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In higher education institutions, critical race theory (CRT) is known to be associated with fields that study racial disparities or systemic oppression such as law, education, and ethnic studies. The impression that CRT is unrelated to fields like business or computer science may have led scholars and practitioners from these disciplines to put their focus on elsewhere than on racial inequality and its implication in their research and practice, despite apparent need. To counter such fallacy, this review article—focusing primarily on the US context—discusses CRT literature in fields where its presence is less known which are nevertheless among the major domains of higher education institutions: health sciences, computer science and information technology, sports, business, and religion. By discussing example research of how scholars have utilized CRT in different fields to challenge the race-neutral thinking that often obscures structural racism, this paper exposes racism's ability to alter manifestations and to appear through various shapes and forms within the higher education context. Initial recommendations on how educators may engage in further discussions or actions will also be considered. This paper concludes that racist ideologies are often hidden behind discipline-specific vocabulary or technical language, and it is by tackling the ideologies at work underneath the technicalities can we address the chameleon-like nature of racism more effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the 50th anniversary special issue of Higher Education recounts the history of the journal and reflects on the evolution and expansion of the journal and the field. Higher education studies is an object-oriented field that combines academic explanations with practical interventions. The journal takes an agnostic approach to disciplinary frameworks, theories, and methodologies and an eclectic and inclusive approach to topics. It began in 1972 with a preoccupation with the nature and implications of mass higher education systems, including internationally comparative analyses, and with a focus on policy and planning. Most of the earlier themes of research in the field have continued to the present, but as mass higher education systems have spread across the world, so has the journal's author list and editorial group. Higher education studies remain biased to the Anglophone and Euro-American worlds in their topics, theorizations, and author lists. Between 1996 and 2018, the USA and other English-speaking countries accounted for about 70% of authorship in the six journals with the highest impact factor. However, in Higher Education, that proportion was just over 45%, indicating some progress in the journal's efforts to pluralize, partly through the growth of papers from China. The introduction looks forward, anticipating growth in contributions from the global South, and further inquiry into the purposes of higher education and into its relations in social context. Finally, the introduction discusses the 50th anniversary papers that follow, contributed by twelve present and past editors of the journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to the pandemic, approxiately 42,000 students from countries in sub-Saharan countries in Africa enrolled in U.S. universities (IIE 2021). Despite this strong and growing presence, little research exists focusing on their experiences of education in the U.S. Through a small-scale study of the experiences of graduate students from sub-Saharan African countries, we see evidence of material and discursive representations of race that produce material inequalities that are then used to legitimize racial formations. We couple these experiences to the background of campus internationalization policies and the university's responses to argue that the policies reproduce and reinforce cultural and social racism that positions white Americans as the norm and unproblematically contributes to Western supremacist positionality in the academy and beyond for economic benefit. In this paper, we demonstrate ways in which the implementation of campus internationalization programs is part of the larger discourse of racism on both the national and international arenas, perpetuating white superiority and implementing policies that reproduce the inequities that reify and legitimize neoracism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the disruptions COVID-19 caused to normal research processes, including international collaboration, this study sought to understand scientists' experiences collaborating internationally during the pandemic on COVID-19-related research. Specifically, it explored US scientists' tie formation and reasons for international research collaboration with Chinese scientists. The study employed a sequential exploratory mixed methods design collecting interview and survey data from US scientists who co-published articles related to COVID-19 with Chinese scientists. The findings revealed the role of network mechanisms, such as transitivity, opportunity of contact, and homophily, in promoting relationship formation and maintenance. Moreover, they showed the greater role that bonding social capital played in helping scientists access valuable knowledge, skills, and resources to enhance their research potential. Lastly, they demonstrated how particularized trust based on prior interactions and experiences encouraged relationship formation and collaboration between US and Chinese scientists. Together, these results provide new insights in informing future policies and guidelines related to supporting international collaboration and, ultimately, shared pandemic challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selecting a major is one of the most consequential decisions a student will make in college. Though major selection is often conceived of as a discrete choice made at a particular point in time, many students change their majors at least once during college. This article examines the process of changing majors as a key education transition. Drawing from 38 interviews with college students at a public university in the USA who changed their declared major, this study explores the ways they make meaning of transitions between fields of study. Specifically, I ask: How do students describe their experiences navigating the process of switching college majors? Six themes emerged in relation to three phases of transition: endings, neutral zones, and new beginnings. These themes provide new understandings of students' meaning making about their experiences moving between majors. In doing so, this study (1) demonstrates the value of studying major change as an important educational transition and (2) sheds light on the potential for employing theories of transition to understand non-normative and non-linear transitions in higher education. Implications for higher education research and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The boundaries of higher education organizations (HEOs) are becoming increasingly porous both in the USA and globally. Research has shown that individuals within universities (e.g., trustees and faculty) can serve as boundary spanners who connect universities to their external environments. However, our knowledge of how individuals span HEO boundaries is limited, especially for university leaders. University presidents are leaders that bridge the boundaries of universities via the internal and external aspects of their role. We evaluate the connections presidents establish between universities and external organizations and how they change over time to expand our knowledge of boundary spanners. Drawing on literature on academic capitalism and the interdependencies between organizations, individuals, and environments, we conceptualize how presidents connect their institutions to external organizations and how these connections may differ across institutions over time. Using social networks and latent profile analyses, we examine the connections between elite US universities and external organizations via presidents between 2005 and 2020. Results show growth in connections over time as well as three distinct patterns of connections across institutions. This suggests that presidential connectivity differs across institutions and has changed over time in ways that have implications for university governance, decision making, policies (e.g., conflict of interest), and organizational inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article seeks a deeper understanding of the concept of authentic assessment which ensures it does not become another educational buzzword, slowly diminishing in real meaning. I consider the origins of the term in the US schooling sector, and how it has developed over time, and in different countries, to today focus in higher education largely on real world tasks. There is, however, I argue, a common conflation of real world with the world of work. Little of this literature actually engages with the rich philosophical debates on authenticity, and in this article, I suggest that this deeper understanding of authenticity can enable us to build on existing work on authentic assessment to develop a more holistic and richer concept that will be more beneficial to individual students and to the larger society of which they are part. I argue that we should move from thinking in terms of either the so-called real world, or the world of work, to focus our justification for authentic assessment on its social value (which encompasses but is not limited to its economic value). To achieve this aim, I suggest we move from simply focusing on the authentic task to considering why that task matters? This then enables a shift from the student in isolation to the student as a member of society. Senses of achievement can become richer, thus enhancing the students' sense of self, self-worth, and well-being. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we contribute to the scant literature covering quantitative studies on the determinants of the non-academic staff incidence in higher education institutions by analysing how the proportion of non-academic staff is related to key features such as size, prestige, year of foundation and financial structure of universities. We apply nonlinear regression analysis to compare HEIs across Europe and the USA, taking into account time and cross-country heterogeneity of the two balanced panel datasets concerning European and American universities over a period of 6 years (2011–2016 for Europe and 2012–2017 for the USA). Evidence suggests that in both Europe and the USA, public and larger (if sufficiently large) as well as more research-oriented units are characterised by a higher proportion of non-academic staff. In Europe, we observe an inverted U-shaped effect of the share of non-personnel expenditure and the foundation year on the proportion of non-academic staff, while the proportion of non-academic staff decreases with the share of core and third-party funding. For the USA, we obtain similar findings except that the share of core funding and third-party funding is characterised by a U-shaped effect, and the impact of the share of non-personnel expenditure has no empirical effect on the proportion of non-academic staff. Additionally, we discover that some factors that contribute to the proportion of non-academic staff may constitute indicators of performance, suggesting the need for further research to extend our knowledge on the complex issue of the role played by non-academic staff in university performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The journal, Higher Education (HE), was established in 1972 and is currently one of the leading international journals in higher education studies. By using bibliometric techniques, a systematic review, and a social network analysis, this review article provides an overview of the main patterns of publications in HE during its history. The findings show that (i) the volume of articles has been continuously increasing, with a particular marked uplift since 2007; (ii) while single-authored articles have dominated the publication pattern, collaborative articles have shown a particular growth over the last decade; (iii) the USA, the UK, and Australia have dominated the journal in terms of the number of articles, international collaboration, and the most prolific authors; (iv) while Chinese authors have become more evident, there has been a near-absence of contributions from Latin America, Eastern Europe, and most of Africa; (v) in the entire history of HE, there has been a gender imbalance (in favour of male authors) across the most cited articles, but this pattern has changed in the last decade and; (vi) both teaching and learning and system policy have been key research themes in the journal although internationalisation and the student experience have recently gained traction. These patterns of publication in HE, with their imbalances and absences, suggest several challenges ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women academics have represented half of the academic body at Chinese higher education institutions since 2018. However, national and international scientific research on women academics in China has been limited, in contrast with the numerous international publications on women academics working in European, Oceanian, and North American higher education systems. Motivated by this relative lack, this study takes a historical perspective to analyze the role played and the expectations and challenges faced by women academics in Chinese higher education. We organize this history into three periods: (1) the emergence of the modern, Western-influenced university, starting at the beginning of the twentieth century; (2) the creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949; and (3) the contemporary period, beginning with China's opening up in the late 1970s. For each of these periods, the study identifies how traditions, changing cultural and societal beliefs concerning gender, and the development of the higher education system in China transformed the role, positioning and activities of women academics. This study contributes to a better understanding of the current status of women academics in China, what has changed, and the challenges they still face to gain further prominence in the country's fast-developing higher education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]