Navigating a career in tertiary education management in an era of unceasing transformation

As we consider the focus and content for this special issue about practice-led research by tertiary education (TE) managers, we take the opportunity to reflect upon some of the broader settings affecting these endeavours, as well as development of the people who undertake this work as a career. Indeed, if enough of the many thousands of people who do TE management think of this as a profession – and if you are reading this editorial then chances are this is so – then some discussion about signifiers of a maturing profession for TE management is necessary too. The Aims and Scope of this journal states that the audience are ‘managers in post-secondary education, who seek to locate their work and interests in a broad context and who seek to influence educational policy and practice’ (http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cjhe20/current). The contributions to this special issue, to be introduced at the end of this discussion, are themselves markers of the kinds of thought leadership expected by practitioners in maturing professions. These accounts are drawn from capstone projects supervised at the LH Martin Institute for Tertiary Education Leadership and Management, as part of the Master of Tertiary Education Management awarded by The University of Melbourne, Australia. Their studies have been an opportunity to research a topic of professional interest, and all are to be congratulated for their determination to explore their own management practice whilst holding down challenging roles in a sector beset with change and uncertainty. As you will see, some have academic appointments and others are employed as professional services staff; and, rather than dwell on any perceived divide, instead supported each other to complete their studies. This is the first point we wish to highlight in this letter – that we already have common ground here regarding the work of TE management. It is useful to think of this work as undertaken to a greater or lesser extent by all who work in the sector – rather than perpetuate any us and them divide. Then, for those of us who do this work to a greater extent, we can consider how we may play our part in maturing this global TE management profession. TE managers are generally very well credentialled, with findings from the 2016 Association for Tertiary Education Management sector survey (Mirosa, Abela, Davis, & Graham, 2017, p. 3) where ‘428 higher education staff . from nearly 59 institutions across Australia and New Zealand gave their views on a wide range of employment issues’ (p. 2) showed that 62 per cent of respondents held postgraduate university degrees or diplomas. Academic staff with management responsibilities generally have research degrees as a requirement for employment. We posit that practice-led research and the sharing of professional insights are fine examples of thought leadership. Nevertheless, opportunities like these to contribute to the maturing of the profession are regarded as aspirational for many TE managers. JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION POLICY AND MANAGEMENT, 2018 VOL. 40, NO. 2, 97–106 https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2018. 1428932