-term pain for many campus units: to hire a first-class Director of Public Affairs and a Development Officer and provide them with resources to tackle the job in a major way, 500,000 pounds had to be "clawed back" from the existing budget. Once the Joint Strategy Committee made the decision to go this route - to seek major long-term enhance­ment of discretionary income from some combination of annual gift-giving and endowment income - and do it now rather than at some undefined later date, the senior administrative officers had to take some funds from one academic unit after another. They were, in effect, required to cross-subsidize a development venture from academic programs and early retirements. The capacity to do so was another example of the power of the center to assert the institutional inter­est by mounting a new initiative and finding the means, from a tight budget, to effect it. Serious payback here, if the new fundraising infrastructure is successful, may be eight to ten years down the road.

This brings us to the fifth pivotal element, the stimulated academic heartland. Entrepreneurship has not been left to a few subject areas such as engineering and business, and only to a managerial group dedicated to earning income, but has come to characterize virtually all academic fields. Four features reveal much about the involvement of core academic units: the melding of periphery into the core; the extensive building of research centers under departments; the construction of a universitywide graduate school; and the introduction of an imaginative and highly attractive research fellowship scheme that reached across the campus.

Periphery-heartland fusion has developed in the two largest programs we noted in our discussion of the developmental periphery. The huge Warwick Manufacturing Group clearly exists as a quasi-independent entity; it even goes "off-scale" in much of its salary-and-career structure in order to attract unusual talent in competition with the lures of industry. On the university-industry interface, the group lies close to industry. But it is also very much a formal part of Warwick's omnibus single engineering department and appears as such in its campus location. One can find it by entering the engineering department as well as by tracking its independent ways. The business school is even more a fusion of outreach to heartland. It bulks large in the forming of a productive periphery, with quasi-independent programs multiplying around the Masters in Business Administration (MBA) degrees, each a veritable "tub-on-its-own bottom." But it remains foremost a major academic unit, with all programs subsumed under its administration and general campus review. The only major unit in the periphery that stands fully independent is the science park, operat­ing under its own board and off the books of the university's administration.

28      The Warwick Way

All others are simultaneously a part of the academic heartland. And even the park has quasi-formal and informal links to the academic departments, particularly to engineering.

Departments at Warwick, virtually without exception, have been busy developing research centers to further their own subjects, necessitating the rais­ing of funds from second- and third-income streams. Such efforts have not simply been left to "science and technology," where large amounts are most likely to be available. The university's 1995 annual report depicted current structure in three major groupings: Social Studies, Arts, and Science. The social science component consisted of nine departments and schools and over 20 research centers. The units responsible for teaching ranged from economics, sociology, and politics to continuing education and applied social studies; they included a school of law and the very large business school. The numerous research centers operating largely under the departments and schools included ones on legal research, health services, philosophy and literature, as well as on macroeconomic modeling, comparative labor studies, ethnic relations, democratization, women and gender.

The arts component showed nine departments and schools and six research centers. The departments consisted of history, history of art, classics and ancient history, English and comparative literature, French, German, Italian, theatre studies, and film and television; the research centers included one in general humanities research as well as more targeted ones in cultural studies, social history, and the Renaissance. The entrepreneurial spirit shows through in these departments and centers. For example: the head of theatre studies, Professor David Thomas, reported in interview that he was a "happy opportun­ist" who came to Warwick because it "had an entrepreneurial feel about it." He takes experimental performances - undergraduates may be included - out to international festivals and audiences, raising money as he goes, while train­ing "cultural administrators" in advanced programs in a "research-led depart­ment." With self-funding courses, the department is basically self-supporting: it "washes its own face."

The science component was constituted by nine departments and schools and five research centers. The teaching units consisted of engineering and a new School of Postgraduate Medical Education as well as such traditional science fields as physics, chemistry, and biology. The research centers included the large Centre for Advanced Materials Technology which has joint research projects with such major British industrial partners as Rolls Royce and British Gas, as well as foreign collaborative ventures in such countries as Sweden, France, Belgium, and Japan.

Across the three faculties in 1995, Warwick consisted of 27 major depart­ments and schools (with some subdepartments) and, as a second major operat­ing component, over 30 research centers. The university has dampened department proliferation: for example, English and comparative literature are together in one department in the humanities, all the biological sciences are

Burton R. Clark       29

grouped in one biology department, and anthropology is left out altogether in the social sciences. Departments are thereby made relatively large, achieving critical mass in the included subjects. Fewer than 30 basic departments provide some focus: the university explicitly makes the point that it does not attempt to achieve the coverage of subjects found in the 100 and more departments of the large UK civic universities. The bias is toward focused comprehensiveness.

The growing use of research centers and the resulting dual operating structure of departments and centers strongly indicates diffusion of the entrepreneurial attitude throughout the academic understructure. At the cut­ting edge of this spread we find in 1995 the Warwick business school raising over three-quarters of its budget from "earned-income activities in teaching, consulting, and research, while just under a quarter came from Higher Education Funding Council grants." (University of Warwick, 1995b, p. 97) Other departments are not far behind. The university proudly points to the dominant role of the academic heartland units in producing income; it is able to claim that over two-thirds of its earned income (70 percent in 1995) is academically driven, that is, "based in academic departments and concerned with the provision of teaching and research on a fee-paying basis." (University of Warwick, 1995a, p. 9)

Further, Warwick has developed two major initiatives in the 1990s that range across its stimulated heartland. The first was the establishment in 1991 of a universitywide graduate school, the first of its kind in the United Kingdom. Like most European systems of universities, the British system has long lacked a formally organized structure for supporting systematic instruction for gradu­ate students (known as postgraduate in Britain), especially for research students pursuing the doctorate. (Becher, 1993; Clark, 1995) British universities made a delayed and essentially secondary commitment to the graduate level. The modern Ph.D. was not put in place until 1918, virtually half a century after its introduction and takeoff in the 1870s and 1880s in the United States. Adopted in the form of a three-year program, the doctorate was almost completely given over to actual engagement in research, a practice that has continued to dominate. A British expert on the training of researchers writing in the early 1980s noted: "At present we assume that the need for researchers is best met by selecting some of our academically most able graduates and giving them three years in which to carry out one major research project and write a thesis." (Hirsh, 1982, p. 190) Future researchers were deemed not to need more instruc­tion in courses. There would be nothing like the American graduate school with its overarching panoply of rules and regulations for admissions, course credits, written and oral examinations, and dissertations.

But postgraduate work grew in the late 1980s and the 1990s in an ad hoc fashion, field by field, especially in what the British called "taught masters" programs. Doctoral students became more numerous nationwide and in specific universities; they placed a heavy burden on the happenstance of individualized mentor-apprentice relationships while offering up more clusters

30      The Warwick Way

of advanced students that could become the critical mass for organized courses. Graduate student complaints about uneven, if not poor, supervision increased (Becher, 1993) amid general observations that graduate education was "bolted on" to the structure for undergraduate education on the one side and on to staff research on the other, marginalizing it with poor systematic support.

Warwick, reflecting its proactive, searching style, was apparently the first university in Europe to seek to systematically remedy the problem by establish­ing a full graduate school, American-style, that would embrace all masters and doctoral programs. An initial paper prepared by Michael Shattock, the registrar, led to an exploratory working group in 1989. A young administrator, John Hogan, was sent to the United States to observe the working of the graduate school at the University of Wisconsin and to attend meetings of the U.S. Council of Graduate Schools: his follow-on report influenced the way Warwick developed its new school. Robert Burgess, a professor of sociology, was on the early team and became the first chair of the new unit and its board when they got underway in 1991. Warwick was strongly interested in adding graduate students, as reported earlier, and as part of the rapid expansion of the late 1980s and early 1990s the university found that its number of graduate students had more than doubled in five years. This led to over 4,600 full and part-time, or nearly 40 percent of the total student population, a very high proportion for a publicly supported comprehensive university. (University of Warwick, 1992-93, p. 2) Additional curricular, financial, and social support for this now large population could have been developed by individual depart­ments (or faculties) in an ad hoc fashion - this did occur later at Twente, Chalmers, and Joensuu on the continent - but Warwick opted for the American all-inclusive form that then evolved in Britain as "the Warwick model." (Burgess, 1996)

Across the university, the new school was given the remit to regulate the admission and monitor the progress of graduate students, to provide appropri­ate academic resources and social facilities for them, to make awards to them from set-aside university funds, and, overall, "to scrutinize all new postgradu­ate degrees and course proposals" and "to review all graduate programmes on a three-year cycle." (Burgess, 1996, p. 12) In short order the school developed a teaching assistants' scheme, designating a training program and employment for up to four years, and research assistantships of similar lengths. New residences were constructed, and a postgraduate association initiated by the students themselves. As the locus for systematic, periodic review of all postgraduate degrees and for the monitoring of student progress in pursuit of advanced degrees, the new school was soon the place that could say, in American style, that it "now offers over 130 postgraduate programmes." (University of Warwick, 1992-1993, p. 5) Applicants and enrolled students continued to increase: the latter from 4,600 in 1992-1993 to 5,200 two years later (University of Warwick, 1995c, p. 7)

In retrospect, the establishment of a formal universitywide graduate school

Burton R. Clark       31

in 1991 was clearly the right move at the right time. Other universities were showing interest: establishing a stronger infrastructure for advanced degree work was about to become the thing to do. The Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) noted in early 1994 that Warwick had "definitely stolen a march on everyone else," that "institutions with a graduate school, most notably Warwick University, which established one in 1991, are seen to have a distinct publicity advantage over rivals." (April 15, 1994, p. 1) Not only was Warwick fast off the mark and thorough in its effort, but it immediately moved to promote graduate schools nationally. Burgess convened a meeting on the topic at the university in January 1993 for interested parties at other universi­ties and nearly 100 people came. That summer, six months later, a more formal first conference at Warwick was convened, with Jules LaPidus, longtime head of the American Council of Graduate Schools, as featured speaker. Chaired by Burgess, in early 1994 a UK Council for Graduate Education was established; it was soon able to claim more than 90 institutional members. No government approval was needed and none was sought. By the end of 1994, about 20 universities had formally established graduate schools. Universities were finding out at a rapid rate that "the postgraduate market [offered] a way of maintaining the momentum built up over the past few years of increasing student numbers." (THES, Aug. 5, 1994, p. 7) While the government had "slammed on the brakes" on full-time undergraduate education, because of its costs, officials cast an approving eye on low-cost "taught masters" programs, with students paying much of the bill. And since universities wanted to build doctoral programs, and national research council funds for doctoral support were meager, the institutions were willing to invest more of their own funds (if available!) for teaching and research assistantships.

Warwick's leadership in promoting new infrastructures for graduate educa­tion also spread to the continent. In 1994 Burgess coauthored a book with an Austrian colleague which reviewed graduate education reform in six European countries, with attention paid to the development of systematic training components. (Burgess and Schratz, 1994) Collaborative research was started in 1995 in six European countries that stretched geographically from the UK to Greece. A widespread diffusion effect was underway.

In 1994-1995, Warwick offered up yet another striking initiative that revealed much about its ability to see what ought to be done, mount the will to devise a programmatic solution, and then move relatively fast administratively to put it in place. The initiative was the Warwick Research Fellowships, started by a paper drawn up at the vice-chancellor's request in late spring, 1994 to discuss "how Warwick might increase the number of high quality research active staff through a research fellowship scheme." The idea was pursued on a fast track: detailed proposals were approved by the university's senate in July, a few months later; departments and research centers were immediately informed and invited to bid for fellows. The basic units had to decide on internal priorities that could be advanced by fellows focused in certain areas and to

32       The Warwick Way

exhibit a capacity to fund one-third of each post acquired and filled. Departmental replies were evaluated in a central fellowship Committee, an overall institutional listing was assembled of preferred fields, and worldwide advertising, including on the Internet, was begun in the early fall, with mid-November deadlines set for applications. (University of Warwick, 1996)

Administrative (and departmental) staff work then became enormous: the 50 advertised posts received about 8,500 inquiries, and a follow-on 2,000 applications. Applications went to the departments for rankings and then back to the central committee in December and January. One hundred and forty applicants scattered across many countries were shortlisted for interview, invited to the university, and seen by interview panels in February. Decisions were made in March to make offers to 49 candidates, of whom 36 later accepted - seventeen in the sciences, eleven in the humanities, and eight in the social sciences. Of those who accepted, 44 percent were from overseas (19 percent from European Union countries, 25 percent non-EU); and 33 percent were women. The science intake was particularly international, with 71 percent from overseas. The university held the number to the 36 who accepted, rather than fill in with a second round to get to the upper-end target of 50. The appointed fellows then came on board at the beginning of the 1995-1996 academic year. (University of Warwick, 1996)

The whole exercise may be seen as proof positive that universities can move very fast across the board when they have the will and a sharpened administra­tive capacity to do so. In his initial memorandum to chairs of departments in the summer of 1994, Vice-Chancellor Sir Brian Follett stressed "the great importance that the university is placing on the scheme. It is a key step towards further enhancing and strengthening Warwick's standing in research. To be successful, we will have to appoint research fellows of the highest quality, comparable with those awarded long-term personal fellowships by the Royal Society, the British Academy, the Research Councils, etc. This will not be easy, but the scheme will fail unless it is achieved." (University of Warwick, 1996) The will expressed by the V-C was soon picked up and rapidly advanced in the central committees and the departments. And a highly focused bit of administrative machinery was created and placed in the hands of a bright, capable young assistant registrar who then managed on a tight schedule the enormous flow of communication within the university and between the university and outside interested parties, applicants, and awardees.

The successful applicants were offered attractive positions: six-year appoint­ments as research scholars, located in departments where teaching was not to exceed one-third a normal load, and with a strong promise that if they were productive - that is, "establish themselves as international leaders in their areas of research" - they would at the end of this initial appointment become permanent members of the faculty. Those selected already had a publication record that augured well for the future. The university's immediate hope was that the young fellows would "galvanize research generally, act as research

Burton R. Clark       33

foci, increase research grant income and postgraduate numbers." The long-term hope was to renew the faculty by replacing retiring professors and improv­ing the age profile of the faculty, especially to heighten the number of young staff in the sciences. The age of the new fellows ranged from 27 to 37, the average being 32. This was close to "the target age range of 'late twenties/early thirties'." (University of Warwick, 1996) By the end of the fellows' first year, the university had good reason to think that the whole exercise, especially at a dreary time when nationally awarded research fellowships were in notoriously short supply, amounted to a first-class and probably successful initiative.

The gain in reputation, at least, was immediate and clear. In September 1994 the THES editorialized about how universities were being short-changed by a government that persisted over many years in driving down unit costs, causing the universities to pursue money primarily to support an underfunded system and "too little by genuine educational considerations." Warwick was then portrayed as the leading example to the contrary (THES, Sept. 30, 1994, p. 11):

Warwick University's announcement this week that it has made sufficient profits from non-government funded activities to be able to take on 50 research fellows on six-year contracts is a heartening example. This is an investment in academic quality which would once have been made from the public purse but the public purse no longer funds excellence adequately. It is a supreme irony that Warwick, once vilified for commercial attitudes which were thought to compromise academic integrity, is now unusual in having money to spend on academic enrich­ment. Alas, not all universities are as well placed.

A few weeks later The Economist (Nov. 12, 1994, p. 74) sharply commended the university, on the eve of its thirtieth birthday, for its "enthusiasm for the private sector" that had "paid off handsomely." Noting that the national fund­ing council had rated the university as "Britain's fifth-best research university and also given it high marks as a teaching institution," The Economist maintained that:

Warwick looks set to grow even stronger. While other British universities strug­gle to make ends meet, Warwick is splashing out £10m ($16m) on hiring 50 research fellows in a range of academic disciplines. . . Few other British universi­ties could even contemplate dispensing such largess. . . Warwick can afford the research fellowships because, since the early 1980s, it has committed itself to generating private income. . . Some of Warwick's competitors are copying its example rather than carping. Cambridge, which has traditionally depended on appeals and endowments for its funding, has struck "corporate partnerships" with companies such as Glaxo; the London School of Economics has set up a private company to sell its research.

Two months later, the THES (January 27, 1995, p. 6) chimed in again with a highly favorable portrayal that any university public relations officer would kill for. In an article entitled "Warwick joins fellowship elite," the new research fellowships (WRFs) were seen as

34      The Warwick Way

a scheme which is set to challenge the Oxbridge dominance of the postdoctoral market. . . They run for six years - double the time of the typical Oxbridge JRF [junior research fellowship] - and more strikingly, they offer the prospect of a permanent post for those scholars who establish an international reputation. . . Brian Follett, Warwick's vice-chancellor, says that the WRFs are pitched higher than the JRFs, and are comparable with the Royal Society university research fellowships. . . The 50 WRFs.will transform the age profile of Warwick's lectur­ers. . . [The scheme] will also ensure that Warwick. . . looks good when the next research assessment comes around in 1996. . . [And, quoting the Vice-Chancellor,] Warwick has decided to recruit young researchers rather than "hoover up stars" because of a conviction that "youth is an important factor in the energy behind novel discoveries."

Four months later, the THES (May 5, 1995, p. 7) came back to point out that "Warwick leads as others follow" : "Universities are rushing to copy Warwick University's prestigious £10 million research fellowship scheme, launched last year to attract 50 top scholars. Among its imitators are old universities like Leeds and Manchester, but also new ones like Coventry and De Montfort." Leeds was now offering "20 fellowships per year for three to five years," Manchester "has already appointed 15 research fellows with prospects of more this year," Coventry wanted to recruit "12 research fellows in technical areas, offering a six-year package worth £26,000 per year - twice a lecturer's basic starting wage," and noted that "its neighbour's initiative" was "a very shrewd, smart thing to do." De Montfort, wanting to invest heavily in research, was now "ready to offer at least 30 six-year research fellowships." Notably, the University of Surrey announced with full-page ads in March 1995 (THES, March 5,1995) that it was "investing in excellence" with 30 Foundation Lectureships, good for three years, that would "provide outstanding scholars with an ideal opportunity to concentrate on developing their research work." Senior as well as junior appointments could be made. The whole scheme would be "funded through income from the University's Foundation Fund arising from its highly successful Research Park." In a national setting of reduced governmental support, and institutional status competition sharply on the rise, UK universities were fast learning how to find discretionary income from private sources which could be invested mainly in research.

Only a month later, the THES (June 23, 1995, p. 4) returned to the Warwick initiative with the news that "Oxbridge dominates Warwick fellowships," in the sense that a third of the new fellowships "have been given to rising stars of Oxford and Cambridge." Out of 36 fellows appointed in 21 disciplines, 12 "currently hold posts in Oxford and Cambridge" and "16 have either studied or taught at Oxbridge." Further, the fellowships "have also been given to candidates from prestigious foreign institutions, including Berkeley, Virginia, Melbourne and L'institute Hautes Etudes Scientifique in Paris," and altogether "the international fellows come from Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Holland, India, Israel, Russia, and the United States."

Burton R. Clark       35

The data offered by the THES to UK academics and the general public spoke to a point that had been raised by traditionalist critics: that the whole fellowship scheme at Warwick had been nothing more than a gigantic public-relations exercise and would fail to lure the best academics away from more prestigious places, notably Oxford and Cambridge. But Warwick could and did attract them. The initiative could even be seen as a small step to help the UK reverse its braindrain, long a sore point among British academics, especially scientists, as promising young scholars fled to other countries, primarily the United States, and to UK jobs outside academia. With recruit­ment pursued on a thoroughly worldwide basis, the Warwick effort could even pull in talent from elsewhere that might be superior to that brought forward in the UK system: for example, out of 250 applicants in mathematics, the five mathematicians offered fellowships by Warwick were non-UK applicants. All five chose to come, giving the mathematics department, newly chaired by a mathematician from an American university, a cadre of excellent young scholars that truly reflects the highly internationalized character of this key discipline.

The Warwick fellowship scheme had a significant internal downside, however: it throws the regular junior staff into somewhat of a second-best position. Research fellows need to teach very little; they are heavily subsidized to devote themselves to research and publication. Meanwhile, the regular staff are evermore heavily involved in teaching and weighty departmental responsibilities, the price for academic influence by senate and faculty com­mittees. "What about us?" became a natural complaint, prodding the university to pay more attention to the junior staffs conditions of work and morale, including teaching loads and time for research. Warwick staff were not prohibited from applying for the research fellowships and several, mainly in the social sciences, were selected. Overall, the fellowship scheme may be seen as putting pressure on the main career structure to move all positions in the direction of more research. Limited resources and the ever present UK concern for staff devotion to undergraduate education then become the chief constraints on the promotion of research.

Conclusion

In a decade and a half of transforming effort, Warwick made remarkable progress in achieving operational strength and high status as a comprehensive research university at the same time that it developed uncommon outreach to industry. Academic and practical thrusts interacted to promote a virtuous circle of effects. Financial and research returns from industrial outreach furthered academic goals, while an increasingly respected academic base pushed up-market in the outreach programs, especially those involving contact with industry. For academics and business executives alike, Warwick in the 1990s brought repute to those associated with it.

36       The Warwick Way

Proof of achievement and recognized competence has been abundant. For a university only three decades old in the mid-1990s, Warwick has had a surpris­ingly high number of top-rated departments in the research assessment exercises that the British government has carried out every three or four years since 1986: in the fourth such assessment in 1996, the university had 12 depart­ments with a "5*" or "5" rating at the top of the scale, nine with the strongly favorable rating of "4," and only three at "3" and one at "2." The university could appropriately point out that it had put forward 98 percent of its faculty members for the assessment (hiding far fewer than nearly all other institutions, including Cambridge at 90 percent), and that four-fifths of its faculty were in 4- and 5-rated departments. If games had to be played with a government that was obsessed with top-down assessment, the university had positioned itself to maximize the gains in status as well as in income that flowed to those able to sustain a virtuous circle of effects at the top of the line. On one indicator after another, based on national assessment of teaching quality as well as research quality, Warwick could claim a position in the top ten British universi­ties, often as high as fifth or sixth, placing just after Cambridge and Oxford and such impressive institutions in the national capital as the London School of Economics, University College London, and Imperial College. Potential students have gotten the message: applicants to Warwick in the mid-1990s outnumbered available places in the entering class ten to one (in 1995, 27,000 to 2,300). Apace the growing size of the applicant pool (and Warwick's solid standing among other preferred institutions when students make multiple applications through a central office), student selectivity has steadily risen. The institution could justly claim that it had become "one of the UK's most popular universities." (University of Warwick, 1995a)

A number of indicators placed Warwick as the most successful of the Seven Sisters, the "green-fields" universities initiated in the 1960s. It had become much the largest in overall structure, an important characteristic in a system where small size had severely constrained the competitive scale and scope needed for both student growth and knowledge growth: in 1995, over 13,000 full-time students attended, compared to Lancaster, the next largest at 8,000, and Sussex at 7,600. It had the largest income, double on the average the budgets of the other new universities and about the overall budget size (at over 130 million pounds by 1995) of some of the large civic universities that had developed in the UK's industrial cities since the late nineteenth century. The research rat­ings have marked it first among the Seven Sisters, with high average institutional scores stemming from the large number of "4" and "5" rated departments. An analysis made by the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Birmingham showed that in the 1989 second national research assessment Warwick had 18 high-rated departments (4s and 5s), compared to York's 11, Sussex's 10, and the remaining 4 members of the New University group with 9 or fewer. (Thompson, Sir Michael, 1991, 352-353) And Warwick's outreach to industry, a special feature, has been a qualitative leap higher. To round out its highly

Burton R. Clark       37

favorable reputation, the university could also boast that its Performing Arts Centre was the largest complex of its kind in the UK outside of London, thereby bringing "the community" physically into the university on a massive scale.

Warwick profited immensely from its early tough-minded recognition that central government in Britain had become an undependable university patron, often a hostile one. The recognition led to a will to work hard to place the institution in an independent posture - to stand on its own feet by earning its way. Building off of this willful idea, much effort, as we have seen, fed into strengthening its steering capacity, actively pursuing diversified income, add­ing one new outreach after the other at the institutional periphery, and gradu­ally developing an entrepreneurial culture throughout most, if not all, of the basic departments that constitute the academic heartland. Equipped with a transformed infrastructure, the university was able to flex itself.

At Warwick, waiting for the government to come up with more money was seen as an option taken only by those who did not face reality. Spiraling downward into the muck of self-pity and low morale that was diffusing through so many British universities by years of bitter university-government relations was a road to be avoided at all costs During a decade and a half when British universities were having a very tough time, with more harsh medicine always in the offing, the university's self-steered success bolstered commitment and morale. Faculty had only to consider the plight of academic colleagues elsewhere in the UK, outside of the top half-dozen or so institutions, to become aware that Warwick's willingness to work with industry did not end up as a pact with the devil. Instead, industry's patronage, along with other second-and third-stream sources of income and program service, had become a crucial part of institutional viability. Income came from a plurality of sources the institution had to actively pursue in increasingly competitive settings. The financial base largely moved over to that part of the ledger where income streams differentiate institutions as they individually win or lose in obtaining research grants from private and public sources, pursue foreign students to garner fee income, sell contract-education courses and consultancy services, and attract conference and overnight guests to conference centers. In develop­ing new sources of income the university has been out in front, at the cutting edge of a trend that affects UK universities generally and increasingly affects universities throughout developed and rapidly developing societies.

When the German Bertelsmann Foundation searched across Europe in late 1989 for the most impressive case of a progressive university, it chose Warwick as its winner. In a 1990 award, the foundation portrayed the university as "a model European university" that combined in an exemplary way "academic excellence and the imaginative generation of revenue." (Bertelsmann Foundation, 1990) The foundation hoped that by making the award to Warwick it would "help to promote understanding for appropriate and progres­sive university work both in Britain and in the rest of the world." The award

38      The Warwick Way

was followed by a forum, for a largely German audience, that discussed the structure and administration of universities. Bertelsmann was interested in unfreezing the interlocked rigidities of the German university system (which have largely remained), and in calling attention to a model for all of Europe to consider. The award was appropriate. A half-decade later, Warwick remained an example second to none in Europe of university proactivity, one grounded in an aggressive attitude. In its brief to Bertelsmann, submitted in late 1989, Warwick stressed as the final element in its culture "a belief that attack is the best form of defence, or in university language, that optimism, some risk tak­ing and a willingness to attempt new things represent a better policy than caution, cut-backs and academic conservatism." The university went on to point out that "the creation of a positive organizational culture is a lengthy process which cannot be achieved overnight," but that once you have it, a university has "a momentum" that carries it through difficult decisions and troubling times. (Shattock, 1989)

Underlying that culture and momentum we find many unique features of context, individual personality, and organizational process. But playing a large part are the five elements isolated in this study, elements common to Warwick and the four other universities described in the following chapters. Warwick serves as a vivid demonstration of these elements at work. As a leading case, it suggests strongly in itself that the five features we have uncovered are important pathways of university transformation at the end of the twentieth century. When we take Warwick seriously as a powerful model of the contemporary reformed university, we find university transformation built upon, even thoroughly dependent on, a strengthened administrative capacity, a buildup of discretionary funds, a vigorous periphery of outreach structures and programs, a willingness of heartland departments to join in the pursuit of new ventures and relationships, and, finally, a wrap-around entrepreneurial mental­ity that unites the university in a new direction of development and presents a distinctive outlook different from traditional modes.

Warwick teaches us much about what organizational changes enter into the making of entrepreneurial universities.