Globalization, the transfer to knowledge society exposes the environment of higher education institutions (HEIs) to increasingly complex operating conditions. The universities have to address additional demanding tasks with often-staggering public funding at their disposal. The paper aims to depict the interaction of government – managers – and higher education (HE) sector – employees – in the context of recent university governance reforms, which in its essence is another manifestation of managerialist policy followed by the government. The paper starts with contextual information on the HE system in Latvia and its antecedently limited public funding. It then touches the introduction of the performance-based funding model. The review of the funding model came as a reaction to dramatic public funding cuts within the higher education sector that were triggered by the economic crisis 2009-2012. The paper outlines the expectations of the higher education sector that additional public funding will be invested as soon as the new funding model is implemented. However, quite surprisingly for the higher education sector, the newly elected government decides to reform the internal governance of public higher education institutions instead. The depicted context is analyzed against the concept of managerialism and its influence on the higher education sector, specifically on the deterioration of collegiality as the traditional form of university governance. The paper explains, why the plans to reform the university governance in Latvia by introducing university boards with external stakeholders represented there have been met ambiguously by the higher education sector. The authors seek to answer the seemingly irrational series of actions taken by the Latvian government and do so referring to phenomena of managerial ideology, as well as cautions against the rule of uncompromising, forthright managerialism within the public sector. The article finds, however, that pure collegiality is no longer viable in the higher education sector in Latvia, and different manifestations of managerialism are there to stay in the higher education sector. Therefore, ways need to be found to adopt and draw benefits from the induced changes. Understanding the rational reasons behind seemingly irrational reforms introduced by the government is the first step in this direction. The next step, but this would be then the subject of further researches, would be to detect the conditions in which the incoming managerialism may undermine or reinforce the quality of higher education.

The globalization of higher education labour market and endeavour to capitalize on diaspora recently called to attention the reconsideration of the administrative procedures in place for awarding a professorship in Latvia. It is claimed that deconstruction of administrative barrier – requirement of doctoral degree – will make it easier for qualified members of the diaspora to re-emigrate to Latvia. Referring to the raised assertions in favour of the proposed amendments, the author reacts, cautiously supporting her own argumentation by findings of recent researches on diaspora and high skilled labour migration from small, open economies. As a result, a term “brain-capitalizing” is coined, meaning national incentives of capitalizing on diaspora in situ, as well as nurturing the existing human capital. The term can be of interest to high-emigration countries fighting the brain drain, but unable to revert it to brain gain in any near future.

The paper is reviewing an array of recent literature sources arguing that the Neoliberalism and the New Public Management are the driving forces behind the observable increase in numbers of terminated employments in several countries in recent decades. The further focus of the literature review is on recent researches suggesting that the non-tenured staff members tend to have less pedagogical skills and are excluded from the internal quality culture. The synthesized findings of the both review sections suggest that the inclusion of the non-tenured staff into the institutional quality culture can augment the quality of higher education. This constitutes the core motivation for the authors to further research within this article whether the tendencies of increasing share of non-tenured staff members can be identified in Latvia as well. The empirical section of this article is based on statistical analysis of data from different reliable sources. The study suggests that due to shrinking higher education market and necessity to handle the impact of 2008-2012 Economic crisis, the share of academic faculty staff is being consolidated around the core elected faculty staff. Nevertheless, it is important to consider a timely inclusion of the non-tenured staff into the institutional quality culture. However, in view of recent higher education reforms and new academic career model being introduced, it is hard to predict the further dynamics of the non-tenured positions in higher education of Latvia. This paper is an effort to start filling the existing research gap in the emerging but under-researched subject of non-tenured staff in Latvia.