Digital strategies: universities and fields of study as the agents of change?

Digital transformation has become an important topic both within and outside Swiss universities since 2014, and competition for material and immaterial resources (such as funding, attention, legitimacy, and students,) has quickly set in between universities, disciplinary fields, and individual academics. This project showed the strategies and approaches that Swiss universities and disciplinary fields have used to harness opportunities and chances to gain a relative advantage. To this end, the project team examined digital activities in research and teaching, analysed strategy documents, and conducted numerous interviews with managers, researchers, and administrative staff.

Swiss universities, and in particular the two ETHs, laid the foundations for digital transformation in previous decades. Since 2014, however, the topic of digitisation has once again been receiving a great deal of attention, both in higher education and research policy and in the universities themselves. The federal government and the cantons are responding with numerous announcements of educational and research policy support measures, while universities are launching digital initiatives and strategies.

By means of empirical research, the research team aimed to visualise the diversity of strategic initiatives in higher education. Using case studies, the team showed how academic institutions and scientific disciplines are adapting to and adopting new trends and topics using the example of digital transformation and what change processes this triggers within universities.

This project advanced research on higher education and science in Switzerland. The analyses and results helped monitor current and ongoing changes at universities. In this regard, the project provided an important foundation for discussing the many ways universities are implementing the digital transformation, whether in research and teaching content, in the emergence of new research areas and disciplines, teaching methods and didactics, administration and infrastructure, and changes in publication practices.

Three main messages

1. The autonomous universities in Switzerland show a high level of initiative and responsiveness when it comes to taking up a topic that is considered relevant for the future in the public discourse. One important explanation for this is that even formally autonomous universities depend on material and immaterial resources, namely reputation, attention, financial support from their sponsors and, very importantly, justification (legitimation) for their virtually complete public funding. Universities and their semi-autonomous units, right down to the individual scientists, are all looking for opportunities to improve their relative position in securing resources compared to others. This often takes on the characteristics of competition; however, depending on the actor and level, we are dealing with very different competitive spaces. In all these spaces, it is important for an observer to distinguish between two dimensions: how institutions talk about the topic of digitalisation in their communications at the one hand, and the scientific, scholarly, and content-related appropriation of the topic in research, teaching, and continuing education on the other. The universities are very active and creative when it comes to getting themselves involved as relevant players or using a current topic for their own interests and purposes. This suggests, at least to some extent, as an indication that the governance and financing system that have been built up and developed through the reforms since the 1990s is having a positive effect.
2. There is a competition in the Swiss university system and it affects the willingness and activity to take up new topics, thereby opening up new opportunities for universities to pursue their own interests. It is quite obvious that university administrations, researchers and research groups, as well as departments and disciplinary communities, are in competition for material and immaterial resources. At all levels, actors try to gain relative advantages in a competition for financial resources, personnel, career positions, attention, interpretive power, reputation, relevance and legitimacy. The topic of «digitalisation» has shown that there is a multi-layered competition – or rather, that many actors are using this topic to gain an advantage in the competition for resources and to make themselves look good. Two conclusions can be drawn from this: First, more broadly, “digitalisation” can be understood as an example to study and understand the adaptability and innovative capacity of universities and their members in the face of new issues, partly driven by competition. From this perspective, «digitalisation» can be used as a case to monitor the competitiveness and strategies of universities and researchers. In this context, «digitalisation» is an interesting example because it is a challenge for almost all disciplines, as it also changes the scientific methods and work itself. Second, from a narrower and more content-specific perspective, the framework of competition can help to interpret and explain the observable activities in the area of digitalisation at and by universities.
3. This project helped clarify the dimensions in which digitalisation at and by universities can be observed and examined. “Digitalisation” is a very general term for a highly diverse and multifaceted process. As far as the field of Swiss higher education is concerned, the research team empirically examined some selected dimensions of this change, focusing on those that are driven by active, interest-based action, whether it is more of a bottom-up or a top-down logic. The levels and dimensions include the content level, which is reflected in new research areas, new research topics, new disciplines, and also new study programmes. Then, there is the administrative level, the question of infrastructures for research and teaching as well as the didactic dimension of teaching formats and forms. And there is the aspect of the digitalisation of the scientific work itself, its publication and evaluation. Added to this are the external effects of research and teaching activities of universities.

Universities and scientific disciplines as drivers of digital innovation and catalysts of digital change. Societal expectations, strategic positioning, and competition for relevance in Swiss Higher Education.