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Discusses the management of change in higher education, with a focus on the work of the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Meeting the challenges of higher education will require leaders of the highest caliber and managers who embrace change through developing management practices and strategic thinking. (SLD)

by Nicholas Mansfield (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001; pp. 227. 40 £). Historical studies of rural England, and of rural labour in particular, seem once more to be somewhat out of fashion. [...]

The chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) explains the organisation's strategy for dealing with the maintenance of courses in minority subjects and in subjects identified as strategically important, such as modern languages. It is noted that Hefce already provides funding for many minority subjects and will take steps to ensure that at least one national centre will remain for all subjects in which it is deemed that national capacity is vital, however, it is acknowledged that Hefce will not be able to please everybody and it is also noted that the organisation has received no additional money to tackle the issues facing it.

An analysis of the difficulties faced by universities in the United Kingdom of dealing with the problem of strategically important subjects. It is noted that there are two sides to problem subjects, a supply side and a demand side, and it does not matter how much additional funding you pump into the supply of a subject, it will still be a problem subject if very few students want to study it.

The chief executive of the Higher Education Funding Council for England looks forward to the changes the Government's Higher Education Act will bring about for the Higher Education sector. He contends that change is something the higher education sector can tackle with confidence as the sector as a whole is energetic and full of intellectual vigour, even if it is cash-strapped.

Issues relating to the debate surrounding the UK government's white paper on higher education are examined from the point of view of the Higher Education Funding Council for England's (Hefce) plans to create a robust, diverse higher education sector that offers quality at every level. It is argued that higher education institutes need to realise that no individual college or university can meet all of the needs of every customer and they must, therefore, develop their strengths and work with other providers so the sector can deliver the complete range of services demanded of it. To encourage this realisation, Hefce's approach to funding will reflect this reality, responding to the individual aims of institutions and encouraging distinctive missions.

The proposed partnership of National Health Services and the medical and health departments of universities to better manage the interdependent compartments of health services, research and education, should be executed, argues the author.

The author advocates judicious government spending for higher education, balancing desire for knowledge with specific goals to prevent individuals from becoming 'professional students.' This strategy will help countries remain competitive in the global economy by enhancing human capital while maintaining sound fiscal policy.

The outstanding results of the research assessment exercise show that British Universities can compete well in the international research arena. Although government officials are saying the results must be due to grade inflation so that they can cut promised funds, research grants from foundations and companies should be abundant.

British universities must prepare to join the global marketplace. They should be ready to offer individual learning packages to their students and to make their services much more flexible. The universities should try to be more forward looking rather than having to adapt to change after it has occurred. Many US universities have formed collaborations with technology companies to help them reach the global market. The British universities have been spending too much time looking at their domestic problems rather than preparing for globalisation.

Former UK Science Minister William Waldegrave believes EU research funding is influenced by scientific, industrial and political factors, but feels pan-European research and development projects are beneficial and should be supported. University of Glasgow Principal Sir Graeme Davies believes the EU is increasingly offering financial support to UK research projects, but an increased number of pan-European collaborative projects could encourage further support. European Science Foundation Head of Strategy Tony Mayer believes a single European Grant Agency should be established to fund European research.

The University of Southampton, England's response to an outbreak of meningitis in Nov. 1997 is discussed. Six cases of meningitis were confirmed over a three-week period, three of which proved fatal. The university maintained active lines of communication with staff, students and their parents while taking steps to control the spread of the disease with the help of medical experts from the Southampton Communicable Diseases Control. The university provided as much information as possible and was heartened by the overwhelming support it received, particularly from journalists.

The UK government's recent White Paper on science, engineering and technology advocates innovation through the interaction of the science base, technological development and market needs. Given a cautious welcome by academics, the White Paper's proposals suggest a move away from research for its own sake, towards research that contributes to the creation of wealth and improving the quality of life. However, a market-led system in which the science base is tied to highly applied, short-term objectives is rejected. Some changes to the funding councils' current practices may be needed as a result of the White Paper.

The article focuses on sociologist Colin Bell's contribution to the past and future of community studies. It discusses the works of Colin Bell and discusses the connections between the author and Bell. It also discusses the continuing significance of the aspects of Bell's sociological ideas, his interest on the connection between the social and the spatial, with the interpretation of methodologies and with social justice. It also describes the decline in studies of communities which is considered hindering the understanding of transformations from within the communities.

There is still a wide gulf between the natural sciences and the social sciences and humanities, although both continue to develop and prosper as separate topics. One main reason for this is the fallacy that progress in science is independent and external to society. However although changes in science and the resulting technology dramatically changes the world it does not change society on its own. Society also has a dramatic impact on scientific activity. Social science should therefore be regarded as integral to progress in the natural sciences, leading to economic and social improvement.

Assesses the extent to which discernible trends indicate the need for structural change in higher education in Great Britain. Impact of forces of globalization; Growth of information and communication technologies; Growth of English as the de facto global language; Changing patterns of student demand for teaching and learning.

There is plenty of evidence to show that the placid, harmonious exterior of rural society often hid a guerilla class warefare expressed in various forms of collective and individual action and in the institutions of an alternative rural society. The fact that 'proletarian' class imagery outnumbers the 'deferential traditionalists' partly vindicates scepticism about some of the more simplistic versions of the deference of agricultural workers. However, the particular problem about the relevance of either view can hardly be said to have been settled, since both are more or less equally tangential. It can now be seen just how hazardous it is to make any generalised statements about changes in the social imagery of agricultural workers. However, there have been a number of changes in the structural parameters of their social situation which lead me to suspect that the coherence of both 'deferential' and 'proletarian' traditionalism may have dissolved more and more into various forms of ambivalence.

Introduces articles and research papers of the July 1985 issue of the Journal "Sociologia Ruralis."

This paper presents, in a modified Weberian framework, an approach to the study of capitalist farmers in the British class structure. Their market situation is principally analysed in terms of the outcome of pressure group activity vis-a-vis the state. A typology is derived for their work situation based upon the degree of market-orientation and the degree of direct involvement in husbandry. This typology can be related to the legitimating strategies which farmers choose to operate over their employees. The analysis of their status situation emphasises the declining coherence of the evaluating criteria on which status is based and illustrates the limitations of existing occupational prestige studies with regard to farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deduces conclusions from all the discussions on rural sociology included in this journal. There has been a deliberate attempt to focus on those issues, which are relevant to the current crisis in rural sociology. Much of the routine work carried out by rural sociologists, particularly in the United States, has not been included or has been referred to only in passing. This has resulted in the omission both of lines of enquiry, which have now been virtually played out, and research, which has made little or no contribution to the advancement of the discipline. It has been a major theme of this report that rural sociology has still not adequately filled the conceptual vacuum left by the demise of the rural-urban continuum. It has been argued forcibly that in order to overcome these problems rural sociology could learn from the example of its urban counterpart by beginning from a holistic theory of society within which the rural can be satisfactorily located and, as a corollary, developing theories which link the social structure with the spatial structure.

This brief, highly selective and deplorably inadequate account of rural sociological research in state socialist societies is intended to show some of the benefits of investigating the role of the state in agricultural and regional development in a comparative perspective. It also illustrates the way in which the generation of socio-spatial inequalities commonly attributed to capitalism may partially be due to the process of industrialization per se, whether within a primarily planned or primarily market economy. One of the concerns, which are most prevalent within Western Europe, derives from the increasing awareness of the irrationalities of the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union Commission (EEC). However, in the United States, the state has played a less visible and more indirect role, relying less on direct intervention but nonetheless fostering the growth of agribusiness by a variety of fiscal and other measures. While in the EEC it is the cost of farm support policies, which have become the major public issue, in the United States it has been the accelerated trend towards corporate agribusiness, the increasing rate of attrition of small farmers and the breakdown of the rural way of life.

The article considers the enormous literature on agricultural change in Eastern Europe. It does not attempts to present a comprehensive overview of rural sociological research in all of the state socialist societies in Eastern Europe, but will instead concentrate on a few pertinent themes which relate to the central concerns of the rural sociology. Rural sociology in Eastern Europe cannot, of course, be considered as a unity, any more than the rural social structures of the respective Eastern European societies. One of the more remarkable aspects of rural sociology in Eastern Europe concerns its close convergence with the research style of rural sociology as it has emanated from the United States. One of the more remarkable aspects of rural sociology in Eastern Europe concerns its close convergence with the research style of rural sociology as it has emanated from the United States. There is even a noticeable similarity in the selection of problems and methodology of research, social book-keeping and "dust-bowl empiricism" are by no means confined to American rural sociology and have nestled comfortably into the apparatus of state planning in Eastern Europe, posturing about "Marxist-Leninist scientific principles" notwithstanding.

Community studies have long been the province of social anthropologists and social historians so that one finds in the area of rural community studies one of the most widespread methodologies for the study of rural social change as well as objects of study in their own right. In many respects the mid-1960s was a period of considerable turmoil in the field of community studies. This was partly the result of theoretical advances, but more importantly it was due to cumulative empirical refutation. The rural community studies became bound up in a generalized attack upon "abstracted empiricism" on account of their impressionistic methodology, their excessive descriptions of local ecology, social organizations and social participation, and their parochial and a historical bias. This decline has also been associated with the downfall of the rural-urban continuum, which provided a rationale for such studies. There is now a widespread realization that the processes of rural change are more complex than this and that change cannot be regarded as an exogenous factor, which impinges upon an other-wise static rural community.