The values of English universities: questioning the role of value statements and mapping their current focus

Elwick, Alex ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9930-798X (2018) The values of English universities: questioning the role of value statements and mapping their current focus. Higher Education Policy . ISSN 0952-8733 [Article] (Published online first) (doi:10.1057/s41307-018-0112-x)

Preview

PDF - Final accepted version (with author's formatting) Download (274kB) | Preview

Abstract

Universities now routinely promote value statements in order to express their beliefs and moral principles – adopting the practice of many commercial organisations. However, such value statements have rarely been collated or studied across the sector, which is what this paper sets out to do. Focusing on English universities, current value statements were collected and thematically analysed in order to assess what values universities in England claim to embrace; whether there are patterns in these value statements; and how these values are used to characterise the ‘business’ of higher education. A small number of key themes are used to typify value statements across a majority of institutions and differences between sub-groups of universities are identified. The paper concludes by questioning why universities adopt and publicise value statements and what role they might play in universities’ projections of themselves.

Actions (login required)

View Item

Statistics

DownloadsShow export options

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Activity Overview

6 month trend

193Downloads

6 month trend

228Hits

Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.