Books for HigherEd Professionals 2026

1. Leidinggeven aan professionals? Niet doen!

By Mathieu Weggeman

About knowledge workers, craftsmanship and innovation – Available in English: Managing professionals? Don’t!

Weggeman’s delightfully contrarian book—along with his story collection “Goeie mensen, mooi werk” (Good People, Beautiful Work)—argues that knowledge workers like academics thrive through servant leadership and collective ambition rather than bureaucratic control, since professionals are already intrinsically motivated to excel.

It offers higher education a powerful alternative to corporate managerialism by recognising that faculty innovation emerges from autonomy and craftsmanship, not compliance systems.

2. Diffusions of Innovations

By Everett M. Rogers

While many educators recognise Rogers’ famous adopter categories (from innovators to laggards), this influential book goes far deeper, drawing on numerous studies to reveal how new ideas actually take hold in organisations. Rogers examines the crucial influence of communication networks, trusted opinion leaders, and the often-surprising consequences—both positive and negative—that follow when innovations spread, giving educational leaders practical insight into why some changes succeed while others struggle, and how to better understand the human side of organisational transformation.

3. Dark Academica, How Universities Die

By Peter Fleming

Fleming’s sharply critical analysis examines how the corporate transformation of higher education has replaced collegial academic cultures with top-down management systems obsessed with metrics and performance indicators, creating widespread distress among faculty and students. Written with sardonic wit, this diagnosis exposes the damaging effects of treating universities as businesses rather than intellectual communities—essential reading for anyone seeking to understand what’s at stake and why resistance to these trends matters for the future of higher education.

4. Enabling Professional Development Networks: How Connected Are You?

By Prof. Dr. Maarten de Laat

De Laat challenges the dominance of formal training by revealing the “invisible learning” that happens daily when professionals share knowledge, solve problems together, and learn through their networks, arguing that this informal organisation is where the real action happens rather than in planned courses. Through his networked learning perspective, he shows how these bottom-up, practice-embedded relationships naturally drive innovation and professional becoming, advocating for “informal-formal” hybrid approaches that honour autonomy while creating organisational recognition for this spontaneous learning. For higher education, this means academic developers need to seek out where authentic learning already occurs, build trust between management and faculty, and shift from controlling professional development to enabling the social spaces where colleagues naturally help each other grow—recognising that professional autonomy, not management control, fuels the motivation and meaningful learning that truly transforms practice.

5. Ten Steps to Complex Learning: A Systematic Approach to Four-Component Instructional Design

By Jeroen J. G. van Merriënboer & Paul A. Kirschner

Why do students struggle to apply what they’ve learned in real-world situations? Van Merriënboer and Kirschner address education’s fundamental transfer problem—our inability to help students move beyond isolated knowledge to professional competence. Their Four-Component Instructional Design (4C/ID) model offers a holistic alternative, organising learning around authentic whole tasks from the start rather than building up from isolated skills, gradually increasing complexity while providing strong initial support that fades as learners gain confidence. For higher education teachers designing programs where students must coordinate multiple skills—from clinical diagnosis to engineering design—this research-based framework (developed by the late van Merriënboer over decades) provides both theoretical depth and practical tools for creating learning that actually transfers to professional practice.

6. Reconstructing Relationships in Higher Education: Challenging Agendas

By Celia Whitchurch & George Gordon

Where De Laat made informal learning networks visible, Whitchurch and Gordon reveal an uncomfortable truth: when universities ignore relationships in policy implementation, they create institutional “blind spots” that undermine even well-designed strategies. Drawing on international research, they show that relationships function as the arteries of institutions—overlaying formal reporting lines and profoundly shaping whether strategies actually succeed or fail. Faculty consistently identify teaching team colleagues, corridor conversations, and informal mentors as their most significant sources of support, often more valuable than formal development programs. The authors distinguish several relationship types, demonstrating that these day-to-day interactions prove far more fluid and adaptive than organisational structures. For higher education professionals, this research validates what many intuitively know: institutions that support informal mentoring and collaboration create the conditions where both people and meaningful change can actually flourish.

7. Compost: Transform Waste into New Life

By Charles Dowding (with illustrations by Jonathan Gibbs)

And now for something completely different—literally getting our hands dirty. Charles Dowding, the leading proponent of no-dig gardening, puts feeding the soil at the heart of his method, showing how to transform kitchen and garden waste into “compost gold” by understanding principles rather than following rigid recipes. Drawing on 40+ years of experience, he challenges conventional wisdom and debunks persistent myths, making composting accessible whether you garden on a balcony or across acres. For anyone overwhelmed by complex systems in their professional life, there’s something deeply satisfying about this straightforward approach: understand the principles, work with natural processes, and let the soil do what it does best—support life.

8. Trends Shaping Education 2025

by OECD

This report explores major forces reshaping education worldwide—from AI and climate challenges to mental health crises and shifting work patterns. Instead of predictions, it asks practical questions that matter to educators: How do we prepare students when AI is changing jobs we can’t yet imagine? How do we teach digital literacy and protect student wellbeing in an always-online world? What professional development do teachers need to support students with mental health issues or diverse learning needs? For higher education professionals, this offers a helpful reality check on the challenges you’re likely already wrestling with—and some structured ways to think them through rather than just reacting to whatever crisis lands on your desk next.