ABSTRACT
In the last three decades there have been prognoses about the future of academic staff development in higher education at the beginning of each decade. For example, Piper and Glatter (1977) wrote about The Changing University: A Report on Staff Development in Universities in the 1970s on the basis of their ‘Staff Development in Universities’ programme 1972/4, and Rhodes and Hounsell (1980, 9) viewed their edited collection of papers on Staff Development for the 1980s: International Perspectives:
not as astrology, but as something more akin to the work of meteorologists. While predicting the weather with a high degree of accuracy is a risky undertaking, forecasts based upon available evidence and extrapolations from past trends are quite useful in planning for the future.
Similarly, the essays in the volume by Ball and Eggins (1989) on Higher Education into the 1990s: New Dimensions consider the development of higher education generally from many different points of view and in many contrasting dimensions.