Managing the external environment
No institution can exist in isolation. All have important interactions with their environment. In the case of universities, for centuries they have interacted with the external environment in numerous, diverse and complex ways.
A crucial feature of the environment has always been the relationship with the state and government. In the UK, a significant aspect of this relationship is that, legally and constitutionally, universities are not state institutions, but independent autonomous bodies.
However, although there has been no fundamental change in the legal status of UK universities in the last 50 years, there have been dramatic changes in the environment, and consequently in the way universities respond to it.
This arises for two principal reasons. First, there has been a huge expansion in higher education participation rates (now in excess of 50% in Scotland), which has been made possible by roughly trebling the number of universities, and by a very substantial increase in average size. Second, the amount of public money allocated to higher education has also grown substantially in real terms, even if by rather less than the expansion in student numbers.
The first of these factors requires universities to address the general public more directly than ever before. Now, the majority of families have a stake in the higher education system.
The significance of the second factor is that, as so much public money is involved, government takes an ever-closer interest in the return it is receiving. There is greater interest in the instrumental aspects of higher education: the output of employable graduates in the quantity and with the mix of skills required by the economy; and the exploitation of knowledge for commercial purposes.
Increasingly, government also sees the attraction of making use of the universities to advance specific aspects of its public policy agenda, such as social inclusion and economic regeneration.
In the UK as a whole, and in Scotland in particular, the higher education sector, both through individual institutions and their representative bodies, has responded energetically to this challenge, but it is overstating the case to say that we are "managing" our environment.
However, the need to communicate more regularly and directly with the general public has led to a more coordinated and professional approach to public campaigning and to working with the press and the broadcasting media. Similarly, the increased importance of interacting with government and law-makers has led to better planned and more systematic lobbying.