ABSTRACT
Introduction For almost as long as there have been universities, there have been those who taught, and those who supported those who taught and were being taught. However, university administrators have historically been associated with some of the more negative aspects of managerialism, in what Ramsden characterises as ‘The Bureaucracy’:
Its focus is on regulation, consistency and rules. Its managerial style is formal-rational. A cohort of senior administrators wields considerable power. Standards are related to regulatory bodies and external references: evaluation is based on the audit of procedures. Decision making is rule-based and students are statistics.
