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The increasing internationalization of Higher Education Institutions has facilitated universities from East Asian countries like Taiwan, Korea, and China to value university rankings more in enhancing their admissions and reputation. Especially when Taiwan and China are all considered belonging to Chinese social community, returnee doctorates are assumed to possess international experience that is theoretically helpful to improve their research productivity and university employers generally prefer foreign-trained doctorates. However, there is little research to prove that returnee doctorates are more productive than local doctorates because of more frequent international mobility. This research examines a University in Taiwan, a prominent academic research university, credible for its research productivity. From the perspective of bibliometrics, this study used the Scopus International Academic Database to identify publications, citations, and Field Weighted Citation Impact (FWCI) as credible indicators of research productivity, controlling for personal background, doctoral training, international mobility, and research collaboration. We hope that the differences in research productivity between local and returnee doctorates can be measured more comprehensively and objectively. The results of this study found that there is a significant difference in the higher FWCI score of research publications between local and returnee doctorates, and further found that there is a significant positive relationship between local doctorates, published papers during doctoral studies, prestige of supervisors, and international and domestic research collaboration on research productivity. Those that identified international mobility in careers had a stronger impact on research productivity compared to those of the doctorate educating stage, and both international and domestic research collaboration were important for research productivity. The results based on empirical analysis broke the myths of returnee doctorate corresponding to high research productivity in this study, and can serve as a reference for faculty recruitment and research environment enhancement in research-oriented universities in Taiwan and other Asian countries. Policy implications are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evaluation of research to allocate government funding to universities is now common across the globe. The Research Excellence Framework, introduced in the UK in 2014, marked a major change by extending assessment beyond the 'quality' of published research to include its real-world 'impact'. Impact submissions were a key determinant of the £4 billion allocated to universities following the exercise. The case studies supporting claims for impact are therefore a high stakes genre, with writers keen to make the most persuasive argument for their work. In this paper we examine 800 of these 'impact case studies' from disciplines across the academic spectrum to explore the rhetorical presentation of impact. We do this by analysing authors' use of hyperbolic and promotional language to embroider their presentations, discovering substantial hyping with a strong preference for boosting the novelty and certainty of the claims made. Chemistry and physics, the most abstract and theoretical disciplines of our selection, contained the most hyping items with fewer as we move along the hard/pure – soft/applied continuum as the real-world value of work becomes more apparent. We also show that hyping varies with the type of impact, with items targeting technological, economic and cultural areas the most prolific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In China, higher education institutions (HEIs) have a governance arrangement in which the university president and the party secretary occupy key roles. However, their legal roles as institutional leaders are vaguely specified in existing legal frameworks. Based on a four-dimensional theoretical model, this paper (i) clarifies the leadership roles in the dual governance structure, (ii) explores how HEI leaders (i.e. presidents and party secretaries) perceive their leadership, and (iii) applies the unique Chinese practices as a valuable test bed for critical reflections on how existing theoretical models of leadership are relevant in Chinese contexts. Through in-depth interviews with six top-level leaders from six Chinese public HEIs, our findings indicate that Chinese HEI leaders apply more structural than symbolic dimensions in their leadership practices. Whereas studies on institutional leadership conducted outside China tend to highlight the symbolic dimensions of leadership practices, our study suggests that top-level Chinese HEI leaders may assume the role of university managers rather than institutional leaders. We offer some reflections on the relevance of existing theoretical models of leadership and suggest the directions for further theoretical enhancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education systems are caught between two dynamic processes, one referring to economic value and the other to status value. Although these political rationalities are presented as part of a coherent programme of reform and 'modernization', they pull higher education systems and the actors within them in contradictory directions. Their impact can collectively be referred to as research selectivity, since these rationalities encompass both research performativity and institutional practices of recognition and reward and subjective strategies. In this paper, we first aim to map the dominant orientations of higher education studies research and how they reflect the relationship between neoliberalism and the restructuring of higher education systems and research infrastructure. Our reading shows that this is a significant context for inquiring into research selectivity as it is enacted and, at the same time, suggests that we need to pay attention to the privileging of existing centres of higher education research and the relative absence of sustained focus on research selectivity in the non-core regions of Europe. Secondly, the paper puts forward the case for a sustained research agenda that focuses specifically on the identification of the differential impact of processes of research selectivity in non-core regions of Europe, organized around three intersecting themes – linguistic, epistemological, and disciplinary impact. Arguing for the importance and relevance of this research agenda for empirical research in Europe and globally, the paper emphasizes that its main objective is to create a critical space within which we can, collectively, think higher education otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flipped classrooms have become widely adopted in educational settings (e.g., in higher education) worldwide. However, there is a need for more precise understanding of the ingredients for student satisfaction in a flipped setting. The aim of this paper was to investigate university students' experiences of the factors that create a successful flipped course. Ten measures were used to investigate the hypothesized factors affecting satisfaction, which were chosen based on the results from previous flipped classroom studies and higher educational research. These measures were grouped into three dimensions: (1) pedagogical (five measures), (2) social (three measures), and (3) technological (two measures). Exploratory factor analysis was run to analyze the adequacy of the instruments. Results revealed that the factor structure was as expected and that the instruments measuring all ten factors of teaching and learning in a flipped classroom were adequate. Furthermore, confirmatory factor analysis was used to formally operationalize the hypothesized latent constructs, and to build a structural equation model for predicting the student satisfaction of a flipped classroom. In the end, seven factors were found to predict student satisfaction with flipped courses. The highest predictor was guidance from the dimension of pedagogy, and the second-best predictor was experienced teaching for understanding. The results, limitations, and conclusion are discussed in terms of key issues and the development of a flipped classroom pedagogical design for higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing impetus, from university students and administrations, to decolonise the curriculum and develop diverse reading lists. Yet, there is limited theoretical or empirical analysis of the authorship of current reading lists to justify this imperative. The present study developed and applied a method for auditing the authorship on reading lists of two modules, one from science and one from social science, in a research-intensive British university. The paper explores whether these reading lists can be considered descriptively representative of the student body or scholarly community. The analysis of reading lists found empirical basis for concerns that university curricula are dominated by white, male and Eurocentric authors, with some exceptions. The reading lists did not represent the diverse local student body but came closer to representing the demographic profile of academic staff. To interpret these findings, the paper argues that reading lists have a role to play in decolonising our universities, and offer opportunities to critique and deconstruct disciplinary boundaries. Further research is required to explore student and staff views of reading lists and the meaning of diversity, to evaluate existing tools, and address barriers to decolonising our curricula on a global scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher degree research students and their contributions to society and the economy are well known. However, the recognition of the increasing numbers of such students and the decreasing availability of supervisors implies that traditional individual modes of research supervision are no longer sufficient, while models of cohort supervision have led to successful outcomes. This paper uses the notion of threshold crossing to reflect upon a case study of higher degree research (HDR) supervision in an action research program, where students are immersed in industry projects to investigate company issues, innovate and transform the organisation. The action research model balances structure and flexibility, with set tasks and embedded reflexivity; the responsiveness of the model ensures timely project completion and the development of critical thinking skills. Balancing the proximity and distance between the supervisors, student, cohort and industry partner ensures that students are socialised into both academic and industry settings, developing self-efficacy to succeed in both worlds. Analysis of interviews with students and firm partners reveals that the cohort model valorises the higher research degree, developing research students. Three trends in HDR supervision are reconciled in the pedagogical approach outlined: bridging industry and academia, enculturation and emancipation and communities of learning and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, identity has emerged as a concept framing studies of early career researcher experience. Yet, identity is an amorphous concept, understood and used in a range of ways. This systematic review aimed to unpack the underpinnings of the notion of researcher identity. The final sample consisted of 38 empirical articles published in peer-reviewed journals in the last 20 years. Analyses focused on (a) identifying the dimensions used to define researcher identity, and (b) characterising the meta-theories—the underlying assumptions of the research—in relation to these dimensions. We identified four different stances towards researcher identity (clusters), based on variation on the identity dimensions in relation to the meta-theories. We characterised these as (1) transitioning among identities, (2) balancing identity continuity and change, (3) personal identity development through time and (4) personal and stable identity. These stances incorporate thought-provoking nuances and complex conceptualisations of the notion of researcher identity, for instance, that meta-theory was insufficient to characterise researcher identity stance. The contribution of the study is first to be able to differentiate four characterizations of researcher identity—important given that many studies had not clearly expressed a stance. The second is the potential of the four dimensions to help characterise identity, in past as well as future research—thus a useful tool for those working in this area. Many questions remain, but perhaps the biggest is to what extent and under what conditions is identity a productive notion for understanding early career researcher experience? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As constraints on government funding to public universities become a trend in higher education internationally, clarifying the impact of government policies on donor behavior from a comparative perspective is an issue of higher education research. This paper aims to explore the impact of government appropriations and tax policies on macro trends in donations to public research universities in Japan and USA. Panel data of donation revenue to public research universities in both countries is used to answer the following two research questions: (1) whether the trends in capital markets affect the donation revenue of public research universities operating under different tax systems in Japan and USA, and (2) how the level of government support to higher education affects donations to American and Japanese public research universities. The primary finding is that stock prices are positively associated with donations in USA; however, there is no evidence that stock prices have a positive impact on donations to Japanese public research universities. These contrasting results imply that higher stock prices do not always induce donations to universities and that it is important to consider each country's tax structure when looking for possible links between stock prices and donations to universities. Also, donor behavior is independent of the amount of government appropriations received by universities in both Japan and USA; therefore, the recent decreasing trends in government appropriations in both countries do not necessarily attract donors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to the understanding of how different actors in the academic field perceive the challenges that Brexit poses for European higher education. Based on a narrative analysis of 28 interviews, this paper highlights how actors' narratives convene discursive elements stemming from competing discourses on cooperation and competition. In doing so, the exploratory study focuses on two countries, Portugal and Germany, which correspond to distinct cases regarding their performance in the European research and higher education landscape. The analysis highlights that there are national differences between the perceptions of Brexit and allows identifying commonalities in the narratives in both countries. In addition, we identify the presence of a pragmatic managerial attitude in response to Brexit. The three overarching narratives are the narrative of concerns, the narrative of hopes, and the narrative of beliefs. These narratives reflect the struggle of the cooperation and the competition discourses in ascribing meaning to Brexit. The competition discourse has assumed a dominant role in the perceptions of Brexit and cooperation is mainly fueled through the academics and their professional ethos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Empirical social science research increasingly involves working collaboratively with organisations beyond the university. This paper contributes to the growing international literature on doctoral collaboration by exploring how UK doctoral students in the social sciences negotiate organisational collaborations. We draw on narrative interviews and administrative data to create a series of case-study vignettes. We juxtapose these with a theorisation of disciplinary knowledge practices to show how such collaborations are at once demanding and unpredictable, but also generative of new understanding and insights. We suggest that Burawoy's (American Sociological Review, 70(1), 4–28, 2005) model of the 'antagonistic interdependence' of public, critical, professional and policy sociologies is helpful as a heuristic for conceptualising doctoral student experiences of a range of different (and often contradictory) forms of social scientific knowledge. Our analysis demonstrates that both instrumental and critical forms of social knowledge can emerge from organisational partnerships and placements. We call for further attention to the 'generative paradoxes' (Bartunek and Rynes Journal of Management, 40(5), 1181–1201, 2014) and 'reflective entanglements' (Jagoda 2016) that result from doctoral collaborations, and for doctoral pedagogies that help students use these experiences to develop criticality and see it as a key skill in social research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research into academic writing has, in large part, focused on the fundamentals of how to write, and as a result, the understanding that writers require a space in which to concentrate on writing is not new. What is lacking, however, is detailed consideration of what influences writing practice and, specifically, an understanding of how scholarly writers construct their writing taskspaces. This paper explored how academic writers organised their best writing taskspaces. The notion of what constituted best was self-defined by informants. Informants submitted photographs of their best writing spaces, and these were analysed using a two-part methodology. First, the artistic and structural elements of the photographs were considered followed by analysis of the each photograph's aesthetic qualities to determine the participants' establishment and maintenance practices. The relationship between academic writers and their best writing spaces was categorised around construction and consumption themes. A typology of academic writers was developed from these findings. A four-part research agenda is proposed. This research extends understanding to include the informant's role in creating writing spaces which may guide building and design, renovations and reallocation plans for departments and assist individual academics to improve writing productivity and effectiveness. The findings may also assist managers to ensure that employer-provided working habitats are conducive to effective writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaboration is an indispensable tool to promote and increase research. However, little is known about the role of women in collaborative efforts among educational scholars, especially in developing countries, such as Chile. We apply social network analysis (SNA) to examine the relationships and patterns that emerge from a dataset retrieved from Web of Science (WoS) of coauthored scholarly publications. Using sociograms and networks' centrality indicators (density, degree, betweenness, and closeness) and bibliometric results, this study focuses on detecting the role of women in the collaborative networks. Our results show that the presence of women in the research space is stable across time, but they tend to collaborate more than men, acting as important bridgers since 2000, and that their contribution is relevant in promoting networking. This paper invites a reflection about the policies of research and gender, as well as the positionality of women doing knowledge on education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than four decades, studies of higher education have espoused the significance of fostering intercultural interactions between international and domestic students, yet numerous studies have provided widespread evidence of limited interactions between these cohorts and limited development of long-lasting relationships, such as friendship. After reviewing the conceptualisations of intercultural relationship development and their limitations in the extant literature, this paper outlines the rationale for a three-stage ecological and person-in-context conceptual framework of the development of intercultural relationships in university contexts. The proposed framework addresses: the issue of loose conceptualisations of intercultural relationships in the literature; the overlooked phenomena of dynamic interactions between individual and environmental dimensions that co-contribute to intercultural relationship development; and the developmental nature of intercultural relationships. The main proposal underpinning the framework is that the development of intercultural relationships occurs at the dynamic experiential interface between environmental affordances and students' agency, both of which evolve along three stages of relationships (i.e. interactivity, reciprocity and unity). The framework, illustrated by empirical data, addresses aspects of intercultural relationships that have been neglected in the higher education literature, and that are expected to stimulate further educational research and practices in various (inter-)national/regional and institutional contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In countries with a school-entry cutoff date, individuals born right after the cutoff are almost 1 year older than individuals in the same school cohort born right before that date. Abundant research has documented that, as a result of that extra year of maturation and skill accumulation, older students in a cohort outperform their younger peers. It is also well-established that this effect peaks at the initial stages of the educational career and wanes as students grow. However, it remains unclear whether or not the age at school entry affects final educational attainment. In this work, we use Spanish census data to assess whether individuals born right after the school-entry cutoff (January 1) are more likely to complete post-compulsory education, a university degree and post-graduate education. We also assess if the age at school entry affects the probability of completing education in a STEM field of study. Our findings indicate that males born after the cutoff accumulate more years of education than males born before that date, but are less likely to complete their education in a STEM field of study. Interestingly, the effect concentrates among the youngest and oldest students in each cohort, is less intense for higher levels of education and disappears among females. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We studied the population of articles on higher education published in academic journals by researchers from post-Soviet countries in the last three decades. We found that post-Soviet countries contribute differently to the overall publication output, with only Russia, Lithuania, and Estonia having more than 100 articles in journals indexed in Scopus. Countries also have different publication profiles in terms of articles' language, topics, methodology, and the balance between articles in local and international journals. In comparison with a sample of international articles, post-Soviet authors publish a substantially smaller share of research articles, and articles about teaching and learning issues, student experience and outcomes, and academic work, but a larger share of policy-related articles and articles about system policy and history. Researchers from one post-Soviet country collaborate much less within their country compared with authors from the international sample, where people collaborate more actively between institutions within a country. At the same time, scholars from different post-Soviet countries do not collaborate with each other. Our analysis demonstrates the disunity of the community of post-Soviet scholars disconnected by national borders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic capitalism has been among the most influential lines of research into markets in higher education. This paper takes up the distinct but related topic of academic production. This study makes use of a theory of fields and the concept of strategic action fields Fligstein and McAdam (Social Theory 29:1-26, ; A theory of fields, Oxford University Press, New York, ) and empirical evidence from a qualitative study of laboratory management at three research universities in the US to explore the how micro-dynamics of academic production may contribute to the establishment and maintenance of academic capitalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports on the role and value of social reflexivity in collaborative research in contexts of extreme inequality. Social reflexivity mediates the enablements and constraints generated by the internal and external contextual conditions impinging on the research collaboration. It fosters the ability of participants in a collaborative project to align their interests and collectively extend their agency towards a common purpose. It influences the productivity and quality of learning outcomes of the research collaboration. The article is written by fourteen members of a larger research team, which comprised 18 individuals working within the academic development environment in eight South African universities. The overarching research project investigated the participation of academics in professional development activities, and how contextual, i.e. structural and cultural, and agential conditions, influence this participation. For this sub-study on the experience of the collaboration by fourteen of the researchers, we wrote reflective pieces on our own experience of participating in the project towards the end of the third year of its duration. We discuss the structural and cultural conditions external to and internal to the project, and how the social reflexivity of the participants mediated these conditions. We conclude with the observation that policy injunctions and support from funding agencies for collaborative research, as well as support from participants' home institutions are necessary for the flourishing of collaborative research, but that the commitment by individual participants to participate, learn and share, is also necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study's principal objective was to explore the statistically predictive power of academics' research agendas for their job dissatisfaction beyond demographics. Five hundred and forty-seven academics from the eight publicly funded universities in Hong Kong responded to the Multi-Dimensional Research Agenda Inventory-12 (MDRAI-12) and the Job Dissatisfaction Scale (JDS). Three key findings were obtained. First, good psychometrics for the MDRAI-12 and the JDS were obtained. Second, research agendas varied by age, gender, academic rank, and academic discipline, while job dissatisfaction varied by age, academic rank, and institutional ranking. Third and most importantly, when age, gender, academic rank, academic discipline, and institutional ranking were statistically controlled, trailblazing research agendas generally negatively contributed to job dissatisfaction, whereas a cohesive (conservative) research agenda positively predicted job dissatisfaction, as hypothesized. Implications of the findings are discussed for academics and university senior managers. [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]

A significant number of university students are leaving their institutions before completing their degrees. The present research project applied embeddedness theory, from organizational research, to understand student retention in a tertiary student population, and develop a quantitative instrument that measured university student embeddedness. In Study One, a mixed-methods approach was employed to determine whether the Fit (similarity between the student and the university), Links (count of relationships at university), and Sacrifice (losses upon leaving university) dimensions of embeddedness related to students' self-reported reasons for remaining enrolled at their university. Qualitative results from 15 undergraduate students indicated that intent to remain could be understood within the embeddedness dimensions of Fit, Links, and Sacrifice. These themes were employed to build the University Student Embeddedness (USE) scale. The measure was examined against Rasch measurement model assumptions for each of its subscales using data collected from 299 Australian tertiary students. Study Two sought to examine exploratory evidence of the concurrent validity of the scores from this developed measure. Responses from a separate sample of 196 Australian tertiary students showed only the Fit scale significantly related to student intentions to stay at university. All USE scales correlated with academic-related skills and motivations. These results suggest that the Fit scale may be valuable in identifying students at risk of dropout. Early identification of "at risk" students may lead to the development of targeted retention interventions. However, the USE's role in detection requires further validation and the development of consistent findings within other student cohorts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic research has evolved tremendously over the last century. The middle of the twentieth century saw the development of research and the strengthening of trust both within academia and between academics and external actors. Since the later part of the twentieth century, however, the development of academic research has been characterised by reduced trust in universities and academics. It is argued that the lowering degrees of trust in universities and science are reflected in the current incentives in academia, often driven by governmental funding agencies, and the result of the altered position of universities within innovation systems. Universities are still important contributors to knowledge production, but they have slowly become more peripheral within innovation systems. Rather than setting their own research directions, they face strong incentives to do research primarily to serve others. This requires them to interact with organisations with which they have little in common and with which they find it difficult to communicate. The academic research pendulum seems to have swung too much towards knowledge transfer and application, with problematic outcomes. These developments indicate that it is necessary to reassess the purposes and potential benefits of academic research to restore trust in universities and increase the integrity and usefulness of research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complexity theory suggests that educational research should consider students' community contexts, because individual students' outcomes are interrelated with community characteristics. While some prior literature finds that higher education enrollment choices are influenced by geography, scholars have largely overlooked the importance of geography and community-level characteristics in admissions outcomes, especially in countries with distinct segments of academic and vocational universities. In this study, we adopt a geo-spatial perspective to examine the spatial distribution of student enrollments at a highly selective Taiwanese technological university, Taipei Tech. Geocoding students' home addresses, our dataset includes geodemographic characteristics and university enrollment data for villages throughout Taiwan. Our analysis shows that geodemographic segmentation of enrollment patterns is only partially driven by socioeconomic conditions of villages and primarily driven by geographic proximity. We also confirm that spatial clustering is evident and that it influences enrollment patterns. Additionally, we provide evidence of a spatial spillover effect; after controlling for village-level characteristics, we show that a village tends to have more students enrolled at Taipei Tech when nearby villages have more students enrolled at Taipei Tech. Although universities such as Taipei Tech have adopted a non-traditional admissions policy to increase diversity, we show that students from remote villages rarely used the policy to enroll at Taipei Tech. Conversely, villages with more well-educated residents were more likely to benefit from the non-traditional admission pipeline. Our findings suggest that offering alternate admissions policies may only partially address challenges related to the geography of opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a context of increasing institutional demand to be geographically mobile to examine how early-career researchers move across borders. I explore the case of Swiss academia, a particularly competitive and attractive environment with the highest levels of inbound and outbound mobility in Europe. In line with the aims of the European Research Area, an EU programme created in 2000 to foster a pan-European academic labour market, Switzerland funds scientific mobility and promotes extended research trips abroad as tools to boost collaboration and research excellence. Therefore, Swiss institutions have valued mobility for professional and personal development. In the meantime, they have raised concerns about female academics not being mobile and the potential consequences of their local family ties on career inequalities. In this study, I explore how early-career researchers experience mobility and how their personal accounts challenge institutional definitions of being mobile or immobile. I draw on a qualitative analysis of 65 semi-structured interviews conducted for two EU research projects on early-career academics from various backgrounds. I show how empirical data question the traditional—and often gendered—mobile/immobile dichotomy. I also highlight how mobility practices are normalised by the interviewees. Moreover, using the concept of stickiness, I describe a subtle range of sticky-to-stretchy mobility experiences influenced by both structural and individual factors. Finally, through the figure of the geoccasional worker, I question romanticised visions of mobility and stress the need to reconsider mobility as a (gendered) precarity issue rather than as a female problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes cross-national trends in national student-faculty ratios (SFRs) over the past five decades. In descriptive analyses, we find that SFRs have increased globally, driven by particularly large increases in low-income countries. We analyze two cross-national datasets to examine factors associated with national SFRs. We find that national SFRs are positively associated with gross tertiary enrollment rates and particularly so in low-income countries. In contrast, both the female share of faculty and research spending are associated with having lower national SFRs. The findings shed light on how national higher education systems are responding to massification pressures and suggest that differentiating faculty roles is one way that countries curb their rising SFRs as enrollments grow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite some theoretical and technical criticism, scholars largely acknowledge the influence of universities' ranking positions on the preferences of fund providers, academics and students, nationally and internationally. Considering their noticeable contribution to university rankings, prominent indicators can guide university leaders to develop better strategies by targeting common aspects of international ranking systems. The purpose of this research is therefore to specify the significant indicators and to examine their individual weight through an expanded indicator-set of international university rankings. The research benefited from the predictive approach of correlational research. The dataset was composed of universities' scores in the 2018 ARWU, THE, QS and URAP world university rankings and includes the scores of 224 universities. The data were re-organised following the expanded indicator-set previously formulated by the researcher. Regression analyses were then employed in two steps to explore significant predictors through the expanded indicator-set. The researcher also re-calculated the percentage values of seven combined indicators: citation, income, internationalisation, prize, publication, reputation and ratios/degrees. The findings showed that while all these indicators are statistically significant, the components of research reputation contribute 73.71% to universities' ranking scores. On the other hand, income is the only negative contributor with a weight of − 1.78%. The research also revealed that when comparing two scores based on re-calculated and assigned weights, only 19 universities occupy the same position among the 224 universities. Following these results, the researcher then discusses various policies and practices with the potential to expedite universities' ranking success. Considering the data reliability and longitudinal feasibility, several recommendations were also developed for further research on university ranking systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parallel to the increasing level of maturity of the field of research on higher education, an increasing number of scholarly works aims at synthesising and presenting overviews of the field. We identify three important pitfalls these previous studies struggle with, i.e. a limited scope, a lack of a content-related analysis, and/or a lack of an inductive approach. We take these limitations into account by analysing the abstracts of 16,928 articles on higher education between 1991 and 2018. To investigate this huge collection of texts, we apply topic models, which are a collection of automatic content analysis methods that allow to map the structure of large text data. After an in-depth discussion of the topics differentiated by our model, we study how these topics have evolved over time. In addition, we analyse which topics tend to co-occur in articles. This reveals remarkable gaps in the literature which provides interesting opportunities for future research. Furthermore, our analysis corroborates the claim that the field of research on higher education consists of isolated 'islands'. Importantly, we find that these islands drift further apart because of a trend of specialisation. This is a bleak finding, suggesting the (further) disintegration of our field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although international students have been a notable research topic in higher education for more than 100 years, to date only one qualitative literature review has been published on the topic. In order to help researchers better understand the intellectual landscape of global research related to international students, we conducted a quantitative scientometric review of 3685 relevant journal articles published between 1900 and 2018 and indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection. The findings show that the number of articles published in the field has increased rapidly, especially since 2006, and this expansion has been led primarily by Australia, the U.K., and the USA, as these three countries not only produced most of the high-yielding research institutions and productive authors, but also published a majority of the prolific journals. Among the numerous topics discussed in these selected articles, cross-cultural adjustment, mental health problems, second-language acquisition, intercultural development, and student migration were most frequently studied, while social integration, graduate employability, and student satisfaction have emerged as new trends. These results complement the existing qualitative literature review from a quantitative perspective and provide valuable insights into and implications for global research related to international students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing availability of high-quality longitudinal data on students in higher education, scholars' interest in how students proceed through higher education has risen. So far, the research field is diverse in theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. Thus, based on 27 studies published in (higher) education research journals during the past two decades, this literature review provides an overview of the theoretical concepts, methodologies and main empirical findings in the study of students' trajectories in higher education. The results depict a US dominated research field. Most theoretical frameworks are based on student's decision-making. Across different country contexts and research designs—ranging from descriptions of student trajectories to studies predicting who engages in which types of trajectories to sequential trajectory reconstruction—we found that historically disadvantaged groups in higher education such as students from low social origin follow less linear and less smooth higher education trajectories. However, while the field of comparative education is growing steadily and may significantly contribute to explaining the link between the realization of students' opportunities and the way how higher education is designed and implemented both on the national and local level, there were no cross-country comparison studies on higher education trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academics have always been endowed with the privilege of autonomy, but the diffusion of evaluation systems based on publication outcomes potentially jeopardizes the benefits deriving from behaviors that address other pillars of higher education. Besides research and teaching, academic citizenship, i.e., the service behaviors carried out within and outside organizational boundaries, are in fact cornerstones of university functioning. We investigate the relationship between academic citizenship and research after the introduction of an evaluation system that moves research performance to center stage on a dataset collecting publication records and service activities of 353 Italian scholars in the accounting discipline in the 2004–2013 period. A cluster analysis reveals different academics' orientations towards research and academic citizenship. We contribute to the debate on academic choices by showing that a large number of university members tend to focus on a single type of academic citizenship or to adopt a research orientation, while a significant part remains stuck in the middle without achieving satisfying performance in any domains according to international standards, and discuss implications for the design of behavioral incentives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the paths after graduate school are increasingly varied, the central goal of doctoral programs remains to develop independent researchers. Given the important role of doctoral advisors in the socialization and progress-making of doctoral students, we conducted semi-structured interviews with faculty advisors who regularly advise chemistry doctoral students from three chemistry departments with rotation programs for their first-year students. In contrast to existing studies documenting advisee perspectives of research autonomy, this work focuses particularly on the advisor perspective. After open coding these interviews, we found a breadth of ideas and approaches to developing research autonomy. The faculty advisors conceptualized research autonomy in their first-year doctoral students as enthusiasm or curiosity for their research or research area. The advisor's approaches to developing and promoting autonomy in doctoral students varied widely, and some went so far as to not develop autonomy in new students but to "screen" for it. Finally, different subdisciplines in chemistry provide unique opportunities as well as constraints for advisors and students. We discuss the implications of these findings for doctoral students, advisors of doctoral students, administrators, and research advisors of undergraduate students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on thematic data analysis of reports from a qualitative cross-country study, the article explores the perceptions of Brexit and collaborations with the UK in different EU countries through the lens of discursive institutionalism. We suggest that in the context of uncertainty characteristic of the post-Brexit referendum period, ideas related to economic concerns and strategic repositioning of national higher education systems subsume the values attached to the European dimension of higher education and research policies. The ideal of educational cooperation based on cultural diversity and national varieties is overridden by concerns expressed in terms of economic rationales. These findings corroborate research that argues that collaboration/cooperation has become a pragmatic and instrumental endeavour. In time, and if the current climate of uncertainty persists, this may further reconfigure institutional strategies and lead institutions to focus on problem-solutions rather than the pursuit of the political ends of cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While higher education research has paid considerable attention to the impact of both ratings and rankings on universities, less attention has been devoted to how university subunits, such as Schools of Education, are affected by such performance measurements. Anchored in a neo-institutional approach, we analyze the formation of a competitive institutional environment in UK higher education in which ratings and rankings assume a central position in promoting competition among Schools of Education (SoE). We apply the concepts of "institutional environment" and "organizational strategic actors" to the SoE to demonstrate how such university subunits articulate their qualities and respond to the institutional environment in which they are embedded—by using ratings and rankings (R&R) to compete for material and symbolical resources as well as inter-organizational and intra-organizational legitimacy. Through findings from 22 in-depth expert interviews with members of the multidisciplinary field of education and a content analysis of websites (n = 75) of SoE that participated in REF 2014, we examine the stratified environment in which SoE are embedded (1). We uncover how R&R are applied by SoE within this competitive, marketized higher education system (2). Finally, we indicate the strategic behaviors that have been triggered by the rise of R&R in a country with a highly formalized and standardized research evaluation system (3). The results show both homogenization and differentiation among SoE in their use of organizational vocabulary and the applications of R&R while simultaneously revealing strategic behavior, ranging from changes in internal practices to changes in organizational structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most research on the implementation of research-informed teaching has focused on influencing the individual practices of academics. However, social practice theory has criticised individualist approaches, arguing that attention must be paid to the context of practice, which in the academic context requires a focus on how academics articulate agency in their teaching practices in relation to specific contextual opportunities and constraints. This small-scale qualitative study in a UK university explores how academics across eight disciplines reshaped their understandings and practices of research-informed teaching in the context of a change in institutional mission from teaching and professional practice to incorporate expectations around research, drawing on developments in social practice theory when applied to academic workgroups. Understandings of identity and agency developed in postcolonial literary theory are used to further explore the academic work involved in creating new narratives for research-informed teaching in the context of changing, and often contradictory discourses of research, teaching and practice. This has implications for approaches to implementing research-informed teaching, which should recognise the work of academics in developing new narratives for research-informed teaching in the context of unique configurations of the nexus between research, teaching and practice in different disciplines. Social practice theory provides a lens for considering the contextual elements impacting on academic approaches to research-informed teaching, while approaches to narrative borrowed from postcolonial literary theory foreground the agency of academics in working across contradictions that surfaced with changes to the nexus between research, teaching and practice, to create emergent practices of research-informed teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Women researchers are underrepresented in almost all research fields. There are disciplinary differences in the phase in which they tend to quit their academic career: in the natural and technical sciences (STEM), it is in the postdoctoral phase, whereas in the social sciences and humanities (SSH) it is during the doctoral phase. This is indicative of disciplinary differences in the barriers women face in their careers. Related studies on these barriers are more numerous in the STEM field, which in turn limits the scope of potential policies and measures that address the needs of women in the SSH field. This article aspires to contribute to an understanding of the obstacles women from different fields face in their careers and to offer a reflection on various support measures. Using qualitative data (interviews, focus groups, workshop notes, evaluation forms) from a Czech mentoring programme for female junior researchers across all fields, the subsequent analysis reveals disciplinary differences in the perceived career path obstacles in research as well as the attitudes held towards it. Furthermore, the analysis points to the reasons for these obstacles and attitudes by using the concept of professional identity, a useful tool for identifying the barriers to the development of professional career ambitions. Additionally, the analysis utilises Becher and Trowler's categorisation of SSH and STEM fields into rural and urban categories, enabling one to reflect on the social, cognitive and power features of these fields and the influence these features have on the conditions for the start of an academic career. In order to motivate women to complete their PhD and to apply for a job in academia, this article argues that measures should be taken in the SSH field to promote the involvement of women in the academic community right from the start of their PhD, and therefore, along with mentoring, sponsorship is also needed. In the natural and technical sciences, it is crucial to present women in the late doctoral and early postdoctoral phase with positive female role models – not as token superstars, but as young researchers who are just a few career steps ahead and who have managed to balance their career with a family in the frame of an egalitarian partnership. Furthermore, it is necessary to increase the gender sensitivity of these female researchers in order to prevent feelings of scientific inefficacy arising from the discrepancy between their own intended biography and priorities, and the normative notion of the "proper" scientist, which is strongly masculine instead of gender-neutral. Recommendations are also included for transforming this normative notion of the "proper scientist" – a precondition for wider structural changes within the entire academic environment – into a more gender-neutral one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faculty members seek employment in an environment that offers good fit and work satisfaction. As in other countries, higher education institutions in the USA vary by size, disciplinary focus, and emphasis on research. This study examined faculty satisfaction by institution type (baccalaureate, master's, doctoral, and research) for recent full-time faculty members in 100 US 4-year institutions. Findings showed that, overall, satisfaction was highest for respondents in baccalaureate colleges. Subsequent analyses to examine strength of difference across institutional type confirmed initial differences for some facets of satisfaction, but not for others. Although differences that contributed to satisfaction by type were limited, results showed that faculty perceptions of the institutional environment firmly contribute to their satisfaction. Additional findings as well as policy and program implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a map of the three-element conceptual set of the common (the common good, the commons, and the common) in reference to higher education. It does so using a method of political ontology. It discusses the three concepts in reference to the six dimensions of higher education reality (ontology, politics, ownership, governance, benefits, and finance). Thus, it not only presents a systematic view of higher education reality as seen through the lenses of the common but also explains the substantial (and in some cases, subtler) differences between the concepts themselves. Moreover, it addresses briefly the differences between the concepts from the order of the common and those from the order of the public. Finally, the article seeks to offer an insight into what this particular conceptual set may provide the researchers in terms of thinking through, and designing an alternative to the current predicament of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The second year of university is little-researched, despite being a focal point for declining performance, persistence, and satisfaction. It is important to establish appropriate methods for studying this 'sophomore slump' and to pinpoint specific antecedents from broad domains noted in literature (e.g. students' social integration, perceptions of the curriculum). Using a novel methodology, 166 undergraduates were surveyed in successive years of study to derive a gold standard 'within-subjects' data sample. Under a replicated design, a 'between-subjects' sample of over 1000 students completed the same e-survey just once, in year one, two, or three. Quantitative comparison of the responses across years showed over 85% agreement between samples. This endorses between-subject approaches (i.e. simultaneously surveying students from different years) to facilitate rapid interventions that benefit students before they graduate. In terms of detailed findings, year two saw positive trends in students' academic engagement (e.g. self-reported independent study time), social integration (e.g. feeling accepted, involvement in extra-curricular activities), and views on teaching staff (e.g. approachability). Although appraisals remained broadly favourable, there was, in contrast, significant deterioration in global perceptions of the learning atmosphere (e.g. course enjoyment), as well as specific elements of the teaching provision (e.g. contact hours, feedback). Notably, there appeared to be little progression in students' academic self-perceptions (e.g. confidence to make presentations, enter class debates). Year two also saw increased thoughts of drop-out. These results highlight the unique character of the second year at university and indicate potential target areas for enhancing this phase of the undergraduate journey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities find themselves faced with the conflicting institutional demands of being cathedrals of learning and research as well as introducing managerial and corporate-like structures. Despite many studies in higher education research that focus on how this situation affects the mission of universities, the role of imprinting has not received considerable attention yet. Our study aims at closing this research gap by analyzing the influence of institutional founding conditions on mission statements of universities. Results show that imprinting does not affect the introduction of mission statements, but rather their contents. The role of imprinting is, however, moderated by the power and the reputation of universities. In discussing these findings within the context of higher education research, our study contributes to a better understanding of developments in the field of universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For long, the research-teaching nexus has maintained the interest of the scholarly community. The present study introduced a process variable-teaching styles-into the investigation of the association between research and teaching. The study adopted a predominantly quantitative-driven, mixed research method design, with a questionnaire survey supplemented by insiders' views. Three hundred and fifty-four academics from 15 institutions in Beijing, P. R. China, responded to the Thinking Styles in Teaching Inventory and reported their research publications for 3 years. The quantitative findings suggested that after key demographics and contextual factors were controlled for, teaching styles were related to research productivity largely in the anticipated directions. Subsequently, four additional academics who met the criteria of possessing expertise in teaching styles and of having experiences as academics in China were invited to explain the quantitative findings concerning the relationships between specific teaching styles and particular types of publications. It was concluded that although the magnitude of the relationship between teaching and research is rather small, the research-teaching nexus does exist. Theoretical significance is discussed and practical implications of the findings are proposed for academics and for university senior managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the past decades, university teachers from both the East and the West have been increasingly called to involve their students in research, therefore they have to rethink not only their research and teaching practices but re-evaluate the role of research in their ongoing teaching. Thus, a survey was conducted to explore (1) what Chinese and Dutch university teachers believe the role of research should be in their teaching, (2) how they perceive their actual incorporation of research into their current teaching practice, and (3) how their beliefs about the role of research relate to their beliefs about teaching. Altogether, 284 university teachers from China and the Netherlands participated in the study. One striking result was that the Chinese and the Dutch university teachers were similar in several ways. They both highly valued the role of research in teaching, and were dissatisfied with the actual incorporation of research into their ongoing teaching practice. However, despite all similarities, the Chinese teachers were also found to be different from the Dutch teachers: They scored lower on how much they valued the role of research, how well they could incorporate research into their current teaching practice, and how much they agreed with teaching as conceptual change and focusing on an active role of the student. In general, the differences between the Chinese and the Dutch teachers may have their roots in the Confucian versus Western educational philosophies, respectively, and the similarities identified perhaps reflect the Western influence on Asian higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]