Universities as peculiar organizations

Abstract

We integrate contemporary sociological scholarship on higher education to appraise universities as peculiar organizations, on three dimensions. Universities are positionally central to the institutional order of modern societies, providing working links between state, market, civil society, and private‐sphere organizations. Universities are polysemic, embodying civic, economic, and sacred meanings simultaneously. And universities are quasi‐sovereign, enjoying a substantial margin of jurisdiction over their own boundaries and internal affairs. These insights are harmonious with classic insights on the character of academic organization and offer concise dimensions for observing variation in higher education systems across space and time.

What is educational entrepreneurship? Strategic action, temporality, and the expansion of US higher education

“…The organizational architecture of higher education provides ample flexibility for these projects, which are occasionally "submerged" more or less entirely within colleges and universities (Mettler 2005(Mettler , 2011. As hubs, universities are especially well-suited to aligning otherwise dissonant interests and projects into joint ventures (Eaton and Stevens 2020). 8 This, we will argue, is what Frederick Terman and other academic actors did with alacrity during the middle decades of the twentieth century.…”

“…Usually, much of this meaning-making activity is routinized into regular sequences of habitual action (Meyer and Rowan 1977;Swidler 1986;Gross 2009). When events disrupt the ordinary flow of institutionalized interaction, it becomes possible to re-narrate past and present in ways that encourage, legitimate, or even require novel action (Aminzade 1992;Sewell 1996;Emirbayer and Mische 1998). Understanding how educational entrepreneurship unfolds requires investigating how historically situated actors attempt to shape "the construction of futures out of pasts" (Adams et al 2005:9).…”

Organizing Competition: Regulatory Welfare States in Higher Education

“…Throughout this history, universities have fulfilled core social functions, acting as “sieves for sorting and stratifying populations, incubators for the development of competent social actors, temples for the legitimation of official knowledge, and hubs connecting multiple institutional domains” (Stevens, Armstrong, and Arum 2008, 127). At the same time, they have remained “peculiar organizations” that have enjoyed “a substantial margin of jurisdiction over their own boundaries and internal affairs” (Eaton and Stevens 2020, 1). This on-the-ground reality has been a function of state authorities’ reliance on the cooperation of societal actors, such as professional associations and private benefactors, to extend their own reach within and through higher education.…”

What is Educational Entrepreneurship? Strategic Action, Temporality, and the Expansion of US Higher Education

“…The organizational architecture of higher education provides ample flexibility for these projects, which are occasionally "submerged" more or less entirely within colleges and universities (Mettler 2005(Mettler , 2011. As hubs, universities are especially well-suited to aligning otherwise dissonant interests and projects into joint ventures (Eaton & Stevens 2020 (Starr 1982:13-17;Cetina 1999). Educational institutions define what is knowable and how it is legitimately known, and they authoritatively mark individuals as capable knowers (Meyer 1977).…”

“…The very name of HCP alluded to prior models of postsecondary education as a project of building civic capacity, and its design enabled participants to be students and company employees simultaneously. Third, it reveals the strategic value of the autonomy afforded to academic organizations in the US polity (Eaton & Stevens 2020). Terman and his colleagues were broadly free to shape HCP's admissions policies, fee structures, pedagogical requirements, and overall purposes as they saw fit.…”