Change Management at Ghent University

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Change Management at Ghent University

• Bert Hoogewijs

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Situating the city

• Between the coast and Brussels
• Part of Flanders
• Dutch-speaking
• Ghent University (UGent)
• 25,000 students
• distributed campus

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Historic City of Gent
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Situating the University

• Founded in 1817
• Autonomous public university since 1991
• 11 faculties and 134 departments
• 5,500 staff
• Part of Ghent University Association

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Other Universities in Flanders
Founded Students
K.U.Leuven (Louvain) 1425 27,000
VUB (Brussels) 1834 (1969) 9,000
UA (Antwerp) (RUCA-UFSIA-UIA) 1995 (2003) 9,000
LUC (Limburg) ( TUL with Maastricht) 1971 2,500
KUB (Brussels) 1969 700
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Mission statement

• Education
• Research
• Services to society
• Also
• socially committed, pluralistic, broad
  international profile, decentralised and dynamic,
  participation

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Organisational Structure I

• Rector and Vice-Rector
• Board of Directors
• Executive Committee
• Management Committee

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Organisational Structure II

• Central administration (8
  Departments)
• 11 Faculties ( Faculty boards)
• Faculty departments
• Degree planning committees
• Advisory councils and committees

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Change Management Overview

• Financial reform 1991-1996
• Reorganisation of Faculty departments
• Resource allocation models
• Personnel management reorganisation
• Reform of central administration
• Bologna process

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Financial Reform

• Autonomy led to financial accountability
• Reduction of personnel costs
• Reduction of Faculty departments
• Introduction of resource allocation models
• Constraints on spending

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Resource Allocation Models

• Autonomy and lump sum funding
• Distributive codes for distribution of resources
• More autonomy for faculties

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Distributive codes

• Academic staff
• 85 teaching activities
• 30 programmes offered
• 45 teaching load
• 10 graduate dissertations
• 15 research
• New analysis of real needs in progress
• Decentralisation

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Reorganisation of Departments

• From 400 to 134
• Smallest administrative unit
• Collectively responsible for organisation of
  teaching (content degree planning committees)
• Led by elected chairman
• Research units

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Personnel management reorganisation I

• Support staff
• new procedure for hiring
• job assessment and evaluation
• job function classification
• functional groups with specific salary scales

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Personnel management reorganisation II

• Academic staff
• new career model for senior academic staff
• two major classes and a dual approach
• seniority and biannual evaluations (incl. student
  evaluations)
• competition applies to the highest categories

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Reorganising the Central Administration I

• First analysis of information flows led to
  recommendations
• Second analysis led to STaR project
• S service-oriented
• T transparant
• and
• R responsibility-oriented

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Reorganising the Central Administration II

• STaR led to new structure from 1 Oct 2001
• Eight central departments
• Educational Affairs
• Research
• Administrative Affairs
• Personnel and Organisation
• Finance
• Information and Communication Technology
• Infrastructure and Facility Management
• Student Facilities

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Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

• Automation of administrative procedures
• First application is Finance (with SAP)

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Educational change Bologna

• Bologna Prague Berlin
• European Higher Education Area
• Convergence towards 2-cycle structure of
  Bachelors and Masters degrees
• Implementation by 2010

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Bologna in Flanders

• Structural Decree (April 2003)
• Other decrees to come (by 2004-2005)
• Professionally oriented and Academic Bachelors
  degrees
• Masters degrees of at least 60 credits (1 year)
• Masters degrees as additional qualification
• Ba-Ma system implemented from 2004-2005

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Associations

• Collaboration between 1 university and several
  other institutes of higher education
• Ghent University Association comprises 4
  institutions
• University supervises research of the members of
  the association
• Bridging programmes

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Accreditation

• Quality assurance
• In Flanders in collaboration with the Netherlands

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Flexible learning

• Decree is being prepared
• Individual learning paths
• From credit transfer to credit accumulation

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Ghent University Association

• Legal status since the spring of 2003
• Representatives of all institutes in governing
  bodies
• Co-operation by means of wide-ranging working
  groups
• Discipline-oriented working groups discuss
  content
• The transition towards the Ba-Ma structure is on
  course

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Strategic Policy Lines

• Continued and strict budget control
• Market-orientation
• Internationalisation
• Personnel management
• Innovation

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Conclusion

• Drastic transition from state university to
  autonomous public university
• Confidence in the future

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Change Management at Ghent University
Bert Hoogewijs Universiteit Gent Sint-Pietersnie
uwstraat 25 B-9000 Gent Belgium Bert.Hoogewijs_at_
UGent.be