How to Run a University

The Lambert Review of Business-University Collaboration proposed a business model for universities in 2003. Pressure to change university governance to make it match the business model remains strong, and it is being most actively applied to Oxford and Cambridge. The Oxford and Cambridge governance debates (which began in the 1990s) open up the deeper questions which affect all universities in ways which are not possible in connection with the running of any other type of university. This article examines the emerging structural fundamentals and their apparent pros and cons in a attempt to clarify the issues within a framework less narrowly-conceived than Lambert's review of university-business collaboration.