It seems that four major trends are affecting our university teaching in general, and that of the field of public administration (PA) in particular: Europeanisation, public sector reform in member countries, globalisation, and marketisation. Each of these four trends may have a different impact in different European countries. However, the combination of these four trends, in their different intensities, will affect the field of Public Administration in a substantial way.
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In most cases European universities have been created as part of public sector. Their reforms and developments reflect the reforms and developments of the public sector in each country. Taking Finland as a case in focus, we will show how administrative reform policies are reflected in the changes of the governance of universities. Administrative reform policies of the 1990s are described, first, as general trends, second, as changing structures and practices in the development of Finnish university governance. The objectives set by the government in the mid 1980s to reform universities have been mostly achieved. They reflect the policies of performance-oriented budgeting, independence and flexibility in resource allocation, performance accounting, and efficiency. The strategic reallocation of existing resources and inertia in completing studies continue to be problems. The gradual changes have now amounted to a phase where a more radical reform of universities' institutional and legal status is being designed and implemented.
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Champlain College, a leader in both online and international education, uses the Internet to create Global Modules that link the students and faculty at international educational institutions for shared online readings, discussion and teamwork. The readings challenge cultural assumptions as well as promote ritical thinking and collaborative learning. Students are divided into virtual mixed groups with the charge of attempting to address global problems and then presenting their findings to their peers. This article presents an overview of the Global Modules approach, including the technological and pedagogical implications. In addition, the article will focus on Champlain's innovative efforts to embed the Global Modules approach as a required part of the college's new interdisciplinary core curriculum. Champlain College redesigned its general education requirements with a sequence of eleven interdisciplinary courses in fall 2007. The result of the curricular redesign is an integrated series of international dialogues spread over the student's university experience. Its aim was not only to address the breadth of disciplines, but to understand them in a contextual, meaningful way. These courses are thematic in approach, and model the inquiry-based method of learning. The Global Modules are embedded throughout the new Core in key courses as required, graded assignments.
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Most modern European universities are funded almost entirely from public sources or, more recently in some countries, from a mix of student fees, research grants and public funding of the teaching function. Efforts to expand university systems, under conditions of diminishing ability or willingness by governments to pay the full costs of such expansion, have led to demands for greater accountability of these institutions to their paymasters. The result has been an increasing trend towards target-setting in universities, combined with diverse efforts to assess and improve the quality of both teaching and research. In some respects, this makes our universities one of the last bastions of oldstyle central planning, with all its attendant inefficiencies and distortions, a curious irony in view of the rapid shift towards a market-type economy in central and eastern Europe since 1989. Moreover, the same tendencies are also apparent in the widespread shift from academic autonomy towards a more managerial type of university. In this paper I review these trends in the European university system, assess their impact on both academics and the institutions where they work, and examine the extent to which European and wider networking across universities can provide a valuable counter-weight to protect institutions from excessive pressures of accountability.
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