Higher Education in the UK operates in a rapidly changing and highly complex environment. Universities need to adapt quickly to this environment and managers must begin to explore 'new angles' and approaches in addressing the challenges they are now facing. This book offers a tool box of metaphors and associative Operational Research (OR) approaches. Metaphors are a powerful 'way of seeing' but also 'a way of not seeing'. Furthermore, the OR discipline has significantly evolved over the last 30 years which has led to the emergence of three distinctive intellectual areas, namely Hard OR, Soft OR and Methodological Pluralism OR. Drawing on these intellectual areas and on the experience of educational and OR practitioners, the book highlights the use of various OR approaches to a variety of complex and uncertain problems encountered in higher education management. The book aims to explore 'new perspectives' in HE management thinking and to describe and illustrate the use of OR methodologies, methods and techniques in helping HE managers to make informed management decisions.

Part 1 Introduction; 1. The Need for New Higher Education Management Practices and Metaphors; Part 2 The Context of the Evolving Higher Education Environment; 2. Do Industrial Approaches to Quality Management and Performance Indicators Work for Higher Education? 3. Higher Education Management and University Culture; 4. Rethinking Learning in the 21st Century; 5. The Funding of Higher Education in England; Part 3 Managing Student Learning and Support; 6. Managing E-xpectations: Developing Knowledge Management Through Market Communication; 7. Where Worlds Collide: Changing Spaces to Facilitate Learning; 8. A System Dynamics Approach to Improving an Advising System for Business School Undergraduates; 9. Enhancing the Student Experience: Setting up a Student Experience Unit; 10. Web-Based Learning Environments; Part 4 Managing the Business of Higher Education; 11. Making a Bed to Lie in: System Dynamics behind University Management Stress; 12. An OR Technique for the Formulation of HE Strategy and Future Directions; 13. Challenging Custom and Practice in the Design of Learning Programmes: The Lessons from Project Management; 14. Formalization of Models and Strategies for Diversity Management in a Multiethnic and Multicultural School; 15. Operations Research Applications in Higher Open and Distance Learning Systems; 16. Library OR: Time for a New Paradigm?