Framing turbulence in the academy: UK planning academics in a period of change

摘要

Higher education in the UK is undergoing a process of significant transformation involving major changes in the roles of academics, including planning academics. The argument of this paper is that these changes can be usefully understood within an institutionalist framework, as changes that have implications for the identity and roles of planning academics and the nature of planning education. Within this framework, influencing change requires understanding institutional traditions. The paper begins the task of assessing how familiar the academy is with traditions relating to higher education, with a view to initiating a more fruitful engagement with broader changes in the future.