Rethinking Higher Education: Participation, Research & Differentiation by George Fallis (review)

Over the last five years, the higher education policy community in Ontario, Canada has been grappling over what the future of their public higher education system should look like. The directive from the top has been very clear: the provincial government can no longer afford to increase expenditures, meaning that future improvements to the public higher education system will have to come through qualitative changes in how ‘things are done’ at the institutional level. Within such context, ‘institutional differentiation’ has been embraced by the provincial government as a primary tool through which to improve the system. The provincial government has ordered each institution to carefully identify which particular ‘areas’ they possess considerable strength in. It has done so in order to kick-start a process through which it will encourage such institutions to further specialize in such areas of strength, while at the same time, driving them to move away from other areas in which they are currently providing largely ‘average’ service. Through this process, the provincial government expects to improve the overall quality of the system.

This ongoing process of differentiation has occurred under conditions whereby each individual public institution has been granted a substantial degree of autonomy by the provincial government. Public institutions have been allowed to negotiate their futures through strategic mandate agreements (SMA) which outline the directions in which they will develop, whether it be disciplinary specialization, greater community engagement, increased research intensiveness, or a host of other important factors. Given the decentralized nature of this process, it remains somewhat unclear what Ontario higher education will look like in coming decades. In light of such events, several commentators (Clark, Moran, Skolnick, & Trick, 2009; Clark, Van Loon, & Trick, 2011; Weingarten & Deller, 2010) have stepped forward to provide distinct visions of how the Ontario higher education system should develop in order for it to best meet the needs of the province. George Fallis’ book, Rethinking Higher Education, follows in this tradition, constituting one of the most sophisticated attempts to inform how Ontario higher education should be transformed in coming decades.

Central to Fallis’ understanding of Ontario higher education is the point that, if higher education institutions (HEIs) are left to their own devices, there will be a strong tendency towards ‘isomorphism’ within the higher education system. Drawing inspiration from new institutionalist (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) theorizing within the sociology of organizations, Fallis indicates that HEIs are becoming increasingly similar to each other over time. This process is driven by three distinct mechanisms labelled by organizational sociologists (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) as normative, mimetic, and coercive. For example, Fallis suggests that HEIs tend to “model themselves on similar organizations that they perceive to be more legitimate and successful” (p. 87). Within the case of Ontario higher education, this entails mimicking elite research-intensive universities (mimetic isomorphism), including Canadian institutions such as Toronto or UBC, or international counterparts like the “Berkleys, Harvards, and Oxfords” (Fallis, 2013, p. 87). Universities are also staffed by professionals who espouse similar world views, and thus, come to structure their organizational surroundings in very similar ways ( normative isomorphism). Existing financial incentive structures ( coercive isomorphism)have also not facilitated the natural development of differentiation within the system, given that they have placed public institutions under uniform pressures, rewarding them for performing many of the same tasks (i.e., teaching large groups of students across many of the same disciplines). Based on such an understanding of organizational behaviour within higher education, Fallis argues that the differentiation of Ontario higher education must be driven primarily and decisively by the provincial government. To him, it is “clear that universities will not become significantly more differentiated, operating as they have been, making institutional decisions as they have been, within the current government framework. Change will require a changed framework, a more intrusive government” (Fallis, 2013, p. 88). According to Fallis, HEIs cannot be given too much latitude in deciding their own futures given that, by default, they will select pathways that are remarkably similar.

Beyond emphasizing the...