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This paper examines if universities in the UK mediate the impacts of spatial inequalities on earnings disparities among similar graduates and provides new evidence on the persistent income inequality at the neighbourhood level, using the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE) survey data on the population of individuals graduating from universities in 2012/13. The results suggest that graduates from neighbourhoods with the highest university participation rate, on average, have higher earnings than those from the lowest-participation neighbourhoods, holding demographic features and university-related factors constant. The earnings gap by the neighbourhood quality remains substantial so that males from the lowest-participation neighbourhoods with a degree from the Russell Group barely earn higher incomes than their peers from the highest-participation areas who attended a less prestigious university. These results imply that universities in the UK do not fully level the playing field in terms of earnings disparities among graduates from different neighbourhoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning in the mid-1980s, European governments have increasingly implemented performance-based funding systems for higher education. While a focus on the transnational pressures that contributed to the widespread adoption of performance-based funding in Europe accounts for the impetus for performance-based funding policies, it fails to address how and why the resultant performance-based funding policies are as distinct and different as they are. In this paper, I argue that an institutional logics perspective offers a theoretical account of the performance-based funding policy formation process. I use the United Kingdom (UK), Germany, and France as case studies. I contend that in these three cases, different local logics drove the performance-based funding policy formation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education estates are large and valuable assets that affect diverse stakeholders. Despite recent growth, data on university estates has received little concerted attention from national and international statistics bodies. This paper examines and contrasts the evolution of universities and their estates in the UK and Poland, in the light of the degree of central government control versus institutional autonomy. Given increased international competition for students, staff and research funding, the paper argues that universities and their stakeholders would benefit from more transparency, the development of an agreed set of estate definitions, standards and regular statistical reports. Data based on agreed standards would provide a basis for comparative analysis and help to run better university estates and facilities, thereby enhancing HEI efficiency, effectiveness and environmental sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK Government's Green Paper (BIS in Fulfilling our potential: teaching excellence, social mobility and student choice. BIS, London, 2015), White Paper (BIS in Success as a knowledge economy: teaching excellence, social mobility and student choice. BIS, London, 2016a) and Higher Education and Research Bill (, 2016) appear to be premised on a normative student ideal in UK higher education policy. This ideal student presupposes a transactional model of student engagement, which relies on the accumulation of knowledge capital by a systemic subject. The current government vision forms part of a long-term shift away from the discourse of social democracy since the policies of the 1960s. This shift towards neoliberal political economy is reflected in the legislation to establish the Office for Students, United Kingdom Research and Innovation and the Teaching Excellence Framework (BIS 2015, 2016a; BIS in Teaching excellence framework: technical consultation for year two. BIS, London, 2016b). Rather than adding to the transactional view of student engagement based on the neoliberal student ideal, this article explores the democratic idea of a higher education multitude in which there might be a more nuanced pedagogic and socio-technical understanding of student engagement for further policy developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the impact of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) on academic identity within the context of a UK-based research-intensive higher education institution. TEF is the latest in a series of changes that have impacted upon the UK's HE sector and it is highly likely to have a significant impact upon academic identity. Collecting evidence through sixteen qualitative interviews, findings show that while TEF may not alter the broad substance of what it means to be an academic in terms of engagement with research, education and citizenship activities, it has the potential to have profound implications in terms of exacerbating conflicts within identity. This paper argues that negative work outcomes result where role conflicts, and mismatches between expectation and reward, create difficulties in realising our desired versions of ourselves. Theoretical contributions relevant to debates around identity conflict are discussed, with practical contributions exploring the importance of resource allocations and the need to align expectations and rewards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing prominence given to student satisfaction at UK Universities as a response to the introduction of fees and the growing stature of league tables has led to a desire to understand the factors that affect the quality of the student experience. Therefore, this paper examines whether students who study at universities in the UK where research is highly rated or where a high proportion of faculty are professionally qualified are more satisfied, measuring satisfaction through data from the National Student Survey. Our key results are first that students are happiest at pre-1992 universities outside the Russell group and where the amount of top-rated research is lower. Second, we uncover no link between student contentment and the percentage of faculty holding formal teaching qualifications. Our findings have important implications for university policies regarding the link between research and teaching and for the current drive to 'professionalise' teaching in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UK HEIs have recently developed overseas campus-based teaching, some as branches but most as collaborations with local institutions, usually offering scientific, technical and commercial degree courses in English. Academic staffing has evolved rapidly towards international recruitment, supplemented by supervisory and specialist inputs from the UK. The paper focuses on staffing arrangements in various campus-based, collaborative and teaching-only cases, including recruitment, contractual and personnel development, during the early period of IBC development. We show that different development models and mobility portfolios were created, but they face similar challenges in attracting and guiding the work of an international cadre of staff able to deliver the UK HEI ‘quality model’ of teaching. We find that at this early stage, contracts were mostly short term and locally based, with a generally ad hoc approach to induction, training and monitoring. We suggest that greater attention will be needed to such issues if these developments are to sustain UK-style teaching in a changing international higher education environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'student engagement' has become ubiquitous in mainstream discourses concerning higher education in the UK and beyond. The term is used to denote a desirable set of practices and orientations in students which should be worked towards or encouraged in order for teaching in higher education to be deemed successful - as such, it has enormous influence in the higher education (HE) as part of a discourse which carries powerful ideological force in the sector. However, as Kahn (Br Educ Res J 40(6):1005-1018, 2013) points out, it is a concept which is weakly theorised in the literature. This paper will interrogate the concept in order to deepen understanding of how the term operates. I will argue first that the notion often relies on typological categories which tend to posit the individual as the primary site of student engagement and secondly that this is primarily identified in interlocution or observable interaction. Drawing on the work of Gert Biesta, I will argue that this position reflects a broader trend towards 'learnification' in higher education, which positions teaching as problematic and inherently repressive. I seek to build on this critique by arguing for a reframing which recognises the sociomaterial and radically distributed nature of human and non-human agency in day-to-day student engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 20 years, the notion of relevance vis-à-vis political science became not only a subject of academic debates but also a domain of practice, largely due to the developments in the research funding, increasingly referred to as the 'impact agenda'. In this article, we explore how the growing focus on socio-economic impact as the assessment criterion of research funding shapes the discipline of political science itself—its knowledge production, dissemination and the emergent forms of accountability of political scientists. The article presents the results of a major international study that has examined the emergence of 'impact agendas' across 33 countries. We report on the changing idea of relevance of political science through the lens of its strategic ambiguity and historical evolution. We then explore these broader trends through an in-depth analysis of the UK as an 'extreme case' and a blueprint for funding system reforms. These developments, we argue, are not a mere funding policy innovation but rather a paradigm-level change, reshaping the position of political science in society as well as the types of scholarship that are possible and incentivised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aimed at the construction of representative indicators of social responsibility information, from the perspective of stakeholders in Brazil and the UK, for the disclosure of Philanthropic Higher Education Organizations (PHEOs) in its Internet websites. Using the grounded theory techniques, we raised evidence that enabled us to identify social responsibility information valued by PHEOs stakeholders in Brazil and the UK. We developed the research in four phases: systematization, evaluation, valuation and econometric validation of the indicators. As a result, we have built a relationship that includes 186 indicators of stakeholder interests. Of these, we identified 84 indicators, subdivided into ten categories of social responsibility, which include the indicators considered most relevant by the experts and stakeholders for the PHEOs disclosure. The article contributes to the formulation of the PHEOs disclosure policies and to the recommendations and regulations of the institutional bodies at the moment in which it demonstrates the information of interest of the stakeholders, as well as those that should be highlighted in the first place because they are considered more relevant. Therefore, from the results of this research, the PHEOs disclosure has the possibility to reflect the interests of external stakeholders, adding value to the transparency and accountability of organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ways in which the increasingly market-based higher education (HE) landscape of UK HE is shaping students' attitudes and responses towards their HE. Contemporary HE policy has framed HE as a private good that generates largely private benefits. There has also been a concern that these changes will distort institutional relations and the traditional value of participating in HE, reinforcing the growing commodification of UK HE. On the basis of a qualitative study with students in a range of higher education institutions from the four UK countries, it outlines the main impacts recent policy is having on students' attitudes and relationship to HE. Dominant market-driven discourses around investment, consumerism, employability and competition indicate widespread concerns among contemporary HE students about operating in higher-stakes markets, which are intensified by increased personal financial contribution towards HE. While the data reveal an identification with the student as 'consumer' and strigent expectations over what HE provides, it also points to an ethic of self-responsibility that is built on highly individualised discourses of personal application, proactivity and experience optimisation. Goal-driven and instrumental learning are evident, which relate to widespread concerns about future returns and the private good value of HE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

UK Higher Education has recently entered uncharted waters - this includes changes to the fee structures in England and ever increasing pressure to perform to measurables such as Key Information Sets, Destinations of Leavers in Higher Education data and a plethora of Key Performance Indicators. In this article, we highlight key findings from recent research regarding the status of women in the profession - with particular emphasis upon evidence that may suggest a gender divide in terms of research and teaching. We then go on to explore primary data from a number of sources to explore whether male and female academics in the UK have different priorities, and question to what extent recent reforms will exacerbate a 'glass ceiling' or 'leaking pipeline' and further challenge the diversity of the profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]