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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]

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]

This paper discusses the features of the Soviet higher education system that have been crucial to the formation of the current system and then focus on the main changes that it has endured in the past 20 years. We pay special attention to the current challenges in the sphere of higher education and the counter-measures taken by the government and the academic community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapidly shifting higher education policy agenda in the aftermath of the students' movement of 2011 in Chile and its mismatch with Chile's research capacities in the field of higher education studies are analyzed to illustrate how research is path dependent on policy. I argue that a stable policy environment, where change is only marginal or incremental, begets research problems and questions squarely situated within the boundaries of the established rules of the game. Conversely, whenever policy swerves considerably off its expected path, knowledge may not be available to illuminate policy-making. The motif of disassociation between the policy field in the making with the availability of knowledge to support it is probed via the analysis of two policy proposals currently in Chile's new government agenda: introducing tuition-free higher education and assuming greater state oversight of teacher education programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education has been continuously growing, changing and developing since the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in China. With development of more than 30 years, Chinese higher education has achieved many breakthroughs. Meanwhile, it has been facing some new situations – demographic changes, economic development and massification itself – which all have direct influences. Some policy choices have been made responsively, including reforming the college entrance examination system, improving the quality of higher education, developing modern university system, promoting marketization and internationalization, and enhancing the quality guarantee system, which are currently the priorities of Chinese Government. There are also a number of conflicts involved in the policies of higher education development as well as in the policy-making process, such as conflicts between scale and quality, values of utilitarian and non-utilitarian, centralization and decentralization, and localization and internationalization, that have already brought about and will definitely continue to have important effects to the future development of Chinese higher education broadly. [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]