Leadership Strategies for a Higher Education Sector in Flux

Abstract

The 2020 pandemic experience signals a pivotal opportunity for a transformation in universities, critically through narrowing and sharpening a distinctive mission and aims for each campus. A series of strategies are proposed for university leadership, commencing with a move towards hybrid delivery of teaching and a reconceived support of the student experience, to a rescheduling of teaching semesters to fill the year, a repurposing of existing buildings to a blended-learning, externally collaborative norm, a reallocation of funds away from new capital works towards investment in staff upskilling in digital tools and online pedagogy, and towards an array of salaried appointment types rather t..