The Higher Education System: Academic Organization in Cross-National Perspective

The triangle of coordination formulated by the author, Burton Clark, is influential that changing relationships between the state, market and academic oligarchy can be analyzed and compared more systematically across different countries. This model has been modified and developed by a number of scholars and researchers that Clark's model has become a classic in the field of higher education studies. Clark accurately points out that market becomes an important factor shaping the development of higher education systems in different countries, for instance, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and even Hong Kong. Based on this analytical framework, there has been a new balance between the state, market and academic oligarchy. In the era of globalization, higher education moves towards a new mode of management which has been commonly known as new managerialism or New Public Management, which replaces the tradition of collegiality inherited by the academic community. By all these, Clark's book is so stimulative that enlightens our research on the changing nature of higher education in the post-modern, globalizing society.