In Search of Academic Quality

Are higher education and research in the process of becoming more and more alike? Global standards such as performance rankings and New Public Management approaches provide an identical rationale for launching major reforms. The way to produce an academic quality at the local level is expected to be aligned according to such standards.

In Search of Academic Quality questions the relevance of such an evolution scenario. Based on an international comparison observing in-depth a series of universities, the book suggests that diversity remains massive when considering how single institutions position themselves in terms of quality standards and combine resources, as well as the alternatives they have access to given their organizational and cultural governance path dependence. This volume explores a series of analytical tools applicable for management purposes such as improving academic quality upgrading.

Catherine Paradeise was Professor of Sociology at several French higher education institutions, lastly at Universite Paris Est-Marne la Vallee (U-PEM). She was deputy director at the department of social sciences and humanities of French National Centre for Scientific Research and Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan (ENS-C), and co-founded the Institute for Research and Innovation in Society (IFRIS).


Jean-Claude Thoenig was Professor at the Lausanne Federal Institute of Technology, Dean and Professor at INSEAD (Fontainebleau), co-founder of EGOS (European Group for Organizational Studies) and the Ecole de Paris du Management, and Senior Researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research.