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In this essay, we explore the consequences of the University of California's policies to address racial disparities and its support for social justice activism as influences on its commitment to academic freedom and other intellectual values. This is a story of the interaction between two essential public university missions -- one civic, the other intellectual -- and the slow effacement of one by the other. The University's expressed commitments to academic freedom and the culture of rationalism have not been abandoned, but they are too often considered secondary or when confronted by new administrative initiatives and social movement activism related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The experimental use of mandatory DEI statements on a number of the ten UC campuses, within willing academic departments, as initial screening mechanisms in faculty hiring is the most dramatic of the new administrative policies that have been put into place to advance faculty diversity. This policy can be considered the most problematic of a series of efforts that the UC campuses and the UC Office of the President have taken for more than a decade to prioritize representation in academic appointments. Our intent is to encourage a discussion of these policies within UC in light of the University's fundamental commitments to open intellectual inquiry, the discovery and dissemination of a wide range of new knowledge, and a culture of rationalism.

Starting this year, tens of thousands of Russian freshmen found themselves attending a new mandatory course -- "Foundations of Russian Statehood." Swiftly designed under the auspices of Putin's administration, this ideologically charged course aims to position Russia as a unique civilization-state, bolstering Putin's political narrative and providing justification for the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Consider, for example, this excerpt from the course's instructional video: "The 'Russian world' extends beyond current Russian borders, transcending ethnicities, territories, religions, political systems, and ideological preferences." As this curriculum becomes standard in Russian universities, it contributes to the emerging trend of weaponizing Russian universities and turning them into instruments in Russia's war of attrition with Ukraine and its broader stand-off with the West. This report discusses this weaponization process and the impact it is having on Russian universities, faculty, students, and the academic communities they belong to. It is regrettably a story of back to the future, reminiscent of the Soviet era of repression and attempts at control and manipulation of academics.

Franchised provision of higher education has been under the spotlight in recent times. Without shying away from the challenges faced by those delivering successful franchise arrangements, this paper shows how important franchising can be in extending access to higher education. The authors explain what protections need to be in place to ensure franchise arrangements work out for students. They end with clear recommendations to encourage more collaboration between franchisors, franchisees and regulators, such as the Office for Students.

We examine the potential to expand and diversify the production of university STEM degrees by shifting the margin of initial enrollment between community colleges and 4-year universities. Our analysis is based on statewide administrative microdata from the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development covering enrollees in all public postsecondary institutions statewide. We find that the potential for shifting the enrollment margin to expand degree production in STEM fields is modest, even at an upper bound, because most community college students are not academically prepared for bachelor's degree programs in STEM fields. We also find that shifting the enrollment margin is unlikely to improve racial/ethnic diversity among university STEM degree recipients. This is because community college students at the enrollment margin are less diverse than their peers who enter universities directly.

We study whether female students benefit from being taught by female professors, and whether such gender match effects differ by class size. We use administrative records of a German public university, covering all programs and courses between 2006 and 2018. We find that gender match effects on student performance are sizable in smaller classes, but do not exist in larger classes. This difference suggests that direct and frequent interactions between students and professors are important for the emergence of gender match effects. Instead, the mere fact that one's professor is female is not sufficient to increase performance of female students.

In this HEPI Report, Nick Petford, Robert Griggs and Terry Neville explore the rationale and development of the University of Northampton's Waterside Campus, one of the UK's most ambitious university relocation projects. They conclude with a series of lessons learned.

India has the second largest higher education system in terms of institutions worldwide, despite having only 26.3% Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER), including vocational education. It aspires to achieve a target of 50% GER by 2035. It means it would require a larger number of higher education institutions (HEIs), public and private, in addition to huge fiscal resources. At present about 75% of the HEIs are privately managed with about 66% of student enrolment. Though there is no provision of for-profit higher education institutions in India, many non-profit private HEIs are actually working as for-profit. They are growing fast and are visible too. Therefore, it is high time now to think seriously about the pros and cons, causes and consequences of for-profit and nonprofit private HEIs in India. India provides a big market for non-profit and for-profit higher education to domestic and foreign stakeholders. Already 160 foreign universities are working in collaboration with public or private limited companies in India. This essay provides an analysis of issues related to for-profit and nonprofit HEIs, including desirability, size, funding, transparency, accountability, quality, feasibility and sustainability, government policies, regulation, foreign collaborations, private investments, and incentives. The methodology adopted is analytical, comparative, and empirical.

This paper examines how international education (IE) as a tool of government foreign policy is challenged in an era of new geopolitics, where China's growing ambitions have increased rivalry with the West. It compares U.S. and Canada as cases first, by examining rationales and approaches to IE in both countries, second, IE relations with China before conflict and third, current controversies and government policy responses to IE relations with China. The paper concludes identifying contextual factors that shape each country's engagement with IE, but suggests that moving forward, the future of IE in a world of new geopolitics is likely to be far more complex and conflictual.

The critical role of communication is usually overlooked by higher education institutions. Here we argue that higher education institutions must consider an effective communication as one of their top priorities. This communication must go well beyond promoting the university's opportunities to potential new students, the pursuit of potential donors and outreach to policymakers: it must engage all aspects of internal academic life and seek the engagement of the larger society. Increasingly, higher education has to defend its purpose, integrity and legitimacy in a climate of growing neo-nationalist and populist movements. A comprehensive communication plan includes a deep revision of the University core values and practices, better teaching and learning strategies, as well as modern internal and external communication tools, including all sorts of social media.

Following a landmark court ruling in 2005, more than half of Germany's universities started charging tuition fees, which were subsequently abolished until 2015. We exploit the unusual lack of grandfathering in these policies to show that fees increase study effort and degree completion among incumbent students. However, fees also decrease first-time university enrollment among high school graduates. Combining this enrollment impact with the effect on completion, we find that fees around the zero-price margin have only little effect on overall educational attainment. We conclude by discussing policies targeting the separate effect margins of fees and caution against a general abolition. [Funding for this report was provided by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation).]

In assessing the current and future role of universities in the nation-states in which they are chartered and funded, it is useful to ask, When are universities societal leaders as societal and constructive change agents, and when are they followers, reinforcing the existing political order? As discussed in the book, "Neo-Nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats and the Future of Higher Education," the national political history and contemporary context is the dominant factor for shaping the leadership or follower role of universities -- what I call a political determinist interpretation. We often think of contemporary universities, and their students and faculty, as catalysts for societal progress -- the Free Speech and Civil Rights movements, Vietnam War protests, the anti-Apartheid movement, Tiananmen Square, and more recently the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong. Universities can be, and have been, the locus for not only educating enlightened future leaders, but also for opposing oppression and dictatorships. But universities have also proved over their history to be tools for serving the privileged, and reinforcing the social class divisions of a society; they also have been factories for errant theories that reinforce the worst of nationalist tendencies. Universities are both unique environments for educating and mentoring free thinkers, entrepreneurs, and citizens with, for example, a devotion to social change, or for creating conformists -- or all of the above. How might we assess whether universities are followers or leaders in their societies? This essay considers this question, offering a framework for evaluating the follower or leader role, and with particular attention to the emergence or, in some cases, re-emergence of neonationalist leaders and autocratic governments.

This paper describes the current criticisms of academic research collaboration between the US and China and proposes a university-led initiative to address those concerns. The article begins with the assertion that bilateral research collaboration has historically benefitted both countries, citing cooperation in virology as an example. The paper continues with a discussion of the criticisms leveled by several US government agencies against the Chinese government, especially with regard to the Thousand Talents Program (TTP). A close examination of publicly available appointment letters under the TTP suggests that Chinese universities are given wide discretion when it comes to defining the specific terms of scholarly collaboration. Along with additional supporting arguments, the paper concludes that the most significant violations of commonly accepted research norms are owing to the behavior of individual Chinese institutions and are not directed by the TTP or the Chinese national government. The paper then suggests several steps for addressing these issues at the university level, beginning with a convening of campus leaders from both countries.

There continues to be widespread anxiety about the future of work. I recently proposed a labor studies perspective on how to understand and meet undeniable challenges. This follow-up paper explores the implications of my analysis for the contemporary American academy, reflecting on how labor studies can help enlist public research universities in support of building a human-centered world of work. American universities have long been intricate bundles of contradictions, but recent trends have left them at a crossroads: Will they be able to reform and connect with a progressive reading of the original land-grant vision to support a future in the interest of workers? Or will their practices further drift away from a public-serving mission as they succumb to neoliberal expectations? This paper contends that the three constitutive features of labor studies--its focus on people's struggles, interdisciplinarity, and upholding workers' rights--illuminate crucial steps for realizing much-needed innovations in support of revaluing both work and workers.

This paper summarises the literature that has linked education and economic growth. It begins with an overview of the key concepts in neoclassical and endogenous growth models, and discussion on how these have been tested in the data. Issues with respect to specification, the measurement of human capital and causality are discussed, together with studies that have sought to addresses these. A more recent and growing literature that explores the links between firm level human capital and productivity, including externalities, is then summarised. Beyond studies that link human capital to economic performance directly, there are numerous studies that have explore the relationships between human capital and the determinants of growth including investment, technology adoption and invention. Key findings from this literature are drawn out, together with a summary of the literature that has linked the activities of universities (key producers of both human capital and innovation) to their local economies. The paper concludes with discussion of policy implications stemming from this body of research, and promising areas for future research.

Hong Kong and Singapore are island city-states that exude the complicated tensions of postcolonial nationalism. Both are influenced directly or indirectly by the long shadow of China's rising nationalism and geopolitical power and, in the case of Hong Kong, subject to Beijing's edicts under the terms of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. Both have productive economies dependent on global trade, and each has similar rates of population density--Hong Kong's population is 7.4 million and Singapore is home to 5.8 million people. It remains to be seen whether Hong Kong's peripheral nationalist identity will be retained, or whether the increasingly assertive influence and control by mainland China will prevail and fully assimilate Hong Kong. But it is apparent that Hong Kong is at a turning point. Throughout 2019, protesters filled the streets of the city, worried about declining civil liberties, specifically Beijing's refusal to provide universal suffrage as promised previously in law and the disqualification of prodemocracy candidates, along with the growing control of Hong Kong's government and universities by Chinese central government designates and fears of an ever-expanding crackdown on dissent. Singapore provides a less dramatic but relevant example of the tension caused by the influx of foreign national students and academics who often displace native citizens, combined with government-enforced efforts to control dissent in universities. And like Hong Kong, the long shadow of China influences the role universities are allowed to play in civil society. The following is an excerpt from the book "Neo-Nationalism and Universities: Populists, Autocrats and the Future of Higher Education" (Johns Hopkins University Press) that explores the implications of nationalist movements on universities in Hong Kong and Singapore. In both, university leaders, and their academic communities, value academic freedom and the idea of independent scholarship. Yet the political environment is severe enough, and the opportunity costs great enough, that they, thus far, remain generally neutral institutions in a debate over civil liberties and the future of their island states. The exception is the key role students have played in the protest movement in Hong Kong, but for how long?

The empirical management literature has found that the education of both managers and the workforce more generally appears to be an important driver of better management practices. This article sets out how such relationships might be conceptualised, and suggests that in a complementarities framework, modern management practices can be thought of as a type of skill-biased technology. It then summarises the literature that has explored the relationships between human capital and surveyed management practices in manufacturing firms and other sectors, highlighting the handful of papers that have found a positive correlation between management practices and measures of local skills supply. It concludes with a discussion of the policy implications that stem from what we know so far, together with avenues for future research that could shed more light on the causal mechanisms at play. [This report was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council through the Centre for Economic Performance, the Programme on Innovation and Diffusion (POID).]

Global university rankings influence students' choices and higher education policies throughout the world. When rankers not only evaluate universities but also provide them with consulting, analytics, or advertising services rankers are vulnerable to conflicts of interest that may potentially distort their rankings. The paper assesses the impact of contracting with rankers on university ranking outcomes using difference-in-difference research design. The study matches data on the positions of 28 Russian universities in QS World University Rankings between 2016 and 2021 with information on contracts these universities had for services from QS -- a company that produces these rankings. The study estimates the effects of the conflicts of interest with two difference-in-difference models. The first model compares the difference in five-year change in rankings between QS rankings and Times Higher Education (THE) rankings across two groups of universities -- those that frequently (five times or more) contracted for QS services, and those that never or seldomly contracted for QS services. The second model compares the difference in five-year change in faculty-student ratios -- between scores in QS rankings, THE rankings, and scores recorded by national statistics -- across the same two groups of universities. The results suggest universities with frequent QS-related contracts had an increase of 0.75 standard deviations (~140 positions) in QS World University Rankings and an increase of 0.9 standard deviations in reported QS faculty-student ratio scores over five years, regardless of changes in the institutional quality. The study calls for universities, governments, and prospective students to reconsider their use of global rankings where conflicts of interest may be generated by the ranker's business activities.

I study the efficacy of test-based meritocracy in college admissions by evaluating the impact of a grade-based "top percent'' policy implemented by the University of California. Eligibility in the Local Context (ELC) provided large admission advantages to the top four percent of 2001-2011 graduates from each California high school. I construct a novel longitudinal dataset linking the ELC era's 1.8 million UC applicants to educational and labor market outcomes. I first employ a regression discontinuity design to show that ELC led over 10 percent of barely-eligible applicants from low-opportunity high schools to enroll at selective UC campuses instead of less-selective public colleges and universities. Half of those participants were from underrepresented minority groups, and their average SAT scores were at the 12th percentile of their UC peers. Instrumental variable estimates show that ELC participants' more-selective university enrollment caused increases in five-year degree attainment by 30 percentage points and annual early-career wages by up to $25,000. I then analyze ELC's general equilibrium effects by estimating a structural model of university application, admission, and enrollment with an embedded top percent policy. I find that ELC and counterfactual expansions of ELC substantively increase disadvantaged students' net enrollment at selective public universities. Reduced-form and structural estimates show that ELC participants derived similar or greater value from more-selective university enrollment than their higher-testing peers. These findings suggest that access-oriented admission policies at selective universities can promote economic mobility without efficiency losses. [Additional funding for this research was provided by the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment.]

This article is a follow-up to a recent ROPS [Research & Occasional Paper Series] article on strategic budgeting at colleges and universities. In recent years, several colleges and universities have explored alternative strategies for developing operating budgets. In part, this exploration was driven by the desire for transparency among various constituent groups and the need to tie budgeting to campus strategic planning. While developing a new budgeting process can be a very intense and involved process, the ability to implement a new budget process requires the same level of commitment and involvement. A successful implementation process involves an effective communication process combined with training and the commitment of senior campus leadership.

In recent years a number of colleges and universities have explored alternative strategies for developing operating budgets. In part this exploration was driven by the desire for transparency among various constituent groups and the need to tie budgeting to campus strategic planning. With the advent of declining federal and state support, along with changing student demand, the need for a more strategic approach to budgeting has gained momentum. This paper highlights the various budgetary approaches currently in use and provides examples of their application in a variety of university settings. Particular emphasis is given to the process by which universities develop new models.

The European Union is likely the most far-developed cross-border public space for higher education. The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the European Research Area (ERA) both span an even larger number of countries including associate and partner countries of the EU. Based on shared European values, such as academic freedom, cross-border cooperation, and mobility, these policy frameworks have been developed in Europe over the last decades and with much success. HE systems in this area are thus well-positioned to benefit from cross-border mobility and collaboration but may at the same time face a certain loss of control over HE, for instance with respect to access due to the cross-border flows of students. This seems to make them vulnerable to populist tendencies and neo-nationalist politics seeking to inhibit the free movement of students, scholars, and data. Such tendencies have never been completely absent on the "old continent" but resurged over the uneven outcomes of globalization, the effects of the global financial and consequent Euro crisis, and the refugee crisis. Meanwhile, the impact of the coronavirus crisis is still by and large unknown. Populist tendencies seem now to be turning against the EU, with its freedom of movement for persons (i.e. open borders) as one of its cornerstones and are therefore of concern for the HE sector. Countries such as the UK, Switzerland, Denmark, and the Netherlands have a different position in the European landscape but are all struggling with the complexity of combining the virtues of an open system with constrained national sovereignty. Sovereignty is required in terms of steering capacity in order to balance access, cost, and quality, i.e. the well-known "higher education trilemma." In open systems this is challenged by the "globalization trilemma", which states that countries cannot have national sovereignty, (hyper)globalization and democracy at the same time. How are the EU, its Member States, and the HE sector responding? Will the Union stay united (i.e. Brexit)? Are the legal competencies of the EU in HE strong enough? What about the many European university associations, leagues, and networks? And what do the millions of (former) Erasmus students have to say?

Selective college admissions are fundamentally a question of tradeoffs: Given capacity, admitting one student means rejecting another. Research to date has generally estimated average effects of college selectivity and has been unable to distinguish between the effects on students gaining access and on those losing access under alternative admissions policies. We use the introduction of the Top Ten Percent rule and administrative data from the State of Texas to estimate the effect of access to a selective college on student graduation and earnings outcomes. We estimate separate effects on two groups of students. The first--highly ranked students at schools which previously sent few students to the flagship university--gain access due to the policy; the second--students outside the top tier at traditional "feeder" high schools--tend to lose access. We find that students in the first group see increases in college enrollment and graduation with some evidence of positive earnings gains 7-9 years after college. In contrast, students in the second group attend less selective colleges but do not see declines in overall college enrollment, graduation, or earnings. The Top Ten Percent rule, introduced for equity reasons, thus also seems to have improved efficiency. [This research was originally published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (see ED604542). Funding was provided by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence Scheme, FAIR project No 262675.]

Internships are widely perceived as a "high-impact practice" that opens the doors of opportunity for college students, yet little is known about obstacles to participation. Instead, educators and employers too often view participation as unproblematic, with many postsecondary institutions beginning to mandate internships for graduation in many colleges and universities. This study reports findings from surveys (n = 1,549) and focus groups (n= 100) with students at five diverse postsecondary institutions that include a community college, a Historically Black College and University, and three comprehensive universities. Results indicate that 64% of students who did not take internships had in fact wanted to, but could not due to intersecting obstacles that include the need to work at a full- or part-time job, heavy course loads, and a lack of opportunities in their disciplines. First-generation students were more likely to report needing to work, Arts & Humanities students were more likely to report insufficient pay and heavy course loads, and full-time students were least likely to report insufficient pay. Given the financial, structural, and even spatial forces that inhibit the ability of many college students to pursue and then complete an internship, we argue that postsecondary institutions should not mandate or advocate for internships until and unless they address these obstacles to internship participation. Ultimately, colleges and universities must work to ensure that internships do not reproduce privilege and exacerbate inequality.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) are more critical than ever to help societies respond to the complex challenges of our times. Recognising that these challenges require HEIs to adopt holistic innovations in teaching, research and collaboration activities, the European Commission (EC) and the OECD have developed the HEInnovate guiding framework. HEInnovate promotes innovation and entrepreneurship in higher education and provides guidance to policy makers and HEIs that want to generate additional societal and economic value. This policy brief distils the main findings and recommendations of 13 HEInnovate Country Reviews that have examined higher education system and institution, identifying factors affecting the delivery of the entrepreneurial and innovation agenda in higher education. Looked at in the round, the country reviews provide HE leaders with peer-learning and best practices, policy makers with tested policy solutions and the European Union and the OECD with a deeper understanding of the state of innovation and entrepreneurship in higher education.

Driven by a shift in the political economy towards knowledge and information, and by the emergence of mass higher education, the historic central value of the liberal arts to the contemporary university is endangered. This essay presents an analysis of the current status of the university and asserts the value of the liberal arts to the covenant that sustains it. A history of the origin of the contemporary university, along with its dependence upon the liberal arts, is outlined. Finally, a definition of the liberal arts for the contemporary university is proposed, along with suggestions for models that could incorporate it. The argument concludes with a plea for anchoring university life in commitment to a modern understanding of the value of the liberal arts for faculty, students, and society.

One of the problematic features of the increasingly influential discourse of student employability in higher education is the widespread conception of "skills" as de-contextualized bits of knowledge, ability, and disposition. Instead, how particular competencies are valued, defined, and utilized in practice is deeply shaped by sociocultural, political, and situational factors. The effect of these influences is especially relevant for communication skills, which are widely viewed as critical for employability. In this study we examine how nursing and engineering experts and novices conceptualize communication within specific situations. The data highlight distinct ways respondents define communication and the role of contextual and cultural factors in shaping these perspectives, and how views of "acceptable" communication risk reifying norms of dominant classes while ignoring cultural variability.

The paper studies the impact of financial aid on long-term educational attainment and labor market outcomes in Colombia. In 2014, the government launched a large-scale and generous student loan program called "Ser Pilo Paga." It offered full tuition coverage to students admitted to one of 33 government-certified high-quality universities known for superior test scores, graduation rates, and per-student spending. Notably, completing a bachelor's degree converted the loan into a grant. To qualify, students must score in the top 10% of the standardized high school exit exam and have below-median household wealth. Using RD and DD methodologies, we use nationwide administrative microdata linking all high school test takers, postsecondary attendees, and formal workers to estimate impacts up to eight years after high school. Financial aid improves college enrollment, quality, and attainment, particularly in STEM-related fields. The earnings gains are substantial, growing, and driven partly by high-quality universities improving students' skills, as demonstrated by their performance on Colombia's college graduation exam. A welfare analysis using the MVPF yields over $4.8 per dollar of government spending. Lastly, the program narrowed socioeconomic gaps in college attainment, skill development, and earnings among academically similar students without adversely affecting non-recipients, thereby promoting equity and efficiency.

This paper summarises the evolution of student contributions in Australia since 1989, exploring system redesigns that commenced in 1997, 2005 and 2021. Public and private benefits are recurring themes in setting student contributions, both as high-level justifications for government policy and in pricing specific disciplines. Professor Andrew Norton evaluates five different rationales used by successive Australian governments to satisfy competing policy and political considerations: course costs, private benefits, public benefits, increasing resources per student place, and incentivising course choices. Professor Norton argues that despite using student contributions to guide course choices being central to current funding policy it is never likely to be effective. Student contributions do, however, have practical consequences that seem to be given little consideration by the government. These include how long it takes to repay student debt, how much of that debt the government will eventually write off, and university incentives to enrol students. As the new government reviews the Job-ready Graduates policy, the paper provides a useful basis for discussion, offering lessons from history in what works and what does not, and guiding policymakers towards student contribution systems that minimise problems for students, government and universities.

International students are critical to the competitiveness of American higher education in terms of financial, intercultural, and educational contributions. However, recent data indicates that the U.S institutions enrolled 31,520 fewer international students in Fall 2017 as compared to Fall 2016. At average tuition and fees of US$ 25,000, higher education institutions are likely to lose potential revenue of US$ 788 million for the first year of studies alone. This paper examines the shifting landscape of international enrollment from the lens of three overlapping Waves spread over seven years and takes a deeper dive into implications for American universities. Wave I was shaped by the terrorist attacks in September 2001 and resulted in slower overall growth in international student enrollment of 11% between 1999 and 2006. Wave II has its origins in the global financial crisis which prompted universities to search for self-funded students and experienced overall robust growth of 44 percent in international student enrollment between 2006 and 2013. Finally, Wave III is shaped by the new political order and intensified competition from English-taught programs in Europe and Asia which will slow down the pace of projected growth in international enrollment to 18 percent between 2013 and 2020. In this current Wave of intensified global competition, overall international student enrollment is likely to flatten or decline for most universities. While the reputation and quality of American higher education is admired and emulated around the world, resting on its past laurels will not be sufficient for attracting international students in the Third Wave. This means that universities must get proactive and strategic in reaching, engaging and supporting international students throughout their educational lifecycle. Demand for studying abroad among international students remains robust, however, increasing competition and expectations for value for money will requires proactive and concerted efforts to maintain the global competitiveness of American higher education.

A singular vision has propelled higher education and ministries of education in Asia since the new millennium. It is a vision launched by the once rising tide of a globalized world order that spilled into higher education: in order to be competitive on the world scene, each Asian country had to build "World Class Universities," which could be compared and rank-ordered with the pre-eminent research universities of America, Britain and elsewhere. And if the pre-eminent American and British research universities could not be quickly surpassed, punctuated jumps up the status ladder of global higher education would establish an "heir-apparent" trajectory. Now, however, the rising tide of globalism has perhaps crested. Indeed, as some scholars of globalism and higher education point out, in certain aspects of national policy the rising tide is turning into a receding one. Nation-states are recoiling from an elite-driven, transnational world order into an "inside economy" that is concerned with its own issues of development and sustainability, quite apart from measuring itself against the rest of the world. In time, higher education in Asia is likely to follow suit. Globalism created the vision of "World Class Universities" ranked in an imitative hierarchical order; its demise suggests the need for other ideals that can drive the quest for excellence in higher education in Asia. The bedrock of educational quality for the New Flagship University in Asia is excellence in all of the forms of knowledge and understanding of human experience. The stronger the excellence in each form, the better the university's earned standing amongst its peers. But this is not a relative relationship, like the World Rankings, where worth is measured against other institutions in a game of winners and losers. Rather, it is measurement against the standards of excellence inherent in each form itself.

This ESIR Focus Paper provides a 'deeper dive' into the role of European Universities in achieving systemic change in the post-pandemic economy and society. It builds on and complements ESIR's second Policy Brief, which offers guidance on how a 'protect-prepare-transform' approach in the post-pandemic Europe can ensure fast learning from innovation by relying on smart and coherent policies, collaborative efforts across levels of government and decentralisation of governance, and most importantly the courage to direct research and innovation at the transformations Europe is facing.

We explore the recent undertaking in El Salvador to establish the country's first industry-higher education clusters in four economic sectors critical to growth and competitiveness: (1) information and communication technology; (2) light manufacturing; (3) energy and energy efficiency; and (4) agroindustry and food processing. These clusters take a systems approach to aligning higher education institutions (HEIs) with the talent and research needs of the private sector. Under the United States Agency for International Development's "Higher Education for Economic Growth" project, RTI International designed and facilitated a three-phase, 10-step process, beginning with the careful and transparent selection of sectors, followed by early engagement of key stakeholders, to form clusters and establish formal structures necessary for sustained multisector dialogue. The discourse ultimately culminated in the creation of data-driven strategic and operational plans guiding cluster actions. This paper documents this detailed process and highlights early successes and challenges observed. Finally, learnings and insights are also offered for those wishing to undertake a similar systems-level approach to collaboration between HEIs and industry with the goal of producing tangible, sector-level economic benefits.

In this HEPI debate paper on the media and higher education, Rosemary Bennett provides a commentary on the interaction of the two sectors and proposes ideas on how universities might best engage with journalists to promote themselves and their research. [Foreword by Adam Tickell.]

Why is invention strongly positively correlated with parental income not only in the US but also in Finland which displays low income inequality and high social mobility? Using data on 1.45M Finnish individuals and their parents, we find that: (i) the positive association between parental income and off-spring probability of inventing is greatly reduced when controlling for parental education; (ii) instrumenting for the parents having a MSc-degree using distance to nearest university reveals a large causal effect of parental education on offspring probability of inventing; and (iii) the causal effect of parental education has been markedly weakened by the introduction in the early 1970s of a comprehensive schooling reform. [Funding for this report was provided by the ERC, the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation, and FORTE.]

In the face of the dominant World Class University rhetoric and ranking paradigm, most academic leaders and their academic communities have had difficulty conceptualizing and articulating their grander purpose and multiple engagements with society. Some seem to wait for the next ministerial edict to help or push them toward greater societal relevancy--often limited to improved global rankings. This essay discusses the evolving idea of the Flagship University, its past and future, and the need to develop and articulate a more holistic and modern narrative regarding the role of these important institutions. "The New Flagship University" is an institution grounded in its historical purpose, but remarkably different in its devotion to access and equity, to the quality of its teaching, research and public services mission, and to meeting national and regional socioeconomic needs. This essay briefly discusses some of the central themes in the book, "The New Flagship University," and includes observations in recent articles by scholars and researchers on their relevancy in various parts of the world. Leading national or "Flagship Universities" are now more important for socioeconomic mobility, for knowledge production, for generating economic and civic leaders, and for pushing innovation and societal self-reflection than in any other time in their history.

As pushes for increased accountability in higher education continue, postsecondary institutions are interested in identifying early on students who are at risk of leaving their institution. With this in mind, this study sought to identify incoming first-year student information (such as that available on the ACT student record) that postsecondary institutions might use for determining students who are at-risk of leaving their institution in year two. Specifically, student characteristics were examined in relation to two types of attrition for the institution--students dropping out of college and students transferring to another institution--in comparison to students returning in year two. Data were available for more than 630,000 ACT-tested 2014 high school graduates who enrolled in college in fall 2014 at nearly 1,150 two- and four-year institutions. Initial and subsequent enrollment was tracked using National Student Clearinghouse data. Data on student-level characteristics evaluated included academic preparation and achievement measures; college intentions about living on campus, enrolling full-time, and working while in college; educational goals; the number of college preferences met by the initial institutions; the distance between home and initial institution attended; and demographic characteristics. Student's college intentions, college preference matches, and distance from home were included in the study as possible proxies for barriers to social and academic integration at the initial institution attended. Hierarchical multinomial regression models accounting for institution attended were used to estimate retention and attrition rates. Results were examined by type of institution. Study findings suggest that multiple academic and non-academic factors are useful for predicting student attrition. First, at both two- and four-year institutions, students who were less academically prepared for college were more likely than those who better prepared to drop out of college. Academic readiness was also negatively related to transfer at four-year institutions but was somewhat positively related to transfer at two-year intuitions. College intentions also played a role in identifying who was likely to leave their initial institution. For example, students who indicated that they planned to work more hours while in college were more likely to drop out of college than those intending to work fewer hours. Additionally, the fewer the number of college preferences met by the initial institution attended the more likely a student was to drop out or transfer to another institution. Attending an institution farther away from home was also associated with higher transfer rates. Unfortunately, even after statistically controlling for academic measures and other student characteristics, students from certain underserved demographic groups (e.g., first-generation students and economically disadvantaged students) continued to be somewhat more likely than their peers to drop out. In secondary analyses, retention and attrition rates were found to vary across college majors and by institutional characteristics. Study findings illustrate how institutions can use incoming student information from the ACT record to help identify students who are at-risk of leaving their institution, allowing for the opportunity to intervene early with these students. The ACT student record contains additional data elements beyond those examined in this study that can help institutions build multidimensional models of student success in order to better identify students who might benefit from additional academic and student support services upon entering college.

Positive social mobility benefits individuals in terms of personal advancement and the nation in terms of productivity. There are other social benefits aside. Education, including higher education, is widely understood to be a key contributor to social mobility. However, without a measure of universities' impact on social mobility it is difficult to assess their individual or combined contribution to this agenda and therefore to understand fully the value of university education to individuals, to the country and its taxpayers. The author sets out to identify a measure of universities' contributions to social mobility, combining the social distance travelled by graduates and the number of graduates transported. In this paper, Professor David Phoenix, the Vice-Chancellor of London South Bank University, proposes a new English Social Mobility Index (SMI). Incorporating the number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds and the distance they travel after they enter their higher education institution, the English SMI provides a new way of understanding the contribution of universities to social mobility. [Foreword written by Nick Hillman.]

The 2020 EUA Learning & Teaching Thematic Peer Group on "Meeting skills and employability demands" explored how universities can ensure that their study programmes reflect the dynamic demands of society and the labour market, and address skills demands throughout the student experience. In this paper, employability is considered as part of universities' mission to educate and to contribute in general to future graduates' personal and professional development, including in lifelong learning. It outlines challenges associated with this mission and provides recommendations to tackle them.