Introduction
Higher-education institutions (HEIs) have always relied on a broad set of internal and external stakeholders – including students, academic staff, administrators, governmental representatives, donors such as churches or foundations, as well as industry and business actors. Over recent decades, this stakeholder landscape has expanded and diversified substantially (Jongbloed et al. Reference Jongbloed, Enders and Salerno2008). This development is closely tied to higher-education and research reforms that have intensified competition, strengthened accountability and increased expectations that universities respond to societal needs. At the same time, changing modes of knowledge production and the urgency of addressing global challenges have encouraged public–private partnerships and problem-solving collaborations with industry and local or regional communities. The resulting mission overload has prompted many systems to rethink the role and prioritization of stakeholders within governance processes. Compounding these dynamics, recent geopolitical tensions and a growing societal distrust in academic institutions have further underscored the need to re-examine how stakeholders influence the governance and strategic direction of contemporary higher education.
Against this backdrop, this article investigates the changing role of stakeholders in higher-education governance, drawing on Stakeholder Theory (Freeman Reference Freeman1984; Mitchell et al. Reference Mitchell, Agle and Wood1997; Jongbloed et al. Reference Jongbloed, Enders and Salerno2008) to analyse how different actors acquire and exercise power, legitimacy and urgency. While traditional actors such as students, academic staff and government bodies remain central, a range of emerging or previously overlooked stakeholders now shape decisions related to teaching, research, quality assurance and the strategic positioning of HEIs through EU regulation, collective mobilization, market dynamics and technological infrastructures. These include early-career academics, organized academic labour, intermediary agencies, financial actors and increasingly dominant EdTech platforms. Their growing presence raises fundamental questions about the redistribution of authority within universities and the tensions that arise when new stakeholders challenge established hierarchies, governance norms and academic values.
The analysis is guided by three questions: (1) How do stakeholder groups gain or lose power, legitimacy and urgency within evolving higher-education governance structures? (2) How are the roles of traditional and emerging stakeholders being redefined by political, economic and technological change? (3) What do these shifts imply for institutional autonomy, academic freedom and universities’ long-term governance capacity?
By foregrounding emerging stakeholder groups that remain understudied in higher-education research, this article contributes a timely and comprehensive analysis of how governance in HEIs is being reconfigured. It demonstrates how the diversification of stakeholders reshapes decision-making structures, redistributes authority and generates new tensions around legitimacy, academic freedom and institutional autonomy. Moreover, it highlights the need for governance approaches that balance executive power, collegial participation and stakeholder engagement – while ensuring that core academic communities, especially students and early career researchers, remain recognized as definitive stakeholders whose voices are central to the future direction of the university.
The article proceeds as follows. The next section outlines the broader contextual changes reshaping higher-education governance. It reviews governance reforms and the formalization of stakeholder participation. The subsequent section presents the analytical framework based on Stakeholder Theory. The penultimate section illustrates changing stakeholder roles through examples involving students, early career researchers, organized academic labour and EdTech platforms. The conclusion synthesizes the implications of these transformations for hybrid governance models and institutional resilience.
Contextual Changes and Stakeholder Roles in HE
It has been well accounted in the literature that a range of New Public Management reforms has increased the importance of stakeholders in steering HEIs towards more strategic orientation and increased managerial self-governance (Bleiklie et al. Reference Bleiklie, Enders and Lepori2017; de Boer et al. Reference de Boer, Enders, Schimank and Jansen2007; Jongbloed et al. Reference Jongbloed, Enders and Salerno2008; Leišytė Reference Leišytė, Leišytė, Marquina and Jones2025). Studies have shown how efficiency and accountability arguments, alongside competitive funding and, in some cases, a decrease in funding, have urged HEIS to be more responsive to their environment. Open innovation models, mission-oriented innovation policies, changing modes of knowledge production and imperatives of solving global challenges have fostered higher-education institutions (HEIs) to engage with society through various networks and partnerships with various stakeholder groups (Mazzucato Reference Mazzucato2018).
In the past few years, geo-political tensions, decreasing trust in the academic profession, advances of social media and the rise of AI have further challenged universities. Questions of legitimacy and power of the academic profession and of universities as societal institutions have become pressing. Due to populistic parties coming to power, some HE systems experienced drastic cuts in funding for certain disciplines and HEIs have been experiencing higher demands of regulation and accountability. Combining imperatives for open science coming from publicly funded research with research security concerns and dual use of knowledge has become a complex balancing act between academic freedom and accountability, openness and secrecy.
Higher-education institutions, in order to position themselves in the ever-increasing competition for resources, reputation and legitimacy, have been reading their volatile environments and engaging in dialogue with their stakeholders, albeit to different extents in different systems. Some systems have been fostering external stakeholder representation in boards, study programme committees, quality assurance procedures as well as traineeships as part of their governance reforms under New Public Management.
Governance Reforms of Higher Education
The advancement of New Public Management (NPM) in European higher-education systems increased centralization, accountability and transparency of decision making at universities, even though in different forms and degrees (Broucker et al. Reference Broucker, De Wit, Verhoeven and Leišytė2019; de Boer and Maassen Reference de Boer and Maassen2020; Leišytė and Dee Reference Leišytė, Dee, Smart and Paulsen2012). Traditionally, HE governance has been collegial and hierarchical, with universities functioning as professional bureaucracies. With the NPM reforms, the need to read the environment and to understand better the needs of various stakeholders has significantly increased. Studies exploring higher-education governance reforms through the lens of network governance (Bleiklie et al. Reference Bleiklie, Enders, Lepori, Musselin, Christensen and Lægreid2011), of New Public Governance (Jungbauer-Gans et al. Reference Jungbauer-Gans, Gottburgsen and Kleimann2023) or public-value approaches (Broucker et al. Reference Broucker, De Wit and Verhoeven2017; Broucker and de Wit Reference Broucker, De Wit, Huisman, de Boer, Dill and Souto-Otero2015) have emphasized the role external stakeholders play in HEI governance. Some have argued that HEIs are in co-creation relationships with societies – based on shared value orientations, where various internal HE stakeholders, such as students and academic staff, engage with external communities via projects, internships and living labs. Today ‘universities are forced to be in a constant dialogue with their stakeholders in society’ (Jongbloed et al. Reference Jongbloed, Enders and Salerno2008: 306).
One way of reading the environment for HEIs is engaging with it and drawing from the expertise and experience of external stakeholders by including them in HEI decision-making bodies through expert advisory boards, governing boards or programme committees. Thus, higher-education governance involves a ‘verticalization’ of decision-making power through the strengthening of the role of university boards and of executive leadership, as well as of rectors, or chancellors, accompanied by reduced power and the role of collegial decision-making bodies (Kretek et al. Reference Kretek, Dragsic and Kehm2013; Broucker et al. Reference Broucker, De Wit and Verhoeven2017; Capano et al. Reference Capano, Regini and Turri2016). In this context, academics’ power in HE governance is reconfigured (Bleiklie et al. Reference Bleiklie, Enders, Lepori, Musselin, Christensen and Lægreid2011; Bleiklie et al. Reference Bleiklie, Enders and Lepori2015; Deem et al. Reference Deem, Hillyard and Reed2007; Enders et al. Reference Enders, de Boer and Weyer2013; de Boer et al. Reference de Boer, Enders, Schimank and Jansen2007; Junbauer-Gans et al. Reference Jungbauer-Gans, Gottburgsen and Kleimann2023). Governance reforms in higher education have increasingly threatened institutional autonomy and academic freedom, so much so that, recently, the European Parliament has produced a resolution on academic freedom. Following the EUP (2024) resolution, Article 18, governmental bodies have ‘an obligation to take active measures to protect against third parties unduly interfering with any dimension of the freedom of scientific research’ (EUP, 2024, Art. 8).
At the system level, the above reform agenda fostered new relationships between the state, universities and society, suggesting the introduction of new external actors capable of influencing HEI decisions. Thus, the range of actors involved in governing higher education has significantly expanded over the past decades as the role of universities has been redefined as contributors to knowledge economies and societies at large rather than institutions serving the elites (Aarrevaara et al. Reference Aarrevaara, Ryynänen, Tenhunen and Vasari2021). This led to the emergence of intermediate-level organizations or agencies tasked with implementing the new functions specified by the policy agenda (Musselin Reference Musselin2013), the process termed ‘agentification’ (de Boer Reference de Boer, Leišytė, Dee and van der Meulen2023).
Characteristics and Types of Stakeholders in Higher Education – a Stakeholder Theory Perspective
The range of stakeholders contributing to the strategic orientation of HEIs, to their study programme offers or to research and technology transfer has been diversified. HEIs have become more open to external engagement, especially universities of applied sciences and technological entrepreneurial-oriented institutions. Some of these HEIs have closer relations with communities and industry compared with classical comprehensive research universities owing to their particular applied missions and profiles. In order to understand the complexity of various stakeholders shaping HEIs it is useful to draw on well-established stakeholder theory in order to frame our inquiry.
According to Freeman (Reference Freeman1984), stakeholders are defined as ‘any group or individual who is affected by or can affect the achievement of an organisation’s objectives’ (Freeman Reference Freeman1984: 46). The term ‘stake’ can be simply described as a share, interest or investment that a certain party attributes to an entity (Freeman Reference Freeman1984). Mitchell et al. (Reference Mitchell, Agle and Wood1997) rank stakeholders according to their salience and influence potential. Three criteria are used to identify the importance of stakeholder groups and interests which create a stakeholder hierarchy – power, urgency and legitimacy (Jongbloed et al. Reference Jongbloed, Enders and Salerno2008). The ordering builds on stakeholder salience, defined as ‘[t]he degree to which managers give priority to competing stakeholder claims’ (Mitchell et al. Reference Mitchell, Agle and Wood1997: 868).
Leišytė and Westerheijden (Reference Leišytė, Westerheijden and Eggins2014: 84) explain that the power of a stakeholder group in HE may stem from its ability to exercise veto rights in committees concerned with educational quality or from its broader social or professional prestige, which provides either utilitarian or normative influence. They further define legitimacy as the widely shared expectation that a particular stakeholder category deserves representation within higher-education governance structures. Finally, urgency refers to the degree to which a stakeholder actively participates – by attending meetings, presenting proposals or comments and by ensuring follow-up on decisions (Leišytė and Westerheijden Reference Leišytė, Westerheijden and Eggins2014: 84).
Most stakeholders in HE consist of organizations and groups of individuals (Jongbloed et al. Reference Jongbloed, Enders and Salerno2008: 305). They share a common identity with certain shared obligations on the side of the members and the side of the university (Jongbloed et al. Reference Jongbloed, Enders and Salerno2008: 305). They can be classified as ‘internal or external; individual or collective; academic or non-academic’ (Jongbloed et al. Reference Jongbloed, Enders and Salerno2008: 311). Jongbloed et al. (Reference Jongbloed, Enders and Salerno2008: 309) identify 12 stakeholder categories involved in higher education, including governing entities, administration, employees, clienteles, suppliers, competitors, donors, communities, government regulators, non-governmental regulators, financial intermediaries and joint-venture partners.
Most of the above categories comprise external stakeholders (Jongbloed et al. Reference Jongbloed, Enders and Salerno2008: 311). Among the different types of external stakeholders, donors and financial intermediaries, as well as joint venture partners, have significantly gained legitimacy and interest in higher education. A variety of donors have, for example, gained ground in higher education, such as:
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Research councils, state financial aid agencies, third party project funding distribution and monitoring agencies, as well as foundations. This layer of agencies has expanded in the past decades, a tendency termed as ‘agentification’ (de Boer Reference de Boer, Leišytė, Dee and van der Meulen2023).
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In addition, in the audit society some of these agencies are not only sponsoring but also monitoring and controlling HEIs, such as quality assurance and accreditation agencies. In some higher-education systems, where tuition fees are introduced, banks, analysts and a range of consultancy companies are also important stakeholders influencing and administering student credits.
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Partnerships and joint ventures between universities and various platforms, especially EdTech sector companies, have become extremely important for teaching and the administration of teaching, with the most recent developments including partnerships of HEIs with AI companies (Leišytė 2025b).
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Further, corporations, their foundations, as well as various other societal actors, may be influential funders and supporters besides the governments through participation in various boards at the national level, e.g., in boards of quality assurance agencies, through working groups on particular policy issues of the ministries, advising the government or lobbying governments to increase the supply of particular graduate skills to meet industrial demands.
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Clientele, such as parents, are other important external stakeholders, that are interested in the quality of higher education provided.
The participation of external stakeholders has also become increasingly important in the advisory or supervisory boards at the institutional level, with some of these stakeholders being appointed by governments, following specific governmental priorities, such as, for instance, in Hungarian higher-education institutions today (Kováts et al., Reference Kováts, Derényi, Keczer and Rónay2024). While often dominated by representatives of industry or civil society (Antonowitz and Jones Reference Antonowicz and Jones2024; Pruvot and Estermann Reference Pruvot and Estermann2018), these boards are often responsible for financial monitoring, strategy setting and the selection or appointment of institutional executives. As noted by Kováts et al. (Reference Kováts, Derényi, Keczer and Rónay2024: 370), boards differ, however, in terms of how and to what extent they exercise formal powers.
In addition, the role of internal stakeholders has been redefined in the context of New Public Management reforms (Jongbloed et al. Reference Jongbloed, Enders and Salerno2008: 311). Following European policies, we see, for example, attempts at the empowerment of students and young researchers as powerful stakeholders following the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance or the Charter and Code for Researchers (Leišytė et al. Reference Leišytė, Načinović Braje, Almog, Baysan, Carvalho, Daunoraitė, Diogo, Papaioannou, Farmaki, Feldman, Külcür, Matijošytė, Pralgauskaitė, Rangelova and Šatkovskienė2025b). Further, the introduction of tuition fees in some countries, national student satisfaction surveys and concerns about graduate employability have fostered the view of students as customers.
In the following, I will draw on a few examples of external and internal stakeholders and their changing role in decision making in European universities.
Examples of Stakeholder Groups and their Changing Role
Students as Stakeholders
Student representation and voice have been extensively documented across European countries, including the important roles of the European student union and national student unions. Many higher-education regulations foresee students’ representation in HE decision-making bodies, such as senates or faculty councils. In some countries, such as the Netherlands, student representatives account for half of the university boards. In addition, student activism has focused on a range of topics that have to do with the funding of higher education, access, climate justice, equality/diversity and democracy (Brooks et al. Reference Brooks, Gupta, Jayadeva, Abrahams and Lažetić2020; Della Porta et al. Reference Della Porta, Cini and Guzmán-Concha2020). Research has shown that big student campaigns have largely been symbolic. They have increased the legitimacy of students as stakeholders in higher education and influenced policy agenda setting to some extent, while by and large not transforming higher education (Della Porta et al. Reference Della Porta, Cini and Guzmán-Concha2020). One important area, where students’ voice has contributed to transformation, however, is quality assurance of teaching and learning.
The European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance (ESG) define students as definitive stakeholders in HEIs’ internal quality assurance processes, including all steps of the internal quality assurance cycle. This implies their active involvement in course evaluations, programme reviews or the participation in and contribution to internal QA boards and committees (Logermann and Leišytė Reference Logermann, Leišytė, Curaj, Matei, Pricopie, Salmi and Scott2015). Studies have shown that such ESG standards have been partially implemented across European countries (Leišytė and Westerheijden Reference Leišytė and Westerheijden2013). The analysis of eight European countries has, for instance, shown that national and institutional regulations define students as legitimate stakeholders in quality assurance of study programmes (Leišytė and Westerheijden Reference Leišytė and Westerheijden2013) and that students are represented as internal stakeholders at all levels of HEIs.
Usually, student representatives make up about around 20% of membership in governance bodies. In Central and Eastern European countries, students have been included in decision-making bodies since the changes of the 1990s. Student representation seems to be weaker in Portugal and the Czech Republic, as certain bodies at the chair level or at the university board level do not include students (Westerheijden et al. Reference Westerheijden, Epping, Faber, Leisyte and De Weert2013). Further, national student surveys in the UK and the Netherlands have boosted the legitimacy of the student voice in quality matters. These surveys influence university rankings and thus students’ voice is very important to universities. In fact, in the UK and in the Dutch context, students were found to have power and provide a sense of urgency to administrators and academics to improve study programmes – their wellbeing and needs are seen as drivers of change in the HEIs (Leišytė and Westerheijden Reference Leišytė and Westerheijden2013).
The student survey results also influence relevant others, building institutional prestige in the eyes of donors and the general public. Students thus have some legitimacy, power and urgency in these two countries. In the studied CEE countries, such as Latvia, Poland and Slovakia, students had legitimacy and power when it comes to playing a role in quality-related decision-making bodies and processes (Leišytė and Westerheijden Reference Leišytė and Westerheijden2013). Students seem to have wide and significant impact on the revision of study programmes; they are involved in evaluations and in revisions of programmes’ learning outcomes in Latvia and Poland. In Latvian cases, examples of students initiating proposals for particular courses or training methods were found. Their comments were taken into account for course improvement and for upgrading learning resources (Westerheijden et al. Reference Westerheijden, Epping, Faber, Leisyte and De Weert2013).
Despite the legitimacy of students across the studied European countries, in some examples it was found that students’ roles were tokenistic. The feedback loops of the quality assurance cycle do not always work even if they are in place, and there is a high variability of students’ role played in quality assurance processes of study programmes across different disciplines (Leišytė and Westerheijden Reference Leišytė and Westerheijden2013: 23). Even though the student feedback is taken into consideration in the Dutch case, this was not evident to the students themselves and there was no transparency (Logermann and Leišytė Reference Logermann, Leišytė, Curaj, Matei, Pricopie, Salmi and Scott2015: 692). In the German case, students had urgency in addressing QA issues; they were, however, not equally represented in IQA procedures and had limited legitimacy and power. They could not address their concerns and there was a lack of transparency of QA procedures (Logermann and Leišytė Reference Logermann, Leišytė, Curaj, Matei, Pricopie, Salmi and Scott2015: 693).
Early-career Researchers as Stakeholders
As shown in a recent study across multiple European countries, the academic decision making tends to be dominated by senior academics (Leišytė et al. Reference Leišytė, Pekşen and Tönnes2022; Durbin Reference Durbin2011). A range of policies at the EU level have aimed to promote underrepresented groups in academia, including those academic staff who are on precarious non-permanent and part-time positions, which include early-career researchers (ECRs). The European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers state that researchers should be represented in the relevant decision-making bodies of their institutions in order to protect and promote their interests (EC, 2005: 22).
In national legislation, some European countries have also foreseen that the decision-making bodies should include representatives of various groups of academia, including students and academic staff working on non-permanent positions (Leišytė et al. Reference Leišytė, Načinović Braje, Almog, Baysan, Carvalho, Daunoraitė, Diogo, Papaioannou, Farmaki, Feldman, Külcür, Matijošytė, Pralgauskaitė, Rangelova and Šatkovskienė2025b). This study has shown a high variability of formal representation of ECRs looking at the national and institutional legislation in seven EU countries – with more inclusion of ECRs in the more managerial HE contexts at higher organizational levels. The traditional hierarchies of the academic profession, however, seem to persist. Overall, ECRs have low power, urgency and legitimacy across the seven higher-education systems. At the level of school or faculty boards, case studies showed that ECRS had medium urgency and legitimacy, but low power in decision making. They had, however, in most cases, power, urgency and legitimacy at the departmental level.
At the same time and despite formal representation, the voices of certain groups of ECRs are not heard even at the departmental level. Diversity of representation and the level of inclusion of women, foreign ECRs or those working on short-term contracts is limited across most of the studied institutions. Departments with a more collegial culture and a leadership supporting ECRs made a difference. Overall, findings call into question the effectiveness of an increase in accountability and transparency of decision making in higher education following the New Public Management policies to advance inclusion and equal representation (Leišytė et al. Reference Leišytė, Načinović Braje, Almog, Baysan, Carvalho, Daunoraitė, Diogo, Papaioannou, Farmaki, Feldman, Külcür, Matijošytė, Pralgauskaitė, Rangelova and Šatkovskienė2025b).
Organized Academic Labour
Collective labour organizing in academia has traditionally taken place via labour unions, which have represented the interests of academics through collective bargaining (Conley and Stewart Reference Conley and Stewart2008). Their main focus has been academic labour conditions, including permanent employment, pensions and salaries (Dobbie and Robinson Reference Dobbie and Robinson2008; Halffman and Radder Reference Halffman and Radder2015). Different types of labour unions can be found in different countries, with some higher-education systems having strong traditions of collective labour agreements, as in the UK or the Netherlands. Collective bargaining has been one of the most important instruments to represent the academic interests. As argued by Cain (Reference Cain, Leišytė, Dee and van der Meulen2023), labour unions were crucial for negotiating intellectual property rights, have influenced pension systems, have bargained for better salaries for their members and have supported improving relationships between employers and employees. But not all of them have been successful; owing to limited legitimacy, they have not reached their goals and could not protect their members from firing or cutbacks in salaries, partly due to strong anti-unionism promoted by the academic capitalism (Cain Reference Cain, Leišytė, Dee and van der Meulen2023). Cain (Reference Cain, Leišytė, Dee and van der Meulen2023) argues that anti-unionism is a global phenomenon in which employers and states seek to reduce employees’ voice, and Cain (Reference Cain, Leišytė, Dee and van der Meulen2023) sees it as one of the causes of the decline in union membership over the past 40 years (Behrens and Dribbusch Reference Behrens, Dribbusch, Gall and Dundon2013; Dundon and Gall Reference Dundon and Gall2013).
Thus, union legitimacy, power and urgency vary depending on particular policy environments and higher-education system tradition and the strength of neo-liberalism in the country. Recently, however, due to drastic cuts in funding of higher-education institutions, the urgency of labour unions has increased, as seen in a number of protests organized by academic labour unions in the UK or the Netherlands in response to pensions scheme changes and lay-offs (Gulland Reference Gulland2023). At the same time, despite some petitions and hearings in parliaments, the number of lay-offs has been significant; thus, the power of labour unions has not been high.
We can also observe other types of labour organizing in recent years, partly, as I argue, in response to the low legitimacy and power of academic labour unions. A number of academic platforms that organize collective resistance against the reforms to cut funding for science to limit academic freedom can be observed in the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium and France (Leišytė and Hosch-Dayican Reference Leišytė and Hosch-Dayican2017; Leišytė and Gozlan Reference Leišytė, Gozlan, Leišytė, Dee and van der Meulen2023). Even though the main reason seems to be the increasing neo-liberalism in academia, research evaluations and other types of monitoring of academic performance seem to be one of the important grievances, especially in strongly managerial higher-education systems such as the UK, the US and the Netherlands (e.g., March for Science, Science in Transition). Academic activism of such platforms can take place via street action or online petitions, online magazines and organized protests (Leišytė and Gozlan Reference Leišytė, Gozlan, Leišytė, Dee and van der Meulen2023). Even though they are quite visible in their collective resistance, having high urgency especially mobilizing regarding research funding and academic freedom, they also seem to have low legitimacy and low power.
EdTEch Platforms as Stakeholders
Industry in general is an important external stakeholder in higher education, for example, being influential in financing problem-solving research at universities or in providing employment to university graduates. One sector, the EdTech sector, has recently become an increasingly influential stakeholder in higher education, providing services related to all university functions and administration processes. The EdTech sector has grown significantly in the past decade, with private platform companies being created to cater not only for the teaching and learning processes for K-12, vocational training and higher education, but also for institutional operations, customer relations, student recruitment, alumni relations, to name a few areas of growing influence (Leišytė Reference Leišytė, Sarrico, Rosa and Carvalho2022).
These stakeholders are powerful and they have urgency, especially since the COVID pandemic. HE institutions increasingly use various digital products and services for their everyday operations, including virtual learning management systems, research management systems and human-resources and accountancy platform solutions, for which universities often pay various kinds of subscription fees (Leišytė Reference Leišytė, Thomas and Laterza2026). For example, learning management systems (LMSs) may shape the organization of physical classes, and communication with students and student data analytics can shape assessment (Ovetz Reference Ovetz2021; Cope and Kalantzis Reference Cope and Kalantzis2019). As noted by Johri and Hingle (Reference Johri, Hingle, Thomas and Laterza2026), in the US context the power of such systems, such as video-based monitoring of examinations, may be very high, when teachers, especially if they are adjuncts, have no choice not to use the systems if the university administration and management have decided to use them (Johri and Hingle Reference Johri, Hingle, Thomas and Laterza2026).
At the same time, the legitimacy of such systems, at least at the beginning, is quite low. The surveillance created with the use of LMS and especially video-based monitoring implies limited trust in teachers and students. More than that, it communicates that ‘the value system of the university is geared toward surveillance and monitoring over other values’ (Johri and Hingle Reference Johri, Hingle, Thomas and Laterza2026: 31). Further, video conferencing via Zoom, Webex and similar communication platforms has become a mainstay at universities since the COVID pandemic, being used for teaching, administration and research purposes. Over time, this type of video-based communication devices has gained legitimacy and acceptance in academia, among managers and students. The massive investments of universities in LMS and Zoom-like communication platforms has shown how powerful they have become (Thomas and Nedeva Reference Thomas, Nedeva, Thomas and Laterza2026).
The EdTech platform used by universities embeds university teaching staff in dynamics engaging students into a collection and monetization of user data for assessment, marketing and other uses (Thomas and Nedeva Reference Thomas, Nedeva, Thomas and Laterza2026: 56). More than that, since all the LMS are converging into using deep underlying digital architecture services, such as Amazon Web Services, they all tend to use the same services of cybersecurity and analytics, and they increasingly apply artificial intelligence. The key business strategy of LMS is to lock in third-party developers of tools, simulations and education games (Cope and Kalantzis Reference Cope, Kalantzis, Thomas and Laterza2026), who cannot really move content from one LMS to another. University users become strongly dependent on such learning platforms and often do not have much say in the underlying architectures; often, they produce content and pay for services per user, for example. At the same time, the platforms have power, since they are the ones that use the data collected through their analytics and capitalize on it (Leišytė Reference Leišytė, Thomas and Laterza2026).
Overall, varying scales of digital platformization across different higher-education systems and countries relate to uneven but potentially wide-ranging effects for teaching, labour, organizational practices, management strategies, funding models, ongoing corporatization, quality issues and public missions of higher-education institutions (Laterza et al. Reference Laterza, Thomas, de Andrade, Thomas and Laterza2026). Platforms have become active participants in ‘learning ecologies’ (Stornaiuolo et al. Reference Stornaiuolo, Higgs, Nichols, Leblanc and Santiago de Roock2023: 336), even though they are relatively new stakeholders, and can be treated as suppliers of services but also as a kind of intermediary. I interpret them as increasingly important stakeholders, with high urgency and power and low to medium legitimacy.
Discussion and Conclusion
This article has explored the evolving role of stakeholders in higher-education structures and processes within the broader context of global, political and technological transformations. Over recent decades, HEIs have undergone significant shifts driven by NPM reforms, increased accountability and the growing expectation that universities contribute directly to societal and economic goals. These developments have transformed governance systems, creating complex networks that include both traditional and emerging stakeholders. As a result, the balance between academic autonomy, managerial control and external influence has been fundamentally redefined.
Drawing on stakeholder theory, the analysis demonstrated that HEIs now interact with a wide range of actors whose legitimacy, power and urgency vary across contexts. The typology of stakeholders identified by Freeman (Reference Freeman1984) and further refined by Jongbloed et al. (Reference Jongbloed, Enders and Salerno2008) provides a valuable framework for understanding this diversification. Traditional internal stakeholders, such as students and academic staff, have gained new forms of representation and agency, although their influence remains uneven. Student participation in governance and quality assurance processes, for instance, reflects an increased legitimacy and urgency but is often constrained by tokenistic implementation. Similarly, early-career researchers (ECRs), while formally recognized in policy frameworks, continue to experience limited power due to persistent academic hierarchies and precarious employment conditions.
Among external stakeholders, organized labour and EdTech platforms represent contrasting developments. Labour unions and academic collectives continue to advocate for fair working conditions and academic freedom but struggle to maintain legitimacy and bargaining power within neoliberal policy environments. Conversely, the rapid rise of the EdTech sector has introduced powerful new actors that shape teaching, learning and administrative practices, raising questions about surveillance, data ownership and institutional dependence.
Overall, the growing diversity and salience of stakeholders reflect the shifting social contract between universities and society. Governance structures in higher education increasingly operate as hybrid systems, balancing managerial, collegial and network-based logics. Understanding and critically engaging with these evolving stakeholder relationships is essential for ensuring that universities remain legitimate, autonomous and socially responsive institutions in the face of complex global challenges.
The evolving landscape of university stakeholders necessitates a critical examination of how they impact teaching content and methodologies, research directions and institutional autonomy – key considerations for grasping the role of external stakeholders in higher-education governance. Increasing institutional complexity at universities meeting the multiple demands of different stakeholders is one of the great challenges that university leaders have to deal with. At the same time, given the dynamics of power, legitimacy and urgency of different types of stakeholders, it is important to understand what kind of interests are represented in higher-education governance and which voices are considered legitimate and heard – and which are ignored.
Hybrid governance models attempt to balance executive decision making, collegiality and bureaucratic management with a results-oriented system. These models might foster an environment that promotes institutional identity and collective innovation (Marquina Reference Marquina, Leišytė and Marquina2025). Shared and responsible governance (Leišytė et al. Reference Leišytė, Marquina and Jones2025a) is one of the possibilities of moving forward for institutional managers facing today’s huge geo-political and financial challenges. Keeping the core of the university thriving, taking into account the key communities and stakeholders, such as students and ECRs – ensuring they are heard and seen as definitive stakeholders – is paramount for HEIs to be resilient and inclusive. At the same time, it is crucial that HEIS are in dialogue with the key external stakeholders vital for their missions and identities, finding innovative solutions for societal challenges, while at the same time negotiating hard-to-protect academic freedom and institutional autonomy.
Competing Interests
The author declares there are no competing interests.
Liudvika Leišytė is Professor of Higher Education and Deputy Director at the Centre for Higher Education (ZHB) at TU Dortmund University in Germany. Her research focuses on changing university governance and the academic profession. She has published seven (co-edited) books, and numerous articles in leading higher education, science policy and public administration journals. Professor Leišytė has received several awards, including the Emerald Literati Award (2018), and serves on four editorial boards of higher-education and organizational journals. Since 2013, she has co-convened Network 22 on Higher Education at ECER. In 2023, she was elected a member of the Academia Europaea, and since 2025 she serves as President of the European Institutional Research Association and as a board member of the Consortium of Higher Education Research.
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