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Globalization and the revolution in technological communications are major forces of change in higher education. This environment, when coupled with the needs of adult learners and the rising costs of tuition at traditional colleges and universities, has stimulated the emergence of for-profit, degree-granting higher education in the United States. This paper examines the growth of for-profit higher education, provides a cost/profit analysis, and gives examples of for-profit universities that are increasing international in scope. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these developments for traditional colleges and universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last quarter-century bore witness to a sea change in academic involvement with commerce. Widespread university-based efforts to identify, manage, and market intellectual property (IP) have accompanied broad shifts in the relationship between academic and proprietary approaches to the dissemination and use of science and engineering research. Such transformations are indicators of institutional changes at work in the environment faced by universities. This paper draws upon a fifteen-year panel (1981-1995) of university-level data for 87 research-intensive US campuses in order to document trends and transitions in relationships among multiple indicators of academic and commercial engagement. The institutional environment for public and private science is volatile, shifting in fits and starts from a situation conducive to organizational learning through high volume patenting to a more challenging arrangement that links indiscriminate pursuit of IP with declines in both the volume and impact of academic science. The pattern and timing of these transitions may support an enduring system of stratification that offers increasing returns to first-movers while limiting the opportunities available to universities that are later entrants to the commercial realm. Unpacking the systematic effects of university research commercialization requires focused attention on the sources and trajectories of profound institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article questions the assumption that increasing competition among higher education institutions is the best method of achieving a strong higher education sector in developing countries. It notes that there has been increasing emphasis on the importance of higher education institutions for sustainable development, particularly because of their importance to the global knowledge economy. For the same reason, the appropriate management of the relationship between the state and higher education institutions is vital to a strong and dynamic future for these institutions. This paper proposes a menu of options for higher education governance, grouped around ‘state-centric’ and ‘neo-liberal’ models of development. The ‘state-centric’ model proposed is based on a variety of examples of high performing Asian economies, in particular, while the ‘neo-liberal’ model is based on emerging trends in higher education management in countries such as Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. The paper suggests that despite pressure across the globe to encourage a market among universities, this may not always be the most efficient use of resources, or the best way to integrate universities in a country’s drive for economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the dynamics of competition in higher education. National competition and global competition are distinct, but feed into each other. Higher education produces ‘positional goods’ (Hirsch 1976) that provide access to social prestige and income-earning. Research universities aim to maximise their status as producers of positional goods. This status is a function of student selectivity plus research performance. At system-level competition bifurcates between exclusivist elite institutions that produce highly value positional goods, where demand always exceeds supply and expansion is constrained to maximise status; and mass institutions (profit and non-profit) characterised by place-filling and expansion. Intermediate universities are differentiated between these poles. In global competition, the networked open information environment has facilitated (1) the emergence of a world-wide positional market of elite US/UK universities; and (2) the rapid development of a commercial mass market led by UK and Australian universities. Global competition is vectored by research capacity. This is dominated by English language, especially US universities, contributing to the pattern of asymmetrical resources and one-way global flows. The paper uses Australia as its example of system segmentation and global/national interface. It closes by reflecting on a more balanced global distribution of capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across the field of U.S. higher education, regional teaching and comprehensive universities are striving for national research status. This tendency has most often been explored at the organizational level, but in this paper, the views and actions of faculty members are the unit of analysis. Based on qualitative data, I put forward a three pronged frame-work that organizes overarching faculty responses to one university's transition. I focus most specifically on one faculty response, which I call operationalizing in order to show how faculty members take agency in a moment of complex change that illuminates tensions between faculty, university leaders and the field of higher education, more generally. Contributing to the literature on faculty agency, mission creep/striving and change in higher education, I unpack specific ideas and practices that faculty used as they took agency over their careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the characteristics of US colleges and universities that were early adopters of post-1970 academic growth fields. It examines hypotheses drawn from four analytical perspectives on sources of organizational change: organizational ecology, inter-institutional stratification, demographic composition, and historical traditions. Focusing on 20 'newly established' and 'emerging' growth fields, we find strong support for density-dependence and organizational size as influences on early adoption for all fields, as well as support for institutional status variables as influences on the early adoption of new liberal arts and basic sciences fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of increasing support for interdisciplinary modes of research, many in the policy, scientific, and academic communities propose that universities should change structurally to reduce the barriers to investigation that involves researchers from multiple disciplines. This paper examines ‘interdisciplinary strategies’ in U.S. research universities—deliberate efforts to spur collaborative research across traditional departmental and disciplinary boundaries, including the creation and adaptation of university policies, practices, and structures. It identifies and analyzes the use of incentive grants to initiate new interdisciplinary units, the establishment of ‘campus-wide institutes’ that steer campus investments in interdisciplinary areas, and new modes of faculty hiring and evaluation. Illustrative examples are provided, and the implications of these strategies are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article draws on the narratives of 34 immigrant women professors from 22 different countries who teach in a major research university in the U.S. First, the article presents immigrant women professors’ voices of experiencing traditional academic activities in terms of teaching, research, and administration/service. Second, the paper voices women’s stories of social climate prevailing in their departments and institutions that affects their academic careers. Third, the article narrates women’s expressions of their efforts to balance academic life and family life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following landmark legislation passed more than 20 years ago, university-industry relationships have now become central to understanding the changing role of research universities in American Society. The paper analyzes the development of university-industry partnerships during the 1990s. Past studies have used a broad array of measures of ties and a variety of research methodologies, but they have shared a focus on top collaborators or on samples of universities skewed toward the top. However, findings based on top collaborators may not be valid for other universities. Universities involved in mid- to low-levels of collaboration are qualitatively different in many ways from the more extensively studied set of top collaborators, suggesting that characteristics affecting university-industry ties may not be the same for these institutions. The paper shifts the focus away from top collaborators to this sizable and less studied majority. In general, we find that the same characteristics predicting high levels of involvement for the sample as a whole also predict high levels of involvement for the sub-sample of mid- and low-level collaborators. However, We find some particular characteristics of these institutions, such as land grant status, are also associated with stronger ties to industry, and that some characteristics of 25 top institutions do not predict the level of involvement of these lower-level collaborators. We will discuss whether the licensing of new technology is likely ever to become an important source of net revenues for current middle and low-level collaborators. Our findings raise doubts about whether many universities below the top 25 will earn substantial net revenues from licensing, though they do not dispute the potential service value of these ties. The study is based on examination of a wide range of potential influences on university-industry collaboration for institutions that are not currently among the most heavily involved in partnerships. These include status, other institutional characteristics (such as size and control), investment in science and engineering, and characteristics of offices or technology transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global expansion of access to higher education has increased demand for information on academic quality and has led to the development of university ranking systems or league tables in many countries of the world. A recent UNESCO/CEPES conference on higher education indicators concluded that cross-national research on these ranking systems could make an important contribution to improving the international market for higher education. The comparison and analysis of national university ranking systems can help address a number of important policy questions. First, is there an emerging international consensus on the measurement of academic quality as reflected in these ranking systems? Second, what impact are the different ranking systems having on university and academic behavior in their respective countries? Finally, are there important public interests that are thus far not reflected in these rankings? If so, is there a needed and appropriate role for public policy in the development and distribution of university ranking systems and what might that role be? This paper explores these questions through a comparative analysis of university rankings in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The American academic research enterprise relies heavily on contributions made by foreign nationals. Of particular note is the large number of international postdocs employed at universities in the United States (US). Postdocs are among the fastest growing group of academic staff in the US, and over 50 % of all postdocs in the US are temporary visa holders. While academic mobility is sometimes understood using a 'push-pull' model, we argue that demand for educational migrants must be considered. Drawing from Marginson's (Handbook on globalization and higher education. Edward Elger, Northampton, ; Marginson and Rhoades in High Educ 43:281-309, ) work, we develop a model for assessing local, national, and institutional (or local) variables that may shape the employment of international postdocs at universities in the United States, and we operationalize the model through a panel regression analysis using data covering the period 1989-2009. We find that the passage of time and federally supported research and development expenditures are strong predictors of postdoc employment. Institutional characteristics predict changes only in the subsample of private universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similar to trends in postsecondary education across the world, today's US universities are an increasing mix of native and foreign-born scholars. US institutions are experiencing a growing number of international faculty members, but there is limited literature examining foreign-born faculty who work in US institutions and how outputs from foreign-born faculty compare to US-born natives. Using data from the 2004 National Survey of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF:04), this study examines difference in faculty members' research productivity at doctoral-granting institutions by foreign/US-born status controlling for select individual and institutional characteristics. Findings show that foreign-born faculty members spend more time on research and less time on undergraduate instruction than US-born peers, and this may contribute to their higher levels of production. Implications are discussed that consider how to ensure diverse faculty communities that lead to strong research and knowledge production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of attending college on students' political ideology has been a controversial topic for many decades. In this study, we explored the relationship between attending a liberal arts college and students' political views. Compared to their counterparts at other 4-year institutions, liberal arts college students began postsecondary education with more liberal political views, but also made great changes toward liberal political views over 4 years of college. These greater gains persisted even in the presence of important confounding influences such as pre-college political views. In addition, our analyses suggested a global effect of attendance at a liberal arts college on the development of liberal political views. Attempts to explain the causal mechanisms underlying this apparent institutional influence were only partially successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

questionnaire was administered to 1,929 applicants to Oxford University, including measures of trait anxiety, behavioural response to examinations and to breakdown in relationships. 635 of these applicants were admitted to the university and of these, 383 also responded to a questionnaire administered 4 years later, just before their final examinations. The classification (first, upper and lower second, third class) and marks in the final examinations were obtained and the relationship between the personality measures and academic performance were calculated. Women showed higher anxiety scores than men at both times of testing. Women who obtained the best (first class) degrees scored significantly higher on anxiety than those who performed less well. In contrast, there was no such difference in men. Explanations for anxiety having a facilitatory effect on academic performance of women at Oxford University are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research demonstrates that leadership, particularly among presidents, is important for moving a diversity agenda forward and make appreciable progress on it. The research questions pursued here are: What is the role of the college president in advancing a diversity agenda? What strategies do presidents identify as important to facilitating a diversity agenda? There were three main findings: (1) strategies are deployed in a non-linear way best represented through a web metaphor, (2) six sets of actors that serve as key nodes on the web and specific strategies were crucial to enhancing and deepening the web-developing an internal network, hiring, mentoring, partnering with faculty on the curriculum, supporting student affairs staff, working directly with and learning from students, and establishing external networks; and, (3) strategies within the human resource frame are noted by presidents as particularly important to moving a diversity agenda forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the impact of accountability on higher education policies in Europe and the United States. We describe how the accountability movement relates to other policy trends in higher education, providing empirical data on how accountability was implemented and how academics and managers in four universities perceived these policies. We close the article with a reflection on the observed shift from professional to political accountability that uses `soft' mechanisms that seem to offer little change in the quality of education in these countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the problems and issues of higher education in universities, polytechnics, colleges, and vocational and education institutions in the U.S. Features of higher education system; Provision of forums for ongoing discussions on higher education; Content of technical reports or doctoral dissertations.

This article analyzes forms of resource allocation in university systems and their effects on performance in institutions of higher education. Internationally, higher education systems differ substantially with regard to research and education funding sources and to ways that resources are allocated. European universities receive the majority of their funding from public sources, but private funding plays a more important role in Anglo-American systems of higher education. Many governments use competitive elements in the process of allocating public funds to institutions of higher education. Examples include the implementation of performance measures through ``formula funding'', or resource allocation on the basis of evaluated project proposals. Corresponding forms of performance-based resource allocation can be found within most higher education institutions. This article analyzes how various forms of funding and resource allocation affect universities at the macro-level and individual behavior at the micro-level. A theoretical approach to this problem suggests that performance-based funding tends to bring about positive changes but is also a factor in unintended side effects. Forms of resource allocation influence the behavior of academics and managers in higher education, particularly their levels of activity as well as the kinds of activities they engage in and their ways of dealing with risks. Empirical analyses partly confirm these hypotheses. It can be shown that changes in resource allocation have an impact on the level and type of activity academics concentrate on but not on the long-term success of universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]