An Appreciation (by Prof Guy Neave - fellow distiguised member)

Burton R. Clark, Alan M. Carrter Professor of Higher Education Emeritus at UCLA, a good friend and colleague of EAIR, passed away on October 28th after a short illness. With his passing, the community which studies and leads higher education has lost one of our keenest minds whose work shapes both the way we think about what we do and how we express what we have found. The "Cooling out function", "Academic oligarchy", the so-called "Clarkian triangle of Coordination" are known to every student of higher education. Our discourse and common vocabulary are very certainly part of that outstanding debt we owe to Bob Clark, for without common terminology scholarship and research are curtailed indeed.

EAIR members and particularly those of us who attended the meetings at Limerick (2002) and Barcelona (2004) will remember Bob as one of the eager participants in those Events: Indeed, the latter meeting saw the publication of his last research project which pushed the pioneering work he did on the Entrepreneurial University of six years previously, further a-field and beyond Europe.

Bob's talent was colossal. It brought together an unrivalled ability to identify strategic issues in higher education, a gentle, but nonetheless iron determination to tease them out and an unsurpassed gift for both grounded research and synthesis that drew around him a network of scholars from different lands, systems and Continents to dissect with him the key issues of the day.

Bob's work, however, went far beyond the moment. Rather, if the truth were out, it engaged abiding, long-term concerns. From 1981, on his return from Yale to UCLA, his Alma Mater, and well on until after his official "retirement" in 1992, Bob masterminded a series of path breaking cross-national studies on higher education. Amongst them, the disciplines that made our field up (1982) the links between secondary and higher education, (1985) the Academic Profession (1987) and the research training system (1993).

Creating Entrepreneurial Universities (1998), his last and, if Google Scholar is to be believed, his most cited book, saw Bob at his happiest and most creative, travelling, interviewing colleagues in key positions, and revelling in the delights, once again, of being a One Man Orchestra. Retirement? Not a bit of if! If difficulty there was - and there was very certainly - it was to keep him reigned in, to keep his eagerness from exceeding his strength. Over this, Adèle, his wife, kept a watchful eye, which did not prevent the Clarks from time to time rushing off to interesting conferences, people and places across the face of the Planet!

Bob Clark was not simply a "researcher's researcher". His was above all a talent of great clarity which is itself the outcome of great learning, and an ability to sum up the subtlest of analyses with the apposite and sparking phrase. Or term. Literally, and in the many meanings of that notion, "What he said, made sense." At all levels and to all minds. A rare talent indeed. And the rarer the talent, the more grievous the loss - for ourselves but above all, for his wife, Adèle who cannot but be in the thoughts of all in EAIR.

Some reactions from EAIR members

Prof Charles Bélanger
"True entrepreneurs in higher education are few and far between. Prof Clark was the perfect embodiment of this entrepreneurial spirit through his key note addresses, his publications, his teaching and research, and his conversations. His association with EAIR goes back to more than 15 years. He was always proud and willing to carry the message of innovation, leadership, and entrepreneurship to his many audiences across the world. His intellect, discipline, and capacity for change were immense."

Dr Kari Hypponen
Bob was the leading light, a true and veritable lighthouse, for all of us in higher education research, governance and administration who showed us the way forward. I have many fond memories of meeting him, and both of you, in different parts of the world, at CHER, IMHE/OECD and EAIR events and especially at the Honorary Doctorate ceremony and the EAIR Forum at my university here in Turku I am very happy indeed that Bob accepted the Distinguished Membership of EAIR during my Chairmanship as an expression of our gratitude for his contribution to higher education research and governance. I will always remember Bob.