This article takes the author's personal experience of being a Head of Department (HOD) in an English University, and frames this experience as a transition narrative. The format draws on the work of Sandra Acker, who framed her own experience as a Head of Department in Canada, in three areas. Utilising literature both on Higher Education…

The past 50 years have witnessed a growing presence of critical theory within different social science academic departments across the western world. The joint existence of a theory committed to exposing and criticizing various inequalities of the social order within academic institutions based on traditional hierarchies and prestigious…

Reverend Father Professor Amechi Nicholas Akwanya is one of the towering scholars of literature in Nigeria and elsewhere in the world. For decades, and still counting, Fr. Prof. Akwanya has worked arduously, professing literature by way of teaching, researching, and writing in the Department of English and Literary Studies of the University of…

In this article Sutherland surveys over the period of the last 40 years (the length of an average full academic career) the changes which have occurred to the departmental structures and procedures in the teaching of and research into English Literature in British universities. He perceives a marginalization of the English department in the…

The move of the University of Southern California to eliminate its German department in order to shift resources to Asian languages has sparked a debate about the relative importance of learning European languages. College administrators seem to assume that global shifts in economic power call for changes in the distribution of their budget for…

Changes in the status of the British "chair" or professorship in the twentieth century are examined, with focus on the types of changes, the reasons for them, and the administrative, educational, and intellectual results. (MSE)

Focuses on the role of English language teaching in Chinese universities. Suggests that if ELT is to survive a a university subject, it must take the character of humanistic/philosophical education, although it should retain its technical aspects. (Author/VWL)

The article is an exploration of current trends within, and the desired destiny of, the humanities discipline of English Studies in the context of calls for the "Africanization" of South African universities. The essay advocates the embrace of a non-universalist, emancipationist humanism. (Contains 8 notes.)

The departmental concept, while widely accepted in the Anglo-Saxon nations as a way to organize educational institutions into homogenous groups, is not used in many continental European countries and elsewhere. This paper analyzes various structures for organizing academic institutions at lower levels in certain national systems, dissects the most…

Focuses on secondary school departments in England, arguing that current approaches to school improvement do not adequately reflect or incorporate the department level. Highlights the processes that contribute to improved departmental performance, and subsequently, to school and classroom improvement, drawing upon empirical evidence from two…

Johnes and Johnes demonstrate use of data-envelopment analysis to construct an efficiency frontier comparing different UK university economics departments' efficiency without having to assign uniform weights to inputs and outputs. Since desirability of departmental goals cannot be compared, DEA's usefulness is limited to comparing relative…

Compares British and American higher educational systems and describes the benefits of a foreign exchange professorship program. (AEA)

This rejoinder to K. K. Fung's critique of the authors' data-envelopment analysis (DEA) article argues that eliminating inefficiency by competition requires perfect information, not just freedom of entry and exit. DEA provides the necessary information, but is not intended as a mechanism to replace peer review. (MLH)

Discusses the role of the University of Toronto's humanities chair in dealing with other disciplines at the university. (MM)

Australia's training programs for academic department heads are examined in relation to the tradition of academic staff development, the changing nature of department heads' responsibilities, and increased concerns about the effectiveness of institutional management. It is suggested that training programs be one element in a comprehensive…