Two Hippocratic Oaths for University Scholars and Managers. (July 14, 2010)

Geoff Sharrock is an Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Melbourne's Graduate School of Education Centre for the Study of Higher Education. In a paper published in the August issue of the  Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management he agues that it has become necessary: "...due to a confluence of trends over the last two decades, today’s universities rely on managerial professionalism far more than in the past. But the legitimacy of management in academic institutions remains in question, and is often seen as a threat to scholarly aims and values."

Dr Sharrock  then makes a detailed argument suggesting that: "Institutions may benefit from considering two 'Hippocratic oaths' in parallel, one for scholarly work and one for managerial work."

Dr Sharrock concludes: "While not all who work in universities would agree to every line of these two notional 'Hippocratic oaths', my hope is that many would recognise their basic logic, as a shorthand description of what these two modes of professionalism might look like... By promoting deeper, more widely shared understandings of these two forms of professionalism, academic institutions stand to benefit from more ‘enlightened’ approaches to managing, and more ‘strategic’ approaches to sustaining scholarly projects."