Assessing institutional change at the level of the faculty: Examining faculty motivations and new degree programmes

Since the 1970s, several industrialised countries have attempted to steer and restructure their higher education systems in the face of changing enrolments, strained budgets, and the need for better coordination and planning. Higher education policy-makers have struggled with the job of maintaining specific roles and missions for higher education institutions. In the light of these restructuring processes, both policy-makers and researchers have paid attention to the phenomenon of academic drift, a process which basically consists of lower status institutions trying to gain status by imitating higher status institutions (especially the prestigious research universities) (see e.g. Riesman 1956).