Purpose and Collegiality in Planning Education

Abstract

This article considers the interplay between purpose, collegiality, and performance in planning education. A global transformation of higher education is now underway and this poses new challenges for all academics. This article adopts an international perspective and locates current U.S. debates about performance measurement of planning schools in a broader context. A critique of the highly centralized approach to research performance measurement in higher education in the United Kingdom— known as the Research Assessment Exercise— is followed by a discussion of the trajectory of the values that have under pinned U.S. higher education. The very nature of “scholarship” is now highly contested and this creates new challenges for all faculty, including planning academics. By drawing on a case study, the article suggests that an inclusive approach to strategic planning at the college level may provide a helpful way of building unity of purpose and collegiality in a period when universities are being forced to rethink their role.