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Questions whether quality assurance procedures in higher education are indeed fit for the environment of the new millennium. Following discussion of the international context, focuses on the activities of the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) in the United Kingdom. Argues that much of the recent emphasis of the QAA has been on compliance and that such an approach is not necessarily conducive to quality enhancement. (EV)

Community college remedial reading students composed an informational report from sources. Productivity, use of source text, reproductions, accuracy, and inclusion of key ideas were analyzed as a function of text density and domain (health, business), and prior knowledge and general literacy skill. Text density interacted with literacy skill for productivity, and with prior knowledge for accuracy. Domain affected productivity, use of source, and inclusion of key ideas. (EV)

Employs Sporn's (1996) organizational culture typology in developing a framework to assist in understanding the process of internationalization of universities. Drawing from examples, discusses the alignment of internal culture with the internationalization objectives and strategies selected by the institution. Concludes that the framework helps to understand different approaches to internationalization and may be helpful from both a managerial and research perspective. (EV)

Addresses some of the key issues likely to dominate U.S. and Australian higher education during the first decade of the 21st century, such as costs to students, technology and instructional delivery, and faculty roles and rewards. (EV)

Explores resistance to globalization through an analysis of three movements in which university students played pivotal roles: the student strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, global trade protests, and the graduate student union movement in the United States. Reveals how anti-globalization rhetoric deriving from the three movements seeks to counter the hegemony of corporate globalism. (EV)

Examines Taiwan's transition from elite to mass higher education, including the political and cultural background, and compares its experience to the United States and Japan. Concludes that problems include fears for educational quality, a rise in the unemployment rate of graduates, and an increased financial burden on the government. (EV)

Studied the development of information strategies in 12 United Kingdom higher education institutions and highlighted the influence of different styles of management on organizational climate. Findings identify six issues that affect the climate of security or insecurity within different higher education institutions. (SLD)

Discusses the pedagogical aspects of the increasing interaction and collaboration between higher education and working life and the challenges this causes for higher education research. Suggests four different perspectives from which to examine the relationship between working life and higher education. (SLD)

Reviews some themes and methods within qualitative research and makes the case for self-ethnography as an approach to study universities and other settings with which the researcher is highly familiar. Outlines advantages and disadvantages of this approach. (SLD)

Built on results of a previous Delphi study to compare the opinions of "experts" in the scholarship of teaching to those of other college faculty (with expertise in different areas). "Regular" academic staff were more likely to associate the scholarship of teaching with good or effective teaching. (SLD)

Analyzes the post-Soviet academic profession, focusing on the challenges it has to meet. Discusses the system of academic appointments and promotion, remuneration, motivation, evaluation of faculty, and academic freedom. (EV)

Argues that there is a need for further theoretical development regarding formative assessment, which needs to take account of disciplinary epistemology, theories of intellectual and moral development, students' stages of intellectual development, and the psychology of giving and receiving feedback. Sketches the direction this development might take. Makes suggestions regarding research into formative assessment, and how research might contribute to the development of pedagogic practice. (EV)

Discusses changes in the academic profession in Poland, asserting that it has arrived at a stage of far-reaching autonomy and uncertain individual career prospects. Describes new laws intended to change the structure of recruitment, promotions, remuneration, working conditions, and appointments. Suggests that the sudden passage from an elite higher education system to mass higher education with a strong private sector has transformed the situation beyond all recognition. (EV)

Analyzes the current status of the academic profession in Bulgaria at a time of difficult socioeconomic transition. After providing a brief overview of the historical development of Bulgarian academia, discusses faculty working conditions, the career path within the profession, and the legal framework for the professoriate. Highlights future key issues, including financial viability, difficulties in recruiting a new generation of scholars, the quality of teaching and learning, and faculty entrepreneurship. (EV)

Explores globalization in terms of diffusion of higher education quality assurance models between the United States and Europe, and within Europe, particularly Germany and Austria. Examines the timing of diffusion; the prominence of U.S. models, including the professional and political economic framing of higher education policies; and local variations in meanings and practices of quality assurance and strategic management. (EV)

Critiques the prevailing liberal-theory framework in cross-national higher education research. Offers a "glonacal agency heuristic" to move beyond this current research anchored in conceptions of national states, markets, and systems of higher education, and to instead incorporate globalization by emphasizing the simultaneous significance of global, national, and local dimension and forces, both organizational and individual. (EV)

Asserts that current changes in Latin American higher education cannot be examined in isolation from larger political and economic changes in the region, which are in turn related to the dynamics of globalization and the rise of neoliberalism. Explores the context of university change and the main features of university restructuring. (EV)

Interviewed students taking creative writing courses at three institutions of higher education in the United Kingdom. Analysis revealed a typology of four differing student conceptions of creative writing within two overall "transcribing" and "composing" categories; these categories closely resemble students' conceptions of writing practices in other disciplines. (EV)

Uses data from a study of organizational socialization and induction in universities to critique social practice theory and further develop a model illustrating these dynamics in university life. Offers a case study of one unusual sub-departmental workgroup in an English university that comprised both deaf and hearing academics; such a case study displays important features in an exaggerated form. (EV)

Interviewed Australian professors about the assessments they employ in undergraduate classes. Found that their global orientations to assessment practice (described as a matrix of six orientations made up of six beliefs) could be ordered along a continuum from emphasis on knowledge reproduction to emphasis on knowledge construction/transformation. These orientations were related to teaching- versus learning-centered classroom orientations. (EV)

Explores how higher education can respond to the trend toward lifelong learning with a business concept based on the idea of creating value through enhancing differentiation and moving as much as possible to a student-centered model. Asserts that this may lead some universities to become dual-sector institutions, containing both higher education and vocational parts. (EV)

Using results from a survey of British graduates, examined outcomes of higher education for older students, including their current employment situation, relationship of degree to job, and student satisfaction. Found that mature students are an extremely heterogeneous group, with differences in outcomes by age and mode of study. (EV)

Examined the research training experiences of Australian doctoral students working in or funded by Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs). Found that CRC-related Ph.D. students fare well compared to their counterparts in regular university departments, and that on a number of indicators CRC-related students recorded higher levels of satisfaction with their course experience. (EV)

Traces the institutionalization of industry-liaison offices and commercialization of research in Canadian universities. Describes how the managers "capture the benefits" of discoveries generated by researchers, and identifies four major themes: intellectual property policy, culture conflict, boundary work, and the public good. Explores what is lost when capital is allowed to enter university culture in such a direct way. (EV)

Surveyed German doctoral degree holders to examine the processes and outcomes of doctoral training and their impact on subsequent careers and work affiliations. Found a positive outcome of the Ph.D. on the labor market, and that selection for doctoral training is biased by social origin while later career attainment among Ph.D. holders is not. (EV)

Schematizes developments in quality assurance in higher education by introducing a phase model of the effects of internal and external dynamics. Offers a policy analysis of the model illustrated with the example of contrasting developments in higher education and environmental policy in the Netherlands. Explores challenges for quality assurance in higher education arising from the Bologna process. (EV)

Examined the institutional and policy issues inhibiting or supporting participation by non-traditional and lifelong learners in higher education in Austria, Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Identified six factors: institutional differentiation of the higher education system, institutional governance and control, flexible (open) access, mode of study, financial assistance and other support, and continuing education opportunities. (EV)

Used data from the Careers after Higher Education: A European Research Survey (CHEERS) to examine the selectivity of higher education institutions across countries and fields, particularly in Europe and Japan. The example of business studies reveals that the selection process is heterogeneous across countries. Differences between types of institutions also explain some countries' differences in selectivity. (EV)

Examines research findings on the impact of working on undergraduate students' experience and academic performance, and considers UK institutions' responses, specifically the establishment of university job-shops and curriculum frameworks that try to "capture" learning derived from work experience. Considers to what extent these activities are a pragmatic versus damaging response for students. (EV)

Administered an adapted Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) and Approaches to Studying Inventory (ASI) to Open University students. Found that approaches to studying in distance education are strongly associated with students' perceptions of the academic quality of their courses. (EV)

Examined whether the current entry requirement at the National University of Lesotho of a Cambridge Overseas School Certificate (COSC) credit in English helps in the selection of the most promising students. Found that performance in school-level English is hardly correlated with academic performance, when controlling for overall school performance. (EV)

Investigated the learning style preferences and approaches to learning of international students from Asian backgrounds compared to those of Australian students. Found no statistically significant differences between students in their overall "approaches to learning," but did find differences in "learning style preferences," particularly a tendency for Asian students to be more collaborative in their learning style. (EV)

Investigated university students' beliefs about themselves as writers and about the experience of learning in writing as related to writing approaches measured by the Inventory of Processes in College Composition. Found support for the deep and surface paradigm, and variation in students' conceptions of writing, attitudes about themselves as writers, and felt need for personal expression in writing. (EV)

Critically examines World Bank and other donor agencies' policy changes toward financing of higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa. Concludes that policy vicissitudes have adversely affected these institutions. Recommends that the unique context of each state play a role in higher education financial policy formation and implementation. (EV)

Examines higher education in Indonesia, Nicaragua, and Vietnam to illustrate how use of a credit system is linked to policies and institutions associated with capitalist, market-based economies, and how the credit system, embedded within a network of other educational practices, has transformed the university into an institution focused more on narrow, utilitarian aims than on global pursuit of knowledge. (EV)

Examined approaches to studying among deaf distance-education students in Britain who preferred either sign language or spoken language. Findings included that deaf students seemed just as capable as hearing students of adopting a meaning orientation, and that there were no differences in approaches to studying related to students' preferred mode of communication. (EV)

Describes recent changes in national legal agreements concerning appointment, promotion, and working conditions that have affected the work of academics in Swedish higher education. Uses the current structure of the higher education system and data on working conditions and institutional governance as a context for a discussion of academic autonomy and the future of the academic profession. (SLD)

Describes the end of a dynamic period in higher education in Spain that has resulted in reasonable working conditions for tenured staff with civil servant status. Recruitment and promotion procedures are coming under scrutiny, and the situation of nontenured staff is less positive. (Author/SLD)

Defines the concept of academic freedom in a historical and comparative framework and discusses the challenges facing academic freedom around the world, where it is frequently under attack. (SLD)

Describes some key policy dilemmas and challenges taking place in the U.S. academic profession. These issues derive from a complex array of demographic, economic, social, and technological developments that have caused major shifts in the areas of assessment and accountability, governance, power, faculty roles, and recruitment patterns. (SLD)

Describes changes in the academic professions in the Netherlands that have resulted from a shift toward a private sector model and changes in the management of teaching and research. Universities are increasingly able to employ and manage their own staffs. Describes some methods that allow for flexibility in appointments and for differences in individual, subject, and market differences. (Author/SLD)

Describes structural changes in the Italian system of higher education that have forced a number of academic staff members to adjust to changes in their working conditions. These changes are in response to unmet social demands for higher education. Examines some alternatives related to their professional condition that Italian professors should consider. (SLD)

Describes the position of academic staff at universities and other higher education institutions in France, where they occupy a place between other professions and the civil service. As the system evolves toward increased self-governance of institutions of higher education, the faculty is seen by administrators as an obstacle to the development of institutional policies. (Author/SLD)

Analyzes the ongoing debates and changes in the German system of academic appointments on the basis of an examination of the origins and overall function of the academic career system. Suggests that the recruitment, promotion, and appointment of academic staff are important issues in countries like Germany, where they shape the institutional pattern of higher education. (Author/SLD)

Describes the impact of mass higher education and increasing financial stringency on the academic profession in Britain, where the profession has become fragmented and salary levels have fallen comparably. Suggests that the academic profession has failed to adapt to changes and that continued adherence to a common salary scale represents a constraint on the system as a whole. (Author/SLD)

Studied the relationship between student approaches to learning and stages of cognitive development, also considering the validity of the theory of development of W. Perry (1970). Results for 67 U.S. and 193 Mainland Chinese students suggest a relationship between cognitive development and student learning approaches with different patterns for U.S. and Chinese students. A relationship between cognitive development and achievement was found for U.S., but not Chinese, students. (SLD)

Studied ways of thinking about teaching and learning and the disposition to teach in particular ways for 39 academics, revisiting a previous study and re-evaluating the belief framework developed from that study. Proposes an extended framework that distinguishes between teaching-centered and learning-centered orientations to teaching and learning. (SLD)

Looks at the present higher education reform movement in Japan and its history extending back approximately 30 years. Offers some suggestions as to what more can be done to alleviate many problems still inherent in the system. (EV)

Explores how modern and postmodern theory (including Mann's political sociology of power, Foucauldian theory of knowledge/power regimes, and feminist theory) might be used to examine problems in comparative higher education, including how globalization is related to shifting power/knowledge regimes in which comparative higher education is embedded. Suggests methods that might be used when drawing on these theories for research. (EV)

Provides an overview of developments in higher education internationalization, from traditional forms such as student/staff mobility to exporting via branch campuses, transnational university networks, and virtual delivery. Discusses quality challenges, particularly recognition of foreign degrees and credits. Suggests the solution is integration of internationalization policies and general quality assurance practices at the institutional and policy levels. (EV)