Quotation Archive

"Successful university management represents not an imposition from the top but the continious dialog betwen the centre and the operating units combined with the realistic implementation skills and drive to success."
Michael Shattock

"The teaching and learning of one's own discipline or profession is itself a kind of living laboratory"

Lee Shulman

"The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order"

Alfred North Whitehead, in James J. Duderstadt, "A University for the 21st Century, Michigan, 2003

"Vision is the art of seeing things invisible."
Swift, in Paul Ramsden, "Learning to lead in higher education, Routledge, 2003

"In light of their importance in the process of building a Europe of Knowledge, Higher Education and Research (should) be viewed as strategic investments rather than as consumers of resources and... public funding must remain a major source of their support."
Conference on Public Responsibility for Higher Education and Research Strasbourg, 24 September 2004 Council of Europe

"Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten."
B. F. Skinner, New Scientist, May 21, 1964.

"The increased "marketisation" of higher education can lead to an instrumentalisation of teaching and research, and implies a view of learners and students as consumers rather than full partners in the academic community, ignoring their multi-dimensional status and role."
EUA Secretariat Memo to EUA Board and Council, Re: GATS, 9-10 October 2002

"The real academic leader has purpose, and that purpose must meet the acceptable values of the college or university community."
Budig, Game of Uncommon Skill: Leading the Modern College and University

"(The PhD) changes people, not simply in terms of technical expertise and knowledge in their field, but also in terms of the ways they value themselves and their work... A self forged through tackling the difficulties of research, especially when stress from other sources is high, is a new self. So is the self that overcomes the doubts about ability to do the work."
Hazel Francis, In Graves and Varma (ur.) Working for a Doctorate: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences. 1997:18

"(University is)... a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know and where those who percieve truth may strive to make others see..."
John Masefield, address to the University of Sheffield

"The university is above all else about opportunity: the opportunity to give others the personal and intellectual platform they need to advance the culture, to preserve life and to guarantee a sustainable human future"
Donald Kennedy, "Academic Duty"

"The product of universities is change. The business of a university is learning. The job of academic leaders is to help people learn."
Paul Ramsden, "Learning to lead in higher education"

Chance favours a ready mind.
(Louis Pasteur)