The recruitment of university top leaders: Politics, communities and markets in interaction

• The paper focuses on changes in university governance.
• It analyzes the interaction between politics, communities and markets in university governance.
• On the basis of changes in regulation the paper presents hypotheses regarding changes in the recruitment of university leaders.
• The hypotheses are tested for a Swedish population of recruitments of Vice-Chancellors from 1960s to 2011.
• The data lends support to the hypotheses.

SummaryIn modern society academic institutions attract an increasing amount of attention as providers of education and innovation. While such institutions were earlier largely governed by the academic community itself, they are nowadays increasingly subject to external forces. This paper therefore focuses on the changing character of the interaction between the academic community, politics and markets as it is manifested in the recruitment of Vice-Chancellors. It is hypothesized that these recruitments can be expected to have changed – earlier and more noticeably among young institutions – towards increasing (1) external recruitments, (2) emphasis on managerial rather than academic credentials, (3) recruitments from the natural and life sciences, (4) recruitments of females, and (5) turnover. The hypotheses are confronted with data regarding the 165 recruitments of VCs that have occurred in the Swedish universities and university colleges since the 1960s. The analysis lends support to the hypotheses.