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This paper studies educational inequality in the Philippines from 1950 to 2015, examining changes in the association between social origin and educational attainment against a backdrop of educational expansions and fluctuating economic conditions. Using data from the World Bank STEP Skills Survey, the study employs a sequential logit model to illustrate trends in secondary and college completion, followed by a multinomial logit model to look into differences in college destinations (type and status) between advantaged and disadvantaged students. The findings indicate that despite sustained expansions in the past six decades, disparities in secondary and tertiary completion deepened in relation to social background. The paper also finds that although expansions occurred mainly in public higher education institutions, it did little to alter the trends in college destinations, with advantaged students still more likely to complete in "high-status" universities than disadvantaged ones. Finally, the paper sheds light on how economic recessions have varying consequences on educational attainment, routing disadvantaged students out of college in the short term, while resulting in significant declines in the likelihood of completing higher education for advantaged students enrolled in "high-status" public entities in the long term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws attention to empirical work on widening access to understand the silence on race matters in English higher education. This work repurposes a critical race theoretical framework that offers a glimpse of how the issue of unequal access to higher education has been framed in the research field. It is argued here that the framing of widening access reveals a persistent colour-evasiveness that is dominant. The findings show that widening access policy has not benefitted students of colour as they are not accessing higher education with the same kind of success as their white peers. The paper concludes for a call for race-conscious interventions to remedy the continued race inequity in accessing highly rejective institutions based on the evidence gathered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a large sample of students from a Dutch university to describe variations in academic performance following a change in the strictness of academic dismissal policies. The research setting includes one moment in which the performance threshold for academic dismissal has been changed, keeping constant other characteristics of the educational system. Using a descriptive approach, we show that after the threshold has been raised the number of credits earned by academically weak students increases. A higher threshold level also brings their study effort forward in time, as evidenced by a decrease in the number of no-shows and an increase in the number of credits earned during regular exams. We also show that some students perceive the minimum performance level as a target level. The evidence suggests that variations in the implementation of academic dismissal policies affect students' tendency to procrastinate, especially among weaker students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remediation reform is an influential policy movement in U.S. higher education that aims to increase college completion rates. College first-year reading and writing course requirements have been a major focus of this movement, particularly prerequisite "developmental" course sequences for entering students who are deemed underprepared for college. However, the policy implications of this movement remain unclear for the growing number of multilingual students entering U.S. colleges and universities, and particularly for multilingual learners (MLLs) who are still in the process of developing college-level English proficiency. Accordingly, this paper examined the policy discourse on websites of three prominent remediation reform movement (RRM) organizations to identify explicit and implicit ideologies about language, multilingualism, and literacy that underlie reform policies. Using a Critical Discourse Studies approach to language education policy analysis (Barakos, 2016) and focusing specifically on lexical choice, we find that RRM organizational websites discursively maintain and promote English monolingualism as the normative medium and goal of college literacy instruction. Using a California-based RRM organization as an example, we also suggest that the prevailing English monolingual ideology of the RRM may be moderated by context. Based on these findings we suggest further research and consider implications for RRM college language and literacy education policies for MLL and other multilingual students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contends that the inclusion of meso- and micro-level perspectives has been under exploration in the study of the internationalization of humanities and social sciences, in particular, in a state-mandated system where policy interventions in higher education and knowledge production have typically been aligned with state construction and national development. It argues that institutional and individual responses to state policies on the internationalization of humanities and social sciences should be investigated due to their respective roles in policymaking and implementation. It has, therefore, retrieved recent and historical policy documents during the post-WTO period and collected empirical data from two Chinese universities. A constructivist-interpretivist qualitative approach and a qualitative case study strategy were adopted for this investigation. Based on an in-depth analysis of the empirical data, this paper reveals the gap between the macro-level ambition of achieving outward-oriented diffusion of innovations and the local-level realities, as well as institutional dilemmas and conflicts in facilitating the internationalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, an undergraduate teacher education course is used to explore whether and how academic reading seminars reflect the theoretical notion of academic literacies and provide a learning environment for developing academic and professional learning and engagement. The data analyzed in this article are transcribed recordings of small group activities where students discuss scientific articles based on a template. First, our empirical analysis shows that the use of the template facilitated dialogical discussions and the development of a cognitive skillset and disciplinary categories when used in a social setting. Second, we found that the most challenging part of designing a reading practice related to the academic literacies tradition was fostering a dialogical environment for discussing the validity of findings across different contexts and provide for discussions encompassing complexity, nuances, and meaning making. We found traces of such discussions in all the transcripts; however, many examples were in a premature stage. The paper concludes with a discussion on, and some suggestions for, further development of the template used in the reading seminars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collection of data on values through instruments such as the World Values Survey has focused attention on two opposing but inter-related trends, namely the combination of substantial cultural change in many countries and the persistence of distinctive traditional values. This reflects the interplay between social changes associated with modernisation and globalisation—including increased global trade and the rise of global popular culture—with traditional values country-specific systems. In this paper, we introduce a focus on another potentially important source of change, that of widening higher education participation and attainment, and the extent to which self-reported values differ between university graduates and non-graduates. We investigated this question using data from the most recent collection of the World Values Survey (2017–2020) for six core values—family, friends, leisure, work, politics, and religion—and tested for the influence of higher education attainment on the perceived "importance" of each value and the extent to which this influence differs across values and in gender, generation and country grouping sub-samples. We find evidence for consistent effects in most contexts, with no statistical differences between graduates on non-graduates in relation to the propensity to view family and work as important, statistically significant positive effects on the propensity of graduates to view friends, leisure, and politics as important, and a significant negative effect in relation to religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of research impact as a 'third' space (next to research and teaching) within the universities in the United Kingdom and beyond, academics are increasingly expected to not only produce research but also engage in brokering knowledge beyond academia. And yet little is known about the ways in which academics shape their practices in order to respond to these new forms of institutionalised expectations and make sense of knowledge brokering as a form of academic practice. Drawing on 51 qualitative interviews with researchers and research users involved in two large knowledge brokering initiatives in the UK, this study identifies four repertoires of co-production practices: (i) Challenge to the existing policy framework, (ii) Deliberation between diverse stakeholders, (iii) Evidence intervention producing of actionable knowledge, and (iv) Advocacy for specific evidence-based options. By exploring knowledge brokering as navigation of different knowledge production regimes – traditionally academic and policy-oriented – the paper contributes to the existing debates by providing insights into the nature of navigating science-policy interactions as a process of epistemological bricolage, requiring an assemblage of different meanings, values and practices into new repertoires of practice. Importantly, the choice of a repertoire is not limited to the individual choice of a researcher but rather, it is shaped by the broader institutional context of higher education, risking instrumental bias in which practices oriented towards practical solutions are incentivised over critical or participatory forms of engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rich body of literature that has sought to shed light on how global trends shape public sector institutions at the local level frequently claims that globalization is significantly transforming national institutions. Against that backdrop, the term governance is actually a multifaceted concept representing an ongoing process characterized by complex interactions between globally spreading movements and locally inherited interests. Focusing on transitions in governance and on the variations found in governance at the local level, the present study aims to make a conceptual contribution to existing characterizations of the dynamics of higher education in the context of globalization. After reviewing studies on changes in the governance of higher education, this paper identifies the limitations and implications of various theoretical approaches to describing the transformation of governance in the education sector. We then construct a hybrid analytical framework combining the main elements of institutional analysis (i.e., rational choice, sociological and historical institutionalism) with theories of public policy as a novel way of conceptualizing and operationalizing educational governance. While some scholars might be hesitant to embrace such an approach, we would argue that it deserves consideration. The framework provides an explicit conceptual construct for advancing the theoretical understanding of the concept of hybridization, which is of great utility for identifying the nuances of higher education governance in transition. Moreover, the analytical framework presented herein contributes to a more find-grained understanding of educational transition and extends previous empirical studies on dynamics in the higher education sector. The results can not only supplement the current approach to studying HE governance but also outline a possible trajectory for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although transdisciplinarity has taken hold in many areas, it is still a concept in its early stages of development in Latin America. We see an emergent opportunity to contribute to the current discussion on transdisciplinarity and its institutionalization at universities. Our specific interest in this paper is to disentangle the conditions under which transdisciplinarity is developed in Latin American contexts and how it can be better implemented within those contexts. Our study focuses on the context of "Latin American Public Universities." We examine the following research questions: (i) How is transdisciplinarity conceptualized in university policy and what are the conditions for its institutionalization? (ii) What lessons can be drawn more broadly from the role of university policy in the process of institutionalizing transdisciplinarity? To address these questions, we take the Universidad de Chile as a case study and apply a qualitative methodology of content analysis of university policy documents in the period 2006–2021. Grounded on empirical data, we elaborate on the concept of "situated transdisciplinarity" that emerges from the interplay between practices and policy at the Universidad de Chile and serves as a tool for future institutionalizing processes. We conclude that the concept of "situated transdisciplinarity" can orient transdisciplinary research policy, by problematizing discourses and perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

State policies regarding the internationalization of higher education (IHE) in China have undergone significant shifts between 1949 and 2019. This paper advances the proposition that these shifts in policies pertaining to IHE can be understood as part of a process of ongoing Chinese state formation in relation to national and global developments and does so by examining the history of IHE policy and policy changes between 1949 and 2019 to demonstrate this possibility. We consider three specific periods to make this case, including (1) the period of Marxist-Leninist socialist nationalism, patriotism and proletarian internationalism and the early engagements of IHE (1949–1976); (2) neoliberal globalization and opening-up: a return to the international stage and further IHE (1977–2002); and finally, (3) state developmentalism and the era of globally engaged higher education (HE) (2003–2019). In conclusion, the current implications of a neoliberal (capitalist) globalization are discussed in terms of real and potential implications for Chinese state formation, Chinese HE and society. The paper aims to investigate the historical underpinnings and formation of international HE in China and contribute to the significant gap in our current literature regarding IHE in China as a socio-historical phenomenon. It not only offers a detailed documentation of how policy on IHE has evolved and shifted in the context of significant changes in political and economic directions in China but also teases out influences of national concerns such as ideological and cultural considerations as well as neoliberal globalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature suggests that recent years have witnessed a fundamental shift in higher education internationalisation. This paper argues that a reorientation of policy, which is upheld through an initiative known as the Higher Education Sprout Project, indicates the fundamental shift in higher education internationalisation in Taiwan. The paper begins with an explanation of how the notion of world-class university induced elitism in East Asian higher education. Next, it reviews the last two decades of Taiwan's efforts on developing world-class universities. In particular, the paper explains how perceived domestic problems in higher education, such as an overemphasis on certain performance indicators and the resulting effects of homogenisation, and the phenomenon of emphasising research but neglecting teaching, are considered the consequences of emphasising global competition and the associated quest for building world-class universities. The paper argues that the recent policy change reveals an intention to uphold egalitarianism, thereby reaching a balance between fulfilling global ambition and addressing local needs in higher education. This intention highlights the political essence of internationalisation policy for higher education. It also reaffirms the significance of the global–local dynamics in higher education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than three decades, Australian higher education policy has been guided by a national equity framework focussed on six underrepresented target groups: Indigenous Australians, people from low socioeconomic status backgrounds, people from regional and remote areas, people with disabilities, people from non-English speaking backgrounds, and women in non-traditional areas of study. Despite bringing equitable access to the forefront of university agendas, this policy framework has fostered a somewhat narrow conceptualisation of how educational disadvantage should be addressed. Responding to calls for reform, this paper draws on survey data from 6492 students in NSW government schools to examine the extent to which a new category warrants inclusion in the national framework: first-generation status. We illustrate how being the first in a family to attend university brings distinct equity status and argue for a revision of the national equity framework to recognise and support students who are 'first'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has adopted policy experimentation (PE) as a means of introducing and testing innovative policy options for reforms in higher education (HE). This paper explores how PE plays out in the HE sector, involving state actors and university actors in a dynamic interactive process and bringing about institutional changes. This paper proposes a theoretical categorisation to understand four types of PE that occurred in China's HE reforms, i.e. directive, authorised, exploratory and retrospectively authorised experiments. It discusses an empirically informed case study to illustrate the experiment process characterised by central-local interaction and intentionally ambiguous boundaries. The PE approach enables state-university interactions and power negotiations that create and maintain strategy space for consensus-building. The state, however, retains ultimate authority for legitimatising, selecting and expanding policy experiments. It is best understood as 'elite-enabled experimentation within existing political hierarchies'. This study provides a distinctive perspective for understanding and explaining the power dynamics embedded in China's HE reform process and more broadly the evolution of higher education governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Positive attributes stick to higher education internationalisation, and it is a policy paradigm with performative effects. Internationalisation draws on imagined virtuous flows of knowledge production and exchange, and is presented as an assemblage of detraditionalisation, expansiveness and epistemic and cultural opportunity for individuals, organisations and nation states. Policies target bodies, minds and affect, yet are presented as an unquestionable good in an imagined genderneutral, borderless, meritocratic and benign global knowledge economy. This paper explores the affective economy of internationalisation drawing upon interview data gathered in fifteen private, five national and eight public universities in Japan with thirty-four migrant academics and thirteen international doctoral researchers. We aim to contribute to internationalisation theory by exploring the sticky micropolitics of internationalisation in relation to affective assemblages, and how the gendered, racialised, linguistic and epistemic inequalities constituting academic mobility are frequently disqualified from discourse. Our discussion includes consideration of the Japanese policy context, the concept of affective assemblages, navigating gender regimes, precarity and linguistic imperialism. We conclude that the immaterial or affective labour that is required to unstick, install and maintain an internationalised academic identity and navigate the translations and antagonisms from everyday encounters with difference is substantially under-estimated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between the student-supervisor relationship (SSR) and postgraduate students' subjective well-being. Based on a longitudinal survey of Beijing college students, the present study suggests that in China, the SSR is a supervisor-centred, top-down hierarchical relationship. The reciprocity level of the SSR is positively related to the students' subjective well-being. The trust level of the SSR also has a positive relationship with students' subjective well-being; improving the trust level may also mitigate the possible negative implications of the low level of reciprocity in the relationship. The present study further reveals that it is more difficult for first-generation students to establish sound SSR than non-first-generation students. Additionally, a good SSR is more important for first-generation students' positive well-being. The findings provide implications for educational practices on how to improve postgraduate students' subjective well-being by improving the SSR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents new evidence on how enrollment expansion affects higher education access and production with a focus on social inequality and institutional stratification. From 1999 to 2012, the world's largest higher education expansion happened in China that annual college enrollment dramatically increased from 1,083,600 to 6,888,300. We evaluate this exogenous, unprecedented policy using nationally representative student-level survey data and newly available confidential institution-level data. Enrollment expansion, which reduced per-student resources, negatively impacted college quality as measured by value-added on graduates' employment and earnings. The inequality in access between high- and low-SES students and the stratified production between college institutional tiers persisted during expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores factors that influenced the quality of stay of Chinese-speaking mobile students in France, as the living experience abroad is one of the most-cited difficulties for international students. For practicality, we sieve through previous researches to identify 20 factors (grouped into 4 Dimensions: Personal Dimension Teacher's Effectiveness Dimension, Campus Environment Dimension, and Daily Environment Dimension), which most likely correlated with the quality of the stay of mobile Chinese-speaking students in France. We adopt the DANP (DEMATEL-based ANP) model, i.e., combining the Decision Making and Trial Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) method and the Analysis Network Process (ANP), to construct the Influential Network Relation Maps, identifying the hierarchical structure among the factors and the dimensions. We find that the "Teacher's Effectiveness" is the most influential dimension to the other 3 dimension. Our research can provide more insights on the French educational system improvement, and help define a more effective policy strategy focus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical ideas about globalization and internationalization of higher education emphasize the tension among different ideologies of higher education. According to literature, a competition among states, economy, knowledge, and status generates this tension to drive higher education development. This theoretical understanding not only shapes our global imaginations but also permeates the organizational behavior of universities. In this paper, we focus on the institutional logics that motivate universities in Kazakhstan to engage with China's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). We investigate the ways that Kazakhstani higher education interprets and responds to China's vision of a global order. Based on interviews conducted at 10 higher education institutions (HEIs) in Kazakhstan, we argue that Kazakhstan's engagement with the BRI circumvents the cultural connectivity and global cooperation that are embraced by Chinese policy discourse and perpetuated by academic literature. Rather, institutional leaders in Kazakhstan operate with a utilitarian logic that seeks revenue generation, links with industry, and opportunities for students in employment and further education. The pursuit of these strategic outcomes demonstrates a bilateral engagement with China rather than the multilateral cooperation envisioned by policymakers. In a higher education system dominated by the state, the institutions in our study exhibit partial agency to accrue pragmatic benefits rather than concede to isomorphic pressures or mimic internationalization from neoliberal contexts. The discrepancy between policy discourse from China and policy reception in Kazakhstan raises questions about the rhetoric of a multipolar global order and the realities of international cooperation in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This response reviews the article entitled "Ethical oversight of student data in learning analytics: a typology derived from a cross-continental, cross-institutional perspective" (Willis et al. in Educ Technol Res Dev 64(5):881–901. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-016-9463-4, 2016) from a policy perspective. The paper summarizes the typology of learning analytics and its core ideas proposed in Willis et al. (2016), but also highlights the challenges considering the third-party policies of data privacy and usage. Additionally, the paper addresses the core ethical principles declared in Corrin et al. (Access Online 26, 2019) and suggests using these principles as underpinnings when considering the ethics of learning analytics and seeking effective solutions to best ensure ethical practices of implementing learning analytics. The establishment of a comprehensive data governance system by institutions of higher education is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2000s, the literature on the ongoing higher education reforms in Africa has been increasing. The scientific discussion converges in an implicit and recurrent argument about the drivers of these policies. Given the involvement of international experts in the policy design, university reforms are often described as the output of the incentives of international stakeholders and the representatives of international organizations. The aim of this paper is to add a new variable to understand higher education reforms in East Africa, which has been neglected by scholars. In fact, the article sheds light on the determining role of domestic actors in the (re)negotiation of policy processes in Tanzania and Kenya, especially administrative and academic staff and students. Rather than evaluating the success or the failure of the reforms, this paper aims to highlight the power plays between a various set of domestic actors who reshape the outcomes of higher education policies. The paper crosses the experiences from the reform processes of the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and the University of Nairobi in Kenya. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International student education in China has been continuously changing in response to the rapid social transition since the People’s Republic of China was established in 1949. Adopting a historical perspective, this scholarly paper begins with an analysis of characteristics of international student education in China in terms of rationales, role of government, and international students. Several challenges are then identified and this paper concludes with observations on future trends of international student education development, with a special focus on the implications of “the Belt and Road”. This paper contributes to a better understanding of China’s role as an emerging host nation of international students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on the consequences of academic inbreeding shows ambiguous results: some papers show that inbreeding positively influences research productivity measured by the quantity and quality of publications, while others demonstrate the opposite effect. There are contradictory results both in the studies of different countries and within countries. This variety of results makes it impossible to transfer the findings from one academic system to another, and in Russia this problem has been under-explored. This paper focuses on the relationship between inbreeding and publication activity among Russian faculty. The research was conducted using data from the ‘Monitoring of Educational Markets and Organizations’ survey. The results show that there is no significant effect of academic inbreeding on publication productivity: no substantial and robust differences in publication activity between inbreds and non-inbreds have been found. The paper finishes with a discussion of possible explanations inherent in the Russian academic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The renewed interest in Lipsky's street level bureaucracy (SLBy) in a wide array of public sectors brings higher education research's reticent stance on the bottom-up implementation approach to the limelight. This article explores the impact of front line actors' implementation on the Bologna-inspired quality assurance reforms in Tunisia from the lens of Lipsky's SLBy. Specifically, it investigates how academics use their discretion to cope with the ambiguities and complexities of a rule-bound policy reform. It puts the so-called "decentralized approach" to test in the higher education sector by probing Lipsky's claims on policy making at the bottom-end of policy process. This paper's findings are based on interviews conducted with academics in three disciplines at two Tunisian universities. It concludes that academics' use of discretion can question their technical role as "policy takers" as they sometimes tamper with the policy text. However, Lipsky's concept of policy making at the shop-floor remains somewhat overstated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In late 2015, the Lao government finalized its five-year National Socio-economic Development Plan 2016–2020 (NSEDP) to assist Lao PDR in meeting its goal of graduating from the ranks of Least Developed Countries status by 2020. The NSEDP is supported by a five-year Education Sector Development Plan (2016–2020) and subsequent higher education regulations that prioritise improvements to the quality of higher education in order to meet this goal, in particular by granting increased autonomy to higher education institutions. This paper argues that the association between autonomy and quality being implemented in Lao PDR draws heavily on a neoliberal, dichotomous higher education framework. It argues that efforts to improve quality in higher education should be more nuanced, taking into consideration the internal dynamics of the unitary state structure, the possibilities arising from regional engagement, and the lessons learned by neighbours on a similar pathway. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rising price of college and anxiety about graduates' job prospects, the employability of graduates is a dominant narrative shaping postsecondary policy and practice around the world. Yet, completion and the acquisition of a credential alone do not guarantee employment, and research on hiring reveals its subjective aspects, particularly when cultural signals of applicants are matched to those of organizations. In this qualitative study of 42 manufacturing firms in the US state of Wisconsin, cultural capital theory is used to investigate the prevalence of hiring as "cultural matching" using thematic and social network methods to analyze interview data. Results indicate that 74% of employers hire for cultural fit, but, contrary to prior research, this matching process is not simply a matter of fitting applicant personalities to monolithic "organizational cultures" or interviewer preferences. Instead, employers match diverse applicant dispositions (e.g., personality, attitude) and competencies (e.g., cognitive, inter-personal, intra-personal) to the personalities of existing staff as well as to industry-specific norms that are dominant within specific departments. The paper explores implications of these findings for college students, faculty, and career advisors, especially in light of the potential for discriminatory practices during the job search and hiring process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classification of higher education institutions (HEIs) of a country allows viewing higher education as a differentiated system which respects the diversity of purposes and aspirations of different HEIs. Classification is fundamentally different from ranking, which aims to rank universities in order with higher ranked HEIs being "better" than lower ranked ones. In classification, the universities in a class are grouped by their purpose and mission, and no attempt is made to rank them. Carnegie Classification of universities in the USA is the oldest classification system, which groups universities into a few categories like Research Universities, Masters Universities, Baccalaureate Universities, and Secondary. This classification has been found extremely useful over decades for various purposes including policy making and planning. This has thus motivated similar exercises in many other countries, particularly for research universities. In this paper, we evolve an approach to classify research universities in India, based on the Carnegie Classification approach. We propose a simple basic criterion for identifying research universities, and apply it to the top 100 universities and top 100 engineering institutions in India. Using this criteria, 40 universities and 32 engineering institutions were identified as research HEIs. Based on the data on the level of research activity in these HEIs, we apply a clustering approach similar to the one Carnegie uses to group research HEIs into two sub-categories, viz. "highest research activity" and "moderate research activity". The clustering approach identified six universities and eight engineering institutions in India to be in the highest research activity category. The level of research activity uses data on the number of full time PhD students, the number of faculty, research grants, and publications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the politicisation of universities-within-the-state, the state's governance of higher education in China differentiates itself from other countries. This study examines how the Chinese central government adjusts its governance over universities between 1978 and 2018. Based on an extensive analysis of policy documents and scholarly research, this study proposes an analytic framework, comprising the state's governance logics, governance instruments, and institutional demonstrations. The three strategically selected governance instruments, i.e. laws, policies, and finance, are demonstrated through various aspects integral to China's higher education—the dual-goverance structure, appointment of the principal leadership, access to higher education, university and discipline structures, curriculum and ideology, funding and grants, and tuition fees. Based on an in-depth investigation, the study argues that the underlying governance logics of the state are moving from direct controls to indirect supervision; however, despite the increasing university autonomy and academic freedom in some areas, the state has never abdicated the essential power and authority over higher education institutions. This paper contributes to the theoretical and practical understanding of China's governance of higher education in recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since devolution of education policy to the four 'home' nations of the UK, distinct approaches to addressing social inequalities in higher education participation have developed across the four jurisdictions (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland). From a critical examination of 12 policy documents, this paper presents a comparative policy analysis of the qualitatively distinct ways that inequalities in higher education are conceptualised across the home nations. Basil Bernstein's theoretical ideas are drawn on to help unearth distinctions in their beliefs about the underlying nature of educational inequalities. These can be understood in relation to their degree of closeness to either neoliberal or social democratic ideological positions, and we show that the home nations of the UK place differing emphases on what form of higher education they aim to widen access to, and how they intend to achieve this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we focus on a rare scholarly theme of highly productive academics, statistically confirming their pivotal role in knowledge production across 11 systems studied. The upper 10 % of highly productive academics in 11 European countries studied ( N = 17,211) provide on average almost half of all academic knowledge production. In contrast to dominating bibliometric studies of research productivity, we focus on academic attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions as predictors of becoming research top performers across European systems. Our paper provides a (large-scale and cross-country) corroboration of the systematic inequality in knowledge production, for the first time argued for by Lotka (J Wash Acad Sci 16:317-323, ) and de Solla Price (Little science, big science. Columbia University Press, New York, ). We corroborate the deep academic inequality in science and explore this segment of the academic profession. The European research elite is a highly homogeneous group of academics whose high research performance is driven by structurally similar factors, mostly individual rather than institutional. Highly productive academics are similar from a cross-national perspective, and they substantially differ intra-nationally from their lower-performing colleagues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalent knowledge economy discourse has direct implications for higher education policies and practices. It is expected that the higher education sector supports national economic competitiveness mainly through promoting scientific research, supporting technological transfer and innovation, and producing 'knowledge workers' such as higher degree by research graduates. However in the context of changing work requirements and fast paced technological progress, the 'skills gap' between the labour market needs and the actual attributes of graduates has emerged as a tangible concern. This paper explores the issue of research graduate employability in Australia. Drawing on critical frame analysis, the paper particularly problematises the way research graduate employability has been framed in relevant policy texts, and shows what issues are excluded from the policy agenda and why. By way of demonstrating exclusions from the current debate on doctoral graduates' skills and employability, we briefly report on new data on the level of industry-engagement of research students at one large Australian university to argue that assumptions about the need to 'fix' the skills deficit of graduates have excluded from view high levels of industry engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social inclusion in Australian higher education was high on the agenda of the recent Rudd/Gillard Australian Government. This paper offers an assessment of that agenda, particularly the extent to which it worked in favour of under-represented groups. It argues that the Government's widening and expansion policies and its equity and aspiration strategies lacked sociological imagination, projecting deficits onto individuals who refused to be taken in by its ambitions for higher education participation. The paper concludes that in the absence of a sociological imagination in government policy, the freedoms of disadvantaged groups continued to be curtailed: not just to choose futures in keeping with their goals but also the freedom to formulate choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new perspective for higher education policy research. It introduces the concept of policy object to designate the discrete preoccupation(s) of a policy text (e.g. a new governance regime, a quality system, or new degrees) and suggests that actor conceptualisations of the policy object intersect with other elements in the policy process to shape enactment and outcomes. First, the policy object concept is described. It is argued that the policy object does not have an objective existence and two concepts are proposed to explain it: ontology and enacted ontology. The former refers to what actors believe the policy object is, a socially-construed context-determined conceptualisation, whereas enacted ontology refers to what the policy object becomes further to enactment under the influence of ontology. Second, the paper presents the findings of a comparative study of master degrees further to the Bologna process in different national and institutional settings to illustrate the policy object approach. This research puts forward arguments to suggest that the policy object could be an important variable to consider in policy research. This somewhat different lens, inviting fine-grained attention to a specific policy object (its ontologies and enacted ontologies), could bring additional insight into policy outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 20 years, there has been an increase in philosophical inquiries of hope both in philosophy of mind and of virtue as well as in the philosophy of education. This paper wishes to add to this discussion by presenting the analysis of hope by French existentialist philosopher and theologian Gabriel Marcel and examining its possible contribution to educational practices and beliefs. As one of the very few modern, systematic accounts of hope, Marcel’s provocative conception of it and his critique of its common “technical” use could prove promising when applied to educational theory and practice. Following Marcel, I argue that in hope we find a complex and possibly contradictory view of the future: as a result of planning and technical problem-solving on one hand, and on the other, as an inclination towards the mysterious and radically unexpected. I suggest that maintaining educational hope within the tension between the planned and the unexpected, and specifically rejecting a complete disenchantment of the educational act, could help in securing education from being reduced to instrumental training and socializing, opening it up to new and unimaginable possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments continuously design and redesign higher education policies, and governmental capacities are the pillars for undertaking these tasks during the formulation stage. This paper considers the assumption that different governmental political and technical capacities shape different spaces for action and thus different types of policy design. The usefulness of this theoretical perspective is tested by comparing the dynamics of the policy designs that have been pursued in higher education in Italy and the Netherlands over the past 25 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University rankers are the subject of much criticism, and yet they remain influential in the field of higher education. Drawing from a two-year field study of university ranking organizations, interviews with key correspondents in the sector, and an analysis of related documents, I introduce the concept of weak expertise. This kind of expertise is the result of a constantly negotiated balance between the relevance, reliability, and robustness of rankers’ data and their relationships with their key readers and audiences. Building this expertise entails collecting robust data, presenting it in ways that are relevant to audiences, and engaging with critics. I show how one ranking organization, the Times Higher Education (THE), sought to maintain its legitimacy in the face of opposition from important stakeholders and how it sought to introduce a new “Innovation and Impact” ranking. The paper analyzes the strategies, methods, and particular practices that university rankers undertake to legitimate their knowledge—and is the first work to do so using insights gathered alongside the operations of one of the ranking agencies as well as from the rankings’ conference circuit. Rather than assuming that all of these trust-building mechanisms have solidified the hold of the THE over its audience, they can be seen as signs of a constant struggle for influence over a skeptical audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes a recent initiative of Japan's Ministry of Education, which aims to internationalize higher education in Japan. The large-investment project 'Top Global University Project' (TGUP) has emerged to create globally oriented universities, to increase the role of foreign languages in higher education, and to foster global human resources. The TGUP identifies 37 universities: 13 as 'top global universities' intended to compete in the top 100 university world rankings and 24 'global traction universities' intended to lead the internationalization of higher education in Japan. Despite the substantial funding behind this initiative, little research has been conducted to evaluate the potential impact of this policy on language planning in higher education in Japan. This paper addresses this gap in its exploration of the TGUP, including key changes from previous internationalization policies. It then presents an analysis of publicly available documents regarding the policy, collected from all 37 of the participant universities. Findings indicate a positive departure from older policy trends and the emergence of flexible, unique forms of English language education in Japan's universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main purpose of the paper is to estimate the efficiency of a big public university in Italy using individual student-level data, modeling exogenous variables in human capital formation through a heteroscedastic stochastic frontier approach. Specifically, a production function for tertiary education has been estimated with emphasis on inefficiency and its determinants, taking explicitly into account the role played by students’ socio-economic and educational background. The empirical evidence, based on 48,338 freshmen, leads towards the use of individual-level data in order to control for the portion of the student academic achievement affected by the personal characteristics and effort, and the portion ascribable to the resources or organization of the institutional activities. Within the limit of external validity allowed by operating within only one university, efficiency scores derived from using both individual-level and aggregate level data do offer an important instrument to the university and governance structures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper assesses the evolution of efficiency of Italian public universities for the period 2000–2010. It aims at investigating whether their levels of efficiency showed signs of convergence, and if the well-known disparity between northern and southern regions decreased. For this purpose, we use a refinement of data envelopment analysis, namely window analysis, which allows for measuring efficiency in cross-sectional and time-varying data. We find that the efficiency of most universities registered only marginal changes in the period, although a notable re-ranking occurred. However, changes in the management of universities, consequential to the reform processes, did not affect the long-run tendencies, such as the persisting difference in performance between north and south. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Data envelopment analysis (DEA) has often been used to evaluate efficiency in the context of higher education institutions. Yet there are numerous alternative non-parametric measures of efficiency available. This paper compares efficiency scores obtained for institutions of higher education in England, 2013–2014, using three different methods: the original Charnes et al. method and two slacks-based methods (SBM-Min and SBM-Max) developed by Tone. The findings suggest that results are highly sensitive to methodology chosen. Hence caution is required in applying the results in any policy context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

European quality assurance has a complicated history that must be viewed as taking place on two levels: first, in a national effort to deregulate the public sector and to make universities accountable for their teaching performance; and second, a supranational endeavor to accomplish European integration in the field of higher education. Similarly, the web of institutional constraints and opportunity structures in which accreditation agencies are embedded spans two policy levels, the national and the European. In this paper, we examine how German accreditation agencies achieve some level of autonomy in a highly entrenched institutional environment. The paper is based on a qualitative study comprising archival data and over 70 semi-structured interviews. Drawing on the insights of neo-institutional theory, we argue that quality assurance agencies seek political leverage at the European level in order to strengthen their standing in the higher education systems of their own countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using critical race theory as an analytical framework to examine White privilege and institutional racism, two teacher educators, in a rural predominantly White university tell counterstories about teaching for social justice in literacy and mathematics education courses. In sharing our counterstories in this paper, we, women faculty of color, challenge Whiteness and institutional racism with the hopes of: (1) promoting social justice teaching in order to globally prepare (pre-and-in-service) teachers and educational leaders to motivate and empower ALL students to learn; (2) dismantling racism to promote better wellbeing for women faculty of color; and (3) moving educational communities at large closer toward equitable education, which is a fundamental civil right. After analyzing the counterstories, we suggest that university leaders establish policies and practices to support (recruit, retain, and promote) faculty/leaders of color, not just mainstream academics. Working toward equity and justice, we strive to form alliances between Whites and Others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education is increasingly acknowledged by national governments and international agencies as a key driver of development, and systems are expanding rapidly in response to rising demand. Moreover, universities have been attributed a central role in the post-2015 development agenda and the achievement of the sustainable development goals. Yet questions of institutional models and their differential impact on society have not received sufficient attention. This paper presents an analysis of the 'anatomy' of the university in order to identify the salient changes in the institution across time and location in relation to knowledge and relationships with society. A framework is proposed structured around three key dimensions: first, 'value'-the extent to which knowledge is treated as intrinsically or instrumentally worthwhile; second, 'function'-the role of the university in terms of storage, transmission, production or application of knowledge; third, 'interaction'-the flow of ideas and actors between the university and society. This analytical framework is then utilised to assess two dominant tendencies in global higher education: commodification and unbundling. Finally, implications are drawn out for universities' potential impact on development in low- and middle-income countries in the context of these contemporary trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proportion of students enrolled at university from the lowest quartile of socio-economic position has remained static at around 15% for at least the past 15 years (DEEWR, Transforming Australia's higher education system, ). This paper argues that the apparent lack of progress towards equity of access has been exacerbated due to how socio-economic position (SEP) is measured within higher education. Three major methodological issues are identified: (a) the use of socio-economic indicator for areas (SEIFA) at an inappropriate unit of geographic area (postcode), (b) an inappropriate choice of index (education and occupation), and (c) using the index of education and occupation as the sole indicator of SEP thereby increasing the risk of misclassification of individuals through the operation of ecological fallacy. This paper argues that to address these methodological deficiencies, alternative methods of determining SEP are required at both the aggregate and individual level. Possible options are proposed for use as replacements for the geographic area (postcode) and index (education and occupation) as well as additional measures at the individual or household level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The field of Australian higher education has changed, is changing and is about to change, repositioned in relation to other 'fields of power'. It is a sector now well defined by its institutional groupings and by their relative claims to selectivity and exclusivity, with every suggestion of their differentiation growing. The potential of a 'joined-up' tertiary education system, of vocational education and training (VET) and universities, has the potential to further rework these relations within Australian higher education, as will lifting the volume caps on university student enrolments. Moreover, Australian universities now compete within an international higher education marketplace, ranked by THES and Shanghai Jiao Tiong league tables. 'Catchment areas' and knowledge production have become global. In sum, Australian universities (and agents within them) are positioned differently in the field. And being so variously and variably placed, institutions and agents have different stances available to them, including the positions they can take on student equity. In this paper I begin from the premise that our current stance on equity has been out-positioned, as much by a changing higher education field as by entrenched representations of social groups across regions, institutions, disciplines and degrees. In taking a new stance on equity, the paper is also concerned with the positioning in the field of a new national research centre with a focus on student equity in higher education. In particular, the paper asks what stance this new centre can take on student equity that will resonate on a national and even international scale. And, given a global field of higher education, what definitions of equity and propositions for policy and practice can it offer? What will work in the pursuit of equity? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to investigate the possible framework for encouraging the presence of local dimensions in an internationalised and globally competitive system by using Taiwan’s higher education system as a case. It begins by discussing the notion of internationalisation and its implications for higher education. It then turns to look at Taiwan’s responses to these global developments. It also reviews different opinions on the position and importance of local dimensions in the world of globalised higher education. Based on these perspectives, the paper advocates promoting the concept of state-building in Taiwan’s as well as in other higher education systems for preserving or even strengthening the local dimensions of individual academic systems operating in the international knowledge network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major requirement for transformation contained in the new education policy in South Africa is that the graduate outputs of the higher education system should match the needs of a modernizing economy. This paper addresses the organizational aspect of university-industry relationships that is an element of the transformation. In empirical terms, it reflects upon the policy of the North-West University in South Africa, as embodied by means of the introduction of the Business Mathematics and Informatics (BMI) curriculum and research. Empirical results indicate that the number of students who opted for mathematics had increased dramatically. The majority of graduates delivered by the BMI programme are employed in the financial sector, both nationally and internationally. This paper indicates that the organization of university-industry relationships enforces a difficult institutional balancing act that attempts, on the one hand, to meet the benchmark of international scientific indicators, and on the other hand, “fitness for purpose” in the local context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides a descriptive account of recent changes in Italian higher education policy, focusing in particular on the impact that recent reforms have had on the internal governance of the nation’s universities. The paper shows how the government’s policy of reform (which is currently moving away from the traditional “command and control” approach to a “steering from a distance” policy) risks being either ineffective or attaining its goals too slowly due to the persistence of deeply rooted, previous institutional governance practices. The greater autonomy currently enjoyed by universities is managed in a corporatistic-oligarchic decision-making style, which leads to sluggish distributive outputs and institutional adaptation to external changes. The paper provides empirical evidence of this institutional inconsistency. In an attempt to deal with this problem, there have been discussions and debate in recent years about re-designing the institutional arrangement of universities, even though it is unlikely that any coherent decisions will be taken on this matter, due to the intractability of the problem resulting from a series of political, cultural and social factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to report on who creates branding within institutions of higher learning, and what impact branding has on core institutional activities such as student recruitment and fundraising, as well as on socio-psychological factors such as community respect and national prestige. Eighty-nine tertiary education experts covering three world regions were surveyed in order to gather information to fulfil the paper's objectives. The nature and extent of involvement of enrolled students, alumni, higher management, external consultants, civic leaders and the business community were investigated to identify the part each plays, if any, in the development of an institutional brand. Findings indicate that institutions have a tendency to brand from the top down rather than from the bottom up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper inquires about the conditions that enable the rise of new applied undergraduate fields in American universities and colleges. After identifying high-growth fields since 1950, the paper traces their professional development from an embryonic stage until universities and colleges started offering bachelor’s degrees in those fields. The experiences of the six fields of this study show that although pressures for academic differentiation were evident, governmental intervention was ultimately crucial. Qualitative evidence indicates that the independence of a new field hinges on the interaction of four factors: societal pressures, state intervention, academic resourcefulness of the field, and professional institutional processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]