Higher Education Policy最新文献

This paper provides a comparative analysis of national rationales to higher education internationalization in the global north and south countries using content analysis. The results reveal that the socio-economic rationales are dominant across most of the 27 sampled countries. However, they manifest differently across the global north and global south as countries interpret the benefits and effects of internationalization in line with their national priorities. These variations are being shaped by an increasingly complex, competitive, and multipolar higher education internationalization landscape with new global south actors acquiring agency despite the deepening global inequalities. As a result, political rationales are becoming an important driver to internationalization. The current geopolitical environment associated with global conflicts, health pandemics, and increased nationalistic, anti-immigrant, and anti-globalization sentiments is also adding more uncertainty and complexity. Due to increased concerns about this multipolar and self-centred internationalization, a few countries are starting to promote inclusive approaches to internationalization.

Blended learning has emerged as a prominent feature in higher education over the past decade, aiming to enhance students’ learning experiences and improve outcomes. It has been adopted at various levels within universities, with an increasing trend of institutional adoption. Despite its prevalence, scholars have expressed concerns about our limited understanding of blended learning beyond small-scale and individual applications. Drawing on Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory, this case study explores the intricate process of adoption and implementation of blended learning within a university. Semi-structured, one-on-one interviews were conducted with 24 lecturers and six university executives involved in a university-wide initiative for blended learning. The interviews were analysed using a thematic pattern matching technique. In addition, a variety of relevant university documents were gathered and analysed using a content analysis method. Results reveal that despite some hesitancies among lecturers, the process of adoption of blended learning was supported by a well-justified strategy, investment in infrastructure, and provision of continued lecturer support. Viewing these results through the lens of Roger’s stage model highlights a lack of a proper ‘matching’ stage, reflecting a failure to engage lecturers in adoption decision-making and incorporate their feedback into the blended learning strategy.

The international nature of doctoral education creates interesting tensions where national systems, institutional policies, disciplinary customs, individual supervisor preferences, and doctoral researcher needs meet. The Thesis by Publication (TBP), a model where published works are included within the thesis, is available to doctoral researchers in many disciplines and institutions, but it is not a universally accepted format or approached in a homogeneous way. Policy has been known to shape practice, yet we know little about how institutional policies shape TBP practices across different national contexts. This study presents a content analysis of policy documents related to the TBP in public universities across six countries: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Our goal is to understand the prevalence of the TBP and related policy documentation in different contexts, and how the model is promoted and positioned within the doctoral landscape. Findings from our study challenge the often-stated notion that the TBP is a universally understood format. Our findings also show the risks in the absence of explicit policies, as well as the possible inequalities that may arise as a result of a lack of policy transparency and synergy within and across contexts.

We examine the behavioural additionality effects of a wage subsidy in the form of a tax cut on R&D personnel's wages in a population of universities. How does university management use this wage subsidy? The wage subsidy is welcomed by universities as additional slack resources which are free to be used by university management. Its use depends on its degree of absorption and on it generates specific behavioural additionality effects. Wage subsidy resources are initially unabsorbed slack but over time increasingly function as absorbed slack because of the continuity and predictability of these resources. Different types of behavioural additionalities are generated at different impact levels. We find that initiatives at the organisational level are funded with absorbed slack, while initiatives at the project level are likely to be carried out with unabsorbed slack. The paper contributes to discussing slack resources in a non-profit setting and adds to the conceptual elucidation of behavioural additionality.

Merit-based procedures should be constantly reevaluated according to the circumstances to remain both valid and fair—two interrelated concepts. Inducing reevaluation, however, is difficult. These procedures are controlled by legitimate authorities, are rule and contract-bound, and can become quickly entrenched. This resistance to change calls for specific legal tools and institutions that can favour a potential review. This article advances the first of these tools: enacting the right to be fairly assessed. With this aim, we first explain why challenges to merit-based procedures are complex and then provide contingent justifications to base potential challenges. Our concern is the role of biases and conflicts of interests of authorities who define and control merit-based procedures. We then turn our focus to the institutional aspects of the problem. Administrative alternatives to induce reevaluation involve complex challenges, hence our defence of an actionable legal right. We illustrate the usefulness of this approach by showing how courts enforce fairness in testing in the USA. The need for the right to be both validly and fairly assessed is based on Chilean examples. Still, our argument also applies to other nations lacking equitable remedies and actions to deal with the same issues.

The current Spanish higher education landscape (characterized by evaluations, overcrowding of classrooms, commitment to internationalization) has social, employment, and health repercussions for Early Career Academics (ECAs). However, this group of academics is often described as passive subjects when it comes to challenging the current situation in higher education. In this study, we sought to understand the attitudes of resistance and criticism in ECAs by analyzing the activity (through NodeXL) and content (through Nvivo12) of the Twitter accounts of two Spanish ECA associations. Twitter (now X) was selected since social media has emerged as a new form of social empowerment and democratization. It is concluded that there are attitudes of resistance among the accounts analyzed. However, for ECAs, criticism of the evaluation system and emphasis on scientific production is relegated to the background, with criticism of their working conditions taking priority. Finally, we highlight the significant and impactful role of associations in social and political struggles.

Views on the impact of academic research are divided, with some voices advocating for more impact and others calling attention to pathologies of the “impact agenda”. One point of interest to most observers is the degree of alignment between academics, who do the research, and university leaders, who control rules and resources relating to research. Using a survey of academics and interviews with university leaders at a large, representative, research-focused university in Australia, this article contributes to the scholarship on research impact by investigating and analysing perceptions of what impact is and how it can be achieved. The study finds that in this case, there was significant disagreement between academics and university leaders on the meaning of impact and how it should be incentivised. These disagreements present a serious obstacle for universities advancing impact strategies and create vulnerabilities for conflict between university management and academic staff as envisioned by critics of the impact agenda.

Abstract

Academic careers come with many joys but are frequently accompanied by frustration. In the present study, we provide a multi-dimensional measure of academic frustration. Using a sample of 312 differently frustrated academics across the globe, our study develops a new perspective on academic frustration and academics’ intention to stay or leave academia. We empirically investigate the interaction between academic frustration and scientific and entrepreneurial passion in predicting four different intention outcomes: spin-off, startup, leaving academia, and changing university. Our findings indicate that scientific passion positively determines the intention to stay in academia, whereas entrepreneurial passion prompts academics to opt out of academic careers when overly frustrated. This study contributes to multiple literature and offers practical implications for academics and institutions. From a policy perspective, we seek to provide guidance on how to deal with the intentions and actions of frustrated academics.

In England, the relationship between the higher education regulator (OfS) and those it purports to regulate is highly strained. A 2023 parliamentary inquiry into the OfS published an excoriating report which found, among other issues, problems with the execution of its statutory duty to protect institutional autonomy. An OfS policy which evidences this is the requirement for universities to assess spelling, punctuation and grammar. In imposing this mandate, the OfS appears to be ultra vires as it has a statutory duty to protect institutional autonomy, specifically defined to include the freedom to determine assessment practices. This paper uses an adapted form of Hyatt’s Critical Higher Education Policy Analysis Framework to examine the policy steers and socio-political contexts from which the assessment mandate emerged. The warrants for the policy are analysed with reference to three epistemic beliefs relating to declining literacy, higher education quality and employment. This paper also analyses the OfS’s interpretations of its statutory duties in issuing this policy. Despite the highly critical findings of the inquiry, no substantive change in regulatory approach looks likely.

Federal policy mandates that all U.S. higher education institutions and regional accrediting bodies comply with credit hour regulations. A credit hour equates to 1 h in class and a minimum of 2 h of study out of class for approximately 15 weeks. To meet these regulations, institutions have implemented policies for designating and reviewing course credit hours. However, research has generally not examined if students are actually spending the required number of study hours, and if they do, the impact on academic achievement. This review examines available research on student study time to determine to what extent federal credit hour mandates are being followed and if these mandates are reasonable and appropriate in today’s higher education environment.