Shifting Borders in the Modern University

This chapter draws together to examine the key themes within the book, and highlights how as individual roles within the university have changed, they have also changed the relationship between people and structures within the institution. This chapter is primarily concerned with Bourdieu’s notion of fields and how they relate to each other in a university. The chapter highlights that in past decades, let alone centuries, the roles of academics and leaders within an institution was hierarchical, but research and teaching remained the primary motivator. Thus, even if agents were doing different things, a lot of what they did nonetheless put them in similar fields to others. This chapter accordingly highlights how with vice-chancellors, deans, and academics now having to address their own specific roles such as vice-chancellors and deans taking on tasks much more closely related to management than research or teaching, the connections that once still kept the hierarchy of the university relatable to each other is now lost as vice-chancellors and deans are increasing hired on their management expertise, and increasingly smaller regard for their research profiles, because that is not the criteria for their success. This inevitably causes disconnectedness along the university hierarchy as people employed for specific roles, rarely understand the pressures other people face.