Higher education in three dimensions

Linda Helén Haukland

# **Higher education in three dimensions**

### A New Theoretical Frame of Understanding

Orkana Akademisk

#### © Linda Helén Haukland 2021

This book is published as Open Access under the copyright regulations of Creative Commons License CC-BY 4.0.

Creative Commons License CC-BY 4.0 gives permission to copy and distribute the work in any medium or format, partially or fully, and to freely use the material for any purpose. Correct references to the work and authors must be applied, and include reference to the license, together with a specification of whether changes have been made. References to the original work can be provided in any reasonable manner, but can not suggest that the authors or the publisher endorse the third party or the third party's use of the work. Any reuse of the material in this book may not infringe upon the rights of reuse by other parties.

> For a full description of the Creative Commons License CC-BY 4.0 consult the following webpage: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode

> > PDF: ISBN 978-82-8104-463-0 EPUB: ISBN 978-82-8104-464-7 HTML: ISBN 978-82-8104-465-4 XML: ISBN 978-82-8104-466-1

#### DOI: https://doi.org/10.33673/OOA20205

Linda Helén Haukland *Higher Education in Three Dimensions A New Theoretical Frame of Understanding*

Translation: Alasdair Graham-Brown Cover illustration: VAlex, stock.adobe.com Design: DesignBaltic

This publication is published with the support of Nord University.

This publication was first published in Norwegian: https://doi.org/10.33673/OOA20203

Orkana Akademisk

www.orkana.no post@orkana.no

### Preface

This book is the end product of an exciting and demanding journey. A journey which many people have helped along the way. These include Professor Johans Tveit Sandvin and Professor Narve Fulsås who provided important input to Part I. I would also like to thank Professor Sven-Erik Hansén in particular for his help with Part II and with the systematisation for the presentation of a three-dimensional theoretical frame for the higher education field. My thanks also go to the publisher Elisabeth Johansen of Orkana Akademisk for all her help and support throughout the process.

My greatest thanks must go to my husband Anders and our children Edel-Marie, Mathias André and Hannah Victoria, our extended family and good friends, who have been patient with me and my busyness, and who have been my haven along the way.

> Tverlandet, May 2021 Linda Helén Haukland

### Abstract

'Higher Education in Three Dimensions. A New Theoretical Frame of Understanding' is a book of three parts. Part I is an institutional analysis of the change dynamics of the Norwegian higher education field between 1965 and 2011, and the foundation of the University of Nordland, now Nord University. The analysis examines the foundation of Nordland Regional University College, the development of the national university and university college sectors and the regional university colleges in Bodø up to the founding of the University of Nordland.

The forces and tensions at play and the enabling processes they generated in the period up to the foundation of the University of Nordland are the main topics of Part 1, the main driving forces emphasised being growth in the field, the academic drift of the university and university college sectors and standardisation processes that contributed to the integration of the field. Key tensions arose between national education policy and the development needs of the region. They also arose between the management of vocational and academic educational institutions. A third tension highlighted is between the democratisation of knowledge and the increasing need for standardisation in the field.

Part II presents a new theoretical frame of understanding for analysing development driven by these tensions and by other factors. It also questions the two-dimensional understanding of terms such as autonomy and academic drift, and suggests society is included as a stronger third dimension in the analysis of higher education. Part III concludes that a three-dimensional framework of understanding highlights new key themes, issues and dilemmas in the field of higher education. It is therefore both fruitful and needed as it will allow a greater depth of understanding, comparative analysis, and the uncovering of the dilemmas at stake.

This book is also available in Norwegian. https://doi.org/10.33673/OOA20203


### Introduction

Norwegian society has, in recent decades, undergone major changes in most areas, including higher education. We live in a post-industrial knowledge society, Frønes and Stromme (2014) believing that the life cycle is heavily structured and influenced by the educational systems. Educational institutions have largely been shielded from developments in the rest of society. They are today, however, key institutions in society. We therefore require greater knowledge on the stakeholders and processes that structure these systems, and how theses institutions are affected by society's growing need for higher education. The higher education system is therefore a research object of interest. Societal processes are condensed in higher education, this allowing the factors that lead to institutions changing and new institutions being created to be grasped.

The most striking change in higher education in Norway is perhaps the growing number of universities, Oslo Metropolitan University and the University of South-Eastern Norway being the most recent additions to the university sector. The number of universities was stable until the start of the 2000s, the University of Nordland being just the eighth university in Norway when founded in 2011. The number of Norwegian universities had, however, by 2011 doubled in a short space of time.

The study of Bodø University College's path to becoming a university is presented in Part I, this part of the book also forming the basis for Part II. This study also examines higher education system changes in this period and the processes that led to the increase in the number of universities. This increase was followed, after the 2015 structural reform, by the collapse of the university college sector.

Unravelling the processes that brought about the institutional category change of Bodø University College in 2011 is not an easy task. The local contribution of institutional developers, the efforts of regional stakeholders, the role of the national stakeholders and the processes that created the framework for development are easy to identify. The interaction between the stakeholders and processes operating at different levels must, however, be brought to the fore if the true picture of what led to the creation of Northern Norway's second university is to emerge.

Developments in Norway generally reflect developments in Europe. Part I of this book therefore examines the loose links and strong relationships between local, regional, national and European stakeholders and key processes. This approach highlights alliances between stakeholders, and reveals how and why reforms evolved. It also uncovers why reforms generate results that differ from those intended. The approach furthermore provides insight into the driving forces and tensions that influenced interaction between the stakeholders in the field.

The University of Nordland represents a new type of university in Norway that is also found elsewhere in Europe. Universities have traditionally been a stable institution in Norway that have not changed at the same pace as society. It has a conservative side, which manages knowledge acquired over a long period of time. This knowledge is also to be at the forefront of societal development. Universities are the arena in which students are socialised, in which knowledge is transferred to new generations and developed through research activity, and is the arena in which a highly skilled labour force is certified. These are important functions in knowledge society development and are therefore of sociological interest and relevance. The university has been the subject of sociological research, but has not held a position in research that its social significance warrants.

The Norwegian university has always existed in a field of tension between an internal logic of the intrinsic importance of research and knowledge, and an external logic of the interests of the state owner as reflected in prioritisations. Society's increasing investment in higher education has led to a greater emphasis on the efficiency and social responsibility of higher education institutions. The influence of external logic on development has therefore increased. Vocational education has also been lifted, by the need to secure a knowledge-based welfare sector, out from isolated spheres and established professional cultures into university colleges and universities such as the University of Nordland.

The study of the evolution of the University of Nordland presented in Part I, can therefore shed light on these processes in higher education, and on important aspects of society (society in this book meaning the post-industrial knowledge society, unless otherwise stated). What changes in authority priorities does this reveal? What values has higher education development been based on in the different periods? How has the relationship between higher education and society changed? and what interactions and tensions were behind these changes?

These questions are vital to understanding how Bodø University College gained university status (Part I), and why the reform changes required a new theoretical understanding frame to identify new questions and derive answers (Part II and III).

I first became acquainted with the sociology of higher education research in my doctoral work, the field and its key concepts and theories being presented in detail in Part I (Chapter 1). The sociology of higher education is a field that lacks a common set of concepts and analytical tools. These would be of great benefit to the analysis of reform changes in higher education.

Concepts and theories often, due to the complexity of the change processes, have limited explanatory power. The relationship between higher education institutions and between them and the state are the focus of much research, which further stymies the development of a common set of concepts and theories, despite the growing impact of society on higher education. I therefore present a new theoretical frame of understanding in Part II and III of this book that can serve as a new starting point for such analysis, this new frame including the dimension of higher education institutions' relationship to society. This frame can also be used in the analysis of events and definition of concepts.

The new frame opens up a three-dimensional space of potential positions where a two-dimensional surface previously reigned, and can provide greater depth to the analysis of higher education reform. It can also promote the use of three-dimensional spaces in the analysis of change processes in other areas of society.

A justification and presentation of this theoretical frame of understanding is provided in Part II of this book. Part III reveals how a third dimension can raise new research questions and uncover new themes, issues and dilemmas in an increasingly complex field of research.

## THE ROAD TO UNIVERSITY STATUS. THE NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE SECTOR AS SEEN FROM THE COUNTY OF NORDLAND (1965–2011)

### Introduction

This part, which consists of an introduction and four chapters, examines the tensions and interplay in the Norwegian university college sector that contributed to the founding of the University of Nordland. A review of the topic and underlying issues are presented in the introduction, and the status of research and theory are described in Chapter 1. The chapter first presents the research field, the development of higher education sociology and its thematic division, and then explains the institutional perspective of this book and the problematisation of the time dimension. The key concepts and definitions that the analysis is based on, and relevant historical work, are also covered in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 takes a closer look at the methods used, particularly the approach to written sources and personal interviews.

The local, regional, national and European level are integrated, in Chapter 3, into an overall analysis, to determine the change dynamics at play at each level and between levels in the University of Nordland's founding process. The local and regional level is, in this book and with a few exceptions, referred to as the local level. The analysis is twofold. The first part examines how the conditions for the university process were influenced by sector boundaries arising and developing in the field, this part of the analysis focusing on the interaction between local and national levels. The second part takes a closer look at how Bodø University College was affected by the European level, and by transitional arrangements between the sectors being established and developed.

Chapter 4 presents the answers provided by the analysis to the question central to Part I.

#### **What made it possible for Bodø University College to be accredited as a university?**

The problematisation of 'what made it possible' includes the work and initiatives the university college invested in the process (before it began and during its course), and the external circumstances that influenced the outcome. The question therefore includes developments at the national, regional, local and also at the European level that played a decisive role in 'what made it possible'. The university college environment in Bodø is brought into focus by this question. This, however, also leads to a closer look being taken at the stakeholders at other levels and the relationships between them. Complex interrelationships are therefore highlighted in different development phases.

The question therefore does not solely focus attention on what made it possible for the university college to achieve its goal. It also asks what was the basis for this goal being set. The answer to this requires the examination of a longer period of time than the university process, which was 1998 to 2010. This book therefore covers the period between 1965, when the Further Education Committee was appointed, and 2011 when the University of Nordland was founded.

In this book, I examine the key stakeholders in the institutional development of the university college and the emergence and change of sector boundaries, to uncover the change dynamics at and between the local, national and European levels. The values, cultures and norms that underlie the development of sector boundaries and institutions in the period, are of key importance and therefore important to examine. Was this development a result of society's demands? Was it driven by the institutions themselves? And what role did this play both before and during the university process?

This book is based on a series of personal interviews, on archival studies and a review of public documents that reveal key elements of this development.1 The study was conducted within the field of the sociology of higher education, a number of studies impinging on this topic in different ways.

#### *Bodø* University *College*

Bodø University College is the research object of this study. The university college changed character and name a number of times throughout the period of study. It is therefore not heterogeneous, and so requires a certain degree of construction (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1995). The historical development of the academic environments that eventually became Bodø University College is therefore described below.

The development of upper secondary schools in Northern Norway were, as late as the mid-1960s, ten years behind the rest of the country, due to the region's lack of experienced teachers being an almost permanent challenge.2 Many of Nordland's youth therefore chose to move to the south of the country to study for the 'Examen artium' university entrance exam. Two out of five 'Examen artium' graduates originally from Nordland in 1965, studied for the exam at upper secondary schools in the south of the country, few returning.3 There was therefore a need for the higher education available in the region to expand beyond the student nurse training available in the Salten region, if the growing welfare society was to be able to source the skilled labour force it required. The 'Norske Kvinners Sanitetsforenings' nursing college in this region was established in 1920 in Bodø and was the town's first higher education institution. It would later become a part of the new university. Bodø was the county capital and the centre of schooling in the county of Nordland, the upper secondary school expansion in the town after World War II furthermore raising the question of whether other types of schools and colleges should also be established in Bodø.4

There was no established cooperation between the municipalities that made up the Salten region. There was also little that unified the county's three regions of Ofoten to the north (with Narvik as its centre), Salten (with Bodø as its centre), and Helgeland to the south (with Mo as its centre competing with Mosjøen and Brønnøysund).5 Helgeland submitted a request to the County Council to become a separate county four times between 1922 and 1952.6 Narvik had the largest town population in the region, but Bodø had the largest number of upper secondary school students at the beginning of the 1960s. Five years later Bodø had 14 upper secondary schools, Narvik only having 8 and Mo 5.7

Bodø was also competing with Tromsø further north in the region. The first attempt to establish a teacher training institution in Bodø was made by the Executive Committee of Bodø applying in the 1930s to take over Tromsø's teacher training, which failed.8 State teacher training classes were, however, started in Bodø twenty years later in 1951, as a temporary response to the teacher shortage in Nordland. This change moved the centre for higher education in the county away from the rural municipality of Nesna in Helgeland, where the county's only teacher training had been located since 1918, to the urban municipality of Bodø9 . Bodø in the years that followed this, was the only city in Nordland that continued to grow in population.10

Student nurse training and teacher training have educational cultures with a close relationship and proximity to their fields of practice. This not only reflects the culture of these professions, but also the region's counterculture of higher education not being highly valued. The strength of this counterculture was clearly evident as late as 1990 in the words of Bjørn Berg, the Director of the University College Board of Nordland. He ironically claimed that "anybody with more than 2 years of vocational education" was "a person with unusable and useless knowledge" in the context of the Nordic coastal culture. He illustrated his point with colloquialisms such as "He studied himself into a fool" and quotes such as "general preventive considerations dictate that research and higher education should be banned"11 According to Berg, the region still suffered from the 'Erasmus Montanus syndrome', the name coming from the main character in a satirical play about the pomposity of the academically educated.12

The cooperative climate was therefore not optimal in the region, when Nordland District University College opened its doors to students in Bodø for the first time in 1971. The university college's management had been drawn from the town's teacher training environment, which should have led to good cooperation between the university college and the teacher training college as the authorities wanted. This did not, however, materialise. Cooperation with the higher education institutions in Nesna and Narvik also did not go well. This was primarily due to the district university college being assigned the role of coordinator for all higher education in the county. The university college was therefore seen as a threat to the independence of these colleges. The location of the district university college had also been strongly contested, Fauske Municipality fighting particularly hard to bring it to their area. All these factors taken together formed an unassailable barrier to any cooperation between the municipalities in the Salten region. The adoption of the strong normative values that were rooted in Nordland society by the university college, including values relating to district defence, equality and equalisation of social differences, was therefore a crucial factor in the success of this institute in the face of strong scepticism towards higher education in the region.

Nordland County Municipality established Nordland Research Institute at the end of the 1970s. This organisation was set up to strengthen all university colleges in the county, but in practice ultimately focused on raising the competence of the scientific staff at the district university college.13 The relationship with the new University of Tromsø was both collaborative and competitive, but led to a stronger professional development of Nordland District University College than would otherwise have been possible. The District University College drew on the support of Bodø Municipality, Nordland County Council and representatives in Parliament to achieve this development.

The teacher training and the student nurse training institutions came under state ownership in 1981 and 1983 respectively. They therefore became more strongly integrated into the university college sector, and came under the control of the same regional management through the University College Board of Nordland as Nordland District University College. The district university colleges in Nordland and Rogaland were awarded a graduate programme in economics and business administration (Nordland) and civil engineering (Rogaland), this laying the ground for the two district university colleges being advanced to 'University College Centre' in 1986. The new university college campus at Mørkved in Bodø opened that autumn, Nordland Research Institute also moving here. The barriers between the university colleges in Bodø were therefore now broken and replaced by co-location and stronger collaboration. This was further reinforced by the co-location of student nurse training to the campus in 1994.

The University College Reform of 1994 led to the country's 98 state university colleges being reduced to 26. Nordland now had three university colleges, one in Nesna, one in Bodø and one in Narvik. The country's other counties (except Møre og Romsdal) now had one university college. Bodø Teachers' College and Bodø Nursing College merged with the University College Centre in Nordland to form Bodø University College, teacher training now also being located on campus.

Bodø University College, which is the subject of this study, was therefore founded in 1994. The university college environment that became Bodø University College did, however, exist well before the university college's founding in 1994. Tracing the development of the university college further back in time is therefore of great relevance. The period this study covers therefore extends from the creation of the Higher Education Committee (which proposed the creation of the district university colleges) up to the creation of the University of Nordland in 2011. The university college environment that became the University of Nordland is referred to in this book as Bodø University College when not otherwise specified. Bodø University College was accredited as a university in November 2010 and changed institution category and name to the University of Nordland on 1 January 2011. The University of Nordland furthermore merged with Nesna University College and Nord-Trøndelag University College on 1 January 2016 to become Nord University. This merger is, however, not included in this study.

## CHAPTER 1 RESEARCH STATUS AND THEORY

Higher education is a field of research that involves a number of disciplines, the research in this field ranging from local institution studies and limited topic studies, to the analysis of global development trends. Two types of studies have been particularly important to the empirical data of this book. Norwegian historical institution studies have, firstly, contributed to the understanding of the processes of change in higher education that resulted in the founding of the University of Nordland. National and international studies in the sociology of higher education have, secondly, provided different perspectives on development within higher education and its study.

This chapter presents the development of the sociology of higher education and the institutional perspective of this book. The key concepts used in the analysis, the contribution of the dimension of time to the understanding of change dynamics in higher education, and the historical studies that can shed light on these are also covered.

### 1.1 The sociology of higher education

According to Patricia J. Gumport (2008, 51 ff.), the thematic components of the sociology of higher education research are partly independent of each other. They can also be divided into four domains: different levels of access to education, the influence of university colleges on the development of the field, academic professions, and the study of university colleges and universities as organisations. The domains this book primarily focuses on are university colleges and universities as organisations, and the influence of university colleges on higher education (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 The four domains of the sociology of higher education (Gumport 2008)

Independent research domains are, according to Gumport (2008, 43, 177, 325), difficult to develop in this field due to researchers collaborating both across disciplines, and the domains of the field. This weak form of organisation is, according to Ulrich Teichler (2005, 447), also due to research being primarily focused on the applied aspects of the field.

This fragmentation of research has made it difficult to establish a common conceptual apparatus and body of work. There are therefore no texts that encompass the field and there is no single work that consolidates the development of the research field, the most important introductory literature works therefore being historical summaries of researchers' contributions (Gumport 2008, Cote and Furlong 2016). This fragmentation can, according to Gumport (2008, 334), lead to the risk that researchers become focused solely on the provincial and become preoccupied with concepts that cannot be applied to the general field of research. According to Scott (2014, 270 ff.), this can also become dominated by dichotomies and not by insight into complex relationships. One measure that can be taken to prevent this is, according to Scott (2014, 258), the use of longer time perspectives in analysis.

Gumport (2008, 24 ff.) believes that one reason for this fragmentation is research being largely demand-driven. Research is therefore driven by financial conditions that vary over time. This has led to many shifts in research focus, the main change being between the societal change and organisational perspectives. Researchers therefore look more closely at the economic conditions, political perspective, the development of a knowledge society and of education systems and global interdependence when attempting to uncover societal change. Organisational perspectives focus on dependence on the surrounding environment and the development of leadership in academia. This includes organisational innovation and integration, and fundamental changes in the working conditions of academic staff in academia.

The shift in focus from stability to change dynamics represents an important schism in the development of the sociology of higher education. Talcott Parsons and Gerald M. Platt published an analysis of the American university in 1973. This presented the American university as 'the current culmination of the educational revolution' (Parsons and Platt 1973, 3). Neil Smelser, however, announced in an epilogue that he fundamentally disagreed with the book, which he was to co-author (Smelser 1973, 390). Smelser criticised the analysis for not highlighting the tensions and conflict that can explain changes within the university system. Parsons and Platt responded to this by stating that a sociologist had to choose to adopt a conflictual or a consensus theoretical perspective (Parsons and Platt 1973, 388). A consensus perspective, for Smelser, equates with deliberately obscuring the very source of change in higher education, as the field has a relationship of dependency with both the labour market and democratic processes (Smelser 1973, 398).

Smelser was interested in how rapid expansion affects social systems (Smelser 1973). He believed the expansion of the university system led to and structured new patterns of conflict. Smelser and Gabriel Almond, in response to Parsons and Platt's interpretation of changes in the American university, therefore published an analysis of the education system in California in the following year (Smelser and Almond 1974).14 In this analysis, he criticised elite universities for their resistance to the differentiation demanded by the growth in higher education. Parsons had interpreted this resistance as being a result of growth rather than a lack of a willingness to change (Smelser and Almond 1974, 275). Conflict became an important factor in the understanding of change dynamics in higher education.

Martin Trow (1974) in that year presented an analysis of how education systems would develop where access to higher education was increased. This growth would require the education system for the elite to become an education system for the masses, the education system eventually transitioning into one in which the entire population has access to higher education.

The linking of organisational theory with institutional theory in the 1970s allowed relationships and interactions in and between institutions to be examined more closely. This, according to John W. Meyer, Francisco O. Ramirez, David J. Frank and Evan Schofer (2008), opened the field to a richer analysis of the dynamics of change in higher education.15

This book uses as its start point W. Richard Scott's (2014, 56) definition of institutions as 'regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive elements that, together with associated activities and resources, provide stability and meaning to social life'. It is furthermore based on Macionis and Plummer's (2012, 153) definition of organisations as ' ... large secondary groups organized to achieve their goals efficiently'. The loose connection of the top with the bottom of an organisation was known, from other organisations, to be a destabilising factor. Neo-institutionalism therefore attempted to explain why higher education institutions exhibited stability despite this form of loose top and bottom connection. Meyer and Brian Rowan (1977; 2006, 5) believed that this was due to higher education institutions being institutionalised organisations, so being based on legitimacy instead of efficiency. A key driver of higher education institutions is therefore the preservation and reinforcement of their legitimacy in society, rather than increased production.

The traditional view is that universities are unique and universal entities that can only be compared with each other, irrespective of geographical location. Viewing the university as an organisation therefore breaks with this traditional view. Explanations that are based on the legitimacy of higher education institutions are therefore also no longer sufficient. This is because these institutions are, much more than before, required to meet efficiency and quality control requirements. Åse Gornitzka (1999, 15) and Christine Musselin (2000, 297) have conducted studies using an organisational perspective. Both wished to secure the legitimacy of the institution, and wanted efficiency to be seen as an incentive for action. There are, according to Heinz-Dieter Meyer and Rowan (2006, 2), three change processes that this type of analysis highlights. The first is higher education's increasing use of external funding, the second being the integration of higher education and the third the increasing importance of higher education institutions to the knowledge society (Meyer and Rowan 2006, 2).16 This book covers all three processes. The change processes associated with the integration of higher education (Part I) and the effect of their new role in the knowledge society upon higher education institutions (Part II), are focused on in particular in this book.

Meyer and Rowan (2006, 6, 61) propose three thematic theory development paths within the domain of university colleges and universities as organisations. One thematic area relates to cognition and the social construction of institutions. There has been a change in focus in this area from formal-legal structures to stakeholders, and how these actors seek meaning in institutional settings through language and symbols (Meyer and Rowan 2006, 6, Meyer et al. 2008, 191, Scott 2014, 47).17 Culture is seen here to be a semiotic system, symbols exercising influence on institutionalisation by virtue of external frameworks that '[possess] a reality … that confronts the individual as an external and coercive fact' (Berger and Luckmann 1967, 58 in Scott 2014, 48).18 Culture exerts a strong external influence on individuals. It therefore contributes to the shaping and protection of institutions. Research into the concept of the 'modern' university is, according to Ramirez (2006), one example of this, the perspective explaining why major and rapid reform changes all around the world have taken the same direction, and why they have had the strongest effect in countries with relatively new universities.

The second thematic area looks more closely at changes in the relationship between the state, economy and civil society, and how this relationship change affects higher education. How these changes apply pressure on higher education institutions to meet efficiency and conformity requirements and in the development of an institutionalised education market, is a focus area for researchers (Meyer and Rowan 2006, 8, Scott 2014, 254), this research strongly referencing the historical development of institutions (Scott 2014, 254). An example from this thematic area is Andrés Bernasconi's studies of academia's adaption to the market leading to greater competition and entrepreneurship in education systems (Bernasconi 2006).

The third thematic area, according to Meyer and Rowan (2006, 9), focus on 'concrete historical actors who built a particular institution'. This thematic area marks the transition from a focus on descriptive analysis or the analysis of structural changes, to a focus on the effect of power-based stakeholder motivation, and a desire for change and efficiency in institution building. This increases analysis precision and opens analysis up to the historical dimension, including previous reforms laying the direction for new reforms. This argument will be developed in more detail later in this book. An example of a study in the third thematic area is Charles E. Bidwell's (2006) study of the role of politicians in the establishment and development of higher education institutions.

The ever-increasing volume of statistical material, not least through OECD reports, provides a much better basis for comparative studies. Research has, at the same time, faced challenges relating to independence, it often being initiated and used to meet administrative and political requirements. A key question therefore is, according to Clark (2007a [1973], 12), how can researchers in the sociology of higher education preserve their academic freedom when their clients primarily are the stakeholders in the field. This issue is discussed in more detail in Chapter 2.

### 1.2 An institutional perspective

This analysis is based on an institutional perspective, one that Meyer et al. (2008, 187) and Ivar Bleiklie (2007, 100 ff.) believe can provide deeper insight into how and why higher education reforms are implemented. This perspective allows the analysis of organisations' dependence and independence on the environment around them, and the implementation of reforms to be examined at a number of levels. Ladislav Cerych and Paul Sabatier (1986) have shown that moderate reforms are easier to implement than those that involve major changes in the field. Gornitzka (1999, 18) has also found that ambiguous and vague national reforms create space for greater institutional transformation at the local level.19

Scott's definition of institutions takes into consideration that institutions are made up of regulative, normative and cultural cognitive elements, or 'pillars' (Scott 2014, 56). The three 'pillars' are maintained by different symbol systems. Steinmo (2008, 126) refers to symbol systems as 'rules that structure behaviour', Olsen (1985) believing that these systems justify and limit behaviour, activities and actors.20 Different institutions are made up of different combinations of these three elements, their anchoring in the institution and the way they act varying with combinations. According to Scott (2014, 62), change primarily takes place in institutions through one element taking over from another, or by a higher level of conflict being created within the institution: '… institutions supported by one pillar may, as time passes and circumstances change, be sustained by different pillars'. This allows change dynamics between levels and between different stakeholders to be studied at the same or different levels.

The institutional perspective has traditionally been limited by its strong focus on stability and continuity. This, however, represents a challenge to the uncovering of change dynamics (Thornton and Ocasio 2008, 99). Theorists have therefore applied an organisational institutional perspective to explore these dynamics. Neo-institutionalism is founded on the view of institutions as functional and specialised arenas, actors being also included in organisational fields or sectors (DiMaggio and Powell 1983, Kyvik 2009, 22, Scott 2014, 11). The field concept and its division into sectors is a key element in understanding how and why the field changed, and in allowing this issue to be examined more closely. Paul DiMaggio and Walter Powell (1983) laid the theoretical foundation for this research tradition, Scott (2014, 51) believing this foundation broadened the perspective from institutions determining stakeholders' actions to viewing institutionalisation in the field of organisation as being part of an organisation's environment.21 This book is based on Arthur Stinchcombe's definition of institutionalisation as 'a structure in which powerful people are committed to some value or interest', these powerful people holding both formal (top-bottom) and/

or informal (bottom- up) power (Stinchcombe 1968, 107 and in Scott 2014, 25).22 Institutionalisation and de-institutionalisation are key processes of change in institutions (Tolbert and Zucker 1996 in Scott 2014, 58).23

DiMaggio and Powell (1983) presented three key mechanisms by which institutions influence the field of organisation. They are coercion, imitation and standardisation.24 Competition and institutionalisation contribute to organisations developing structural similarities, the viewing of different types of organisations as fields therefore being expedient. This allows institutional processes to be placed in context. DiMaggio and Powell's work, with the work of others such as James G. March and Johan P. Olsen (1984), became the starting point for a strong and lasting research tradition in the examination of the relationship between institutions and organisations (March and Olsen 1984, Olsen 1985, Scott 2014, 51).

The field concept makes it possible to combine micro and macro perspectives in a single analysis.25 Scott (2014, 19, 50) bases his position on Pierre Bourdieu's field concept, which defines the role played by different social arenas in their fight for and use of power, in organisation and institution development. The actors in the field have common and different interests. The field is therefore characterised by cooperation and struggle between the actors. Part of the struggle is, according to Scott (2014, 221), to get the rules in the field changed so that they are in line with their own interests. The field concept therefore invites the exploration of how differences between actors' local social orders determine these struggles. Organisations, according to Scott (2014, 224, 225), operate in a sector. A sector is a part of the field that consists of their main competitors and closest partners, and is defined by its institutional logics. Patricia H. Thornton and William Ocasio define institutional logics as:

… the socially constructed, historical patterns of material practices, assumptions, values, beliefs, and rules by which individuals produce and reproduce their material subsistence, organize time and space, and provide meaning to their social reality (Thornton and Ocasio 1999, 804).

These logics create a connection between institutions and action, and so allow macro and micro levels to be used in a single analysis (Thornton and Ocasio 2008, 101). The analysis is therefore not limited to looking at isomorphism and diffusion, which have for a many years been considered to be the only effects of cognition. Institutional logics are, according to Thornton and Ocasio (2008, 101), tools for describing 'the contradictory practices and beliefs in the institutions of modern western societies', and therefore provide a deeper insight into why change dynamics arise.

Organisations also operate, according to Scott (2014, 224), within a 'battlefield' that is made up of a number of sectors of conflicting institutional logics that influence organisations' behaviour.

The most important distinction between the stakeholders in a field is, according to Scott (2014, 229), between those who hold most of the most important resources and their challengers. The challengers are defined as being those stakeholders with relatively little influence, but who are looking for opportunities to challenge the dominant structure and logic of the field. In this lies the greatest potential for conflict. '[P]eripheral, subjugated actors who may come together in coalitions' must therefore also be taken into consideration in institutional analysis (Scott 2014, 229).

Higher education is a separate institutional field that interacts with organisational fields other than its own. One example of this is organisational solutions that function well in one sector of society, often being transferred into another. Laila Nordstrand Berg, Rómulo Pinheiro, Lars Geschwind and Karsten Vrangbæks' paper 'Responses to the Global Financial Crisis – Lessons From the Public Sector in the Nordic Countries' highlights this perspective (Nordstrand Berg, Pinheiro, Geschwind and Vrangbæk 2017).26 Some institutional analysis has been criticised for being too particularised. Changes at the local level often are influenced by national and global changes across society's sectors. One way to avoid a particularistic analysis is, according to Nordstrand Berg et al. (2017, 4) to examine the factors that influence developments at different levels in the higher education. This book therefore focuses on developments at the local, national and European level, from the perspective of developments at the local level. Examining key actors more closely leads to, according to Burton Clark (2007b [1973]) and Svein Kyvik (2009, 37), the emergence a more dynamic picture of the processes.

#### *The university college sector's most important actors*

It is impossible, according to Musselin (2000), to draw conclusions about one level directly from the change processes that take place at other levels. The analysis in this book therefore looks more closely at how changes at the general level have been implemented by and have affected Bodø University College, and how the local level has affected national and European level reforms (Musselin 2000). A broader understanding of the relationships that create change, and how they work, can be created through this. The stakeholders are also placed at their level, the dynamics between the levels therefore emerging.

The most important stakeholders in the university college sector are, according to Kyvik (2009), interest groups included in a hierarchy at the local, national and European level. Each group has their own organisations and stakeholders. Key stakeholders at the European level are supranational organisations, the main stakeholders at the national level being parliament, the government, and independent bodies, these potentially belonging to all three levels. The interest organisations of higher education institutions also, according to Gornitzka (1999, 28), belong at the national level. The most important stakeholders at the local level are, according to Kyvik (2009, 22), university colleges, study programs, scientific staff and students. 'Second-order actors', stakeholders who operate at all levels, are society and academia, which includes the different disciplines and subject areas.

This book is based on the above stakeholders, this focus allowing how stakeholders at different levels influenced the conditions for and the founding of the University of Nordland to be illuminated. This provides a more comprehensive picture of not only the changes, but also the dynamics that unfolded in the relationships between the three levels in the period. The analysis is based on this theoretical perspective, and examines the interaction between Bodø University College and stakeholders at each of the three levels, a key element of this analysis being the interaction between stakeholders at the local and national level. This interaction is, according to Musselin (2000, 296), an important key to understanding how educational systems change.

The interaction between stakeholders at different levels in the higher education field has, according to Pavel Zgaga, Ulrich Teichler, Hans G. Schuetze and Andrä Wolter (2010, 16, 17), been a key factor in recent decades.27 These actors operate at different levels, which will be described below.

#### *Generalisation and three different levels*

An important focus has been on how higher education institutions at the local level are affected by and influence the national level. This has been highlighted by, for example, Musselin (2000, 296). It is, however, impossible to generalise from one level to another. Developments at the European level cannot, for example, define developments at the national level, the national level furthermore not being the only factor that shapes development at the local level. Further examination is therefore required to determine how the development affected stakeholders at the different levels.

Musselin (2000) claims that the local level, instead of deriving its distinctiveness from the national level, interacts or competes with it, the form and content of interaction between the government, ministries, the higher education institutions and the structures that define qualification and career paths being crucial to the definition and understanding of national education systems.28 The local level is, according to Musselin, characterised by heterogeneity because each university (and each university college) makes decisions that are based on more factors than can be derived from interaction with the national level. According to Musselin (2000, 296), therefore:

… national modes of regulation … never totally determine the behaviours of the actors within them but are pregnant enough to exercise a certain influence beyond the differences among the disciplines and beyond the heterogeneity of the characteristics each institution owns. They are also stable enough not to be automatically modified when persons, rules, status or policy orientations change.

We must therefore examine more than the frameworks within which institutions operate if we are to learn more about between-level interaction. A unique combination of institutional logics arise, according to Gornitzka (1999, 6), at the national and local level within this framework, and sometimes in opposition to it. The development from political decisions at the national level to implementation in higher education institutions is not linear. Signals and orders from central authorities are instead 'possible inputs into organizational change processes at an institutional level' (ibid.). They can also be a response to demands from the local level.

Max Weber's focus on actors' rationality of action is more of a variable rather than a prerequisite (Scott 2014, 16). Parsons' work with the normative side of making choices laid some of the basis for understanding actors' targeted actions. These

… form the basis for understanding society. The actors intentional and unintentional choices and actions maintain and create new rules of action, social institutions and societal structures (Gunderlach 2017).

Each higher education institution can be understood to be a unique set of actions. Higher education institutions can therefore, according to Musselin (2000, 298), be defined as 'singular organizations that develop (and ought to develop) specific relations with both the political and economic spheres and with society as a whole'.29

The local level is also often a competitor of the national level. The two levels are, however, mutually dependent entities, each educational institution acting within a given frame as an autonomous actor. Musselin (2000, 309) furthermore claims the coinciding of these stakeholders' choices with the preferences at the national level is more the exception than rule. This is the reason why generalisations about national education systems are only relatively loosely related to the local level or a single higher education institution. Top-down models have, according to Zgaga et al. (2010, 18), therefore proved to be insufficient in uncovering and explaining reform-driven change processes.

Both European and national reforms depend on local interpretation and implementation. There are, at the local level, always a number of often conflicting considerations to be weighed. Implementation usually contributes to transformation and to goal shifting, this also sometimes leading to the consequences of reforms being completely different from that originally intended. The focus in Part I will therefore be on the relationships between the local, national and supranational level. These relationships must be understood synchronously, by analysing how changes at different levels affect each other within a specific historical and reform policy context. Changes must also be understood diachronically, through looking more closely at how outcomes of interaction between levels affect each other over time. Part I looks at the three different decision levels, because these cannot be isolated without important relations being lost:

It is important to recognize that even if an investigation focuses on a particular level, institutional forces operating at other levels – both «above» and «beneath» the level selected – will be at work (Scott 2014, 56).

A global level could add a number of dimensions. This level is only occasionally included, and then restricted to the European context, because the work would otherwise become too extensive.

#### *Historic institutionalism*

Institutional analysis concentrates, according to Olsen (1985), Meyer and Rowan (2006, 9) and Scott (2014, 57), largely on long term effects. This analysis is based on the understanding that institutions change over time – and change continuously. The time dimension therefore plays a key role in the sociology of higher education. I will therefore draw, in the following, on historical institutionalism to provide a richer picture of conditions associated with the question. This approach is, according to Steinmo (2007), not a theory nor a method, but an analytical move that provides guidance on the relationship between theory and empirical data, that can ensure deterministic analysis is avoided. A number of factors indicate that it is expedient to address several decades of development in the field of higher education.

The institutional perspective is firstly based on the premise that the past lays down pathways for the present. The past must therefore be examined to understand the processes that are in play.30 Institutional change processes develop in different time sequences. The time dimension is therefore crucial in the determination of how change or absence of change occurs, and the consequences (Scott 2014, 58, 258). Not including the time dimension means the loss of the understanding of continuous driving forces. Changes are therefore primarily presented as being a break with the past, and individual actors are attributed too much influence. Chain reactions can then be reduced to a number of individual events, the real breaks in this being obscured because sequences are not detected. A sequence here is considered to be a limited period of time in which a unique development dominates. Two different sequences can therefore take place in the same time period (Pierson 2000, 72 ff.). A sequence has a time limit, this limit not necessarily coinciding with the exact start and end of the development it defines. It is therefore an attempt to capture the main trend in a development through periodisation.

The institutional perspective secondly also implies that the past lays down paths for the future. These paths can be eliminated or strengthened where historically conditional factors are identified that limit or promote change (Clark 1983, 184). Future changes in higher education are, according Margareth S. Archer (1979, 3), affected by past developments in higher education. This, according to Hallgeir Gammelsæter (2002, 10), depends on 'the resources, the competence, the identity and the norms that have been institutionalized in the organization over a long period of time'. It is therefore important to include the time dimension in the presentation.

Thirdly, a longer time perspective provides a greater understanding of the role stakeholders at different levels play. According to Simon Schwartzman (2007, 54), the consequences of the institutions' uniqueness emerge, for example, more strongly when studied over a longer period of time.31 This is particularly relevant in the implementation of reforms in higher education institutions, as the results of implementation can not be known before they are implemented. Clark (1983, 113) has pointed out that it is the interplay between the levels that determines the outcome of implementation, this including elements of both top-down and bottom-up processes:32

The leading false expectation in academic reform is that large results can be obtained by top-down manipulation. Instead, small results typically follow from efforts at the top, in the middle, or at the bottom, in the form of zig-and-zag adjustments, wrong experiments, and false starts, out of which precipitate some flows of change …

A multi-level analysis makes the unintended consequences of reform implementation shaped by the nature of higher education institutions, clearer.33 Scott (2014, 242 ff.) has pointed out that three dimensions (which often are omitted) are revealed by a longer time perspective. The three are changes in types and number of stakeholders, changes in the institutional logics that governs the activities, and changes in the management structures that have overall responsibility for activities in the field.

### 1.3 Terms and definitions

#### *Academic and vocational drift*

The theoretical approach to academisation processes are here linked to the concept of academic drift. Burgess (1972) first used this term to describe English university colleges' tendency to imitate universities, and their wish to change institutional category from university college to university.34 Guy Neave (1979, 155), Randall Collins (1979) and Kyvik (2007) later uncovered a number of academisation processes at different levels and by different stakeholders in the field, and linked these to academic drift. It is here again not possible to generalise from one level to another.35

Kyvik has also found that academisation processes are not characterised by linearity. For example, what occurs at the program level is not solely the result of the education authorities' policy. The different levels (a) affect each other simultaneously, or (b) one level affects processes at the other levels, or (c) a and b act together, so that 'mutually reinforcing and self-sustaining processes [are] virtually impossible to stop in the long run' (Kyvik 2007, 338). The term academic drift is used as a general term for the academisation processes in the university college sector included in the analysis.

According to Kyvik (2009, 76) and Malcolm Tight (2015, 94), vocational drift denotes the processes at the institutional level in which the approach to the field of practice is stronger than the approach to academic values. Academic and vocational drifts are processes with opposite signs that help to illuminate the dynamics of change in the field.

#### *The third mission*

The strength of the relationship between the higher education field and society has increased in recent decades, integration processes at the European level having contributed to this strengthening. Development has progressed from a two-dimensional relationship between the state as owner and higher education institutions, to a three-dimensional relationship between higher education institutions, the state and society. A close look at how actors and institutions outside the field indirectly and directly promote academisation processes is important to the capturing of this dimension.

This applies to stakeholders who want stronger regional development and who see the third mission of higher education institutions as a way of achieving this. The third mission is defined here as teaching and research activities that promote economic and social growth and development in the region.36 An important factor in this is society's need for highly skilled labour. Working life has also undergone an academisation, highly skilled labour today being essential to the performance of society's functions. Stakeholders outside the field who have a common goal of promoting a region's economic and social development, can directly and indirectly initiate and strengthen academisation, primarily by strengthening the higher education institution that has the strongest academic drift in the region. Stakeholders can see the strengthening of regional higher education institutions as a means to building the welfare, competence and reputation in and for the region.

#### *Five different education systems*

A central element of part I of this book is the establishment of and changes to sector boundaries in the higher education field. Sector boundaries are defined by factors that separate universities and university colleges from each other. Examples of decisive factors include, according to Johanna Witte, Marijk van der Wende and Jeroen Huisman (2008, 218), the educational qualifications higher education institutions offer, the titles they can award, and the collaboration and transition opportunities for students and institutions between sectors. Sector boundaries are dynamic. They are changed by the actions of key stakeholders and the dynamics that arise at and between three different levels – the local, the national and the supranational. The supranational level is limited, in this book, to the European level. The local level, however, also includes the regional level.

Kyvik's (2009, 8 ff.) definition of five education systems that characterise development of higher education in Western Europe, will be used to examine this phenomena more closely. Universities are the only higher education provider in *the university dominated education system*. There are, however, also profession colleges in this system. Higher education outside of the university in *the dual education system* is not a separate sector. This is because universities and other education providers are separate from them and have no formal points of contact with them. The dual education system is characterised by differentiated course options, different forms of organisation and decentralisation, a distinction being made between two forms of decentralisation. Kyvik (1983) has called these *geographical decentralisation* and *institutional decentralisation* of higher education. Geographical decentralisation is where educational opportunities are created outside the established university towns, to also stimulate the economic and social development of the regions. Institutional decentralisation relieves and creates alternatives to university education.

*The binary education system* is characterised by clear sector boundaries between the universities and other higher education providers. *A unified education system* is one in which universities provide the vast majority of educational programs, both academic and professional. *A stratified education system* is not divided into sectors, the higher education institutions instead being a part of a hierarchy (Kyvik 2009, 11, Fulsås 2000, Bleiklie 2003, 343).

Bleiklie (2003, 345) defines a fully developed hierarchical education system as: ' … (a) system that is made up of integrated disciplinary courses within a unitary system of degree, exam and qualification criteria in which students may compose their own tracks…'. The institutions in the field are defined in the unified education system based on equal research and teaching conditions, instead of sector boundaries. The relationship between them is characterised by competition on equal terms. The stratified education system, on the other hand, defines the institutions by a ranking between them, some universities appearing as elite institutions. Research and teaching conditions are different in the stratified system because new universities still relate to frames from their university college past.

#### *Democratisation of knowledge*

Development in the field of higher education is part of a political process to democratise knowledge (Parsons 1973, 3, Trow 1974). This perspective is relevant for two reasons. Firstly, changes in sector boundaries and the establishment of transitional arrangements are heavily influenced by whether the development is politically controlled, or is characterised by depoliticisation. Secondly, the relationship between higher education institutions, and therefore the development of sector boundaries, is affected by the level and form of institutional autonomy in the field sectors. The democratisation of knowledge, according to Kyvik (2009), involves bureaucratisation to ensure equality through assessments based on equal conditions, and barriers to political and institutional autonomy because of the strength of the interest groups involved.

A closer examination of how processes related to the democratisation of knowledge affect the development of sector boundaries in the field is relevant here. The democratisation of higher education has, according to Clark (2007a [1973], 13), actualised Weber's analysis of the relationship between democratisation and bureaucratisation:

… the present natural interest in effective delivery of educational services links well with the Weberian interest in bureaucratic rationality and the role of education in the certification of training.

Weber (1978 [1922], 985), by highlighting the relationship between the ideal types (representative) of democracy and bureaucracy, thematised the classic conflict that arises from a democratisation process requiring a representative democracy and an efficient administration. Democratisation is defined here as a trend towards 'the <equal rights> of the governed' (ibid.). The definition implies that democratisation processes are based on egalitarian values-based norms. Bureaucratisation is defined as 'a certain development of administrative tasks, both quantitative and qualitative (ibid.). According to Kyvik (2009, 27, 79), the democratisation of knowledge creates a need for organisation, all those who qualify for access having equal opportunities and equal rights, irrespective of their social background and region. This normative value is referred to here as the principle of equality.

Weber (1978 [1922], 969) claimed that the bureaucracy that preserves the processes of democratisation may, over time, begin to serve the processes themselves rather than the original purpose.

This type of change of what originally was a democratisation process creates, as advocated by Robert Michels (1911), a new power elite. Michels argued that this tendency was unavoidable, also in the leadership of democratic organisations. Michels' thesis on the iron law of the oligarchy has been criticised by, for example, Seymour Martin Lipset who believed that the oligarchic tendency in organisations is not inevitable (Lipset , Trow and Coleman 1956 in Kjellberg 1968, 56).37 An organisation is, according to critics, made up of different interests. This creates barriers that limit management's scope (Bendix 1947 in Kjellberg 1968, 57).38 Henry Valen came to the same conclusion on Norwegian party organisations, in which rule was by the 'law of rubber' rather than the rule of iron (Valen and Katz 1964 , 42 ff.). Kjellberg (1968, 58) claimed that it is 'the fragile boundary between the need for representation and integration (which) means that the decision-making process within the organization does not assume an oligarchic character'. These theoretical approaches disagree on whether party organisations alone develop into an oligarchy ('the oligarchic problem'), or whether this is a phenomenon of all organisations ('the bureaucratic problem'). This tendency is referred to as 'the democracy-bureaucracy dilemma' when transferred into the field of organisation (Haukland 2017).

According to Kjellberg (1968, 59), the oligarchic and the bureaucratic problem are seen by Michels as being one problem. Other theorists, however, see the two as being separate. The oligarchic problem addresses the concentration of power in organisations. The bureaucratic problem addresses the concentration of power in the administration, the need for bureaucratisation increasing its influence. The two perspectives are therefore complementary and supplement each other in understanding the challenges of organisational fields and growing organisations when facing efficiency demands. The ideal typical bureaucracy safeguards equal treatment and implementation of equal rights. The bureaucratisation process, however, involves the risk that political power is transferred to the bureaucracy, and that the bureaucracy sets its own independent goals instead of operationalising political leadership. Weber's analysis represents an attempt to define key problems in the political development of the West, which is defined by Stein Rokkan (1987, 19) as 'the dialectical opposition between democratization and bureaucratization, and between participatory ideology and organizational necessity'.

'The democracy-bureaucracy dilemma' is actualised by depolitisation processes in the field linked to quality control and transition schemes.

It is also relevant to take a closer look at how the democratisation of knowledge affects the autonomy of the institutions, and whether the sectors or the field as a whole operate autonomously. David Held (1999, 363) claims that 'there is a common principle… the principle of autonomy… at the core of modern democracy'. This principle relates to individual autonomy or self-determination, and actualises the different types of autonomy associated with the democratisation of knowledge. This, according to Bleiklie (2003, 342), is a central issue in both the development of and research in higher education, individual autonomy being linked to the self-determination of each individual higher education institution. Democratisation processes take place in the landscape between individual autonomy (in which organisations function as autonomous actors in line with a participatory democratic ideal) and the collective autonomy (in which superior governing bodies safeguard the interests of all organisations in a sector or field, as advocated by a representative democratic ideal). A central problem in the democratisation of higher education has been the dialectical opposites of individual and collective autonomy. Individual autonomy preserves the participation requirement and collective autonomy preserves the requirement of equality. Much of the dynamics of change in the field of higher education in the period lies in this field of tension.

### 1.4 Historical studies

Key empirical trends in the period covered by this book (1965–2011) are presented in historical works of different purpose and pretension. These contributions provide interesting and important information, including how national initiatives and reform changes were implemented at the local level, and their impact on the creation of the University of Nordland. These have also raised questions on the development of sector boundaries, and the struggle for transitional arrangements. Studies of similar development processes at other university colleges and universities, through describing and analysing national development trends from local perspectives, add new dimensions. These works are presented below.

Narve Fulsås' 1993 book 'Universitet i Tromsø 25 år' (The University of Tromsø, 25 years) examines national development trends in higher education. The founding of the University of Tromsø in 1968 marks the start of a 'decentralization line in the development of institutions for research and higher education' in Norway, this leading also to the founding of Nordland District University College (Fulsås 1993, 7). The University of Tromsø was, unlike the later founding of a university in Bodø, a state initiative and was therefore given primary responsibility for higher education in the region. The University of Tromsø's ability to take this responsibility is a dominant issue that Fulsås covers in his book. He concludes that the university has fulfilled its role as a university in Northern Norway, but that its influence in large parts of Nordland was weak due to the university college environment in Bodø, and due to the large geographical distances between Tromsø and Nordland. Nordland District University College in other words challenged Tromsø's hegemony. It also challenged the concept of Northern Norway as a single higher education entity. The founding of the two educational institutions therefore created a cooperation and also a tension between them. The University of Tromsø did not want a second university in Northern Norway. Fulsås has also written about the academisation and hierarchisation of higher education in Norway (Fulsås 2000), which are key issues that are examined in this book.

Hilde Gunn Slottemo draws out the development trends of the Norwegian university and university college sector in her book on Nord-Trøndelag University College in the period 1994 to 2014. She furthermore examines the relationship between these trends and this university college's development (Slottemo 2014). The book portrays the university college from within, and describes the local and regional driving forces and conflicts that operated in this period. Nord-Trøndelag University College was the result of the merger of a number of educational providers in 1994. Slottemo spotlights the tensions between the academic and the professions, a tension that was also present internally and between the academic environments in Bodø. Her book furthermore contrasts the university process at Bodø University College with that of a university college with no plans to become a university.

Stavanger University College played a key role in the fight for transitional arrangements in this period.39 Stavanger's university process is the subject of Bodil Wold Johnsen's 1999 thesis 'Fra universitetsvisjon til høgskoleintegrasjon' (From university vision to university college integration) and the 2006 book by the university college's former rector Erik Leif Eriksen 'Fra høgskole til universitet' (From university college to university). Wold Johnson's thesis addresses developments in Stavanger in the light of national reform processes and political tugs-of-war, and shows how the city's university ambitions from the early 1960s were a driving force in the academisation processes of the new district university colleges. Eriksen supplements Wold Johnsen's work by providing a detailed picture of the final year of the university process. He draws the development in Bodø into his discussion, both towns gaining the country's only university college centres in 1986. He also highlights the cooperation between Nordland, Agder and Rogaland in their dialogue with the Ministry prior to the accreditation of the University of Stavanger. The books even present the indirect role of the university college in Stavanger in establishing the premises for and helping the university process in Bodø in succeeding. These two authors show how the national strategies that were implemented to avoid a university in Stavanger, in reality contributed to its realisation due to the intended and unintended results of these strategies at the local and national level.

Gunnar Yttri's 2008 book 'Frå skuletun til campus' (From schoolyard to campus) on the development of Sogn og Fjordane University College, sheds light on changes in the university college sector in this period through being viewed from the geographical periphery. The challenges in the county of Sogn og Fjordane are similar to those experienced in Nordland, when it comes to relocation, low educational level and teacher shortages. The book highlights the recurring theme of the desired link between the new teacher training in the district university college's start phase, and the tension between vocational and academic drift. It also addresses counter-expertise perspectives that wanted to 'ensure that rural Norway was not a victim of central power and economic exploitation' (Yttri 2008, 15). This, however, presupposes a regionally rooted knowledge exchange that has similarities with the university college culture in Bodø. The book furthermore brings to the fore the role in institutional development of regional contradictions and geographical location. Sogn og Fjordane University College was, unlike Bodø University College, the result of a merger of five university colleges located in all three regions of the county. The merger therefore brought with it major intra-regional conflicts. Yttri also sheds light on the creation, through the university college being located in the village of Sogndal, of tensions between the university college and Sogn og Fjordane County Municipality. This conflict centred on where courses were to be held and on course termination. This contrasts with the relationship between Bodø University College and Nordland County Municipality.

A nine volume work on the history of the University of Oslo was published in 2011. Volume 1 is John Peter Collett's book 'Universitet i Oslo 1811–1870. Universitetet i nasjonen' (University of Oslo 1811– 1870. The University in the Nation). Collett is also the editor of the entire work. His book makes an important contribution to the understanding that Norwegian higher education was originally a part of the country's nation-building project. It also highlights how the University of Oslo played a stronger role in Norwegian independence after 1814 than was originally intended (Collett 2011, 63). Jorunn Sem Fure's book 'Universitet i Oslo 1911–1940. Inn I forskningsalderern' (University of Oslo 1911–1940. Into the research age), volume 3 of the series, addresses the transition to a new social contract in which the university gained greater independence in its relationship with the state. The university was given greater freedom to set the content of its courses, this laying the foundation for the knowledge society through a greater focus on science and research.

Kim Helsvig's 2011 book 'Universitet i Oslo 1975–2011. Mot en ny samfunnskontrakt?' (University of Oslo 1975–2011. Towards a new social contract?) sheds light on the effect of national reforms, including their intended and unintended consequences upon the university sector. Helsvig addresses key tensions between the Norwegian university and university college sector, and discusses the reasons for them. He also highlights the European and national framework, within which the university process unfolded, in particular the European reform process, the Bologna process and the Norwegian Quality Reform which implemented the Bologna process at the national level. A natural progression is the examination of how these changes brought the universities closer to the university colleges, and the university colleges closer to the universities. The book also questions the link between the weakening of Norwegian sector boundaries and the Bologna process, a 1998 European reform process. This is also a key question in my work, which I cover in more detail in Chapter 3.

The report 'Fem høgskoler blir til tre høgskolesentra' (Five university colleges become three university college centres) by Svein Fygle, former head of Nordland Archives, examines this development in the light of the work of the University College Board in Nordland between 1970 and 1994 (Nordland Research Institute 1995).40 The report is a sourcebased study of the development of higher education between 1971 and 1994, and shows how regional governance operated in the period. One question raised by this report is what effect did weak government control have on the development of the sector boundaries.

This book also builds on studies of the university college environment in Bodø. A brief history of the University of Nordland was published in 2011 on its opening, in the paper 'Fra høgskole til universitet' (From university college to university) written by myself and my colleague Svein Lundestad. The paper describes important milestones and places them into a national framework. It also highlights the external and internal factors that both thesis work and this study were based on.

## CHAPTER 2 METHOD

The theoretical scientific basis of this book is best described by critical realism. An important concept of critical realism is, according to Berth Danermark (2016), that reality exists independently of our observations. This also applies to social reality, which differs from physical reality. Critical realism emphasises that social reality is socially constructed. It however also emphasises that these constructions are real. Social constructions are defined by Berger and Luckmann (2006 [1966]) as being 'objectified', and of becoming part of an objective reality that acts back on the actors and social life. Danemark (2016, 174) claims, in line with this perspective, that

… It is the main task of science to seek to explain, in terms of active mechanisms (…), how phenomena in both material and social reality arise, are maintained and changed.

Historical methods, archival studies and interviews are used in Part I to examine the mechanisms that led to the founding of the University of Nordland.

My book 'Nye høyder. Framveksten av Universitetet i Nordland' (New Heights. The emergence of the University of Nordland) (Haukland 2015) describes the majority of the empirical data used in Part I. The paper 'The Bologna Process: the democracy-bureaucracy dilemma' (Haukland 2017) and to an even greater extent Chapter 3 of this book, base the sociological analysis of the University of Nordland's evolution on this empirical data. The analysis looks more closely at how university colleges were affected by structural aspects of the education system and by social and political processes, and how these higher education institutions affected these factors. The handling of methodological dilemmas associated with the interview material was influenced by sociological method perspectives.

### 2.1 Written sources

The study of higher education in three dimensions, and of the development that led to the founding of the University of Nordland, is based on a number of written sources. These sources have been crucial to the development of an understanding of the continuity, new aspects, key concepts and perspectives that are described in more detail in my doctoral dissertation (Haukland 2018b). The written sources have been primarily obtained from The University of Nordland's archives, Bodø and Nesna. Archive material has also been obtained from the Archives in Nordland, Bodø Municipality, the National Archives, the State Archives in Trondheim, private archives, the Lovdata system, the LovdataPro system, the National Library of Norway, The Norwegian Centre for Research Data and from Statistics Norway.

The key sources of this study are parliamentary negotiations on the establishment of Nordland District University College, the social worker and the economics and business administration graduate programmes at Bodø, the University College Centre in Nordland, Bodø University College, and structural changes in higher education in the period. Of particular importance to the study were the Further Education Committee's (Ottosen Committee) five recommendations between 1966 and 1970, the University and University College Committee's (Hernes Committee) 1988 recommendation 'Med viten og vilje' (With knowledge and willpower), the Mjøs Committee's 2000 recommendation 'Frihet med ansvar – om høgre utdanning og forskning i Norge' (Freedom with responsibility – on higher education and research in Norway) and the Stjernø Committee's 2008 recommendation 'Sett under ett – ny struktur i høyere utdanning' (Seen as a whole – a new structure in higher education). The numerical data has been drawn from the institutions mentioned, from the Norwegian Institute for Urban and Regional Research's 2000 report 'Høgskolenes regionale betydning' (The university colleges' regional significance), and from the Database for statistics on higher education and numerous other internal and external reports.41

### 2.2 Personal interviews

The data also includes interviews that use what Jostein Lorås (2007) calls factual and constructivist reading methods. Factual reading sees the interviews as being sources of information on the university process, constructivist reading seeing the interviews as being accounts of the interviewees' experiences and perceptions of and encounters with the university process.42 The interview is used, as defined by critical realism, as a potentially important source of knowledge of real social processes and of how these were experienced and understood by different stakeholders. The distinction made here between a factual and a more constructivist approach to the interview will, however, never be clearcut. All statements in an interview are 'produced' in a specific context, and must always be assessed and understood in relation to that context.

A total of 34 semi-structured interviews were conducted between November 2010 and October 2015. Some of the informants were interviewed a number of times. 15 of the interviews were conducted with my colleague Svein Lundestad, for the publication of a review paper on the university process on the occasion of the opening of the university in March 2011. Other interviews were conducted as part of my thesis. The interviews were, with just a few exceptions, conducted with managers of the central administration and department and faculty senior officials. Bjørn Stensaker (2006, 50) considers these to be important informants.43

Only 5 of 28 informants were women. This reflects the few women in management positions at the university college before and during the university process.44

## CHAPTER 3 ANALYSIS

The coming into being of the University of Nordland is, as mentioned initially, the theme of Part I. This process did not take place in a vacuum but in a historical, local, national and European context. An important historical factor at the local, national and European level has been the growth in the number of students in higher education, Smelser's views on the effect of growth on higher education institutions being referred to in Chapter 1. Growth creates tensions and conflicts, which force differentiation and change in higher education (Smelser 1973, 398). The analysis therefore focuses on these tensions as explanations of the dynamics of change in the field.

This study examines the role played by change dynamics between actors, institutional logics and different leadership structures at the local, national and European level in the accrediting of Bodø University College as a university. The study focuses in particular on the interaction between the local and national level, an interaction that is according to Musselin (2000, 296), a key to understanding how education systems change. It influences sector boundaries, which set the frame for the relationship between university colleges and universities. This interaction also influenced the development of the transitional arrangements, which determines whether a university college could apply to transition into the university sector.

The book 'Nye høyder. Framveksten av Universitetet i Nordland' (New Heights. The emergence of the University of Nordland) (Haukland 2015) views this history from a local perspective, highlighting the work and initiatives of the university college prior to and in the university process. The paper on the Bologna process conversely takes a European point of view (Haukland 2017). These two examinations are in Part 1 supplemented, however, with an analysis of the interaction between the local and the national level.

The analysis is divided into two sequences, each capturing the sequence's main development features. The first sequence looks more closely at the establishment of transitional arrangements between the sectors in the period 1965 to 2005. The second sequence examines the founding of the Norwegian Accreditation Agency in the period 1998 to 2003, and the affect of this on the desire and opportunity to found the University of Nordland in 2011. The battle for transitional arrangements started long before the management began envisioning Bodø University College as a university. The sequences therefore bring to the fore the main features of the development, even when these occur at the same time.

### 3.1 The struggle for transitional arrangements (1965–2005)

A closer examination of how sector boundaries and transitional arrangements in the Norwegian education system developed from the mid-1960s up until a joint law for the entire field was in place in 2005, is crucial to determining the influences on the preconditions for founding the University of Nordland.45

The district university college in Bodø was a direct result of the Further Education Reform, an ambiguous and vague reform that was implemented in the latter half of the 1960s. Studies have pointed out that reforms such as this create greater scope for institutional transformation (Gornitzka 1999, 18, Kyvik 2009, 52).46 The founding of Nordland District University College and the subsequent institution building, laid the direction for later reform implementation by the district university college. The analysis in this section uncovers the relationship between the founding of Nordland District University College and the unintended consequences of national reforms, which laid the ground for the university process in Bodø. A number of relevant questions arise from this. Firstly, how did the democratisation of knowledge at the national level affect local institution building? Secondly, how did regional governance and regional research activity affect the university college sector and Nordland District University College in particular? The third question is which stakeholders and driving forces contributed to the integration of the university college sector, a development which was a prerequisite for clear sector boundaries and the founding of the new university. Clear sector boundaries were an essential component in the coming into place of transitional university college to university status arrangements.

#### 3.1.1 Democratisation of knowledge as a local institutional value

The Norwegian education system was, until the end of the 1960s, a dual system for a small proportion of young people with upper secondary education. Universities and university colleges recruited a low proportion of 'Examen *artium' (university entrance exam) graduates and these institutions were managed* mostly by scientific staff. The living conditions survey of 1976 (Forbruker- og administrasjonsdepartementet 1976, 46, 55) showed that a university education was associated with high social status, and that higher education largely was an inherited attribute.

### *Destabilising factors and decisive premises: growth, profession and equality*

The democratisation of knowledge provided equal education opportunities irrespective of social background and region. This phenomenon is referred to in this book as the principle of equality. The democratisation of knowledge was based on a new normative approach to higher education, and contrasts the prior traditional elitist model that reserved universities for the few. The principle of equality was strong in national and local development, destabilising the dual education system in three ways, this destabilisation forming the premise for the founding of the district university colleges. These three destabilising factors must be closely examined if an understanding of the institutional development in Bodø is to be reached.

The democratisation of knowledge firstly created a strong and sustained growth in the number of Examen artium graduates in Norway, the number of pupils and students increasing considerably (Madslien 1965, Monsen 1993, 143, Kyvik 2009, 72). This can be partly explained by the growth of upper secondary schools. Examen atrium was, however, not solely used by universities. It was also used (from the 1920s) as an entrance requirement by the country's teacher training programs, a twoyear Examen atrium teacher training course being introduced by the country's teacher training colleges in 1930. The need for an expansion of upper secondary schools was now anchored by the Examen atrium teacher training in both the regions and in the university towns.

A large-scale expansion of the upper secondary schools began after World War II, Northern Norway in 1965 being ten years behind the rest of the country. This expansion was, however, in Bodø, expansive and fast. There were, according to historian Wilhelm Karlsen (2016, 318), up to four applicants per upper secondary school place in Bodø in the 1960s. The town in 1965 had, according to Madslien (1965, 39 ff.), 13 upper secondary education sites with up to 16 full-time classes, this expansion laying the grounds for higher education in the county being centred in Bodø (Madslien 1965, 119). The strong growth in the number of Examen atrium graduates lead to the education system coming under pressure. Growth is, according to Trow (1974, 69, 75), a factor that influences '…every form of activity and manifestation of higher education' by challenging established norms and structures and by undermining current practices. The growth in the number of students created a need for structural changes that in turn destabilised the higher education system.

The democratisation of knowledge, secondly, led to the geographical decentralisation of vocational education. Kyvik (2009, 80) has pointed out that this strongly influenced the locations of new higher education institutions: 'A geographically dispersed pattern of colleges was a precondition for institutional decentralisation of higher education to take place… '47 The new district university colleges were primarily located where vocational education was being provided (Yttri 2008, 12, 15, Haukland 2015, 42; 2018). Vocational education had, according to Kyvik (2009, 70) high status and had recruited more young people than the universities. Student nurse training (1920) and teacher training (1951) were both available in Bodø, the management of both the new district university college and the Regional University College Board in Nordland being recruited from Bodø teacher training college (Haukland 2015, 42). The existing education provided by the upper secondary schools and by the vocational education colleges functioned in many ways as a premise for the new district university college being located in Bodø.

The third destabilising factor was the impact of the principle of equality in the 1960s on Norwegian higher education policy. The growth in the number of students was the subject of two national committees in this period, the Kleppe Committee and the Further Education Committee.48 The committees had, however, different views on how growth should be managed, and therefore also different approaches to the principle of equality. The Kleppe Committee was appointed in 1960, the Further Education Committee five years later. Both were set up to study how the authorities should ensure future skills needs and meet the expected increase in student numbers. The Kleppe Committee believed that growth should be resolved within the framework of the existing education system through institutional decentralisation. The Further Education Committee advocated institutional and geographical decentralisation, and the operationalisation of higher education democratisation through founding district university colleges.49

The Further Education Committee was the first to refer to all who continued their education after upper secondary school as a student, irrespective of where they studied. The committee's position was that education was to meet student demands for education, instead of being focused on society's skill requirements. All therefore would have an equal opportunity (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet 1966, 7, Appendix 2, 50). The committee claimed that skill needs of society should only form the background for the distribution of courses, but not for the total level of education available (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet 1966, 12, Wold Johnsen, 101). As Monsen (1993, 144) has pointed out, higher education should no longer be reserved for the few, but be a right of all who qualify.50 As a result of the committee's report, the number of student places was scaled up to the number of applicants, the education system changing to include a university college sector. The growth in student numbers and the demand for equality became self-reinforcing driving forces in the development of the new sector.

The Further Education Committee went beyond referring to pupils as students, the Report to the Storting no. 17 (1974–75) stating that the work of the Further Education Committee 'created a new way of looking at and assessing higher education' (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet 1975b, 4). The Kleppe Committee referred to what had previously been called post-secondary education, as higher education 'whether this applies to universities or other institutions'. This laid the foundation for the entire field being viewed as a single entity, sector boundaries therefore also arising for the first time (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet 1975b, 4).

What was, however, the background for the Further Education Committee's advocacy of the principle of equality? The answer is found in the relationship between the national and local level (which would later play a significant role in the university process in Bodø), this relationship being between the proponents of a university in Rogaland and the central authorities. The ambition of the country's fourth university being founded in Rogaland arose as early as the 1960s. The plan for a university in Rogaland was inspired by developments in Sweden, in which university branches were being established as a part of institutional decentralisation (Lind 2005, 239). The pattern in Finland, which differed from that of Norway, was of small university colleges without significant research being named universities (Wold Johnsen, 1999, 84, Kyvik 2009). Pressure was exerted from Stavanger in Rogaland on the national level by, for example, the University Committee.

Key driving forces in Stavanger's university process were raised status and a strengthening of the region. This, however, created tensions between two different views of the university. Should the university serve the nation or should it serve the region? Should it be rooted in the very local situation or develop independently of the needs of the region? Norway's nation building project had come to an end. Norwegian universities were still, however and as a conservative institution, strong symbols of the nation of Norway. Historians Fredrik W. Thue and Kim G. Helsvig (2011, 11) refer to this as the beginnings of 'the great transformation' and a 'radical change of heart'. The number of students at the University of Oslo quadrupled between 1960 and 1975, the teaching staff almost tripling, the university therefore changing from an organisation with a relatively simple structure to a complex one (Thue and Helsvig 2011, 11, 12). The university as such now evolved from being a national symbol, to also being seen as the solution to the regions' growing skills needs, particularly in the Agder, Troms and Rogaland regions.

The University Committee in Stavanger used the normative principle of equality to justify their project: They wanted the number of student places allocated to Stavanger to be based on the population, and that the distribution of student places between regions ensured all had equal access to higher education. This was an important precursor to the later concept of geographical decentralisation, in which education expansion would be based on population sizes and district policy considerations (Wold Johnsen 1999, 41). Kjølv Egeland was a member of the Further Education Committee. He later became Director of Rogaland District University College and head of the University Committee in Stavanger. The University Committee in Stavanger was therefore directly influenced by the work of the Further Education Committee, and was instrumental in the number of student places being based on population size. The committee, in its first recommendation, proposed twelve education regions based on population size and independent of county boundaries, each region having its own district university colleges. The regional influence of Rogaland was particularly strong in national higher education decisions. Rogaland initially wanted a separate university, but chose to establish the district university college as an intermediate step, the principle of equality proving to be a quiet-mannered and almost indefatigable facilitator in the time ahead.

The founding of the University of Tromsø in 1968 was, according to historian Bodil Wold Johnsen (1999, 44 ff.), seen by the Ministry as a means of preventing the founding of universities in Rogaland and Agder. It also put an end to any alliance between Southern and Northern Norway that could lead to new universities in all three counties. The Ministry also saw the low local interest in the north of Norway in the university issue, as a guarantee that the Ministry could set the pace of change.

The Further Education Committee's proposal included in the Tromsø region, both Troms and Finnmark. Nordland was, however, defined as a separate region with Bodø as the education centre. The committee envisioned a district university college in Bodø with 2,000–2,500 student places (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet 1966, 17, 18), the principle of equality being operationalised by the division of regions being based on population size rather than county boundaries.

The district university colleges, as Fulsås (2000, 391) has pointed out, represented a completely new type of educational institute in the field, supplementing post-secondary, university and scientific university college educations. They represent a culture in which access to study opportunities and the relationship between students, academic staff, facilities and courses reflect egalitarian values.

The growth in the number of Examen atrium graduates, school pupils, and students, and the decentralisation of vocational education and the impact of the principle of equality were important premises for the founding of Nordland District University College in 1971.

#### *The core of the principle of equality: independent of background and region*

Two new universities and 15 district university colleges founded between 1968 and 1980 were a result of processes related to the democratisation of knowledge.51 The rise of district university colleges challenged the dual education system through the interaction between universities and university colleges, and through the contours of sector boundaries between a university college sector and a university sector forming. The new district university colleges were characterised by a culture based on four values: societal benefit, quality, efficiency, and equal education opportunities irrespective of social background and region (Kyvik 2009, 27, 79). When Nordland District University College was founded, the higher education institutions formed what Kyvik (2009, 8, 56) describes as a loose dual education system. The universities and the scientific university colleges operated in a single clearly defined sector. The post-secondary education providers and the new district university colleges operated, however, in a sector in which the links between the two were weak and boundaries with the university sector were unclear.

The new district university college in Bodø introduced a policy of recruiting students without Examen atrium. This met the equality requirement in terms of social background and geographical affiliation in Nordland. Upper secondary education was still poorly developed outside of central parts the region.52 The district university colleges also introduced democratically composed boards on which students and staff were represented, which set demands for processing requirements and the professionalisation of central administration.

The new normative orientation of the principle of equality greatly contributed, in the period, to creating and legitimising national change processes for decentralising higher education. Geographical decentralisation was seen, according to Kyvik (2009, 61), as a means of creating educational opportunities outside the established university towns, to secure a sufficiently skilled workforce and to stimulate economic and social development in the regions. This provided the scope for higher education institutions to develop strong ties with society. The goal of institutional decentralisation was, according to Fulsås (2000, 386), to promote innovation, to relieve the universities and to reduce costs,53 the goal in Norway initially being institutional decentralisation to relieve the universities. The new district university colleges therefore became, according to Kyvik (2009, 56), hybrids that combined 'vocationally oriented programs and university courses' by adopting elements from similar educational institutions abroad. Nordland District University College early on offered courses on lower levels in both sociology and history, disciplinary subjects that traditionally only had been offered by universities (Haukland 2015, 39). The sector boundaries that had previously been clearly defined between the university sector and the growing university college sector, became more difficult to draw because of university colleges offering such disciplinary subjects.

The political process, in which the principle of equality was central, resulted according to Fulsås (1993, 95, 2000) in the continuation even of *geographical* decentralisation, which was furthermore an aspect of European development. Kyvik (2009, 80) describes the development as follows: 'The process of geographical and institutional decentralisation thus became to reinforce each other… the latter process enhanced the geographically decentralized institutional pattern'. Vocational education institutions represented and defined institutional logics linked to society expressed, for example, through the principle of equality and the social benefit requirement, which were important elements in the realisation of higher education geographical decentralisation. Norway was an early starter. A similar change, which emphasised decentralisation and regional identity, came according to Neave (2004, 17) to Western European countries such as Belgium, France, Spain and Italy in the 1980s. The history of education was young in these countries compared with other European countries. The education system was therefore less institutionalised, which according to Clark (1983, 185) is a factor that facilitates a higher pace of change.

The democratisation of knowledge set the direction of the institutional development of Nordland District University College right from the start. Expectations linked to the principle of equality and the requirement of social benefit laid the foundation for the institution taking responsibility for skill development in the region. The university college was, as mentioned earlier, a hybrid of the universities' academic subjects and regional university college studies. The latter is based on the need for highly skilled labour. Obligations relating to equality and social benefit later became important in the university process. Geographical decentralisation is defined as the creation of educational opportunities outside the established university towns, and the promotion of growth in a region. Geographical decentralisation at Bodø University College is shown by the creation of decentralised courses at a number of campuses in the county, and in a strong third mission in which an institutional logic associated with the market was also in play (Haukland 2015, 109, 211).

The democratisation of knowledge required a dual education system with a strong normative orientation, if academisation of the university college sector was to be avoided. Student growth, geographical decentralisation and the impact of the principle of equality were important factors in Norwegian higher education policy and the development of the new informal sector boundaries.

#### 3.1.2 Regional research as a starting point for academic drift

The founding of the district university colleges was according to Fulsås (2000, 394), not initially intended to create academic drift.54 The founding of the district university colleges was, for the Ministry, instead an attempt to prevent academisation gaining momentum outside the universities. The new university colleges were therefore to provide undergraduate studies, so that the universities could concentrate on research.55 The district university colleges were, in particular, to provide courses in business finance and administration, and to ensure competence increases in their regions. Business economics and administration subjects were the most dominant at Nordland District University College right from the start (Haukland 2015, 39).

Central authorities had left it to the new educational institutions, in the trial period, to themselves define the district university college as an entity based on regional needs, development rate, education provided and research.56 The district university colleges were, according to Wold Johnsen (1999, 224), as autonomous as the universities. This created the scope for institutional transformation. The district university colleges were, in principle, to provide vocational studies to meet the region's needs (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet 1967b, 27, 28). Giving the university colleges responsibility for their own professional development, paved a way for a regional adaptation of the courses provided. The notion was that the decentralisation of decision-making power was to be implied for subjects.

The regions responded by including more and more university subjects in their portfolios and advancing the academic level of subjects (Stortinget 1974, 92). This was a result of normative obligations associated with regional interests and academic quality, and regional research and teaching ideally being on a par with the universities. Nordland District University College made good use of the scope opened in the trial period, by making contact with the two-year-old district university college in Stavanger, by expanding its subjects portfolio, by building up academic areas and conducting regional research (Haukland 2015, 38, 43). The relationship with these university college environments was important to the innovation culture that developed at Nordland District University College.

The real growth in numbers of students between 1975 and 1985, which was a global trend, was channelled into the regional university colleges and the new district university colleges (Wold Johnsen 1999, 17, Kyvik 2009, 12, 62).57 The growth increased the opportunities for academic innovation within the university college sector and contributed, according to Stensaker (2006, 54), to the educational institutions prioritising quality control more than previously. The district university colleges contributed significantly to the fragmented expansion of the university college sector through 'differentiation of study programmes and diversification of organisational forms, curricula, and staff qualifications …' (Kyvik 2009, 44). Academic drift of programs and curricula among students and scientific staff, and centrally in the institutions, represented an academisation process in which the stakeholders influenced and reinforced each other (Kyvik 2007, 337).

The most important explanation of why the district university colleges became hybrids and became characterised by academic drift, is found in the cultural background of the scientific staff. Academics were primarily recruited as lecturers, and brought with them internalised norms from the university at which they had studied and possibly also worked (NAVs Utredningsinstitutt 1976, interview Sandberg 2011).58 This identity was linked to cultural cognitive references, and therefore represented a common understanding among the scientific staff of what type of an institution should be built. The university was, of course, an obvious model of what the staff believed the district university colleges should become. The academic culture of the district university colleges however, according to Kyvik (2009, 51), acted as a barrier between the district university colleges and other university colleges. This was reinforced by scientific staff in the university college sector being required to deliver courses that were of the same quality as those of the universities. The students, scientific staff and management all saw the academic development of the university college sector as being desirable. This strengthened a collective institutional will and laid a good foundation for jointly developing the campus. The district university college also had a more assertive, but also pragmatic, approach to other educational institutions in the region, to the authorities and the political levels.

The link between the district university colleges and the national level was facilitated by a separate section of the Ministry. This, according to Kyvik (2009, 51), reduced the risk that 'bureaucratic routine would hamper development work'. The district university college's desire for strong professional development was well received in this Ministry section.59 The leader of the section, Ingjald Ørbeck Sørheim, had previously been the secretary of the Further Education Committee (Yttri 2008, 54). He later described the development as follows:

The exceptional speed of developments left open many questions to teachers, students and administration in the new institutions, and this helped to create an atmosphere of initiative, responsibility and autonomy (Sørheim 1973, 62 in NAVs Utredningsinstitutt 1976, no. 2, 44).

This key state stakeholder at the national level helped legitimise the academic drift of the district university college.

The founding of the country's fourth university in 1968 in Tromsø, and Rogaland District University College in the year after meant that plans for a university in Stavanger had to be placed on hold. Stavanger's university process continued, however, through the struggle to change its institutional category from university college to university.60 This worked as a destabilising factor in the dual education system, the system not permitting a university college to change institutional category to university. A central element in this struggle was the demand that a transitional arrangement was established that specified criteria for a district university college's category change. According to Fulsås (2000, 391), Stavanger District University College became 'a driving force in the general academisation of higher education'. The university process in Stavanger contributed to the initiation and development of the institutionalisation process at the district university colleges, by Stavanger demanding transitional arrangements that would facilitate transition into the university sector (Wold Johnsen, 1999, 51). This also set the direction of Nordland District University College's management, who looked to Stavanger to build up the business economics and administration program and expand its study portfolio.

Academisation was promoted at the national level by education authority reforms that were introduced to solve new challenges and the need to rectify the unintended consequences of previous reforms. The challenge of large student cohorts was solved by district university colleges relieving the universities of the lower degree level (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet 1975b, 84 ff).

Regional academic drift also became a central driving force in the professional development of Nordland District University College (Kyvik 2009, 53, Haukland 2015). The management of Nordland District University College was advised by Rogaland District University College to establish as much as possible and as quickly as possible in the trial period, and not to wait for guidelines from the national level.61 The management of Nordland therefore focused on providing new courses, generating development and meeting the skill needs of the region.62 The business economics and administration program was, one year after opening, supplemented by a two-year program in fisheries economics (Haukland 2015, 39, Landstad 2001, 17).63 There were no plans to become a university at this time. Nordland District University College did, however and like the other district university colleges, have the high ambition of providing an educational level that was equivalent to the universities, and to build the region through this. The institution was an innovation in the field of higher education. It combined academic and regional values, but with less institutional barriers than the universities.

The relationship between the universities and the district university colleges, which determined the nature of informal sector boundaries, was partly defined by the degrees and titles the institutions could award. District university college scientific staff were required to have the same qualifications as the academic staff of the universities. Whether district university college staff could conduct research was, however, a contentious issue. The Further Education Committee's third recommendation stated that universities were differentiated from the district university colleges by research (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet 1968, 13, 14). The state budget proposal of 1973/1974 emphasised that 'one will still have a division based on research scope' between the two types of institutions. Greater space was, however, being given to research at district university colleges (Stortinget 1974, 84). The Ministry supported regionally anchored and applied research by the academic environments before this was finally adopted as a right in Parliament in June 1975 (Nasjonalbiblioteket 1975, 4660, Fygle 2001, 29). The district university colleges section in the Ministry had stated that there should be regional research activity at the new district university colleges (Sørheim 1978, vol. 9, 553). This focus on regional research did not, however, threaten the established research environments, and was therefore an academic drift that went 'under the radar' as Nordland District University College did not have any concrete plans to become a university. Research could therefore start earlier and progress at a faster pace than would otherwise have been possible.

Research in separate research institutes had already become a practice in Germany and France, before this was adopted in Norway (Witte et al. 2008, 221). Rogaland District University College played a central role in the new research market that developed in the 1960s, this and the region's economic growth leading the university college to focus on research at an early stage (Wold Johnsen 1999, 10, 20). The county municipality established Rogaland Research in 1973, which was the first research organisation linked to a district university college.64 Rogaland District University College and the county municipality therefore, through this, established a form of cooperation that strengthened the research environment at the district university college and yielded synergies. This was a type of collaboration that other counties could copy.65 Nordland Research Institute, the country's second regional research foundation, was established in 1979 by Nordland County Municipality. Nordland Research Institute's focus was on regional competence needs and contract research. The establishment phase of this type of organisation did not really fully start until the mid-1980s, Rogaland Research and Nordland Research Institute therefore being early starters. 66

Nordland Research Institute gained local importance in Bodø for its influence upon the academic drift of scientific staff and of the institutional level. The foundation provided, right from the start, scientific staff at the district university college with the opportunity to take a doctorate. Nordland Research Institute could grant short term employment contracts that could provide academic staff with the opportunity to develop their research expertise. The institutions could also strengthen their academic environments by sharing positions with research foundations, so extending the number of employees beyond the limits set by the Ministry.67 Scientific employees with a doctorate could also be engaged in projects at Nordland Research Institute, which laid the foundation for them gaining professorial competence. Nordland Research Institute therefore contributed to the academic drift of the university college.68 Bodø University College and Nordland Research Institute in 1999 constituted, according to Fygle (2001, 35), the largest academic social science environment in Norway, this being a direct result of Nordland Research Institute strengthening the research environment of the university college.

The regional research focus created what Helsvig (2011, 126, 127) has called an anarchist aspect in Norwegian higher education. Regional interests drove development at the local level and the 'education and research policy conditions' of the national level. Regional research would later prove to be one of the most important factors in the university process.

Academic drift led to a displacement of the division of labour, and therefore the sector borders between the universities and university colleges. Rogaland District University College could from 1980 when awarded civil engineering (a master's degree program), offer high level traditional university courses (Wold Johnsen, 1999, 217). Nordland was awarded a master's degree program in business economics and administration in 1983, the County Council having pushed for this development, Nordland District University College becoming two years later the third largest of the country's 13 district university colleges, Rogaland and Agder being larger.69 The authorities, to retain control of academisation in the university college sector, took greater control by isolating the two district university colleges with the strongest academic drift. The district university colleges in Rogaland and Nordland had professors. They were therefore separated out in 1986 into two university college centres to prevent the academic drift of the other district university colleges (Haukland 2015, 55 ff.).70 This can be seen as being a de-institutionalisation attempt to ensure that the original intention of the district university colleges, which was that they should relieve the universities of the lower levels of degrees, came to fruition. Strong identification with the academic quality of the other university colleges made this attempt a failure, because the new university college centres gained a high degree of legitimacy in the sector and were seen as role models.

The initial objective of higher education geographical decentralisation was to promote regional development. District university colleges were to also be an alternative to the universities, but were not to conduct extensive research nor high level academic development. Academic drift was confronted from below by both verbal and formal barriers. These barriers gradually lowered, a great deal of government policy being based on the political consideration of regional development. According to Fulsås (2000, 394), conflicting signals on what a district university college should be meant that they moved closer to the universities. This hindered regional horisontal integration, which is defined by Kyvik (2009, 81) as 'de-differentiation and de-diversification of professional and vocational programs in the college sector'. This integration process provided unclear sector boundaries and made it difficult for transitional arrangements to be established between the university college and university sectors. This will be examined in more detail below.

#### 3.1.3 A weak regional level of governance

The academisation of Nordland District University College was not only promoted by regional research and the district university colleges in Agder and Rogaland. It was also advanced by the lack of regional governance before the University College Board of Nordland was established in 1976, and by the lack of governance power of this new level. The factors that contributed to the weakening of regional governance, and the consequences of this for the district university college's development, must be examined if an understanding of the role of interaction between the local and national level is to be uncovered in the founding of the University of Nordland.

#### *The district university colleges as a regional governance level?*

Each district university college was initially, and as part of the regional integration of higher education, to administer all higher education in its region (Wold Johnsen, 1999, 221, Kyvik 2009, 14). A clear division of labour and stronger cooperation within and across sectors should lead to horisontal integration. This is characterised by well defined sector boundaries in a binary education system. Report to the Storting no. 66 (1972–1973) of the Korvald government broke, however, with this line of reasoning. Integration was (in the trial period) put on hold, the original purpose of district university colleges being repealed by Report to the Storting no. 17 (1974–1975) of the Bratteli government (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet 1975b).71 The district university colleges had, by this time, become established as independent higher education institutions, making regional governance more difficult to establish.

The opposition of the district university colleges and post-secondary education providers meant that regional governance came into place late (Wold Johnsen 1999, 221, Yttri 2008, 72, Haukland 2015).72 Opponents believed that regional integration was a centralising force that moved the power held by the institutions into regional government. The Further Education Committee argued, however, that regional government represented a decentralisation of power from the national level to the regions (Nasjonalbiblioteket (1974–1975), 4611, Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet 1975b, 14)73. The strongest protests against regional governance came from post-secondary education providers. Vocational education was based on a cultural cognitive symbol system and a strong identity in an educational culture that was not academia. These institutions were characterised by vocational drift. They therefore believed that their uniqueness was threatened by coming under the rule of the district university colleges. Nordland District University College's managers were recruited from Bodø Teacher Training College, the rector of this college Einride Hveding playing a central role in the planning of Nordland District University College, which he became a director of. A close collaboration between teacher training and the district university college was, however, not established until much later (Haukland 2015, 38, interview Hveding 2015).

The two cultural cognitive paradigms rooted in the university and teacher training can not alone explain the lack of collaboration between Bodø Teacher Training College and Nordland District University College. The climate of cooperation cooled when Bodø Teacher Training College was placed under the control of the University College Board in Nordland in 1977, the Board being responsible for 'all higher education in the region' (Haukland 2015, 27).74 The secretariat function of the new University College Board in Nordland was temporarily transferred to Nordland District University College, a change which Nesna Teacher Training College (the county's oldest) believed stymied 'the greatest possible degree of equality between the institutions involved'.75 The two teacher training colleges in the county were both brought under the governance of the regional board. Teacher training in the country was also moved from the School Department to the University and University College Department in the Ministry.76 Bodø Teacher Training College's unwillingness to cooperate can also be seen as a reaction to the college losing some of its autonomy to the new regional governance.

The critics won acceptance for their positions in the Church and Education Committee recommendations and in hearings in Parliament in June 1975, this weakening the new regional governance in three main areas (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet 1975a, Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet 1975b, 14).77 The Ministry and not regional government was firstly made responsible for allocating funds. Each university college was also to have the right to appoint staff. Thirdly, the authority to approve curricula was transferred from regional governance to national academic councils.78 The University College Board in Nordland therefore found the role of regional coordinator and developer of higher education in Nordland very difficult to practice (Kirke-, utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet 1991c).79

Opposition to district university colleges becoming the regional governance level resulted firstly in the Ministry maintaining institutional categories instead of creating university college regions (Kirke- og undervisningsdepartementet 1975b, 13, Wold Johnsen, 216, 235). The local level, as Clark (1983, 113) and Musselin (2000, 298) describe, therefore influenced how and the extent to which national reform was implemented. The district university colleges gained greater scope to manoeuvre from tensions between the regional governance and the institutional logic of autonomy of the university colleges and the national level, and tensions between the academic drift of the district university colleges and the vocational drift of vocational education. This challenged the relationship between university colleges and universities. What should separate them and what could they have in common? Defined sector boundaries, as called for by university advocates in Rogaland and Agder, were gradually developed in a field of tension of many different stakeholders with different goals and driving forces.

Secondly, the authorities did not give up the ambition of establishing a regional level of government, even if this was not to be achieved through the district university colleges. The establishment of the regional university college boards was therefore the result of this opposition. According to Neave (2004, 4, 17), regional levels of government are both a recognition of regional cultural identities, and represent a step towards higher education operation being in line with national priorities. This can therefore, in the long run, promote the integration of the field. How did the new University College Board in Nordland contribute to the institutional development of Nordland District University College?

#### *Stronger actual autonomy under regional control*

The autonomy of the district university colleges became weaker after the establishment of the university college boards. The district university colleges, however, in practice gained even stronger control of their own development (NAVs Utredningsinstitutt 1976, Kirke-, utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet 1991, 22). There were several reasons for this. The first was that they now could concentrate on the development of their own institution and academic areas, instead of also having to focus on the demanding role of regional coordination. The district university colleges could also continue their academic development and regional research activity without having to do this with the university colleges in the other Nordland regions of Ofoten and Helgeland.

Opposition was secondly rooted in expectations of the role district university colleges would play in the higher education field. The fight against what the district university colleges believed was not just a regional centralisation of higher education, but also a fight to determine which local stakeholders would have contact with the national level. This contact was an important prerequisite for academic drift in the university college sector (Neave 1979, 155). Weak regional governance meant, however, that Nordland District University College did not lose contact with the national level, despite the university college board taking over some tasks.80 Nordland District University College received, for example, strong support in its interaction with the national level, through its contact with Minister Langslet in the fight to bring the master's degree in business economics and administration to the campus (Nordland distriktshøgskole 1982, Haukland 2015, 47 ff.). The university college also received support from parliamentary representative Petter Thomassen on the Nordland bench in Parliament (Haukland 2015, 47).81

Thirdly, the board members of the regional university college boards had associations with the region and were therefore interested in promoting the geographical decentralisation of research funding and education. The regional University College Board in Nordland played a strong supportive role for Nordland District University College (Utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet 1991, 73, 77, Wold Johnsen 1999 231, interview Hveding 2015).82 The district university college's established roles, routines, culture and collective code of conduct were rarely challenged regionally.

Fourthly the formal relationship between the local and national levels was weakened by the regional governance level, so protecting the region from central governance (Neave 1979, 156). The regional university college boards took over the Ministry's responsibility for ensuring that district university colleges operated in accordance with budgets and legislation. The boards were not, however, delegated enough authority to control development (Utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet 1991, 73, 77). Nordland District University College could therefore continue to develop based on local initiatives and a local innovation culture (Musselin 2000, 309, Haukland 2015, 47), this increase in scope gradually strengthening the district university college's institutional autonomy.

The regional university college boards to a certain extent met the goal of integrating the sector. It was claimed in a joint statement in 1978 by all elected and administrative district university college leaders that the university college boards had contributed to a unification of regional university colleges that offered a wide range of very different educational courses. Decision-making processes had, however, became 'more bureaucratic and time consuming', so weakening the link with the region (Wold Johnsen, 1999, 237). A unanimous statement by the National Council for District University Colleges in June 1984 recommended that the regional university college board scheme was abolished.83 This was supported by Anne-Lise Bakken and Einride Hveding's 1991 report 'Governance scheme for regional university colleges', which showed that regional governance never achieved the intended regional integration of higher education in Norway (Kirke-, utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet in 1991c).

Opposition to regional integration intensified after post-secondary vocational education was reorganised in the late 1970s and early 1980s into state university colleges, Agevall (2016, 72) describing a similar development in Sweden in the late 1970s. The Norwegian dual education system of a university sector with no formal points of contact with a differentiated university college sector, therefore came to full fruition (Kyvik 2009, 56). The reorganisation was an expression of a normative development that was in line with the principle of equality, vocational education in this being given a higher status. According to Fulsås (2000, 392), the district university colleges were given an intermediate position in the field, this leading to them identifying more strongly with the universities and gravitating towards them.

A stronger academic drift of district university colleges meant, according to Wold Johnsen (1999, 216), that they '… became part of the research system and were represented in the research councils. New top positions such as university college lecturer and scholarship leave schemes were introduced'. The opposition of the district university colleges to regional integration also came to the fore with the Ministry's plans in 1978 to establish a common recruitment regime for the university college sector (Wold Johnsen, 1999, 238, Kyvik 2009, 74). The district university colleges wanted a framework that included the universities. The tension between the vocational drift of profession educational institutions (that had now become university colleges) and the academic drift of district university colleges was still hindering the regional integration of the university college sector.

The Examinations and Degrees at Universities and University Colleges Act in1981 became applicable to the district university colleges and the teacher training colleges, which could now graduate master degree students (Wold Johnsen 1999, LovdataPro 1981).84 This was interpreted as being a step in the right direction by those who wanted transitional arrangements between the university college and university sectors.

The attempt to organise growth by establishing a regional level of governance is a clear example of education reforms having effects that differ from that intended. Local development took place in competition with or in opposition to the national level, the framework not being strong enough to prevent the competitive situation destabilising symbol systems within the institution, and so facilitating institutional changes. The district university colleges instead manipulated restricting interventions, so turning these into new opportunities for academic drift.

#### 3.1.4 From the democratic to academic scale

The conversion of post-secondary educational institutions to university colleges created a need for a more integrated university college sector. Bodø Teacher Training College received university college status in 1981, Nordland Nursing Training School receiving university college status in 1983 and becoming state owned in 1986 (Monsen 1993, 144). The state special college for psychiatric nursing in Bodø was directly controlled by the Ministry until it came under the control of the University College Board in Nordland in 1980. The college became more strongly linked to the university college sector seven years later, after it merged with Nordland Nursing College. There were now three state university colleges in Bodø. This change looked like a drawing of institutions closer together, but in practice revealed differences between them. The greatest tensions were between the academic and vocational drifts, the meeting of academic and vocational identity promoting lasting changes in the field. The integration of the university college sector took, however, longer. Academisation was stronger than was originally intended due to the institutional logics associated with society or with the market playing a greater role.

The academisation of the district university colleges required constant political and institutional pressure from the local level. The district university colleges wanted, according to Fulsås (2000, 394), central academic standards to be harmonised across the field, as opposed to an alternative institutional category being developed at the local level. The rapid growth in the field brought diversity under pressure. Locally through a stronger academic drift based on the demand for equal conditions with the universities, and nationally through the need to make a strongly growing field more efficient. Harmonisation therefore became increasingly relevant across the field. One driving force behind this was that students would be given credit for their university college studies when applying to universities. This demand challenged sector boundaries and, from the turn of the millennium, also part of the harmonisation of higher education in Europe.

There were many traces of a university culture at Nordland District University College. Academic subjects have already been mentioned in this context. The institution was awarded the same credit points for the business economics and administration study program established in 1983 as the university equivalent (Wold Johnsen, 1999, 154). The new master's level business economics and administration study program also functioned as a separate university college until the establishment of the University College Centre in Nordland in 1986.85 The university college centres were also an institutional category that was not clearly defined at the national level. This new university college category was an initiative of Rector Audun Sandberg at Nordland District University College, who wanted to highlight that the institution now had a professor and could supervise PhD students.86 The authorities saw the proposal as an opportunity to prevent Rogaland District University College from gaining scientific university college status, which would be an important step towards university college status.87 This would ensure the unity of the university college sector. It also allowed local development and innovation at the new University College Centre in Nordland, and created another governance vacuum that strengthened the academic drift of the institution.88 The business economics and administration program was allowed to separate from the rest of the institution, with its own department led by a collegiate, and the institution's only professor as dean. This bore clear similarities with the universities. 'There are still some who dream that they will be as similar as possible to the universities… It is a bad dream,' said Minister Langslet during the opening of Campus Mørkved that autumn (Haukland 2015, 58), no one on the new campus therefore envisioning that it one day would be a university.

The principle of equality which paved the way for the democratisation of knowledge irrespective of social background and region was replaced, through the academic development that took place at the University College Centre, by the centre's demand for academisation on equal terms with universities. This change took place throughout the sector. It also, however, intensified tensions between the vocational training university colleges and the district university colleges.

The University and College Committee's 1988 recommendation 'Med viten og vilje' (With knowledge and willpower) put into words the two dimensions behind these tensions.89 The first dimension was 'the big problem of the small population', which requires academic researchers in a research field to be concentrated to ensure good breadth and quality. The second is 'the vast country's big problem', which was that education and research policy was required to take into account district policy considerations, to ensure that the whole country benefited from the competence development.90

The main problem is that there are too many and too small institutions with poor cooperation between them. This can only change if we look at higher education as a national system in which the parts can work together and draw on each other, and not act as a set of rival institutions and regions. The solution is a more clearly defined division of labour and better developed collaboration.91

Tensions peaked at the point where the principle of equality and the requirement for academic quality met, the committee's solution to this being to see the field as a whole and to establish stronger collaboration between higher education institutions. The vocational education colleges were those most opposed to academisation, district university colleges fighting for equality with the university sector. Many of the other regional university colleges worked, however, to prevent academisation. This primarily was due to the wish to preserve the uniqueness and identity of this education, these being the oldest educational institutions in the sector. Institutionalisation was so strong that many reacted with strong emotions and high levels of frustration instead of presenting factual arguments when facing processes of change.92 The student nurse training college was most strongly characterised by vocational drift among these colleges in Bodø. Here, the scientific staff had a profession identity that had strong ties with the field of practice. Teacher training, which was relatively new in Bodø, had initiated collaboration with Nordland District University College and with a number of universities, and in 1990 established a master's program in pedagogy with the University of Tromsø. It also established a master's degree in the following year in special pedagogy with the University of Oslo.

Development in the period after post-secondary education providers became state university colleges was characterised by horisontal and vertical integration. Horisontal integration meant study programs in the university college sector were less diverse and structurally more similar to each other. Vertical integration is understand in line with the position of Kyvik (2009, 81), as the transition from 'the long period of geographical decentralisation of non-university institutions ...' to a period of regional centralisation. 93 This development laid the foundation for the 1994 University College Reform, in which the dual education system was transformed into a weak binary education system, the reform defining university colleges and universities into two vaguely defined sectors with transitional arrangements for students (Kyvik 2009, 9).94 This contrasts the United Kingdom, which introduced a unified system in 1992 (Yttri 2015, 8). According to Kyvik (2009, 9), the binary education system was originally intended to develop university colleges as an alternative to the universities, and not to make university colleges as similar to universities as possible. This was to ensure sufficient skilled labour and regional development. The normative orientation associated with the geographical decentralisation of higher education and with academic drift at the local level, nevertheless maintained the demands of university colleges with university ambitions to change institutional category.95

The university college reform involved a merger of 98 educational institutions into 26 regional university colleges.96 The so-called 'Norgesnettet' (Net of Norway), which was to ensure the quality of courses and a clearer division of labour between universities and university colleges, was also established. According to Stensaker (2006, 43, 46), the reform resulted in institutions with hybrid organisational practices and complex identities. It created an institutionalisation process in which regulative, normative and cultural cognitive elements were at play at the same time. Scott (2014) has highlighted different activities as bearers of institutional elements. One of the activities that marks a stronger regulative element in institutions is, according to Scott (2014, 96), their exposure to interruptions or disturbances to sanction unwanted behaviour. The establishment of Bodø University College can be seen to be such an interruption of an institutionalisation process, this process leading to a stronger cultural-cognitive orientation towards the universities than the authorities wanted. This was an attempt to solve the tensions between academisation at the local level and the wish of government and Ministry for two separate sectors with a clear division of labour, and efficiency challenges. Diversity in the university college sector was limited, so allowing integration to be intensified.

The newly founded Bodø University College raised the challenge of vocational education and academic subjects having to find their way forwards together. Rector Inger Johanne Pettersen, who had a master's degree in business economics and administration, expressed her concern to the local newspaper Nordlandsposten in October 1996, saying that 'Bodø University College will end up as an advanced upper secondary school', after high student admissions to student nurse and teacher training that autumn were not accompanied by increases in budgets.97 She believed that this would affect the institution's research activity, which should be in the '1st division' (Haukland 2015, 80). It was therefore not just vocational education that wanted to go back to being an independent university college. Academic researchers with ambitions to conduct research also considered the vocational educations to be a heavy restraint. Sanctions against a stronger integration of vocational and professional education therefore worked in the short term.

The university college reform placed, however, vocational training under an academic standard. This weakened vocational drift, which acted as a counterforce to integration in the field. All management positions at Bodø University College were announced and academics were recruited to all positions, including for courses. Other staff were required to qualify for their positions.98

Vocational education marked by vocational drift was no longer provided by separate institutions, but was now a part of a larger organisation in which the management goals for the academic staff were academisation and professionalisation.99 This resulted, as it also did in Sweden as described by Agevall (2016, 73), in the vocational educations '[coming] under systemic pressure to become more academic'. Negotiations on the relationship between practice and science were shifted in the direction of what Agevall has called 'an academic imperative' (Agevall and Olofsson 2013, 15).

The authorities' ambitions to establish a homogeneous university college sector created strong tensions internally in the new university colleges, between previous vocational education and district university colleges. The academic standard now applied equal to all. The principle of equality and profession identities, however, lived on as cultural driving forces in the regional university colleges. But these gained a cultural hegemony in the new university colleges, due to the parts that had been district university colleges scoring highest on the new academic scale.

#### 3.1.5 Transitional arrangements established

The university college sector came, as we have seen, into being in the period that led up to the founding of Bodø University College. It is therefore important to look more closely at factors that contributed, both before and after the university college reform, to sector boundaries and transitional arrangements coming into place.

Sector boundaries were a result of the integration of the field. They were consolidated by the 1989 Act on Universities and Scientific University Colleges, the setting up of Norgesnett, the 1994 University Colleges Reform and a common University and University College Act in 1996. The new sector boundaries represented vertical separation. This meant that different institutional categories had different roles, but there were no opportunities for institutions to transition between them. This boundary was challenged from several quarters, most notably through the demand that state university colleges should be allowed to offer doctoral programs.

#### *Statutory vertical sector divide*

The University and University College Committee recommendation proposed establishing a vertical divide between the sectors. This recommendation was made because the committee believed a binary education system (which dominated the European higher education field) prevented academic drift in the university college sector and the founding of more universities (De Wit and Verhoeven 2010, 144). A division of labour defined through an integrated network for higher education and research was, however, established, which was instead of allowing university colleges to gain university status. It was achieved through Norgesnettet, which was established in 1998 (Kyvik 1999). The network's role was to strengthen the relationship between the sectors through increased cooperation across the vertical divide.

The contours of the divide appeared for the first time in the 1989 Act on Universities and Scientific University Colleges. The legal text of the Act defined the relationship between the sectors, by drawing up a clearer distinction between them (Lovdata Pro 1989, Kirke-, utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet 1991b, 5, Eriksen 2006, 65).

Kyvik (2009, 14) sets the point in time at which the binary education system in Norway ended, this being the point in time of the implementation of the University College Reform. The Universities and University Colleges Act came into force on 1 January 1996, which established Norgesnettet. This was the first time a law for the entire field was passed, a change that would facilitate transition opportunities. The legal text, however, named all universities and university colleges, this meaning that a change in the law was now required to change institution category. A number of factors, however, challenged the sector boundaries.

#### *Overlapping job structure in the field*

The two former university college centres in Stavanger and Bodø had already employed professors, this representing a potential weakening of the sector boundaries. Fulsås (2000) has highlighted the University and University College Committee's second recommendation as the most important to transitional arrangements. This included an overlapping job structure between the sectors, and professorships as a promotion scheme. This allowed the position category of staff in both sectors to be changed when they met the new position criteria (Kultur- og vitenskapsdepartementet 1988, 168). A minority noted, in the recommendation, that this 'could lead to demands for research conditions at all university colleges and thus blur the national division of labour' (Kultur- og vitenskapsdepartementet 1988, 168).

A circular was distributed by the Ministry in February 1995 that introduced a common position structure for teaching and research staff that applied across the entire field. This was a natural consequence of establishing an integrated network for all higher education institutions through Norgesnettet (Eriksen 2006, 87).100 It was also an important step towards the establishment of transitional arrangements between the sectors. Integration now related not only to the university college, but both sectors. Even university colleges without university ambitions such as Bodø University College, also therefore become more similar to universities.

Hernes, a minister in the Brundtland III government of 1990, presented the Storting Report 'Fra visjon til virke' (From vision to action) in 1991. The report was primarily based on the proposal of the University and University College Committee which Minister Hernes had chaired (Kirke-, utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet, 1991a, 5).101 The report argued that no new universities or university colleges should be established (Kirke-, utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet, 1991a, 8). The Church and Education Committee moderated this to that 'there is right now no basis for establishing a fifth university' (Kirke-, utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet, 1991b), the words 'right now' signalling that it was only a matter of time before the committee could see a university college advancing to university status.

The democratisation of the professorships, which was an incentive that aimed to build the academic level of subjects even in the university college sector, was adopted during the report discussions in Parliament on 18 June 1991 (Stortingsforhandlinger 1991, 4199). This, according to Fulsås (2000, 396), weakened sector boundaries because the two sectors could operate on equal terms much more than before.102 Urban Dahllöf and Staffan Selander (1996, 210) have called professors being employed in the university college sector despite the authorities not wanting university colleges to aspire to the university sector 'the Norwegian paradox'. The demand for academic equality increasingly became the starting point for decisions at both the local and national level. According to Fulsås (2000, 394), research had 'become a symbolic capital across the entire system, i.e. the common measure of value, status and success',103 the symbolic value of the university as a model of teaching and research activity being greater in the university colleges at the local level than the authorities understood. The institutionalisation of the university college sector can perhaps be summed up in a quote that is often attributed to the socio-economist Peter Drucker: 'Culture eats strategy for breakfast'.

#### *The battle for research education*

The growth in the number of scientific staff from the end of the 1960s led to a recruitment requirement that was so strong in 1985, that only 38 per cent of scientific staff held a doctorate (NAVFs utredningsinstitutt 1988). The University and University College Committee had two proposals to remedy this. These also, however, strengthened the demand that the university college sector could award doctoral degrees. The first proposal was that permanent employees at Norwegian universities must hold a PhD. This requirement was introduced in 1990 (Kultur- og vitenskapsdepartementet 1988, 28).

The second proposal was the introduction of standardised doctoral programs as part of the standardisation processes in the field. This requirement, according to Bleiklie and Høstaker (2004, 230), was already a part of the national standardisation processes of Sweden and the UK at this time. Bleiklie and Høstaker however also point out that development in Norway differed from that of these two countries. PhD students were in Norway paid members of staff, and were seen as being 'trainee researchers'. The scheme therefore provided the university colleges with the opportunity to expand their staff through temporary scientific staff positions, so qualifying them for future permanent positions. This was despite PhD students being formally admitted to the universities.104 This scheme contributed to some university colleges becoming more like universities, irrespective of whether they had university ambitions or not.

The demand for equality in the form of equal academic quality requirements across the entire field, created a persistent dilemma for the division of labour between universities and university colleges. Why were university colleges with sufficient competence not allowed to provide PhD programs? Equal academic quality requirements had already been fulfilled by the Private University Colleges Act. New doctoral programs had to therefore achieve an academic level that was equivalent to that of the universities. This was a strong argument for establishing these programs at state university colleges that met the academic quality requirements.105

The business economics and administration program in Bodø was, before the University College Reform, ready to embark on a doctoral degree program in this area. Doctoral programs were, however, reserved for the universities. The University College Centre had allies in parliament. Petter Thomassen, the Conservative Party member for Nordland, vented the centre's frustration from Parliament's rostrum during the discussion of the 1991 University and University College Committee's recommendation by saying:

… (It is) something close to a compulsion when many claim that it would end badly if Stavanger and Bodø gained such rights. The civil engineering program in Stavanger and the business economics and administration program in Bodø are … in a district university college context, in a special position in relation to other district university colleges in the country, because they have complete and equivalent programs in their fields in relation to NTH in Trondheim and the Norwegian School of Management in Bergen. Agder District University College is, in a limited subject area, also in a similar position with its master's degree in business economics and administration (Nasjonalbiblioteket 1991, 4170).106

Petter Thomassen linked the University College Centre in Nordland to the two regional university colleges in the country that had plans to become a university. This would prove to be crucial. Minister Hernes managed to stop the issue being voted on through an alliance between the Labour Party, the Centre Party and the Christian Democrats Party (Nasjonalbiblioteket 1991, 4170).107 Attempts were made to establish the transitional arrangements through research education in the university college sector. No one, however, advocated or envisioned that the sector boundaries should be erased.108 The goal in Stavanger and Kristiansand was to leave the university college sector and migrate into the university sector. The goal in Bodø was, instead, to maintain the same academic level as equivalent courses and to advance academically to a higher degree.

#### *Two conflicting signals of the university college reform*

The introduction of the University College Reform in 1994 heralded this issue flaring up of once again. The consolidation of the binary education system by the reform sent two conflicting signals. The first was that regional university colleges were to be separated from the university sector and were not to be given the opportunity to transition. The second was that the academic strength of the university colleges was to be raised,109 the university colleges growing closer to the university sector despite the opposite intentions of the reform.

The implementation of the university college reform in Nordland was however an exception, the number of regional university colleges falling not to one but from five to three. Nesna University College and Narvik University College remained independent because higher education regional integration in the county was seen to be impossible. The organising committee appointed in 1991 by the University College Board of Nordland to study the implementation of the reform in the county, stated that the plans for a joint university college (a so-called university college centre) for Nordland 'had to be buried until the geography changes or people can be digitally transported'.110 Campus Mørkved in Bodø was 290 km from Nesna and 300 km and a ferry ride from Narvik.

If the five university colleges in the county had merged, then much management time would have been bound up in solving the regional struggles between academic and vocational professionals in the former university colleges in the regions of Ofoten, Salten and Helgeland. Bodø was, however, now confirmed the centre of higher education in the county. Bodø University College also gained a stronger institutional autonomy than the three university colleges in the town that merged,111 the three university colleges facing the challenge of three autonomous cultures that were to be incorporated into a new identity. Each institute was, at the same time, working to strengthen its academic autonomy. What single identity could manage to embrace such lone wolves? Thomassen's request for a doctorate in business economics and administration at Bodø was more divisive than unifying, the ultimate goal being to separate out the business economics and administration degree into an independent business school. This environment identified with the Bergen School of Business and drew inspiration from Sweden, where the geographical decentralisation of higher education was achieved by the university colleges in Karlstad, Örebro and Växjö changing institutional category to university in 1999 (Lind 2005, 274, 287).

As Fulsås (2000, 394) has pointed out, a joint law for universities and university colleges would give those wanting equal academic conditions for the two institutional categories one more victory (Fulsås 2000, 394). The University Act of 1989 had strengthened the sector boundaries. The chapter in this on degree qualifications and examinations had, however, also been made applicable to the university college sector, which was a first step towards a joint law. The new Universities and University Colleges Act of 1996, which was a result of the University College Reform, allowed university colleges to conduct research programs 'in their special subject areas' (Lovdata 1996, Eriksen 2006, 87) .112 The law, which also defined the vertical divide between the sectors, therefore became a watershed in order to make way for doctoral programs in the university college sector.

#### *The university process begins*

Minister Lilletun was a strong advocate of transitional arrangements between the sectors. The Minister, according to Eriksen (2006, 104) and Fossum (2010 interview), however maintained a low profile externally because the Norgesnettet arrangement required a division of labour and a vertical separation between universities and university colleges. Being seen to actively promote transitional arrangements could be interpreted as undermining the division of labour in Norgesnettet. This could also be a so politically controversial issue that it could undermine the opportunity for new university colleges being permitted to run doctoral programs. The right to award doctoral degrees was seen by those fighting for universities in Agder and Rogaland, as the first step towards university status.

Minister Lilletun referred the issue to the Norgesnett Council, which was appointed in March 1997 and led by Professor Magnus Rindal. The council arose from the merger of previous quality assurance bodies and was responsible for ensuring the division of labour between university colleges and universities in Norgesnettet. Norgesnettet did not, however, have the instruments that were required to maintain the intended division between the sectors.113 It therefore functioned solely as an advisory body to the Ministry. The council also had a quality assurance function and was to determine the academic criteria for different courses. A national arena for regular sector meetings came into being therefore for the first time, so promoting the integration of the field and laying the ground for the voluntary merger in 2000 of the University Council and the University College Council into the University and University College Council.114

Minister Lilletun assured parliament in October 1997 that the awarding of doctoral degrees was 'not very likely'. He stated, however, that he would 'ask the Norgesnett Council to determine the requirements that would have to be met for an academic environment to be allocated doctoral degrees' (Nasjonalbiblioteket (1997–1998), 208, 209).115 This was a strong signal of change in the authority's position. This position was in line with the new law, but was contrary to Hernes' previous political line. This statement therefore represented, according to the then rector of Stavanger University College, a 'softening of Norgesnettet' (Eriksen 2006, 104). This softening meant that Rector Frode Mellemvik and Director Stig Fossum at Bodø University College saw that a future university in the town was now a real possibility. The management, however, kept their intentions to themselves, Minister Lilletun taking the initiative to look at the case, and worked intensely to get the management to take on the challenge.116

The application for a doctoral degree in business economics and administration with an emphasis on innovation and entrepreneurship, was submitted in March 1998, one month after the private 'Bedriftsøkonomisk Institutt' had been granted the right to provide research education in business economics and administration.117 This was a research field in which the university college already had a national hub function in the Norgesnettet.

The University Colleges in Stavanger and Agder submitted their applications to provide doctoral programs shortly after Bodø University College submitted theirs. The university college management in Agder, Rogaland and Nordland now joined forces in an alliance that was called the 'troika' by the Minister, that enabled them to stand stronger in the fight for transitional arrangements. It was by no means pre-ordained that the university college management of Agder and Rogaland would join forces with the management of Bodø University College. The university college environment in Lillehammer was, according to Svein Skjæveland, former Rector of Stavanger University College (2002, 170), initially more relevant. The management at the university colleges in Agder and Rogaland were, however, sceptical about submitting applications for programs for which there were no procedures, Bodø University College applying first for a doctoral program being, according to Skjæveland (2002), a decisive factor in Bodø becoming a part of the alliance.

Norgesnett Council's proposal on the requirements that academic environments had to meet to be awarded doctorates was approved by Minister Lilletun in November 1988. The approval process was, according to Eriksen (2006, 110), simplified significantly by the university colleges being able to base their applications on these doctoral program requirements. Stavanger University College became the country's first regional university college that was given the right to conduct PhD programs, Agder University College being the second. The awarding of doctoral degrees was now not determined by type of institution, a development that was similar to that of the Netherlands (Witte et al. 2008, 222). This was also a first step towards transitional arrangements for changing status from university college to university. Norgesnett Council rejected, however, Bodø University College's application (Haukland 2015, 149).

The start of Bodø University College's university process can be dated to the submission of the application for a doctoral degree in business economics and administration in March 1998. The local press had started writing about the possibility of a university in Bodø the year before. Launching the university process too early could, however, disrupt the second round of the application for a doctoral degree in business economics and administration (Haukland 2015, 147, 185).

The three university colleges in the 'troika' were now, according to Rector Skjæveland (2002, 173) of the University of Stavanger, committed to cooperating in the university process: 'Cooperation with Bodø and Agder was an established understanding. We agreed that all three institutions should support each other and avoid being played off against each other'. The alliance was made up of the three university colleges with the strongest academic drifts in the university college sector. This resulted in a constructive collaboration instead of competition, at a time when competition was growing in the field. According to Scott (2014, 61), increasing competition would have destabilised the institutions in the field, unless regulatory elements were introduced to preserve the status quo. The alliance between the three most important higher education institutions in the higher education sector released the potential that lay in intensified competition, and pushed otherwise impossible transitional arrangements into a reality.

The development bore similarities with that of other European countries. Most reform changes in Germany, France and the Netherlands that weakened the binary education system were, according to Witte et al. (2008), pushed by lower status higher education institutions that wanted to advance higher.

The Mjøs committee was appointed in April 1998 by the Bondevik government, one month after Bodø University College had submitted its first doctoral application.118 The committee was to take a closer look at how quality could be raised in Norwegian higher education, in the context of international developments. European integration in higher education started in the 1960s, and contributed to a stronger focus in the 1990s on the education system's international context.119 According to Gornitzka and Langfeldt (2008, 165), Norway was concerned about falling behind or falling outside the European Community. There was therefore a strong focus on the international reform context throughout the period.120 This was revitalised by France, Germany, Italy and The United Kingdom signing the Sorbonne Declaration on 25 May 1988, the Ministers of the four signatory countries inviting the rest of Europe to establish a joint education area, and led to the initiation of the Bologna process.

Norway became in 1999 a participant in the process to by 2010 harmonise higher education in Europe and to establish a common higher education market. This process did not directly reform European education systems. It did, however, lead to a harmonisation of qualification structures and grading and, according to Witte et al. (2008), also indirectly affected other areas of development in the participating countries. The Bologna Process, however, led to the weakening of sector boundaries in the binary education systems of Europe. Qualifications, grading and quality control were harmonised, the aim of this harmonisation being to establish transitional arrangements between the countries. The process also awoke a stronger need for harmonisation in the higher education field.

Establishing transitional arrangements between the university college sector and the university sector was an unspoken part of the Mjøs committee's work. It was unspoken to ensure doctoral programs at university colleges was not thwarted. Bodø University College kept itself well informed of the processes in the committee. The greatest tension related to how many doctoral degrees the committee decided was the minimum for changing institutional category from university college to university. Could Bodø's single business economics and administration program that was not yet approved, be enough to achieve university status? Rector Frode Mellemvik stated to the local press on the submission of Bodø's application that another solution 'would require intense schooling', as the other academic environments were not strong enough to carry a doctoral degree (Nordlandsposten 18.03.1998, Haukland 2015, 142).

Minister Lilletun, in parliament's Question Time in October 1999, mentioned a future university in Bodø for the first time by highlighting the town as one of three that 'had developed (the university ambition) for the longest period of time'.121 He emphasised the academic quality level requirement as being the determining factor of whether this was possible: 'It is the academic and not the geography or name that will decide this'.122 The management of Bodø University College chose not to comment in the media on this, as the application for a doctoral degree in business economics and administration had not yet been approved.

The right to offer a doctoral degree in business economics and administration had to be in place for a new university in Nordland to provide Minister Lilletun with a district policy alibi for two new universities in the south of Norway. Director Fossum proposed that the Ministry approved the university college's application after it had been rejected by Norgesnett Council. No one in the Ministry was, however, openly willing to sign the application. Lilletun therefore finally asked Secretary of State Svein Helgesen to determine the outcome.123 In February 2000, nine years after Thomassen had in parliament accused his opponents from Nordland of delusions, Minister Lilletun granted Bodø University College the right to a research education program in business economics and administration,124 this political decision being the trigger for the management of Bodø University College announcing plans for a new university (Nordlandsposten 2000, Haukland 2015, 143). Minister Lilletun was the architect of the idea of a university in Bodø, the university processes in Agder and Rogaland serving as a guarantee that transitional arrangements would come into place. The interaction between the local and national level was crucial to the start of Bodø's university process. But how many doctorates would a university status require?

The Mjøs committee, three months later proposed in its recommendation, that university colleges with 'independent responsibility for research education in at least four different subject areas' could change their name to a university (Kirke-, utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet 2000, 49, Utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet 2001).

There was not as much enthusiasm in the new government for the university plans when Minister Giske took over from Lilletun in 2000. Giske thought it was only a theoretical possibility that Bodø would have its own university. He stated to the local press that he was not 'so concerned about a name' (Nordlands Framtid 2000). He, however, found in February/March of the following year a solution to the pressure being applied by the university college sector to establish transitional arrangements. He wanted new university approvals to be based on just one doctorate. This was, however, a solution that only Bodø University College wanted (Nordlands Framtid 2000, Fædrelandsvennen 2001, Eriksen 2006, interview Jahr 2014). The academic professionals behind the application had wanted an independent business school in Bodø from when the business economics and administration program was started. They had the support of Rector Mellemvik, who was a part of the academic college and was involved in drafting the application for a doctoral degree in business economics and administration (Haukland 2015, 142, 14 8, interview Mellemvik 2011). A university status that was based on the right to one doctoral degree finally allowed the split. Minister Giske had, according to Skjæveland (2002, 173), also considered only allowing the transitional scheme to apply to the university colleges in Stavanger, Kristiansand and Bodø. This would permit the vertical divide between the sectors to survive beyond a time-limited period of new universities being founded.

The university sector's opposition to new universities was based on new universities becoming, through this, 'division b universities' so reducing the academic level of the sector. This criticism was clearly directed at the vocational drift the new universities would bring to the university sector. University colleges could offer research education. Transition was therefore just a question of time, the solution to this dilemma therefore being to place new universities into a separate group. New and established universities could be more clearly separated where this separation was based on the provision of just one PhD.125 The two most central stakeholders in the university college sector, at the national level, were at odds with each other in this question. Parliament would not differentiate between new and established universities. The government, however, worked to promote this differentiation, which was expressed in Report to the Storting no. 27 (2000–2001) 'Gjør din plikt – krev din rett. Kvalitetsreform av høyere utdanning' (Do your duty – demand your rights. Quality reform of higher education). The report stated that there was 'no room for additional broad universities beyond the four that exist today' (Utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet 2001, 22, 61).

The majority of the parliamentary committee wanted the Mjøs committee's criteria of four doctoral programs to be used as a basis for university college transition to university status, and this was adopted by parliament on 12 June 2001. A transitional arrangement between the sectors was finally in place.

#### 3.1.6 Sector boundary erosion

Bodø University College wanted to now establish three more doctoral programs, to allow it to apply for university status. The university college did not want to found a broad university like the University of Tromsø or the University of Oslo. The university college's ambition was to become a regional vocational university.

The binary education system consists of a university sector and a university college sector, and does not provide any opportunities to transition between the two. The attempt to consolidate the binary education system through the University College Reform of 1994 and the new law on universities and university colleges two years later, in practice laid the ground for the dissolution of the binary education system, which was brought about by a stronger research focus across the field. Fulsås (2000, 394) claims that the academisation of district university colleges laid the foundation for regional university colleges, '[eroded] the features of the binary system and established a homogeneous system, or …a single division system. A single division system is a single hierarchical system'. The hierarchical education system led to a stronger focus on and demands for research. Academisation had, by the mid-1990s, permeated across the field under the guise of the geographical decentralisation of higher education. This led, towards the end of the period, to a skewing towards a unified education system based on accreditation. This type of education system is characterised by most higher education programs being also offered by universities. Different versions of this system were, according Kyvik (2009, 10, 11, 14), introduced in Spain, the UK, Iceland and Australia through university colleges being accredited as universities, or through different types of university college and university integration.126

A new common law on universities and university colleges in 2005 led to the integration of the field progressing as far as it did.127 No division of labour between the two sectors was defined in the text of this law, the new law therefore contributing to the severe weakening of sector boundaries (Kunnskapsdepartementet 2008, 8). What separated the two sectors now became increasingly difficult to distinguish.

### 3.2 From university college to university (1998–2011)

The management of Bodø University College began working on university plans in 1998. What interaction and what tensions, however, contributed to these plans being realised over the next twelve years? This section takes a closer look at what brought about the successful completion of the university process for Bodø. The development of the university college sector in Norway had, from before the district university colleges existed, followed the general European trend. The European level influenced the development of higher education in Norway more strongly after 1998, and in a way that had a direct effect on the university process in Bodø. This influence was exerted through the direct and indirect consequences of the Bologna process, which represented a continuation of the broad and extensive structural change at the European and national level (Gammelsæter 2002, 10, Neave 2004, 12, Musselin 2004, 37).

#### *The Bologna process: the direct and indirect consequences*

Some parts of the 2003 quality reform were a direct consequence of Norway signing the Bologna Declaration in 1999. One example is the common degree qualification system that was introduced at universities and at university colleges.128 The Norwegian 'Cand. Mag.' qualification was replaced by the shorter bachelor degree, and 'hovedfag' was replaced by the master degree qualification. Rector Mellemvik and Director Fossum stated that this change freed up supervisory capacity and academic development at a higher level, so making it easier to establish new doctoral programs.129 The quality reform also contributed to the integration of and the focus on quality and internationalisation in the field, internationalisation not however being a clearly defined quantity.130 This gave the university college more scope to operate. Cooperation with foreign universities, especially in Russia, strengthened Bodø's identification with the university sector and created a more flexible organisation,131 the institution internationally using the name Bodø Regional University. According to Kyvik (2007, 336), this name symbolised a high academic standard, and promoted the recruitment of many foreign students (Haukland 2015, 111).

Changes directly associated with the Bologna Process opened space for renegotiating sector boundaries in the national binary education system in Norway and in other European countries,132 integration reducing the factors that differentiated the institutions in the two sectors.

The Bologna process indirectly generated institutionalisation processes at the European level that were linked to academic quality assurance. This had major implications for the university process. The need for quality assurance in academia had been problematised for a long period of time, The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in Europe (OECD) pointing out the need for national academic quality standards as early as 1988. The Norwegian higher education institutions continued, however, to bear primary responsibility for academic quality assurance until the Norgesnett Council was established ten years later (Norgesnettrådet 2002, 9).133

A change took place around the turn of the millennium in the standardisation of academic quality in the field of higher education in Europe, that can be described as a paradigm shift. The cultural cognitive element in the field was now weakened in favour of a regulative element in the form of a posteriori accreditation. Scott (2014, 60) views accreditation as being part of the institutions' normative orientation. The accreditation agency was, however, also built on a strong regulative logic.

The European Commission established the European Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) in 2000. This was an indirect consequence of the Bologna process, the objective being a common European education market with common degrees, grading and quality standards by 2010. The process was, according to Kjeldstadli (2010, 96) and Elken and Frølich (2017, 104), used to legitimise a national development that would otherwise have met stronger resistance.134 A national independent supervisory body, the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (Nokut), was established in 2003 based on ENQA's guidelines embodied in the quality reform of the same year.135 Nokut was a result of the interaction between the European and national levels meeting two different local level requirements. The first was the academic quality assurance requirement in the university sector, the second being the transitional arrangements requirement in the university college sector.

The establishment of Nokut resulted in many unintended consequences.136 One consequence, according to Elken and Frølich (2017), was that the road to the university sector became easier for university colleges with university ambitions. An aspect that did change was, however, that the struggle with parliament to establish transitional arrangements was replaced with the struggle to achieve university accreditation from the new accreditation agency. Nokut, unlike the Norgesnett Council, was an autonomous and politically independent body. Professional assessments of the accreditation of educational courses and institutions were now carried out by expert committees based on given criteria. The university process in Bodø therefore changed from being a politically conditioned process, into an academic accreditation issue (Fulsås 2000, interview Rasch 2010). This indicates that the field had moved from a cultural cognitive to a normative basis for institutionalisation. Higher education institutions, including universities, were to now fulfil specific requirements to ensure continued drift. For example, doctoral programs were approved based on clearly defined criteria. This meant that assessment was independent of whether doctoral programs were offered by a university or university college. This is how the new regulative logic came to be applied to the whole field.

A key question here is how the establishment of Nokut affected the university process. To answer this question, we must go back to the time before Nokut existed. The political tug-of-war over the establishment of the accreditation agency created a governance vacuum. This meant that the Norgesnett Council's secretariat formally operated until the new year of 2003. This hesitation around the institutionalisation process was, according to Stjernø (2012, 44), the reason why Bodø University College achieved its university status. The university college gained time from the hesitation, and could start the development of doctoral programs before and while Nokut's regulations and practices were being tested and consolidated.

#### 3.2.1 Nokut and Bodø University College

Nokut also took over responsibility for the quality assurance system of educational activities conducted by higher education institutions. Bodø University College was the first in Norway to apply for approval from its new system. Locally this was seen as a step towards university status,137 the university college's activities having, prior to this, been rooted in an ongoing dialogue with the Ministry. The new quality assurance system was defined but not operationalised in the organisation. The university college management had understood that this was sufficient from their contact with Nokut before submitting the application. The Norwegian education system environment was, however, no longer as easily manipulated by political craftsmanship. The application was rejected in 2004. This came as a surprise to the university college management, who had previously been given the green light to submit an application. The green light had, however, not been given by the expert committee, the body that was ultimately responsibility for assessing the application. This was a new practice that the university college management had not been aware of. Director of Studies Rasch and the management concluded that 'Nokut as a body can say what they want, but the committee is independent'.138 The establishment of Nokut had created a new relationship between the local and national level that was based on fixed criteria instead of informal dialogue.139 This meant a stronger regulative element in the institutions in the field.

#### *The Norwegian university becomes a measurable entity*

Which academic quality requirements university colleges must meet to become a university was still an unanswered question. The institutions in the university college sector where therefore left to answer this question themselves.140 The Universities and University Colleges Act would have to include private higher education institutions if the criteria were to be established. This took place in April 2005 (Lovdata 2005), a regulation for the transition from university college to university status being ready five months later (Lovdata 2005, Nokut 2006, Elken and Frølich 2017).141 The University of Stavanger had been accredited, at this point in time, in October of the year before, Bodø University College also having been awarded a doctoral degree in sociology.

The regulations served as a template for the new university, and for how a university application should be structured. It therefore represented a breakthrough.142 More resources would, according to Rasch (2010 interview), have been required without such a guidance document: "We wrote applications based on what we thought they should contain and submitted them to politicians and the Ministry, that is before Nokut and the accreditation system". The university college established a separate planning and development department in 2007, which focused on complying with Nokut's regulations on university accreditation (Nokut 2006). The University of Agder was established in the same year.143 The university college took measures to improve course credit production, department head Magne Rasch stating that this released between 12 and 15 million Norwegian krone more to the university process (interview 2010).

An increasing number of hybrid organisational practices and more complex organisational identities in the field, according to Stensaker (2006, 43), helped ensure that change processes not only met the administrative function requirements of higher education institutions, but also academic quality and entrepreneurship requirements in the face of stronger competition. There is, in this complexity, a robustness that prevents bureaucratisation mechanisms gaining too much room to manoeuvre, such as through the rule of 'rubber law' (Valen and Katz 1964).144 What was initially called 'the bureaucratic problem' was solved through Nokut's evaluation of higher education institutions and by educational courses being carried out a posterior, i.e. after a development was established. According to Neave (2004, 32), an a priori evaluation would have been equivalent to an even stronger bureaucratisation of the sector.

The establishment of Nokut was nevertheless an expression of stronger regulative elements in the field than before. Competition had destabilised the field, as the partly politically driven certification of institutions had been replaced by a stronger regulative accreditation, to ensure that an institution's future now was being determined by a fixed-criteria based assessment of academic quality, and not political considerations. The dilemma that arises in democratisation processes between democracy and bureaucracy was therefore still relevant, not least in the 'oligarchic problem'. This problem highlights power being accumulated among new elites in the democratisation processes.

#### *The three doctoral programs and Nokut*

The new accreditation agency took time to come into place, so buying the university college valuable time. The doctoral programs in profession praxis and aquatic bioscience, in particular, were dependent on completely new colleges of academic staff being built up, which would then innovate new academic areas. The Centre for Practical Knowledge, which was to develop the doctoral program in profession praxis, was established in the autumn of 2003. The application was not, however, ready until November 2004. It was not until the following year that a master's degree in aquaculture was established, and which a doctorate in aquaculture could build on. This application was submitted in 2007. These and the doctoral degree in sociology benefited from the postponement of the establishment of Nokut, which meant that the university college dealt with an accreditation agency that had no established practices. Bodø University College moved the dialogue to determine the requirements that had to be met at the national level from the Ministry to Nokut's expert committees. Such a dialogue was not formally recognised. Previous practices were, however, through this continued. Contact with an expert committee was the university college's only opportunity to gain crucial advice.

Nokut's expert committees practiced an informal supervisory function until April 2009, when the right to a doctoral program in profession praxis was awarded to Bodø University College (Haukland 2015, 173). The academic environments that applied for accreditation were able to pass an application through a number of application rounds with an expert committee, before the final application was submitted to Nokut's board. This guidance function was crucial to the application process for the doctoral program in sociology, profession praxis and aquaculture (Haukland 2015, 178).145 Nokut's academic committee now submitted its first conclusion directly for a decision by Nokut's board, so closing dialogue with the national level.146 Bodø University College had used the time-limited room given by the setting up of the new accreditation agency, to develop the new university's doctoral programs. This was not the result of an ambiguous and vague reform. It was due to a completely new institution in the field providing a greater scope for institutional transformation in the establishment phase than was originally intended.147

The accreditation agency was important to the university process, because it united the central administration and the scientific staff in a common goal of achieving university status. They worked closely together on the development of the doctoral programs up to 2009, and on meeting Nokut's requirements.148 The management wanted to build a robust institution with strong institutional autonomy. The former vocational college faculties considered this an opportunity to win back the academic autonomy they lost in the merger of 1994, because university status gave the right to establish new masters and doctoral degree programs. Hence separate doctoral degree programs in nursing and teaching could be achieved. The Bergen School of Business also wanted this, after the battle to become a separate university was lost. The accreditation agency therefore drew the university college together internally.

The universities and university colleges had now become of a comparable size. They could be ranked by a common set of criteria, which meant a hierarchisation of the field, institutional diversity giving way to ever stronger competition. The hierarchisation of the field, according to Fulsås (2000, 396), allowed the best institutions to qualify for university title. A key prerequisite for ensuring that the hierarchy was correct was a stronger regulative element that ensured equal treatment and academic quality.

### 3.3 Summary of the analysis (1965–2011)

The analysis has shown how district university colleges with university plans contributed to the establishment of the sector boundaries in Norwegian higher education, and to these being changed over time. The integration processes in the field extend back to the establishment of the district university colleges, but were reinforced after the 1994 University College Reform.

The democratisation of knowledge was the starting point for growth in the field and the change processes this generated. A regionally based academic drift, the desire for stronger institutional autonomy, and that a common academic quality requirement for both sectors were key driving forces. Vocational drift and stronger academic quality assurance requirements from the university sector acted as the strongest counter forces. This development strongly affected the sector boundaries and therefore Bodø University College's prerequisites for achieving university status.

The analysis shows that relations between the local and national level affected development in ways that were not initially intended. The same was true for the integration processes at the European level (Pierson 1996, 123, 157; 2000, 72, 86). Nordland County Municipality, the University College Board of Nordland and parliament played an important role in institutional development in Bodø. The original intention behind establishing the district university colleges was, according to Wold Johnsen (1999, 134), 'to break up the rigidity of existing educational patterns and create institutions that could change both themselves and their relationships with society'. This was achieved, but in a way that called for and challenged the sector boundaries in the field. The struggle for transitional arrangements encouraged reforms that would stop the founding of more universities, but instead led to an erosion of the sector boundaries and made the establishment of transition opportunities inevitable. The Norwegian binary education system had developed towards a unified education system.

Studies have shown that various forms of quality assurance and accreditation facilitate major change processes in education systems. Quality assurance has therefore been highlighted as 'the most potent of change agents (Kogan and Hanney (2000, 240) in Stensaker 2006, 44).

The reform changes unfolded gradually in the field up until 1994. It had been shown in other European countries that gradual change lead to less resistance, and more room for manoeuvre than all changes being introduced at the same time. The unintended consequences of this are also known. The international orientation around the millennium also legitimised (through the Bologna process) a higher national reform pace and a larger national reform breadth (Stensaker 2006, Witte et al. 2008, 219, 228).

There were two factors that contributed in particular to the increase in the pace of reform of higher education in Norway. One was the relationship between the state and the field, which was characterised throughout the period by consensus and dialogue, the important key role of the Minister of Education in this being a moderator of contact between the sectors. The second factor was a growing international perspective, especially from the 1990s, that legitimised the authorities' national reforms and strengthened the relationship between higher education institutions and society. Key stakeholders at the European level were the OECD, the EU and ENQA.

The quality reform first and foremost affected the university process through the establishment of Nokut. This accreditation agency was an indirect consequence of the Bologna process, the integration of the field with joint sector arenas contributing to a common understanding that the quality assurance of university colleges, education systems and the accreditation agency would be moved out of the Ministry. Nokut defined the Norwegian university as a measurable quantity for the first time in 2005, which contributed to the last part of the university process being highly targeted. The Norgesnett Council, the University and University College Council and Nokut were key to this development at the national level.

The European integration process began before the Bologna process started. Nevertheless, this process increased the pace and breadth of integration, and indirectly allowed the facilitation of new Norwegian universities, because it added a stronger international focus that created a new scope for institutional growth. The university title was now available to qualified university colleges. This resulted in the establishment of the University of Stavanger in 2005, the University of Agder in 2007 and the University of Nordland in 2011. The new universities did not operate in a binary system with clear sector boundaries, as the 'troika' had initially envisioned. Universities and university colleges had to now accept that the requirement for quality had been moved out of the institutions themselves and the Ministry, and into Nokut an independent body. The university as a symbol and identity marker had undergone a de-institutionalisation process in which norms and rules played a major role, so allowing university colleges to be institutionalised into the university sector a posteriori. The university status was therefore, to a certain extent, filled with new content.

## CHAPTER 4 THE KEY DRIVERS AND TENSIONS OF THE ANALYSIS

What are the most important factors that led to Bodø University College being accredited as a university on 1 January 2011? We, through using a longer time span, can isolate three strong driving forces in the development of higher education, which were also crucial to Nordland gaining its own university.

The first strong driving force was the *growth* in the field throughout the period. This created a need for structural changes, growth being a result of the democratisation of knowledge. The expansion of the upper secondary schools led to a sharp increase in the number of students, leading to the challenge of a shortage of study places, which was primarily solved through establishing the regional university colleges. The second strong driving force was the *academic drift* among academic staff outside of the university sector, in particular in the new district university colleges where the staff was largely made up of academics with a university degree. The third driving force that propelled the processes was a largescale *standardisation process*. This was triggered by the growth of higher education and its geographical decentralisation, and was reinforced by an ever-increasing need for quality assurance. Standardisation furthermore led to the integration of the field that defined and challenged the sector boundaries throughout the period.

These driving forces were not, however, alone in determining the direction of development. The three driving forces, as Smelser (1973) has pointed out, instead constituted dynamics of change in the field that gave rise to and structured new conflict patterns and tensions. Tensions that were brought into play led to a development in which results that differed from those originally intended, were created by reform changes. Growth, academic drift and standardisation created and maintained three strong tensions throughout the period. These gave Bodø University College the opportunity to become the University of Nordland.

#### *The most striking tension was between the national and regional level.*

Tension rose between the national and regional level due to national education policy coming into conflict with regional development needs. The regional governance level that was established in the 1970s never achieved its intended role. It was weakened, and the regional university college boards also focused on regional interests. The goal of higher education in the regions was not just securing highly skilled labour and academic development, but also economic and demographic growth, reputation building, identity, geographical decentralisation and a logic of equality in which the districts were also to be included. The regional governance level therefore functioned as a buffer for the academisation of the university colleges to the national level.

The tension between the national and regional levels was also shown in the tug-of-war over what a Norwegian university should be. Could Norwegian universities be established based on geographical decentralisation and achieve regional affiliation? Or should they primarily serve national interests? Strong regional alliances helped open up new areas of action at the national level for regional universities.

The alliance between the regional level and parliament was a decisive factor in how this tension affected this development. Regional development and growth repeatedly prevailed over the demand from the government and Ministry for clear distinctions between the sectors. Opponents of regional universities also backed many of the reform changes. The strongest breakthrough for the regional level was, however, Minister Lilletun putting regional universities for the first time on a Norwegian government's agenda. The national level also wanted stronger cooperation and a clearer division of labour in the field. The dilemma between the need to differentiate between the sectors and the need for cooperation between them kept the tension between the regional and national level alive.

#### *The other tension of importance to the establishment of the University of Nordland was the tension between academic and vocational drift.*

There were two conflicting educational cultures in the university college sector prior to the university college reform. Vocational education had a longer history, a strong profession identity and was anchored in the field of practice, these being the hallmarks of a vocational drift that contrasted the educational culture of the new district university colleges. The staff of these university colleges were academics who primarily identified with the universities. The university colleges were therefore characterised by academic drift. This tension led to the district university colleges not exercising the coordinating role for higher education in the county as originally intended, and the regional university college boards never successfully integrating the sector at the regional level.

Vocational drift, which acted as a counter force to academic drift, was confined to separate university colleges prior to the university college reform of 1994. When the schism between vocational and academic drift became released by the inclusion of both in the sector, academic drift had become so strong that it could not be countered.

The district university colleges therefore gained greater scope for academisation than originally intended. The new university colleges would have converged less towards the universities if the integration of the university college sector had taken place earlier.

#### *The last tension, between democratisation and standardisation, should be highlighted because it created a dynamics of change that directly affected the founding of the University of Nordland.*

Growth was an expression of a democratisation of knowledge, a broad proportion of the population having access to higher education, including citizens in the districts. This growth also, however, created new demands. Student rights were to be safeguarded, and equal treatment was to be ensured. The university sector demanded that university college teaching was at the same level as university teaching. How could these demands be met in an ever-growing field of major reform changes? Quality was increasingly converted into quantitative terms, in line with the main European processes of the OECD, EU, the Bologna process and obligations to ENQA's program. The solution was a standardisation process that included academic quality at the interface between the field's internal and external logic. Research quality and state priorities could both be safeguarded by the accreditation agency.

The power to define quality was eventually moved out of the Ministry and the higher education institutions, and into an independent body, the newly created NOKUT. Assessments were no longer based on being equal among peers, but of being assessed by the professionals of an independent body outside of higher education and national education politics. Nokut was also required to be accredited by ENQA every five years, to be certified as a European accreditation body. National control of development was therefore weakened and the sector boundaries were eroded.

A well-known Weberian dilemma arose in the tension between democratisation and standardisation, due to democratisation processes requiring organisation and therefore the delegation of power from those who democratisation is to benefit, to a bureaucracy that is to ensure efficiency and equal treatment. One challenge presented by the new education system was that decision power and organising authority was transferred from students and collegiates of academic staff, to the higher education institution's central management. A democratic ideal of participation was therefore sacrificed to allow equality to be secured by a democratic ideal based on representativeness. The aim of the Bologna process was to strengthen the autonomy of higher education institutions, which many interpreted as a strengthening of the academic staff's academic and administrative autonomy. Two new centres of power in academia, largely governed by rules, arose: the central administration of higher education institutions and Nokut. The dilemma has no final solution. It is instead a permanent issue in the field, and will continue to be as long as higher education is a right of the many and not a privilege of the few.

It is a paradox that the transition to a stronger central administration of higher education institutions, and the setting up of the accreditation agency were decisive factors in Bodø University College achieving its university process goal. It gave the institution space to manoeuvre and more predictable criteria, these defining the 'steps' up the new hierarchy in the field to cross the sector boundaries.

## A THREE DIMENSIONAL THEORETIC FRAMEWORK OF UNDERSTANDING

### Introduction

There is, as mentioned in the introduction to Chapter 1, a need for a common theoretical framework within the sociology of higher education. The field of research is fragmented and lacks a common conceptual framework. One possible solution is to establish a common theoretical framework of understanding that facilitates comparison and a deeper understanding of the dynamics of change in the field of higher education. Part I of this book is primarily from my doctoral dissertation work which was completed in December 2018. From this work grew an ever-increasing awareness of how conceptual understanding and theories in the sociology of higher education lacked one dimension: the impact of society through demands for efficiency and quality assurance. This dimension is associated with the tension between democratisation and standardisation, which was highlighted in Chapter 4.

The introduction chapter also highlights that the university always has existed in the field of tension between an inner logic of its own, and an external logic from the relationship with the state and society. The external logic is often omitted in the analysis of the sociology of higher education. Martin Trow (1974, 3) argued however, in the early 1970s, that society would exert an increasing influence on developments in higher education, as higher education for the many required greater investment in the field. Few attempts have been made to implement this third dimension in the definitions of concepts in higher education and the subsequent analysis of developments. Higher education systems and higher education reforms are still primarily analysed along two dimensions. Trow's point, even though it was only an assumption, was the impetus for my three-dimensional understanding of the field.

The point in time at which I truly saw this was so late in my doctoral dissertation work, that I did not have the opportunity to present an explicit three-dimensional theoretical understanding in the theory chapter of the introductory part of my doctoral thesis (University of Nordland. 'Spenninger og samspill i en høgskolesektor'. (Tensions and interactions in a university college sector) (Haukland 2018b)), which is presented in an edited form in Chapter 1 of this book. The analysis in Chapter 3 is, however, written based on an implicit three-dimensional framework of understanding. The third dimension in higher education analysis is the focus of Part II, the third dimension being highlighted more explicitly. The topic of Part II is therefore a three-dimensional theoretical framework of understanding in the higher education field, and is based on the theory presented in Chapter 1.

The need for a new theoretical understanding is becoming increasingly pressing. Most previous concepts and models are structured along two dimensions, research therefore mainly uncovering the relationship between the state and higher education institutions, and between the higher education institutions themselves. This is despite this relationship being in recent decades challenged by a third dimension: the relationship between higher education institutions and by society. All three dimensions have undergone fundamental change due to major and more frequent reforms in the field of higher education (Witte, Wende and Huisman, *Blurring boundaries*, 229). The role of society has become established in a new and stronger way, so making it an influencal actor in the field. It should today be considered as being crucial to forming an overall picture of higher education in Europe. This highlights a need for a new theoretical understanding to uncover the new complexity and the new dilemmas at play in the field. This understanding is not only a necessary tool for researchers, managers in higher education and politicians. It is also crucial for academic staff, in order to gain a deeper understanding of the changes in the field.

This part presents such a three-dimensional understanding of the higher education field. The developments that led to a number of new Norwegian universities, as presented in Chapters 3 and 4, will serve as a case here. Such an understanding allows concepts to be defined and development to be explored in a fundamentally new way.

Part II consists of two chapters. Chapter 5 uncovers the weaknesses of a two-dimensional theoretical understanding framework, and the relationships in the higher education field that constitute a potential third dimension. Chapter 6 presents a synthesis of the theory in Chapter 1 and the analysis in Chapter 3. This synthesis constitutes a three-dimensional theoretical framework of understanding in the field of higher education. The chapter also describes how this understanding framework was developed, and places the analysis in Part I into this frame, through presenting later studies conducted by the author based on the synthesis and the empirical data used by the analysis in Part I. This is the central issue of Part II and III:

### *How does a three-dimensional theoretical framework of understanding affect the analysis of the field of higher education?*

The justification and a proposal for a three-dimensional theoretical understanding of the field are presented in the following, and some examples of how this can be used and what it can illuminate are given.

In order to answer this research question, Part II and III presents a synthesis of the theory and analysis of Part I in the form of a three-dimensional theoretical framework of understanding in the field of higher education. This can provide an expanded and deeper understanding of how the relationships between higher education institutions and the state, and between these institutions and society, can influence the development of the field. My hope is also that this three-dimensional theoretical understanding will make complex relationships and change dynamics more accessible to researchers and stakeholders. In Chapter 6 I provide a number of examples of how such a theoretical starting point highlights new dimensions in the analysis of developments in the field of higher education. Chapter 3 integrates the local, regional, national and European level in a joint analysis, to determine the change dynamics that were at play at each level, and between the levels, in the process that led to the founding of the University of Nordland. This is presented here in an explicit three-dimensional understanding framework to demonstrate how this affects analysis in the field.

## CHAPTER 5 NEED FOR A NEW THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK OF UNDERSTANDING

Chapter 5 examines a two-dimensional understanding of the higher education field and how this understanding falls short when tensions and dynamics of change are analysed. The examination is based on experiences with the analysis of the emergence of the University of Nordland described in Part I. The need for a three-dimensional theoretical framework of understanding is therefore brought to the fore by describing the change dynamics generated by society's growing influence during the university process, at the regional, national and European level. The relationship between higher education institutions and society represent the third dimension of the analysis.

### 5.1 A two-dimensional framework of understanding

Development in the wake of reforms in the higher education field has previously been analysed along two dimensions. The lack of a third dimension in concepts and analysis tools has, however, led to key change dynamics not being illuminated.

Examples of the influence of regional, national and European integration processes on autonomy, hierarchy and accreditation are presented in the following. The main focus within autonomy has been higher education institutions' struggle for independence and the state being a decisive factor in determining their room for manoeuvre or autonomy. The hierarchisation of higher education institutions is a process which builds and strengthens a hierarchical regime between higher education institutions, as opposed to the alternative state-regulated division of labour between them. Hierarchisation is therefore considered to be a result of academic drift. The introduction of higher education institution accreditation has been considered to be an expression of the state's quality assurance of the education system. These three integration processes are seen to be the result of tensions along two dimensions: the relationship of higher education institutions to each other and to the state, as shown in Figure 5.1 and Table 5.1.

Figure 5.1 Institutional positions in higher education systems I. Based on Bleiklie 2004 (figure 1).

Table 5.1 Focus areas in the analysis of central integration processes using a two-dimensional theoretical understanding framework (See Table 7.1 for focus areas in a three-dimensional theoretical understanding framework).

The analysis of the university process which led to the University of Nordland being founded in 2011, shows that the institution gained more than a university status. The exploration and explanation of new aspects of the Norwegian higher education system, in order to develop an understanding of the effect of European, national and regional integration processes on the university process in Bodø, has been testing. One major challenge has been that analytical concepts changed as society increasingly played a crucial role in the development of the field. Because of this, terms cannot be defined in the same way as they were previously. There is therefore a gap between the European integration processes per se and our understanding of them.

### 5.2. A three dimensional framework of understanding

Key development features of the higher education field are presented in the following, to substantiate the three-dimensional framework of understanding as a beneficial analytical tool. Two development features are highlighted, which reinforce the third dimension. They are the national and institutional integration of the field.

### *Three dimensional national integration*

Teichler (2005, 466) argues that models that describe the development of higher education 'top-down' can not explain the growing complexity and the increasing social significance of higher education after 1990 (Kyvik 2009, 33). The field's increasing complexity is one reason why field development did not lead to heterogenisation. 'Top-down' models do not, for example, satisfactorily explain the relationship between regional higher education institutions and national key actors (Kyvik 2009, 33). Trow's (1974) analysis was, however, based on an American context, which is dominated by private educational institutions. The European situation is fundamentally different, most educational institutions being state owned. State ownership created a development that was driven by the principle of equality and the requirement for academic quality, as opposed to a heterogenisation of the field (Trow 1974, 58). A key question therefore is how can the complexity of the higher education field be analysed.

#### *Greater institutional integration*

According to Bleiklie (2003, 346), the strengthening of the relationships between higher education institutions led to institutional integration, through the introduction of 'common public, legislative and budgetary systems' within one sector or the entire field. Integration has also resulted in greater dependence on the state, the authorities choosing the way the relationship between the institutions is organised (Ibid.). The relationship between higher education institutions and the authorities, according to Gornitzka (1999, 22), functions as an intermediary, a limitation and a facilitator of the formulation of policy and institutions' responses to this. The authorities' influence on the relationship between higher education institutions in Norway has, according to Bleiklie (2003), taken form through a strengthening of management at the individual education institution, and through creating systems for the evaluation and accreditation of institutions.

The development of the knowledge society means that higher education institutions have become a part of a stronger interaction with society, creating a development in which society and institutions mutually influence each other. This shift can be explained by the growth in the number of students and academic staff increasing the pressure on the institutions to benefit society (Trow 1974). Different stakeholders in society, according to Bleiklie (2003), exert different types of pressure, the pressure being in a specific direction – science becomes both more research orientated and more anchored in society. The strength of the relationship between higher education institutions and society is dependent on whether quality assurance is managed by the institutions or by external quality assurance bodies.

The complex interaction between society, higher education institutions and the state has led, according Bleiklie (2003), to relationships between higher education institutes increasingly taking a hierarchical form. Integration affects all interaction and its relationships. Little can therefore be derived from examining the relationship between the institutions, the relationship between the state and the institutions, and between the institutions and society as isolated processes. This complex interaction is instead a three-dimensional complexity in which the three are connected to each other to varying degrees.

There are therefore reasons to claim that a three-dimensional theoretical approach will help concepts and analysis reflect and explain the dynamics of change in the field of higher education.

We must, if we are to fill the gap between integration processes in the higher education field and our understanding of them, therefore develop definitions of these processes along three instead of two dimensions. This will allow us to analyse a more complex field. New definitions of key terms that refer to all three axes will open up a three-dimensional space that can be explored and can therefore enhance our understanding of the dynamics of change, and uncover new dilemmas in the field.

A new theoretical approach along three axes will, in sum, strengthen the understanding of change dynamics and dilemmas, and serve as a tool for analysing the increasing complexity of the higher education field in the present and throughout history. It will open up new opportunities to understand and analyse changes in the relationship between higher education institutions, between them and the state, and between these institutions and society. Appropriate tools for analysing changes in the higher education field can therefore be developed in this way. The researcher's awareness of the third dimension will help ensure that concepts, theories and analysis are more precise.

The relationship between higher education institutions, between these and the state, and between the institutions themselves, strengthened in the period covered in Part I. The relationship between higher education institutions and society is, however, a dimension that was previously not considered to be as important as the relationship between higher education institutions and between these institutions and the state. Bleiklie's two-dimensional figure (Bleiklie 2004, figure 1), as Bleiklie (2004) himself called, needs to be developed if we are to be able to analyse the growing complexity of the field that this has created. As shown by Figure 5.2 and 5.3, a stronger relationship with society has strengthened the three-dimensionality in higher education relationships.

**a. HEIs relation to each other**

Figure 5.2 Higher education institution relationships along three axes, as a starting point for defining concepts and developing the analysis of the dynamics of change in the field of higher education. a. Relationships between higher education institutions, b. Relationships between higher education institutions and the state and c. Relationships between higher

We can develop a new figure based on Figure 5.2, that shows the institutional positions of higher education institutions in relation to the a, b and c axes – as a whole and individually. The point of origin represents a theoretically possible missing relation along each axis. The distance from the origin defines how strong the relations of a, b and c are, as shown in Figure 5.3.

Figure 5.3 Institutional positions in higher education systems II. Based on Bleiklie 2004 (figure 1), Stensaker 2006, Kyvik 2009. The letter W at the origin stands for weak and S on the axes stands for stronger relation. W and S also apply to other figures where not specified.

The axes in Figure 5.3 indicate a continuum from a weak to a strong relation, the three-dimensional space between the axes indicating possible positions for individual higher education institututions. Viewing higher education institutions as two-dimensional quantities, defined by their relationship to each other and to the state, is here also defined based on their relationship to society. This underscores the increasing complexity of the field. There are infinitely more positions in the space between the three axes in Figure 5.3 than in the two dimensional model of Figure 5.1. Figure 5.3 therefore shows that analysis in the field must address the strength of higher education institutions' relationships to the state, society and other higher education institutions. This figure is the foundation for all the three-dimensional figures in the remainder of Part II. Concepts and analysis can be developed in three dimensions in the higher education field, based on Figure 5.3.

Figure 5.3 is a tool for simplifying a complex reality. Synthesising between the theory in Chapter 1 and the analysis in Chapter 3 leads to the emergence of an empirically based theory that provides an understanding of development through three relations, as shown by figure 5.3. Concepts are defined using three relations, to allow a richer picture of development to be drawn. This leads to new questions and illuminates new dilemmas. The answers to these questions and the tensions that unfold in the light of the dilemmas are, however, not along the three axes, but in the space between them. Analysis conducted using a three-dimensional theoretical framework of understanding is, like any theoretical approach, a simplification of reality that focuses on certain aspects of development. This can be compared to adding a filter to a digital image, so masking everything except the main features.

A two-dimensional theoretical framework of understanding is, even so, still both a beneficial and desirable tool, as it draws out other themes and questions. The two different frames do not exclude, but complement each other. A two-dimensional and a three-dimensional framework of understanding are both, however, strengthened by applying definitions along all three axes in Figure 5.3. This will make the researcher more aware of the interfaces (the area defined by a and b, a and c, or b and c in Figure 5.3) on which a development is analysed, and will reveal whether a third dimension will, over time, play a stronger or weaker role in the analysis theme and issue.

## CHAPTER 6 TOWARDS A THREE DIMENSIONAL THEORETIC FRAMEWORK OF UNDERSTANDING

The analysis and conclusion of Chapters 3 and 4, as earlier mentioned, implicitly bear a three-dimensional understanding of the dynamics of change in the field that led to the University of Nordland being founded. A recurring challenge in these chapters was that the concepts did not accommodate the actual development. The real issues were obscured by a conceptual understanding and analysis tradition that was largely two dimensional (see Figure 5.1). Towards the end of my doctoral dissertation work, it became increasingly clear to me how this obscuring masked key topics, issues and dilemmas in the higher education field. I therefore included the relationship between higher education institutions and society in the analysis (Chapter 3) and the conclusion (Chapter 4). Time was, however and as mentioned in the introduction to Part II, too short to expand on a three-dimensional theoretical framework of understanding of the field.

Three driving forces were highlighted in part I as being crucial to the university process in Bodø. The *growth* in the number of students, academic staff and higher education institutions was a result of the democratisation of knowledge, the relationship between higher education institutions and society gradually becoming stronger in the wake of this democratisation process, so allowing regional development needs to prevail in the field. The second driving force, *standardisation*, resulted in an independent accreditation agency, also strengthening this relationship. The standardisation of the field was also the result of the relationship between higher education and the state. The principle of equality was prominent in the first part of period, the driving of the university process by the need for efficiency being prominent in the last part of the period. The third driving force, *academic drift*, affected the relationship between higher education institutions, and was a result of the struggle for university colleges to be accredited as universities.

The tensions, because they played out in a three-dimensional space where relationships encountered each other, are complex and multifaceted. Tensions which affected the relationship between higher education institutions and the state (more precisely between the national and regional levels) were centred on the geographical decentralisation of the universities and the university colleges' opportunity for academic drift. Tensions related to academic drift manifested in a different way, in the relationship between higher education institutions, the tension between academic and vocational drift dominating particularly before the quality reform. The third dimension highlights the relationship between higher education institutions and society, in which growth played a major role. Tension between national and regional levels in relation to regional development needs, was also prominent.

The analysis in Part I also highlights an increasing tension between democratisation and standardisation. This largely passed below the radar, due to an established two-dimensional theoretical framework of understanding. Examining all three dimensions more closely therefore shed new light onto the dilemma between these two driving forces.

The standardisation processes were, in the relationship between higher education institutions and the state, largely motivated by the principle of equality and the need for efficiency. Standardisation of the field was, for higher education institutions, largely about protecting or pushing sector boundaries. This however was, in the relationship between higher education institutions and society, about depoliticising decision-making processes related to quality in academia through the establishment of an independent body, Nokut. This would ensure that society's large investment in higher education achieved the greatest rational return possible. The analysis in Part I can be summarised in Figure 6.1.

The diverse and new themes and dilemmas raised by the development in the field, with the exception of the dilemma between democratisation and standardisation, have not been highlighted by the driving forces and tensions. Some of these will therefore be presented here in Part II (see Tables 6.1 and 7.1).

Figure 6.1 Central driving forces in the higher education field during the Bodø university process. Presentation of Chapter 4 (Part I) as translated into a three-dimensional theoretical framework of understanding based on Figure 5.3.

I have, after completing my doctoral dissertation in December 2018, expanded upon different aspects of a three-dimensional understanding, which I will present in the following.

In the chapter 'Et paradigmeskifte sett nordfra' (A paradigm shift as seen from the north) in the anthology 'Geografi, kunnskap, vitenskap. Den regionale UH-sektorens framvekst og betydning'(Geography, knowledge, science. The growth and significance of the regional higher education sector) published by Cappelen Damm in 2019, I have described how a stronger third dimension in the Norwegian higher education field led to a shift from a geographical to an academic paradigm (Haukland 2019).

Regional development of higher education was seen, under the geographical paradigm, as the fulfilment of young people's rights, as a guarantee of highly skilled labour in the districts and as part of regional knowledge development. Geography became a subordinate issue, quantitative academic quality goals then playing a decisive role under the academic paradigm that evolved following the establishment of Nokut. This chapter shows how higher education in Norway has progressed from an organic order with a division of labour both within and between the sectors, to a hierarchical order dominated by mergers and competition between higher education institutions. 'Et paradigmeskifte sett nordfra' (A paradigm shift as seen from the north) is the product of my work on the book 'Lærerutdanninga på Nesna 1918–2018' (Teacher training at Nesna 1918-2018) published by Museumsforlaget in 2018, and which formed the foundation for examining the development at Bodø University College from a new geographic and institutional perspective. The chapter focuses on how the third dimension, the relationship between higher education institutions and society, is institutionalised through quality assurance.

The chapter 'Bologna, Nokut og Universitetet i Nordland' (Bologna, Nokut and the University in Nordland) in the anthology 'Nord og verden' (The North and the World) published by Orkana Akademisk (Haukland 2020b), highlights the historical development behind this paradigm shift. This shift is the introduction of an independent body outside the Ministry, which quality assures higher education through a posteriori evaluation. The establishment of Nokut was a direct result of European integration processes in the field, and the relationship with society becoming stronger and more binding. The analysis shows that the third dimension has contributed to a depoliticising of the field. What was initially a democratisation of higher education is today less affected by electoral power and the participation of academic staff.

The paper 'The Bologna Process and HEI's Institutional Autonomy' published in the Athens Journal of Education (Haukland 2020a, see Appendix 1) explores the development of higher education institutional autonomy through the use of the three dimensional framework of understanding. This approach changes the focus from an analysis of whether the autonomy of university colleges and universities has been strengthened or weakened, to a closer examination of what form of autonomy in higher education institutions is affected. Uncovering a strengthening of autonomy then adds depth to the analysis by allowing a closer look at where in the institution autonomy is strengthened, and how relationships with other higher education institutions, the state and society are affected by this development. The paper is an example of an analysis along three axis of the field, in which different forms of autonomy emerge. The paper is reproduced in full in Appendix 1 as an example of an analysis based on a three-dimensional framework of understanding. I will shed light on why such an analysis is important in the following, through highlighting some of the findings of the paper.

The relationship between the state and the institutions is firstly defined by the institutions' substantivist autonomy, which includes what they are to do and their procedural autonomy, defined by how they carry out their mission (Torjesen et al. 2017, 80). This shows that higher education institutions operate as independent and dependent stakeholders in the field. These two are rarely differentiated in research. Torjesen et al. (2017) have helped highlight this distinction, which is important if the increasing complexity of relationships in the field is to be understood. There is a substantial difference between being autonomous in relation to your role and being autonomous in how you implement this role. Institutional autonomy is often referred to, in public documents and research, as a procedural autonomy (Sørheim 1973, 44, Trow 1974, Kyvik 1999, Wold Johnsen 1999, 224, Fulsås 2000, Kirke-, utdanningsog forskningsdepartementet 2000, Kunnskapsdepartementet 2008a).

The relationship between the state and higher education institutions is, secondly, defined by where autonomy in the organisation is located, or who holds the autonomy. Professional autonomy is defined by academic staff having the power to make decisions. Administrative autonomy is defined by the majority of decision-making power being held by the organisation's central administration (Etzioni 1964 in Schmidtlein and Berdahl 2011, 70). The different types of institutional autonomy therefore illuminate different dimensions, as shown in Figure 6.2 as taken from 'The Bologna Process and HEI's Institutional Autonomy' (Haukland 2020a, see Appendix 1).

The different types of institutional autonomy presented in the paper show the independence of higher education institutions from the state, society and each other. This can challenge academic freedom. Professional autonomy is, according to Schmidtlein and Berdahl, not equivalent to academic freedom: 'academic freedom as a concept is universal and absolute, whereas autonomy is, of necessity, parochial and relative' (2011, 71). Loss of professional autonomy is therefore not equivalent to the loss of academic freedom (O'Neil 2011, 91).

Figure 6.2 Different types of institutional autonomy in higher education systems. Based on van Vught, 1996; Schmidtlein & Berdahl, 2011; Torjesen, Hansen, Pinheiro & Vrangbæk, 2017. Source: Haukland 2020a, figure 1 (see Appendix 1). Reproduced with permission.

Understanding that academic freedom is not necessarily threatened if professional autonomy is weakened, is fundamental. Academic staff can lose their power to make decisions without this weakening their individual academic freedom. It can, on the contrary, lead to academic freedom being even more protected, because differences of opinion and other conflicts between academic staff do not have the same consequences upon employment relationships or other administrative issues (O´Neil 2011). Scientific staff can, in such a system, also attend to their own research interests independently of their colleagues.

A weakening of substantivist autonomy does, however, challenge academic freedom through increasing integration in the higher education field. The institutions do not define their roles to the same extent, even though they have been given greater authority to decide how these are executed. Academic freedom does, however, come under pressure when higher education institutions, and therefore also academic staff, lose their power to define what their work is to consist of through the weakening of their substantivist autonomy. This is not, however, an unambiguous picture.

### 6.1 The impact of integration on social order

Three-dimensionality captures conditions that relate to the autonomy of higher education institutions and the social orders within which they operate. Bleiklie (2004) has shown that the stronger the relationship is between a higher education institution and the state, the less autonomy the institution has in decision making and in the relationship of the institution with other higher education institutions. A higher education institution goes from being part of an autonomous order, to being part of a heteronomous order. The stronger the relationship between a higher education institution and other higher education institutions is, the stronger the hierarchical order between them. The organic order is therefore weakened (Bleiklie 2004, figure 1). These two dimensions tell, however, little about the institutions' relationship to society.

The education system is characterised by an organic order if the relationship between higher education institutions and society is weak. The system is, where this relationship is strong, however characterised by an 'output' order of accreditation and funding based on research production and candidate production. This is in addition to external accreditation and funding.

We see that when higher education institutions are defined using a three-dimensional relationship, that dichotomies are not able to fully describe the development in the period, as pointed out by Stensaker (2006). A picture is formed, based on the different types of autonomy, of different social orders as a perception internally in higher education institutions, in the relationships between higher education institutions, and in the relationships between theses institutions, the state and society.

The higher education system consists of different combinations of a hierarchical order. Academic status therefore determines institution ranking and an organic order in which relationships between institutions are defined by functions and roles through specialisation (Bleiklie 2003, 341).

If the institutions' relationship with society at both the local and national level (and what characterises them) are included, then a three-dimensional understanding of the integration will emerge in which social orders operate 'with conflicting principles' (Bleiklie 2003, 345), as shown by Figure 6.3.

Figure 6.3 Social orders in higher education systems (based on Bleiklie 2004, figure 1).

The strengthening of relations along three axes created dynamics which opened up new scopes for the higher education institutions to act. The relationship between the state and the higher education institutions is primarily influenced by the degree of institutional autonomy types, and the degree of heterogenisation, in which the state exercises decision-making power and higher education institutions have limited autonomy (Bleiklie 2003).

The relationship between institutions is primarily affected by the relationship between an organic and a hierarchical order in the education system, which has increasingly become an object of state control (Bleiklie 2003). The relationship between the institutions and society is characterised by the degree to which the institution is adapted to the needs of the labour market. This characterises an organic order, and how well they are adapted to an integrated education market in an 'output' order. They are also affected by whether quality assurance takes place inside the institution (organic) or outside ('output'), by the extent to which the institution is run through the use of state or external funding and how strong the 'third mission' is in the higher education institution ('output' order). An administrative order is characterised by the management having administrative and procedural autonomy.


The relationships can be schematically presented as shown in Table 6.1 below.

Table 6.1 Relationships between Norwegian higher education institutions, the state and society. Key characteristics and social orders

The different social orders, according for example to Thornton and Ocassio (2008), operate as institutional logics in the field. These, according to Musselin (1999), promote the interests of different groups, the dynamics of change through this arising. They can be informal, as for example in perceptions and established practices, or formal as in laws and regulations.

We have here seen how a three-dimensional theoretical framework of understanding highlights the social dimension in the analysis, and reveals key changes in the field of higher education. The illumination of these changes raises new questions, such as whether the terms used have changed content and which dilemmas are at play. The third dimension therefore provides a better analytical perceptual depth.

## CONCLUSION: NEW TOPICS, RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND DILEMMAS RAISED

Part III presents how a three-dimensional theoretical framework of understanding affects the analysis in the field of higher education on a theoretical level. As shown in Part II such a framework brings new themes, issues and dilemmas in the higher education field to the surface.

We have seen that it is no longer possible to define and understand higher education systems solely along the two axes that have traditionally been used in their analysis – one for the relationship between higher education institutions, and one for the relationship between these institutions and the state. A third dimension is therefore required that reveals the relationship between higher education institutions and the post-industrial knowledge society. This paves the way for a new theoretical framework of understanding that makes it possible to analyse both the consequences of reforms in the field of higher education, and the path of university colleges to university status.

A theoretical framework of understanding in three dimensions raises new topics and questions, these furthermore uncovering the complexity of the dynamics of change. These change dynamics have led to a fundamental change in what we can call the DNA of European higher education, this framework of understanding also revealing how old concepts have been filled with new content. It furthermore explains why the definitions of these concepts are no longer sufficient to understand developments in the field.

Using concepts in a new way and transferring them from a two-dimensional to a three-dimensional framework of understanding, shifts the focus on type of phenomenon from a focus on whether the phenomenon is strengthened or weakened, and whether the state or higher education institutions lead the process, to the type of phenomenon this relates to.

A three-dimensional analysis reveals new aspects of concepts such as autonomy, accreditation and hierarchisation, through the influence of society being included in the analysis. This creates a deeper understanding of the dynamics of change in the field.

Defining concepts along three dimensions allows analysis to uncover more than a superficial understanding. Researchers can therefore explore three-dimensional spaces, these providing infinitely more possibilities for the positioning of a phenomenon, and raising new questions on complex changes and change dynamics in the higher education field. A theoretical understanding of three dimensions also reveals the fundamental changes undergone by the field, and how old concepts are used by politicians and stakeholders for new purposes. Table 7.1 below summarises three major integration processes in the field, and shows how the study along all three dimensions of a phenomenon in the higher education field and its concepts, adds depth to the analysis and raises new questions. Underlying dilemmas are uncovered and questions that are crucial to understanding the complexity of the field become the subject of the researcher's attention. This is instead of the focus being on examining whether a process is in one direction or another (or in whose favour).

Studies of processes along two axes have, as shown in Table 7.1, been of unique value. They have raised unique questions and led to a focus on specific topics and issues. The three-dimensional perspective is not a replacement for the two-dimensional, and should not serve as a starting point for 'major narratives' that exclude other perspectives. This perspective is therefore a path to deeper understanding, and to establishing a foundation for comparative research in the field of higher education across European borders, particularly the dynamics of change from 1998 when the Bologna process began in Europe.

Definitions of concepts will, however, be strengthened by using a threedimensional approach in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional


Table 7.1 Different focus areas in the analysis of central integration processes using a two-dimensional and a three-dimensional theoretical framework of understanding, with relevant references to analysis that explicitly address the focus areas in a threedimensional theoretical framework of understanding.

analysis. This will also allow researchers to argue for which perspective should be used, and why the focus should be on specific relationships. Concepts defined along three dimensions allow the researcher to, for example, analyse a development that progresses from one area (for example as defined by axes a and b) to another (for example as defined by b and c), or from a two-dimensional to greater three-dimensional complexity. The university process in Bodø has followed this path – from tensions and interactions mainly along axes a and b to development along axes a, b and all relationships (a, b and c) being strengthened as shown in Part I. This also allows the researcher, where combined with looking at change over time, to develop a stronger awareness and deeper understanding of the relationships involved.

A more precise analysis at the national level will also prepare the ground for comparative research across higher education field sectors and across national borders.

### LITERATURE AND SOURCES

#### Literature


*Levekårsundersøkelsen: Utdanning og ulikhet.*


Innstilling nr. 2, avgitt 20.06.1967


Innstilling nr. 1, avgitt 20.06.1966


Lind, Ingemar, *Akademisk resa*, Förlaget Futurum, 2005.


#### Abbreviations


#### Archives

Archives in the County of Nordland

Nordlands Amtstings Forhandlinger 1922 Nordlands Fylkestings Forhandlinger 1923 Nordland fylkestings forhandlinger 1979 Nordland landbruksskole Norske Kvinners Sanitetsforening – Nordland

Einar Lier Madsen's Archive

'Doktorgrader avlagt av ansatte ved Nordlandsforskning etter årstall, navn, stilling og arbeidsgiver'

#### Lovdata

Lov om gjennomføring i norsk rett av hoveddelen i avtale om Det europeiske økonomiske samarbeidsområde (EØS) m.v. (EØS-loven) 27.11.1992

Universitets- og høgskoleloven 01.01.1996, 28.06.2002 Forskrift om akkreditering, evaluering og godkjenning etter lov om universiteter og høgskoler 08.09.2005, 05.04.2006

#### LovdataPro

Ot.prp. nr. 62 (1988–1989)

Nasjonalbiblioteket Stortingsforhandlinger 1975, 1991

Norsk samfunnsvitenskapelig datatjeneste Forvaltningsdatabasen

Nord universitet, archive Bodø Styreprotokoller Høgskolen i Bodø 1994–2005 Protokoller fra avdelingsstyrene ved Høgskolen i Bodø 1994–2003 ePhorte: Styreprotokoller Høgskolen i Bodø / Universitetet i Nordland 2006–2015, 2006/708 PhD i Akvakultur, 2006/246 PhD i Praktisk kunnskap, 2006/795 'Samlemappe – Emneundersøkelser – 2005/2006 – 2006/2007 – 2007/2008 – 2008/2009 – 2009/2010 –2010/2011', korrespondanse Arkivmapper for doktorgradsstudier i bedriftsøkonomi og sosiologi Universitetssøknaden med vedlegg Årsmeldinger Høgskolen i Bodø 1995–2004 Årsrapporter Høgskolen i Bodø / Universitetet i Nordland 2005–2015 Korrespondanse Klipparkiv

Statsarkivet i Trondheim Nesna lærerhøgskole A–4357 / Da Saksarkiv ordnet etter organets hovedsystem Nordland distriktshøgskole

#### Newspapers, journals


#### Interviews


*Interviews before 01.03.2011 were conducted with historian Svein Lundestad.*

## Noter


technological development, complex relationship patterns and an ever-increasing rationalisation of cultural rules. Zucker (1977) and Thornton and Ocasio (2008, 100) have pointed out that culture and cognition also affect institutions at the micro level.




<sup>77</sup> Ibid.

<sup>78</sup> Nasjonalbiblioteket. Parliamentary proceedings (1974–1975), 4619, 4625. (5 June 1975).


entire world community (Utenriksdepartementet 1990, 18, Nordstrand Berg et al. 2017, 4). 121 Parliamentary Question Time 20.10.1999. Question from representative Inge Lønning (Right).

<sup>124</sup> See Haukland 2015, 200.

<sup>126</sup> The UK can be said to have a stratified education system.

<sup>128</sup> Nyborg 2007, 28, 29.

<sup>108</sup> Kyvik 2007, 335.

<sup>122</sup> Ibid. 123 Interview, State Secretary Svein Helgesen 06.10.2015.

<sup>125</sup> Interview Jahr 2014.

<sup>127</sup> Utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet 2003.




<sup>134</sup> Haukland 2015, 135 ff.

<sup>145</sup> Haukland 2015, 178.

### APPENDIX 1

Linda Helén Haukland

### «The Bologna Process and HEIs Institutional Autonomy» *Athens Journal of Education* nr 7, 2020

Reproduced with permission

Linda Helén Haukland Nord University P.O. Box 1490 NO-8049 Bodø (+ 47) 755 17 285 / 932 65 777 Linda.H.Haukland@nord.no

### Abstract

The Bologna Process has had a great impact on the development of European higher education, although the greatest impact has not been from the process itself, but from the national reforms introduced along with it.1 With a relatively young higher education system, Norway was ahead of most European countries in implementing the Bologna Process and reforms indirectly linked to it. Due to path dependencies and the Higher Education Institutions being, to a certain extent, autonomous and carriers of their own culture, we cannot draw conclusions at the local level without empirical studies. Therefore, the case of Nord University shows us how this process directly and indirectly affected Higher Education Institutions in Norway.

The Higher Education Institutions (HEI) integrated horizontally in an education system that was increasingly hierarchical and competitive. The need for standardisation in order to secure equality and efficiency, and the demand for greater autonomy in the HEIs was answered by strengthening some and weakening other forms of institutional autonomy along with the establishment of a new accreditation system. Three dimensions of autonomy are touched on in this study. Firstly, the question of who has decision-making power in the HEIs defines whether they are ruled by professional or administrative autonomy. Secondly, the question of the HEIs' mission is decided either by the HEI itself, representing substantive autonomy, or by external demands on production and external

<sup>1</sup> Stensaker, 'Governmental policy'; Witte, Wende and Huisman, *Blurring boundaries*, 219, 228.

funding, representing what I call beneficial autonomy. Finally, the question of how the HEIs fulfil their mission decides whether they have individual autonomy or procedural autonomy. In the last case, the HEIs are given external frameworks, which, to a great extent, define how they are to carry out their mission in order to succeed.

The development of higher education in Norway shows how the introduction of the accreditation system hampered different types of institutional autonomy and strengthened others, a development that also brought dilemmas and tensions related to academic freedom.

The Bologna Process played the role of both supplier of terms and a catalyst for these dilemmas. One of the consequences in Norway was a development where former colleges gained university status, among them Nord University (University of Nordland) in 2011.

**Keywords:** Bologna, Higher education, Norway, Nord University, HEI autonomy.

## THE BOLOGNA PROCESS AND HEIS INSTITUTIONAL AUTONOMY IN NORWAY

### Introduction

The European integration of higher education, which gained momentum from the 1960s onwards, has resulted in extensive national change processes. However, in relation to previous national education reforms, the reforms that have taken place in the wake of the Bologna Process, have been marked by a higher pace.2 Analyses of these national change processes must include the influence of supranational organisations in order to present the whole picture.3 The OECD and the EU have played key roles, both as drivers of and agenda setters for European development.4

The OECD's recommendations are based on empirical data and thus have a high degree of legitimacy.5 This organisation has played an important role in the development of knowledge about higher education across national borders, which is a condition for the increasing integration of higher education systems in the West.6 It has also played a key role in the overriding process of introducing goal and performance management in European higher education. According to Kyvik, the EU has played an important role in connection with the establishment of a common education market in Europe. 7 After 1998, the European

<sup>2</sup> Witte, Wende and Huisman, *Blurring boundaries*, 229. This made room for a greater degree of change

than that anticipated by North's model from 1990. 3 Gumport, *Sociology of Education*, 26; Zgaga, Teichler, Schuetze and Wolter, *Introduction*, 14 and Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change*, 23. It is also relevant, according to Gammelsæter, to take a closer look at countries outside Europe that have a hegemonic influence on these developments, such as the USA. That is outside the scope of this article, however. Gammelsæter, *Høgskoler til besvær,* 10.

<sup>4</sup> See, for example, Maassen and Olsen (eds.), *University dynamics*; Gornitzka and Langfeldt (eds.), *Borderless Knowledge*; Witte, Wende and Huisman, *Blurring boundaries* and Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change.*

<sup>5</sup> Gammelsæter, *Høgskoler til besvær,* 10.

<sup>6</sup> Bleiklie, *Hierarchy and Specialisation.*

<sup>7</sup> Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change.*

Commission increasingly set the agenda for the development of higher education in Europe.8

This article takes a closer look at how the Bologna Process directly and indirectly affected the reforms of Norwegian higher education between 1998 and 2010, with respect to HEIs' autonomy. The Bologna Process was an initiative to harmonise higher education standards in Europe which indirectly influenced the development of HEIs' autonomy.

Since national reforms also have unintended consequences at the local level and studies have shown that it is the HEIs with the lowest status that drive developments in the field, the process whereby Bodø University College became a university is used as a case. This took place in parallel with the Bologna Process. It serves as an example of how increased European cooperation in higher education contributed to increasing the autonomy of HEIs.9 The development that culminated in university status and the establishment of Nord University (the University of Nordland) in 2011, was both directly and indirectly affected by the Bologna Process.

### Literature Review

When it comes to the impact of the Bologna Process at the local level in Norway, a number of books are crucial to this study, both in order to understand continuity and new developments as well as key consepts. I will present some of them that have relevance to different parts of this study.

In the article 'Governmental policy, organisational ideals and institutional adaption in Norwegian higher education' from 2006, Stensaker explores the relationship between the Government's intentions and the implications of education policy between 1990 and 2000, the period leading up to the Bologna Process. He traces a development towards the bureaucratic ideal in Norway due, among other things, to more centralised decision-making processes in the HEIs.10 Another factor is the

<sup>8</sup> Castells (interview, 2014); Keeling, *The Bologna Process.*

<sup>9</sup> Witte, Wende and Huisman, *Blurring boundaries*, 228.

<sup>10</sup> Askling, Berit, 'Quality monitoring as an institutional enterprise', in *Quality of Higher Education* No. 3, 1997, 17–26. Referred to in Stensaker, "Governmental policy", 43.

institutional implementation of external quality assurance and political guidelines in order to improve and secure the quality of teaching and learning, dominated by the European level.11 Stensaker underlines that there is a gap between the governmental policies and their organisational implementation. In order to find effects at the local level, it is therefore crucial to study how the leaders make use of new room for manoeuvre in reforms, as well as their role in bringing meaning and direction to the organisational implementation process. This insight is the premise for my analysis.

One of the main theoretical sources that illustrates the historical development within the college sector in the Norwegian higher education system, is Svein Kyvik's book *The Dynamics of Change in Higher Education. Expansion and Contraction in an Organisational Field* from 2009, which provides crucial concepts and definitions for analysing the development of higher education in Norway.

Kyvik presents dynamics that follow different partially overlapping phases. One of these phases is when the HEIs became more similar due to a horizontal integration of the college sector where they became more strongly related to each other. Horizontal integration is defined as 'de-differentiation and de-diversification of professional and vocational programmes in the college sector'.12 In this phase, there was a reduction of colleges in the sector due to mergers, and the college sector was separated from the university sector in a binary system.13 Another phase took place during the Bologna Process in Norway and differed from most other western countries. Here, academic and vocational drift met in a more or less unified education system where universities offered most educations, both academic and professional.14 Kyvik defines, like other researchers in the field of higher education, the education system along two dimensions: in relation to the state and in relation to other HEIs. In this article, I present a third dimension, defining higher education systems also along the dimension of society at large.

<sup>11</sup> Kogan, Maurice and Stephen Hanney, *Reforming Higher Education*, Jessica Kingsley, 2000, 240. Referred to in Stensaker, 'Governmental policy', 43.

<sup>12</sup> Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change*, 81.

<sup>13</sup> Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change*, 9.

<sup>14</sup> Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change*, 10.

### Theoretical Perspectives and Sources

In this article, I draw on an institutionalist perspective that takes account of the cultural, normative and formal changes that affected the field of higher education in Norway.15 This perspective enables us to take a closer look at the interaction between institutions, organisations and key persons at the national, regional and local level. The resource dependence theory is also used to highlight the tension between dependence on an institution's surroundings and the independence achieved by the institution through what we now call local entrepreneurship and network building.16 This combination produces a richer picture of the development of higher education.17

The impact of structural and cultural factors as well as the impact of interest groups has been crucial to this study. Structural explanations take a closer look at 'the impact of technological, economic, and social change in society on the organisation of human activity' in addition to changes generated by the education system itself.18 The theoretical paradigm structural-functionalism has been criticised for not explaining the mechanisms leading to change, among them conflict.19 What it *does* explain, is the growth in student numbers as a result of an expanding middle class and the expansion of new professions in the welfare state.20 Due to this paradigm, the transition from fragmented expansion to horizontal integration could, according to Kyvik, be explained as 'a shift from a dysfunctional organisational structure to a more functional or effective way of organising this part of the educational system'.21

When it comes to cultural explanations, Kyvik highlights the role of norms and values in developing higher education systems as one theoretical approach.22 In this article, the values of social benefit, efficiency, quality and equal opportunities for education, by me called 'the principle of equality', are given special attention.23 Another theoretical approach that is given weight is the influence of global ideologies on

<sup>15</sup> Powell and DiMaggio (eds.), 'The iron cage revisited'; Scott, *Institutions and Organizations*.

<sup>16</sup> Pfeffer and Salancik, *The External Control*.

<sup>17</sup> Gornitzka, 'Governmental policies'.

<sup>18</sup> Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change*, 26, 189.

<sup>19</sup> Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change*, 27.

<sup>20</sup> Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change*, 26.

<sup>21</sup> Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change*, 27.

<sup>22</sup> Kyvik refers to Clark 1972.

<sup>23</sup> Haukland, 'Universitetet i Nordland', 29.

higher education systems, which implies that they change as a result. One key question here is whether they respond more to their global context than to their own cultural and social history. Finally, in addition to the specific local organisational culture, there is a tendency for organisations to copy each other.24

As structural and cultural explanations do not involve actors; 'Structural development and cultural trends do not make decisions', there also has to be a third theoretical approach in order to reveal the dynamics of change on the field of higher education.25 The influence of interest groups is a perspective of power and conflict, and emphasises change as a product of interaction and power struggles.26 This study also uses this approach both at a local, national and European level.27

In the article 'Governmental policies and organisational change in higher education' from 1999, Gornitzka presents a theoretical framework for comparative research on organisational change in the field of higher education. She bases her framework on both new institutionalism and on resource dependency, in order to understand how HEIs' economic frameworks and plans are affected by the policy and programme of the government.28 How do they change as a result of their response? Both theories have two basic prerequisites: 'organisational choice and action are limited by various external pressures and demands, and the organisations must be responsive in order to survive'.29 They differ, however, in to what extent and how they change.

The theory of resource dependency, first presented by Pfeffer and Salancik in 1978, highlights that organisations are flexible and basically oriented towards other organisations in order to protect their autonomy and decision-making power when they meet limitations and external control.30 They make active and independent choices firstly because their development is also dependent on them, secondly because they can lead and manipulate their dependency through alternative responses to external

<sup>24</sup> Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change*, 28, 189.

<sup>25</sup> Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change*, 29.

<sup>26</sup> Ibid.

<sup>27</sup> Kyvik refers to Baldridge 1971; Archer, Margareth S., *Social Origins of Educational Systems*, Sage, 1979; Rhoades 1983. Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change*, 30. Later new institutionalist works have implemented this perspective in order to understand change in the field of higher education. Haukland, *Universitetet i Nordland*.

<sup>28</sup> Gornitzka, 'Governmental policies and organizational change', 5.

<sup>29</sup> Gornitzka, 'Governmental policies and organizational change', 7.

<sup>30</sup> Gornitzka, 'Governmental policies and organizational change', 7. Gornitzka also draws on Pfeffer, Jeffrey, Organizations and Organization Theory, Pitman, 1982.

demands, and thirdly, the demands are not always consistent. They find themselves 'in complex environments faced with competing demands'.31

The new institutional approach has another viewpoint, emphasising stability and hindrances for changes within organisations. For example, March has shown that most organisational changes are the result of 'relatively stable routine responses that relate organisations to their environments'.32 Gornitzka takes a closer look at why this is dependent on whether the reform is in line with the institutional identity of the organisation or not. What she calls 'a normative match', a concurrence between values and prerequisites for change and the identity and tradition of the organisation, is, according to her, decisive in order for political initiative to generate organisational change.33

Witte, Wende and Huisman's article 'Blurring boundaries: how the Bologna process changes the relationship between university and non-university higher education in Germany, the Netherlands and France' from 2008 concerns how an overarching European process influences and limits the different national contexts affected by it. The authors show how this, among other things, led to political freedom of action at the national level to renegotiate the autonomy of HEIs.34

The authors assert that the Bologna Process affected the relationship between HEIs and the State because the change of the degree structure at the national level paved the way for further changes to the education system:

If the degree structures changes, this is an opportunity for policy makers and other stakeholders to reconsider the distribution of roles and status between the institutional types in the system … Understanding the power struggles that took place means looking behind the surface of converging degree titles in Europe.35

According to Douglass North's model for institutional change, perceptions derived from an international context can lead to a more extensive

<sup>31</sup> Gornitzka, 'Governmental policies and organizational change'.

<sup>32</sup> Gornitzka, 'Governmental policies and organizational change', 9; March (ed.), *Decisions and Organizations*.

<sup>33</sup> Gornitzka, 'Governmental policies and organizational change', 10.

<sup>34</sup> Witte, Wende and Huisman, *Blurring boundaries*, 219.

<sup>35</sup> Witte, Wende and Huisman, *Blurring boundaries*, 218.

change process than expected.36 Although developments differed in the three countries and were strongest in Germany, an integration of higher education took place in all of them.37 This article takes a closer look at this integration process in the Norwegian context.

Two of the sub-goals of the Bologna Process were to strengthen HEIs' autonomy and to increase efficiency in the field of higher education.38 Both of these goals were achieved through the establishment of the accreditation system, which was made possible through the strengthening of HEIs' institutional autonomy in connection with the 1994 Norwegian college reform.39 However, the increasing complexity of the field necessitates taking a closer look at the type of institutional autonomy that was strengthened through the different national reform processes in connection with the Bologna Process.

There are basically three types of institutional autonomy. The first concerns whose decision-making power is strongest when an institution's autonomy increases. Professional autonomy means that the academic staff have most decision-making power in the organisation, while administrative autonomy is defined by the organisation's central administration having most decision-making power.40 There is also a distinction between substantive and what I call beneficial autonomy, depending on what decision-making power the institution has over what the organisation will do. Fran A. van Vught has defined substantive autonomy as the right to decide the institution's mission.41 Beneficial autonomy means that HEIs have to raise part of their financial base from external clients and financial partners, and that HEIs' income is based on their production, primarily in the form of graduates and research products, in addition to external funding.

The third type of institutional autonomy relates to the extent to which the organisation itself decides how it achieves its mission. In that case, the mission is to ensure profitable operation rather than to develop and preserve the region, to develop counter-expertise based on regional

<sup>36</sup> Witte, Wende and Huisman, *Blurring boundaries*, 219, 228; North, *Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic performance*.

<sup>37</sup> Witte, Wende and Huisman, *Blurring boundaries*, 223.

<sup>38</sup> Gaston, *Challenge of Bologna*, 66; Bleiklie, 'The Social Foundations of the Evaluative State', 98.

<sup>39</sup> Elken and Frølich, 'The Big Consequences of a Small Change', 104.

<sup>40</sup> Etzioni 1964 in Schmidtlein and Berdahl, 'Autonomy and Accountability', 70. Etzioni, Amitai, *Modern Organizations*, Prentice-Hall, 1964, 75–84.

<sup>41</sup> Van Vught 1996, 185. Cited in Stensaker, 'Governmental policy', 44. Haukland, *Nye høyder*, 207; interview Fossum, 2011; interview Mellemvik, 2014; interview Nilsen, 2011; see Figure 1.

knowledge development and to ensure the supply of an educated labour force also in rural areas.42 The third type of institutional autonomy relates to the extent to which the organisation itself decides how it achieves its mission. A distinction is drawn here between individual and procedural autonomy, depending on whether the HEIs set their own limits, as in the case of individual autonomy, or whether their limits are set externally, and are thereby limited to exercising procedural autonomy.43

### Methodology

As pointed out by W. Richard Scott, historical presentations provide a more correct picture of whether change processes represent a break or continuity.44 The Bologna Process did not represent a break, but a continuation of an overarching and comprehensive structural change at the European and national level in higher education.45 The analysis will therefore also be based on a longer time frame where relevant.

A large number of sources touch on this topic. Some local literature is available in the form of publications to mark anniversaries, reports and articles. I have studied key documents at Nord University, Bodø Archive, Nord University, Nesna Archive, the National Archives of Norway in Trondheim and Nordland Archive, as well as articles relating to the process of becoming a university in the local press. At the national level, Official Norwegian Reports, white papers, parliamentary deliberations and draft resolutions and bills are central sources that have been reviewed, as have historical accounts of higher education in Nordland, in particular, and of higher education, in general.

One of these is my book *Nye høyder. Framveksten av Universitetet i Nordland* ('New Heights. The development of the University of Nordland') from 2015, which is based on archival studies in national and regional archives, along with interviews, covering the development

<sup>42</sup> Yttri, 'Motekspertisen', 52 ff.

<sup>43</sup> Torjesen, Hansen, Pinheiro and Vrangbæk, 'The Scandinavian Model in Healthcare and Higher Education', 80.

<sup>44</sup> According to Scott, the time frame also prevents analyses from being oriented towards dichotomies instead of insight into complexity. Scott, *Institutions and Organizations,* 258, 270 ff.

<sup>45</sup> Neave, 'The Bologna Process and the Evaluative State', 12; Musselin, 'Commentary on Guy Neave', 37. Gammelsæter also underlines this point. Gammelsæter, *Høgskoler til besvær,* 10.

in expertise and higher education in the city of Bodø from the 1850s up until the establishment of the University of Nordland, now Nord University, in 2011.

I also rely heavily on around 40 semi-structured interviews conducted with faculty and leaders at Bodø University College and other HEIs about the process leading up to university status in 2011.46 Some of the interviews are with external actors. The interaction between the local and European level has been examined through these interviews, as well as other sources.

### Discussion: Norwegian HEIs' Autonomy

The interviews reveal that the institutional development at Bodø University College was regarded as a regional democratisation of knowledge with the degree of institutional autonomy serving as both a limiting factor and driver. Based on these dimensions, the analysis will therefore look more closely at the increase in institutional autonomy at Bodø University College, and how it affected the process of becoming a university.

When Bodø University College was established in 1994, following a merger between the city's teacher training college, nursing college and Nordland College, the new institution had much greater autonomy than the former colleges had had. The three former colleges nonetheless felt a loss of autonomy because they now had to coordinate their activities under the same leadership and within a new framework. The biggest challenge for the leadership of the new university college was therefore to establish a common organisational culture. The process of becoming a university was seen as a key strategy in order to achieve a shared identity.

At the national level, the problem was how the increasing focus on quality assurance in the field could both follow up national priorities and ensure greater institutional autonomy. An evaluation report from 1999 in connection with the college reform stated that 'it is … difficult

<sup>46</sup> Haukland, *Universitetet i Nordland*. Interviews given before 01.03.2011 were conducted together with historian Svein Lundestad at Nord University.

to envisage strong national control and a high degree of local autonomy being achieved at the same time, while it is fully possible in theory to simultaneously increase efficiency and improve the quality of work at the institutions'.47 Quality assurance was not linked to national priorities at that time.

#### Decision-making power: professional vs. administrative autonomy

When the university process started in 2000, the goal of becoming a university meant that the institution would become part of the university sector and enjoy a higher degree of professional autonomy in a binary education system. The academic staff held on to this perception until the process of becoming a university was concluded. The different academic communities, with their different college cultures, saw the plans to become a university as a strategy to win back the autonomy they had lost in the 1994 merger.48 For example, the academic staff at the Faculty of Teacher Education and at the Faculty of Health Sciences had a strong wish to safeguard the vocational drift of each programme of professional study.49 Achieving this within the framework of the new institution was challenging, since academic drift was seen as the mark of a good academic environment and institutional autonomy entailed more administrative and less professional autonomy.50 Until the merger in 1994, the two programmes of professional study had had institutional autonomy, with administrative and professional autonomy being largely correlated. However, this changed in connection with the merger as the rector was no longer recruited from these academic communities. 51

Their support for the university process was based on the assumption that university status would increase their professional autonomy through the right to develop master's and PhD programmes.52 The interview material shows that they did not distinguish between the previously mentioned different types of institutional autonomy, which led to an expectation that greater institutional autonomy would be

<sup>47</sup> Kyvik, 'Høgskolereformen', 6.

<sup>48</sup> University college board, Nordland, 'Høgskolemiljøet i Bodø'.

<sup>49</sup> Interview Nilsen, 2011.

<sup>50</sup> Academic drift is in this article used as a term for general academisation processes in the college sector. Kyvik, 'Academic drift'.

<sup>51</sup> Karlsen, 'Styring av norsk lærerutdanning', 410.

<sup>52</sup> Interview Olsen, 2010; interview Rasch, 2010; interview Nilsen, 2011; interview Brinchmann, 2011.

synonymous with greater professional autonomy. As mentioned, however, it was in reality administrative autonomy that increased at the university college. Greater institutional autonomy concentrated in the central administration enabled Bodø University College to implement the changes the process of becoming a university required. Stensaker regards this as part of the bureaucratisation process because decision-making processes in the institutions became more centralised.53

The plans to become a university presented a new opportunity to win back professional autonomy because university status meant that the academic communities could establish PhD programmes themselves. All of the academic communities regarded an increase in professional autonomy as a strong motivation for the process of becoming a university. The fact that the academic staff saw university status as being synonymous with an increase in their professional autonomy may explain why few of them opposed the goal of becoming a university, despite the process generating major change processes within the institution.54

Quality assurance has been highlighted as 'the most potent of change agents'.55 The development in Norway was part of an overarching trend in Europe, where the need to establish a regulated and independent accreditation body became more pronounced as the 1990s progressed. In extension of this work, in which Denmark, France, the Netherlands and the UK played important roles, the European Commission established the European Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) in 2000 with the goal of establishing a common education market with harmonised degrees, grades and quality requirements. In the same year, the Mjøs Committee recommended that Norway should be part of this development. The establishment of the accreditation system generated many unintended consequences, however, that went beyond assuring academic quality. One of the consequences was that it made it easier for university colleges with ambitions to become universities to enter the university sector.56

<sup>53</sup> Askling, Berit, 'Quality monitoring as an institutional enterprise', in Quality of Higher Education No 3, 1997, 17–26. Referred to in Stensaker, 'Governmental policy', 43.

<sup>54</sup> Haukland, *Nye høyder*, 144.

<sup>55</sup> Kogan and Hanney *Reforming Higher Education*, 240; Stensaker, 'Governmental policy', 44.

<sup>56</sup> Elken and Frølich, 'The Big Consequences of a Small Change'.

As we have seen, the distinction between different types of institutional autonomy provides insight into the organisational changes that took place in connection with the Norwegian college reform, and partly explains why both the leadership and academic staff at Bodø University College championed the process of becoming a university. This was an important precondition for succeeding. The fact that the strongest academic communities in the college sector – at Stavanger University College, Agder University College (with its main campus in the city of Kristiansand) and Bodø University College – actively participated in the process of becoming universities could also explain why there was such a strong consensus on the major reform changes in the field in connection with the Quality Reform Programme in 2003, a reform that is regarded as having introduced the Bologna Process in Norway, and the establishment of the independent national quality assurance body Nokut the same year.57 These university colleges had the greatest potential to delay the process, but they were keen to realise the plans to become universities and thus to also agree other central requirements from the central authorities, rather than holding back the process.

In the Mjøs Committee's recommendation from 2000, which formed the basis for the reform, institutional autonomy and quality assurance were two of the key dimensions that were to be coordinated within a new framework:

It is important … to find organisational and management models that strike an expedient balance between the institutions' wish for more freedom and responsibility and overall control, coordination and quality assurance.58

This balancing act resulted in greater, but increasingly limited institutional autonomy.59 Through the Quality Reform, Bodø University College's central administration gained even more control of the institution's activities.60This was a part of the European development in the field, with the exception of England, where HEIs already functioned as autonomous units.

<sup>57</sup> Haukland, 'The Bologna Process', 8.

<sup>58</sup> The Ministry of Church Affairs, Education and Research , 51.

<sup>59</sup> Neave, 'The Bologna Process and the Evaluative State', 22.

<sup>60</sup> Elken and Frølich, 'The Big Consequences of a Small Change'.

According to Ivar Bleiklie, the Quality Reform led to educational institutions increasingly functioning as special interest organisations 'in which power is transferred from the academic staff and other employee groups to appointed leaders and external stakeholders'.61 This power shift meant that, while the academic communities developed higher degree programmes to either recover lost or win new professional autonomy, they also lost control of the development of the institution.62

One example that illustrates how the establishment of Nokut undermined professional autonomy was the development of external requirements for PhD programmes that were made applicable to the whole field of higher education. At the same time, it facilitated greater institutional autonomy through the establishment of regulations for the transition from university college to university status.63 University status was thus no longer synonymous with greater professional autonomy. It rather led to greater administrative, but also diminished professional autonomy. Nevertheless, the accreditation system was important in relation to Bodø University College's process of becoming a university because it meant that both the administration and the academic staff had the same objectives for the work on gaining university status. The interview material shows that there was strong support for the process within the organisation also after 2003, probably based on lack of insight into the shift from professional to administrative autonomy in the university sector.

According to John Brennan and Tarla Shah, quality assurance can 'undermine existing academic cultures by weakening the boundaries between groups within HEIs'.64 This was what transpired; the leadership and academic staff cooperated closely on the development of PhD programmes between 2000 and 2009 in order to meet Nokut's requirements.65

It was not just the perception that university status entailed professional autonomy that motivated the academic staff. This group also saw becoming a university as a means of securing their academic freedom, and the interview material also shows that these two aspects were

<sup>61</sup> Bleiklie, 'The Social Foundations of the Evaluative State', 98.

<sup>62</sup> Haukland, *Nye høyder*, 206.

<sup>63</sup> Nokut, 'Forskrift om standarder og kriterier for akkreditering'.

<sup>64</sup> Brennan and Shah, *Managing quality in higher education*, 2000, 119. Cited in Stensaker, 'Governmental policy', 44.

<sup>65</sup> Haukland, *Nye høyder*, 147 ff.

regarded as the same thing. University status meant being able to establish master's and PhD programmes without having to apply to the Ministry. However, the transition to the accreditation system meant that external requirements also applied to these programmes at the universities, so that the academic freedom the academic communities sought was in reality not achieved. Instead, the PhD programmes that were already established had to be consolidated, rather than new programmes being introduced.

A report from Workshops on Higher Education Reform (HER) from 2010, states, among other things, that '(i)nstitutional autonomy has been given a new dimension, but there is a rising suspicion that it occasionally comes into conflict with academic freedom …'66 In democratisation processes, there will always be factors that acts in parallel with and challenges the original intention. The standardisation of the field had this effect on the university process. While the academic leadership of the faculties primarily saw the process as a means of achieving professional autonomy, the academic staff primarily regarded university status as a means of achieving greater academic freedom. Academic freedom can be defined both individually and collectively, and it is linked to the content and results of research. Collective academic freedom is safeguarded through professional autonomy, while individual academic freedom is not necessarily either safeguarded or undermined by it.

When academic freedom is to be organised, it is often defined as professional autonomy, to ensure that decision-making power rests with the academic staff and not with the central administration. The struggle for the professional autonomy of one's own academic community can thereby overshadow or be confused with the struggle for individual academic freedom. There are no examples in the interview material of a distinction being drawn between the two. Professional autonomy and academic freedom were seen as the same thing during the university process. This partly explains the strong institutional will and the strong internal cooperation at Bodø University College during the university process.67

<sup>66</sup> Cited in Zgaga, Teichler, Schuetze and Wolter, *Introduction*, 20.

<sup>67</sup> Haukland, *Nye høyder*, 145.

Mission control: substantive vs. beneficial autonomy

For the university college's central administration, the process of becoming a university was primarily a struggle to strengthen the institution's possibility of influencing its development, even when the future is uncertain, by strengthening their aforementioned substantive autonomy, i.e. the right to decide the institution's mission.68 To achieve university status, the university college first had to meet and function in accordance with the requirements made of Norwegian universities. In many ways, it had to present itself as a autonomous university before it could actually become so. The university college achieved this by, among other things, strengthening its 'third mission'.

'The third mission' is the term used for HEIs' responsibility for regional economic development, which Casper has highlighted as an important part of their relationship with society.69 Research activity with a regional focus and the study programmes' relevance to the labour market have been particularly highlighted in this context, as a source of new technology and knowledge in the region. 'The third dimension' is a spill-over effect that promotes society and the business community, and, according to Casper, is strengthened by the institutions' network building and personal contacts in the region.

The reform developments in the field during the period paved the way for a stronger third mission in the college sector.70 How and to what extent this affected the university college says something about how it operated as an autonomous institutional entrepreneur in contact with its surroundings during the process of becoming a university. The important aspect here is the ability to combine symbolic or material resources in new ways. The university college's regional networks were one of the preconditions if the fight for local transitional schemes was to result in the transformation of the institution from a university college into a university.

<sup>68</sup> Van Vught has asserted that academic freedom is under pressure because of the strengthening of quality assurance in academia. Van Vught, Frans A., 'The Humboldtian university under pressure', 185. Cited in Stensaker, 'Governmental policy', 44. Haukland, *Nye høyder*, 207; interview Fossum, 2011; interview Mellemvik, 2014; interview Nilsen, 2011; see Figure 1.

<sup>69</sup> Casper, 'The spill-over theory reversed', 1313. Casper refers to Audretsch and Feldman, 1996, 2003; Jaffe et al., 1993; Hage, 2011 and National Academics, 2007.

<sup>70</sup> Gammelsæter, 'Høgskoler til besvær', 25.

The university colleges' contribution to regional economic development was an important part of their relationship with society. Their role as region builders generated external funding for the college sector, which strengthened their position as autonomous parties and their institutional entrepreneurship because they could increasingly act independently of state funding. This was decisive in the process of becoming a university, since the university college received no funding from central authorities.71 Both research activity with a regional focus and study programmes of relevance to the labour market were important to the success of 'the third mission' which was strengthened by a number of factors.

First, the institution were strongly involved in building networks and cultivating personal contacts in the region throughout the period.72 This was crucial if regional research results were to benefit the business community and society at large, and for identifying and addressing the need for new study programmes.73 Bodø University College had an advantage here due to its central location, geographically and politically, in the capital of the county, and its proximity to other infrastructure in the region.

Both the rector and director of Bodø University College were strong network builders who were in contact with central authorities and 'second order actors' at the local and national level.74 However, the process of uniting the region behind strong institutional development in Bodø also encountered challenges. Towns in the north and south of the county were experiencing a decline in population and in the business sector, while there was strong growth in Bodø. This challenged the cooperation on Nordland as an entity and Bodø as a regional centre for higher education, and thereby also the horizontal integration of university colleges in Nordland. The county was one of two counties to retain more than one university college following the university college reform of 1994. Narvik University College was situated in the north of the county, while Nesna University College was situated in the south.75

<sup>71</sup> Interview Rasch, 2010; interview Mellemvik, 2010; interview Fossum, 2010.

<sup>72</sup> Cf. Casper 'The spill-over theory reversed', 1313; Haukland, *Nye høyder*, 212.

<sup>73</sup> Institute for Urban and Regional Research, 'Høgskolenes regionale Betydning', 56

<sup>74</sup> Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change*, 22.

<sup>75</sup> The first merged with the University of Tromsø, while the latter merged with the University of Nordland and Nord-Trøndelag University College to form Nord University in 2016.

The establishment of decentralised campuses in Tysfjord, in Helgeland and in Vesterålen was a way of taking responsibility for the development of the supply of an educated labour force in rural areas.76 This was an expression of institutional regionalisation, at the same time as study programmes were decentralised, a dynamic that Kyvik believes promotes vertical integration.77 Narvik University College and Nesna University College saw the development of a university in Bodø as a threat to their autonomy.78 Bodø University College's decentralised campuses, with up to 500 students, were nonetheless involved in generating support for the university process in the region.79 The university college emerged as an autonomous actor with a will to develop Nordland.

As we have seen, greater institutional autonomy was to be balanced with greater overarching control, coordination and quality assurance by the Ministry. As well as further strengthening the importance of the central administration as a local facilitator, it also made a strong contribution to the standardisation of quality assurance criteria and systems. Substantive autonomy was thus weakened in favour of beneficial autonomy where 'the third mission' played a key role in building networks in the region and in raising funding for the process of becoming a university. In many ways, it enjoyed greater substantive authority as a university college than after it secured university status, because it then had to be defended in accordance with Nokut's regulations relating to Norwegian universities, although the quality requirements applied to both sectors.

#### The surprise: Individual vs. procedural autonomy

The standardisation encouraged more competition between the institutions, which, in turn, strengthened the horizontal integration previously driven by academic drift and equality requirements in the college sector. The universities and colleges had become comparable entities, and they could be ranked based on a common set of criteria, which led to the hierarchisation of the field, where institutional diversity was sacrificed

<sup>76</sup> Haukland, *Nye høyder*, 221.

<sup>77</sup> Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change*, 10. Vertical integration is here defined as the shift from 'the long period of geographical decentralisation of non-university institutions …' to a period of regionalisation. Kyvik, *The Dynamics of Change*, 81.

<sup>78</sup> Haukland, *Nye høyder*, 182.

<sup>79</sup> Interview Rasch, 2010.

due to stronger competition. The goal was to be more like the HEIs with the highest status.

This hierarchisation of the field enabled the best HEIs in the college sector to qualify for university status.80 Individual autonomy was weakened in favour of procedural autonomy, and expertise trumped representativeness with regard to the division of labour.81 According to Kyvik, this new competition led to a strengthening of different types of academic drift in the institutions.82

However, the fact that Bodø University College gained greater administrative autonomy, and greater influence on the development of the institution, did not mean that the leadership gained more substantive autonomy, which is characterised by decicive power regarding the institution's mission. In connection with the Quality Reform, elements of both professional and substantive autonomy were transferred to Nokut during the university process, and its administrative autonomy was instead accompanied by greater procedural autonomy (see Figure 1). Instead of determining the institution's mission, the leadership's task was now to decide how the mission was to be achieved within a given external framework. One of the success criterias was to expand the 'third mission'.

It can be argued that this development ensured Bodø University College university status. Nokut's expert committees had an advisory function in the application processes for the PhD programmes in sociology, professional praxis and in aquaculture, which was decisive in relation to their approval.83 The development of three of the PhD programmes, campus facilities, a new quality assurance system and satisfactory student welfare arrangements increasingly resembled procedures, which have to meet pre-defined requirements. Nokut's regulations served as a blueprint for the university in the making. Following the introduction of the regulations on minimum standards for Norwegian universities in 2006, the process of becoming a university mainly focused on meeting

<sup>80</sup> Fulsås, 'Frå binært til hierarkisk system', 396; Haukland, *Universitetet i Nordland*.

<sup>81</sup> Jonsson, *Tanter och representanter*, 28.

<sup>82</sup> Kyvik, 'Academic drift', 334.

<sup>83</sup> Haukland, *Nye høyder*.

the detailed requirements for writing an application for university status that would win approval.84

The establishment of Nokut meant that academics were granted decision-making powers on different expert committees, but they did not decide what they were to make decisions about or on which criteria they were to base their decisions. The professional autonomy of Nokut therefore takes on a veneer of organic order through stronger administrative and procedural autonomy in the institutions. Organic order is here understood as when the relation between the HEIs are defined by different functions and tasks through specialization.85 At the same time it promotes both an 'output' order aimed at ensuring efficiency and quality pursuant to given standards in higher education, and a hierarchical order, where ranking is based on the degree of academic drift in the institutions.86

As previously mentioned, the interview material shows that the academic communities did not distinguish between the different types of institutional autonomy. This can partly explain why few people opposed the university plans, despite the process generating extensive change processes at the institution.87 In reality, a stronger institutional autonomy that was concentrated in the central administration following the Quality Reform increased Bodø University College's ability to implement changes. While the academic communities developed higher degree programmes to achieve greater professional autonomy through university status, they also lost control of the development of the institution.88 Their contribution to the university process was decisive, but the premises on which they were originally based changed after the establishment of Nokut. The academic communities thus did not gain the professional autonomy on which their support for university status was based.

<sup>84</sup> For a detailed description of the university process in Bodø: Haukland, *Nye høyder*, parts IV and V.

<sup>85</sup> Bleiklie, 'Hierarchy and Specialisation', 342.

<sup>86</sup> According to Bleiklie, organic order is weakened in favour of a hierarchical order in relations between HEIs when university colleges offer PhD programmes. Bleiklie, 'Hierarchy and Specialisation', 341.

<sup>87</sup> Haukland, *Nye høyder*, 144.

<sup>88</sup> Haukland, *Nye høyder*, 206. According to Bleiklie, the Quality Reform led the HEIs to increasingly function as special interest organisations 'in which power is transferred from the academic staff and other employee groups to appointed leaders and external stakeholders'. Bleiklie, 'The Social Foundations of the Evaluative State', 98.

#### Three dimensions of autonomy

As we have seen, the central leadership and the faculties of the HEI Bodø University College had different aspirations for cooperating in the university process leading to the establishment of the University of Nordland, now Nord University, in 2011. While the central administration aimed for greater institutional autonomy for the leadership and faculty, the faculty members looked at the university process as an opportunity either to win back professional autonomy lost in the merger leading to the establishment of Bodø University College in 1994, or to strengthen it. The process was made possible partly by the changes following, directly and indirectly, from the Bologna Process. The Norwegian Quality Reform Programme did not only entail the implementation of the Process, but was also the answer to several challenges in the field of higher education in Norway, among them the university aspirations of the strongest university colleges.

The different forms of institutional autonomy are displayed in three dimensions in Figure 1. The first dimension concerns *who* manages the decision-making power. During the Bologna Process, the centre of gravity relating to decision-making power not only shifted from faculty to central administration, it also shifted from the HEIs to different committees of Nokut. The second dimension concerns how the HEIs' tasks are performed. During the national integration processes following the Bologna Process, the individual autonomy of Norwegian HEIs was weakened in favour of procedural autonomy. Although the question of how the HEIs accomplished their mission was left to the institutions to a greater extent, they now had to satisfy stricter formal demands made by Nokut. The third dimension mainly went under the radar due to the new accreditation regime's lack of experience. The organisational culture of establishing and innovating new education programmes in Nordland, which strongly influenced the mission the HEI was to have in the region, was now threatened by the strong demands for economic growth. The substantive autonomy, which was assumed to be strengthened by the forthcoming university status, was replaced by a new beneficial autonomy for both colleges and universities alike.

The different forms of institutional autonomy are presented in Figure 1 below:

Figure 1. Different types of institutional autonomy within higher education systems.

Source: Haukland 2019. Based on van Vught, 'The Humboldtian University under Pressure'; Schmidtlein and Berdahl, 'Autonomy and Accountability' and Torjesen, Hansen, Pinheiro and Vrangbæk, 'The Scandinavian Model in Healthcare and Higher Education'.

### Conclusions

The Bologna Process has had a great impact on the development of European higher education, although the greatest impact has not been from the process itself, but from national reforms introduced along with it.89

This article shows how the dynamics of change in higher education both at the European and Norwegian level affects the local level with respect to institutional autonomy.

As an indirect and direct result of the Bologna Process, the Norwegian binary education system changed into a more uniform education system. This was not generated from the relationship between the HEIs

<sup>89</sup> Stensaker, 'Governmental policy'; Witte, Wende and Huisman, *Blurring boundaries*, 219, 228.

and between them and the state alone. Through stronger ties to society at large this was even generated from a third dimension, adding a tremendous complexity to the field. The development was achieved partly as a result of the university processes in Agder, Rogaland and Nordland, due to a lack of resistance from the three strongest HEIs in the college sector, in their struggle to cross the boarder to the university sector. It led to the establishment of new universities in Norway with a professional profile, among them the University of Nordland, which was subsequently merged into present Nord University.

One of the original central aims of the colleges aspiring for university status in Norway was, as for the faculty members, to enhance and strengthen their professional autonomy. For the central administration, the main focus was to strengthen the substantive autonomy of the institution, gaining mission control. However, as the field of education underwent great changes along with the Bologna Process, the faculty members both in colleges and universities lost their professional autonomy to the central administration of HEIs as well as Nokut. On the other hand, the central administration did not gain the substantive autonomy they pursued due to the establishment of Nokut, but increased their autonomy when it came to their 'third mission' along with other both colleges and universities.

Although the HEIs' institutional autonomy has been strengthened, it has also become more restricted, resulting in a decrease in professional, individual and substantive autonomy. In other words, the faculty has lost much of its decision-making power, and the HEIs have to manage their mission and solutions pursuant to stricter external frameworks and demands for quantitative quality and efficiency. National priorities have become more influential. The new complex three dimensional education system is yet to be examined and defined, in this article I only highlight some of the consequences due to institutional autonomy.

There are certain dilemmas associated with this development. It may threaten the HEIs' status as core institutions of society, as long as their aim to enhance regional development is redefined from developing both urban and rural areas to pave the way for economic development in regional cities. It also entails a dilemma for the academic freedom of faculty members as professional autonomy is partly transferred from the HEIs to the different professional committees in Nokut. This concern has also been raised for the European HEIs in general.90

#### Acknowledgments

I want to thank my colleagues at Nord University, for willingly being interviewed for this study and giving me access to relevant archives and documents. I am especially grateful to the historians at Campus Mørkved and professor Johans Tveit Sandvin for his support.

<sup>90</sup> Van Vught links this concern for European HEIs to the quality assurance of higher education. Van Vught, 'The Humboldtian university under pressure', 185.

### References


DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8283-2.


*Century: Social, Political, and Economic Challenges*. (John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD, May 2011). 69–87.


