Swings and Roundabouts: Riding the Punches of University Management Dilemmas

Pressure on Australian universities to meet priorities of the major funding authority continues to exert a dominant influence on institutional management decision making. Because faculties are unequally positioned with respect to the alignment of their core business with changing government initiatives, stresses are created whenever an institution moves to change its own priorities in line with external pressuresexacerbated by internal policies of debt and surplus management. This paper describes a model built to examine future implications of internal management decisions conditioned by short-term decision making priorities. Problematic outcomes derived from model output are discussed, together with their implications.