Search

The field of higher education research is fast-growing, both in number of publications and in geographical reach. There is however limited evidence on how this growth in publication influences the structure of the underlying co-authorship network. This is important as structural network parameters can change quickly in a fast-growing network, leading to fundamental different network structures, e.g., in terms of hierarchy, fragmentation, and inequality. Ultimately, these network structures can influence the current and future innovation and knowledge production in the field. Empirically, we construct 34 different co-authorship networks of all authors published in 28 higher education journals listed in Web of Science between 1976 and 2018 and perform bibliometric network analyses. We find that the growth of publications and authors in the higher education research field leads to increased clustering among authors, creating a dense core of well-connected author clusters. At the same time, we observe an increasing inequality in the network. The co-authorship network is characterized by high fragmentation and reveals a core-periphery structure. Our analysis shows that co-authorship is a selective process, driven by a Matthew effect based on previous publications. As a result, core authors are unlikely to co-author with newer, less established authors. Moreover, we also detect a growing inequality in the average impact of an article. We conclude the paper by discussing possible explanations and by offering some suggestions for future research.

A growing literature addresses the experiences of international students in higher education. However, limited attention has been paid to how satisfied international students are with their educational experience (gown) and their non-educational experiences related to, e.g. culture, transportation, administrative matters and housing (town). This paper presents findings from a study on 392 international students that have spent a period in one of the higher education institutions located in the city of Ghent, Belgium. We explore which socio-demographic variables and students' motivations predict their overall satisfaction and satisfaction regarding specific dimensions: housing, culture/lifestyle, education and administration. The findings illustrate that financial security and academic motivation positively predict general satisfaction as well as all or most of the four specific dimensions of satisfaction. Socio-demographic variables hardly play a role, apart from religion and the difference between the home and host country's level of educational development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]