Higher Education organisations face today strong pressure to adopt renewed
structures and management systems. Efficiency, efficacy and market principles have
become common words within the University and management practices and principles
are migrating to the academic context, boosting a process of “managerialization”.
However, preliminary results show that the new policies adopted by university
managements have led to counter-intuitive and undesired results, thus adding further
ambiguity to the understanding of the dynamics existing within the HE sector.
This paper explores the role that System Dynamics could play in the
“managerialization” of universities. System Dynamics tools could allow academic
decision makers to better keep under control the complex and dynamic university
environment: in these terms, the paper suggests the use of modeling and simulation
techniques in order to capture the complex and dynamic structure of the university
system and to explore the consequences of the policies and decisions that academic
managements are currently taking
