Challenging the profanity of management of higher education

Management and managerialism in higher education havebecome increasingly synonymous with the corruption of self-regulating institutions, with the disbandment of collegial governance,and with a general devaluation of traditional academic norms and values; they have becomeprofane concepts. In this paper, this profanity is challenged, through an exploration of its reach into the actual practices of higher education. We conceptualise two versionsof profane management:management as discursively profane and as practically profane.Usingdata from a Delphi study on perceptions of quality and quality management, we explore the usefulness of these concepts and discuss their value.