"culture eats strategy for lunch every day" [1]

University governors need a critical understanding of the historical development of the Higher Education sector and of the university and the work of staff. More simply, successful implementation of strategy developed with university governors will fail if the culture of the institution cannot adapt and does not own that strategy. This is fundamental to the problem of "shared academic governance", and the challenge to university governing bodies with a majority of external members does not a priori possess:

Academics are ... not uniquely and superlatively equipped to govern universities: but, and this is the crucial point, on the central activities of a university and on the conditions necessary for them to flourish, none can reasonably claim to be better equipped. The supreme authority, provided that it is exercised in ways responsive to others, must therefore rest with the academics for no one else seems suficiently qualified to regulate the public affairs of scholars.(Moodie and Eustace 1974)

So how are university governors to understand and operate in a culture with "shared academic governance? The nature of the university, "collegiality", academic freedom are endlessly debated, especially from within the the walls of the academy. But does this help you?

These four papers present four distinctive point of view on the cultures of the university, university governance and academic governance. They circle around the university and together provide elements that may help university governors understand the task and your centrality in conceiving the new future of "shared academic governance" in Australia.

In A Comparative Perspective on Changes in University Governance in Europe Uwe Schimank presents a model that offers you the practicality of judging the university governing bodies as just one of a number of factors 'governing' the modern university. For Australian universities this raises the questions what are those factors in our sector, and what is their actual or ideal balance in your university.

Schimank's paper also highlights the diversity of concepts of the university that actually operate in Western culture, with considerable differences from our anglophile ideas and history (though perhaps many of the same 'governing factors' overall).

Schimank's point of view would perhaps be critical of the anglocentric emphasis of Damien Considine's University Governance, Corporations and Cultures: The Impact of Corporate Law on the Development of Appropriate Regulation, Compliance and Recognition of Diverse University Cultures. Considine also walks a tightrope. He provides an excellent analysis of the increasingly codified expectations of body corporate governors such as yourselves in Anglo-American law. At the same time he is gently repeating an academic refrain about the decline of "traditional collegial university governance".

As an 'outsider' looking in at academe, Geoff Sharrock is frankly intolerant of such "Academic Valuespeak" in his forthcoming After Copernicus: Australian Universities in the 21st Century [2]. Sharrock argues that a generation of baby boomer academics experienced golden years of "collegial" tradition and independence of the institution from society, unshackled by the economic realities of resourcing income proportional to expenses by fully-funded growth under Whitlam and tuition-funded growth since. As the baby boomer generation begins to retire they hold responsibility for the future of our universities in a period of "double decline" characterised by

• the challenge to the university's "theory of business" by the dismantling of the schemes providing fully-funding growth and
• the challenge to the importance and independence of the university as "knowledge gatekeeper" by a broader knowledge society, symbolised by the internet.

The results are the sectoral struggle with "third stream" activities and interconnectedness with the broader knowledge culture that you, as our university governors, are working to direct.

This connectedness with wider society is reinforced by Michael Shattock in his historical examination of the shift in the balance of power between governing councils and academic senates over the course of the twentieth century as a product of wider cultural influences in Changing approaches to University Governance in the UK: is the concept of "shared governance under threat? [3].

Shattock argues that the post-war period of nearly complete government support for universities was the exception over the century, rather than the norm of funding from tuition, government and private sources in approximately equal proportions. The current 'decline' in shared acedmic governance is the retreat of academia from an apogee underpinned by secure resources. What further stands out is that the changes in governance culture occured largely the same legislative charter.

Shattock's illustration of the cultural-specificity of university governance completes the circle back to Schimank's model of the University Council as only one in a number of factors 'governing' university cultures, thus completing our circle around university governance and university culture.

1. The quote is attributed to a senior executive at Merck Pharmaceutical.
2. Geoff Sharrock's After Copernicus: Australian Universities in the 21st Century is to be published in Australian Universities Review. A draft copy has been made available to the UGPD Program and is available on request.
3. Michael Shattock's seminar Changing approaches to University Governance in the UK: is the concept of "shared governance under threat? was presented at the Centre for Studies in Higher Education in 2006. Although the UK and Australian university sectors and cultures are closely aligned, it would be beneficial to have a similar analysis of the Australian history of shared governance.