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Higher education in Europe has undergone remarkable transformations over the last two decades. Germany is a very interesting case in point here. While the country was labeled as a laggard in the process, over the last decade the pace of higher education reforms in Germany has grown considerably. This paper will focus on the by now visible effects of these remarkable transformations, which have led to numerous consequences that go beyond the explicit intentions of policy-makers. Unintended consequences resulting from rapid institutional change will be discussed with regard to research, third-mission activities, and structural reforms concerning governance and organization. It can be assumed that, due to a variety of such unintended consequences, also in other European countries the next decade will be shaped by efforts aiming at reforming the reforms, re-regulating the significant changes brought about during the last two decades. The paper closes with a brief discussion of the necessary linkages to three related interdisciplinary research areas, from which both higher education research and policy-making will benefit, and a summary of the main points of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to identify key challenges facing Japan's higher education since the early 1990s and their impacts on major research themes. In this paper key challenges include those resulting from the decline in the 18-year population, the cultivation of high-quality university graduates, the incorporation of national universities, the diversification of higher education systems, and globalization and internationalization of higher education. The paper concludes by arguing that challenges facing Japan's higher education and research are unquestionable and considerable. Because several challenges are different from that of any other countries, Japan has to find out solutions to tackle them by its own efforts. Furthermore, in response to these challenges, there has seen an evident transformation in a vast majority of higher education research institutes and centers from a purely academic-based research to more practical and operational research. Besides, at a policy level, numerous research themes and agenda have been developed and implemented by the Japanese government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper, given originally at a Coombe Lodge Conference for college staff bearing responsibility for course evaluation and review, traces the development of CNAA policy and practice in these matters since 1973, culminating in the Partnership in Validation developments beyond 1979. The author seeks to demonstrate CNAA's central concern in course evaluation and review as with the maintenance of vitality and standards. Within the validation policy of partnership, CNAA's interest is to evaluate the soundness of internal processes so that a shared responsibility for the maintenance of standards may be soundly based, and, as importantly, seen to be soundly based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vietnam's higher education is highly centralized in terms of its governance and management. A couple of higher education reform plans have been introduced over the past decade but they seem to result in poor outcomes. This paper addresses the challenges faced in the areas of governance, quality assurance and finance by a ‘key’ university located in the middle of Vietnam. These are explored by means of a case study approach involving interviews with a cross-section of significant former senior managers, current senior managers and current middle managers. Reform at this university is proceeding at a very slow pace. The impediments are both institutional and national. The implications of the case study for the reform of higher education in Vietnam are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of this paper is to describe actions designed to foster interdisciplinary research efforts at a major university in the UK. The study employed a descriptive mixed method case study approach to collecting and analysing the data used to draw its conclusions. One hundred and twenty-seven academic staff responded to the survey. The results of the survey were verified by 25 interviews with heads of colleges, heads of schools, research coordinators, research team leaders, and team members. These interviews were supported by document review to support the findings. Leadership is important at the college and university levels if interdisciplinarity is to thrive. According to the data, this seems to have not yet occurred at this particular institution. The university has done well with most of the big structures that enrich and support interdisciplinarity. However, ‘small’ structures such as clarity of meaning, motivation of staff, misalignment of old structures, time and workload, and loss of identify have impeded the move to university wide interdisciplinarity. A series of three recommendations are made to move the interdisciplinary project forward: stay clear on focus, extend the benefits of serendipity to more people, and remember that one size does not fit all. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 2008 global financial crisis cast a long shadow over Ireland's higher education and research system. The IMF said Ireland experienced an ‘unprecedented economic correction’, while Ireland's National Economic and Social Development Office said Ireland was beset by five different crises: a banking crisis, a fiscal crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis and a reputational crisis. Despite a return to growth, these circumstances provide the best explanation for the policy choices being undertaken as key actors struggle to sustain the publicly funded mass system, and reassert the country's position as a globally competitive knowledge society attractive to mobile capital and skilled labour. Whatever the outcome, it is unlikely that public funding for higher education will return to levels previously enjoyed. This paper examines the background and policy challenges confronting the government and higher education, and discusses the role of higher education researchers in helping shape options. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we examine the creation and expansion of the English university system. We show how the enormous increase in student numbers, which began with the Robbins Report (1963), led to successive governments cutting universities' funding and compelling them to act more like business enterprises than educational institutions. In turn, vice-chancellors have become more similar to powerful chief executives, collegial forms of control have been significantly reduced and academic staff increasingly work in an environment in which they are told what to teach, how to teach, what research to conduct and where to publish. However, we show that this can be dysfunctional not only for staff, but also for senior managers. In place of this dysfunctional centralism, we argue for a win-win form of collegiality, which is compatible with rapid decision-making at the university centre and effective execution of change at the local/departmental level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent shifts in university governance have relied on increased autonomy. Within this context, the enhanced role attributed to governance boards at the expense of academic bodies and the role of external stakeholders has gained momentum. With the aim of understanding the extent of the influence of external stakeholders at the institutional level, the perceptions of Rectors and Senate members from 26 European higher education institutions were analysed. Their views saw external members of boards as representing the interests of the society at large and bringing outside beliefs and pressures to the university. However, Rectors would prefer to see them as allies, avoiding interfering strongly in the private lives of institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student support practitioners, who provide students with academic, emotional and social support, are integral to higher education institutions' initiatives to widen participation of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Yet, despite calls for a deeper understanding of widening-participation practice, the work of these professionals has received scant research attention. Drawing on interviews with 39 support practitioners working in Israeli higher education institutes, this study explores how practitioners negotiate two contrasting yet coexistent interpretations of 'deficit': student deficit, focused on student inadequacies, and an institutional deficit, focused on shortcomings of the higher education institution. In analyzing how support practitioners negotiate this dual deficit, I draw on the theoretical constructs of tempered radicalism and conservative audacity. The study provides new perspectives on the challenges of widening participation in the current higher education policy climate and reveals the strategies of action that support practitioners use to manage them. The study also contributes to the literature on organizational agency, through the theoretical development of the concept of conservative audacity as agency for change, illuminating the situations in which organizational members who do not challenge institutional frameworks nevertheless disrupt the status quo as part of their everyday work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with how a major top-down reform in Norwegian higher education has affected student writing, and teachers' and students' roles. The Quality Reform was strongly influenced by the Bologna Declaration and was implemented from 2002. One of the outcomes was that, while Norwegian universities previously demanded very little undergraduate writing before the traditional sit-down examination, most courses now include student essay writing and teacher feedback. Portfolio assessment, which demands extended writing, has been introduced. The article presents some results from an evaluation of the reform, and the following questions are discussed: (1) why did the reform change writing practices; (2) what other factors have contributed to the change; (3) in what ways have the changes in writing practices affected students and teachers; and (4) what are unintended results and critical factors in the future development of writing in the aftermath of the reform? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese universities are being continually subjected to new managerial practices and technologies that have fundamental consequences on the university faculty's academic life. Within a predominantly communitarian theoretical framework of academic identity, this qualitative case study draws upon interviews with 25 academics in Mainland China to expose the extent to which Chinese academics’ values, beliefs and behaviour are convergent and consistent with those that might be expected within the reform agenda. The systematic data analysis identified six identity-related characterisations of how Chinese university faculty at this case university have reacted to this shifting context, contributing to the global literature on the academic profession in two respects. First, it contributes to the empirically grounded knowledge of the complex manner in which Chinese academics negotiate, challenge or comply with the new managerialist agenda. Second, it explores the prime academic identity that Chinese academics have built up under this new managerial circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Academic development is a recent project in the university, intended to enable the university to respond to the needs of a more diverse student body. In South Africa, such work arose during late apartheid, and has now moved to a more central institutional position advocating responsiveness in the light of the educational disparities that are the legacy of apartheid. The present study uses a social realist perspective to analyse the 25-year evolution of an academic development project within an engineering department at a South African university. The findings show that while academic development initially posed a contradictory logic to the department, the response was to reform the nature of this project into one that suited the other commitments of the department: a logic of complementarity. The department's relationships with industry were shown to have played a key role in fostering this form of change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic values and norms have as a consequence of the wave of European higher education reforms been put under pressure by the increasing expectations and demands of flexibility, entrepreneurialism and accountability. This article examines how these changes affect identity construction processes at department head level in the case of Danish universities, and how these processes influence management practice. The analysis shows how the structural demands, institutional scripts and values, as well as personal cognitive frames result in very different identity dilemmas for department heads. Three different stereotypical department head types are presented and the implications of the characteristics of these types are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on higher education research and policies in small and/or peripheral countries that usually occupy a marginal position in contemporary international debates. The region discussed here is South-eastern Europe and especially the Western Balkans. First, an outline of emerging research centres and the developments in higher education research over the past two decades is given. The original survey carried out in 2012 is discussed and the problems that have occurred in the policy transfer from ‘centres’ to the ‘periphery’ (i.e. this region) and the policy transformation in local contexts are analysed. In the final section, specific problems in the development of higher education in the region arising from the dichotomy between the ambition for the nation-building and pressures of the global market are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Postsecondary institutions always have been in a state of change. The author discusses four key areas of higher education – systems of tertiary education, privatization, academic work, and technology – that demand careful analysis that have always been of concern but now are entering a new phase of change. The author offers an interpretation of the current state of American higher education in general, and in California in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students, if organised into representative student governments or movements, can be a highly influential agency shaping higher education policy. This article introduces the Special Issue on student power in a global perspective, which addresses the question of how students are organised in different world regions and what role they play in higher education policymaking within universities or at the national level. The article discusses conceptual considerations in the study of student governments and movements and reviews the contemporary trends in student organising globally. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Over the past 20 years, universities in the United Kingdom have been undergoing a dramatic period of transformation and change which can be attributed to the expansion of the higher education sector, the growth in student numbers and the development of an ideological approach to public service management referred to as ‘new managerialism’. The growth in student numbers has provided a challenge for universities, and many have adopted enterprise-wide information systems such as Strategic Information Technology Services (SITS) to support the management of student data in all areas of the university. This article explores through a three-year case study in a UK university how the introduction of SITS, an enterprise-wide student administration system, intended to deliver better quality student information, has had some unintended consequences for organisational culture, which include the expansion of new managerialism and the further weakening of academic status within the university. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

One element of the recent reforms of higher education sectors across Europe is the formation of new governance structures in universities. Supervisory boards are part of these reform processes. However, despite the importance of these boards, surprisingly little is known about their actual work. This article discusses the situation of boards in three European countries: the Netherlands, Austria and the UK. It compares the boards' constitutions with respect to composition, independence, accountability and transparency. Several problems and dilemmas come to the fore. The article concludes by indicating potential areas for improvement in the current board structure and working practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1998 and 2004, the higher education systems of Germany, France and the Netherlands underwent major changes. The changes were framed in the context of the Bologna process, and linked to the reform of degree structure towards a system of undergraduate and graduate cycles. This article investigates how a key feature of these systems was affected, the relationship between university and non-university higher education. It demonstrates how the Bologna process was seized as an opportunity for adjusting policies defining the types of higher education institutions, their status and roles. Using institutional theory, it compares actor constellations and actor interaction in the policy process to explain similarities and differences. It finds that, while the two institutional types moved closer to each other in all three systems, the boundaries between university and non-university higher education started to blur, and tensions emerged between the new degree structures and other elements of the institutional reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University and college courses are frequently evaluated in order to help lecturers improve the course in subsequent years, but there are also other reasons why courses might be evaluated. After listing these the article describes the system of course evaluations which have been developed in the Australian National University. Suggested sources of data are given, from which lecturers may make informed judgements about changes needed in their courses or teaching. The article also gives examples of questions used for gathering these data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents its author's comments on the article "Where We Are Now," by W. Roy Niblett that focused on the present crises in higher education in the western civilization. The author objects the use of the word "climacteric" that Niblett uses to state western civilization. This word is used, not to suggest a resting place in an ascent to higher things, but a point at which one is in danger of falling off. He says that the belief that society has reached a point of special danger is common to every age. He casts his doubt whether the Age of Enlightenment was inwardly as self-assured as it appears in the simplified picture of it. The life of ordinary person has more continuity than the fashions of the literary and artistic worlds. The author feels that it is rather religion that has reached a climacteric. He also agrees with Niblett for pleading for a larger concept of education. But the educational institutes have a special role in encouraging the adequacy and range of education.

As specialists become more specialised, increasing demands are made for curricula in the universities which relate scientific evidence to the demands of decision-making. A multidisciplinary or holistic course in human sciences has therefore been introduced in the Australian National University, and has been the subject of detailed research. The students study problems each of which can be solved only by applying principles and methods of many disciplines: the moral and aesthetic implications of such problems are discussed, as well as the relevant concepts from the natural and social sciences. Hence the programme is not, as are some multidisciplinary courses, merely a collection of specialist units from different departments. Great difficulties were experienced in arranging that both the science and the arts faculties accepted the programme: before it became permanent, a stringent review was made of its academic level. The students who take the course are from the full range of academic abilities, but differ from the rest of the student population in their attitudes toward current issues and the `two cultures'. During their study of the programme they improve in independent judgment, and decline in dogmatism, more than members of `control' groups. They also enjoy human sciences more than controls enjoy their courses. The authors conclude that it is both possible and desirable to introduce genuinely integrated, multidisciplinary courses into the curricula of a conventional university. Such courses could eventually become the modern equivalent of Literae Humaniores—a general education for citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]