ABSTRACT
This chapter is written from the perspective of the head of an institution of higher education in the United Kingdom. It is based partly on personal experience within that institution, and partly on more general experience derived from membership of the Education Committee of the Council for National Academic Awards, which has given the opportunity to become acquainted with institutional problems in many other parts of Britain. The management of educational institutions in a time of contraction, along with the tensions which accompany this, is a subject which has attracted a good deal of attention in years. It may expect to be of continuing interest throughout much of the 1980s because of the falling rolls which will be affecting first schools and then colleges and universities throughout that period. In the Scottish colleges of education nearly 400 staff, out of a total of around 1400, chose voluntary redundancy between 1978 and 1980.
