Higher Education最新文献

Abstract

In England, students apply to universities using teacher-predicted grades instead of their final end-of-school A-level examination results. Predicted rather than achieved grades therefore determine how ambitiously students apply to and receive offers from the most selective courses. The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) encourages teachers to make optimistic predictions to motivate students to apply ambitiously and achieve higher grades. However, little is known about variations in optimism across students and schools, as well as the mechanisms behind such variations. If certain groups of students or schools are predicted more optimistically than others, this may distort application, offer, and acceptance rates between these groups. Such distortions have the potential to impact efforts to promote wider participation and enhance social mobility. In this study, we use newly linked administrative education data to show predicted grades are differentially optimistic by student sociodemographic and school characteristics. These variations are often substantial and can only be partially explained by differences in students’ prior achievements, the subjects they studied at A-level, the degree subjects they pursue, and their choices of university and courses. We find less educationally advantaged students are in general more rather than less optimistically predicted, although there are two important exceptions to this trend. Once we control for GCSE score and A-level subject, greater optimism is observed in independent schools and among Oxbridge applications. Thus, differential optimism is positively impacting some of the most educationally advantaged students in the country. Our findings contribute to the growing consensus advocating for reforms to the admissions system, including whereby students can continue to revise their course choices until they receive their achieved grades, and universities only make offers after that date.

In response to uncertain times, liberal democracies aspire to develop anticipatory practices that usher in changes in policies and governance. These practices include creating visions and implementing roadmaps, which seek to address, and ultimately preempt, future challenges (Anderson, 2010). While such practices are increasingly implemented today in decision-making in Nordic countries and around the world (Dreyer & Stang, 2013; Beckert & Bronk, 2018; Beerten & Kranke, 2022), their implications are seldom studied, especially in the context of higher education. This article addresses this gap in current research by analyzing the case of the future governance of Finnish higher education. The analysis focuses on the creation of visions and roadmaps, as well as reports anticipating the future needs of higher education. The article investigates how the anticipation of higher education needs has developed and how it is related to current visions. Moreover, it examines the consequences of anticipatory practices in the development of policy and governance and investigates the policy future that will be enacted through these anticipatory practices. The findings show that the anticipation of higher education needs underpins the strategic choices affecting the allocation of resources and the population’s educational levels in the long term, while visions draw actors into the coproduction of future imagining and instigate widespread reforms. Visions and other practices underpin anticipatory governance in higher education, where goals for the long term are established through the negotiation of normative preferences based on a human capital view of the future.

Higher education is a powerful tool for migrant integration into destination countries. This paper presents an empirical comparison between native and migrant students in Chile, focusing on their trajectory through different transitions: high school graduation, performance on university entrance exams, and decision to enroll in technical or university higher education. Results show that, when controlling for school performance, natives are more likely to complete every transition compared to migrant students, except in the enrollment to technical higher education where migrants have a higher rate. However, we also show that the timing of arrival to the educational system matters and that the differences between groups completely disappear if migrant students arrive before age 10 in the educational system. Therefore, we expand the educational literature by empirically showing that when migrants enter the school system is crucial. If they arrive early in life, they can have a trajectory similar to that of native students.

Prior studies showed that optimism has positive benefits for students in higher education. However, research indicates different types of optimism, including the unrealistic optimism associated with the illusion of control. The literature review showed a lack of research on the effect of the illusion of control among students in higher education. Two studies were conducted to fill this gap. In Study 1 (N = 210), university students responded to two surveys: one before oral presentations in class (measuring illusion of control and unrealistic optimism) and another after they received their grades for the presentations (measuring disconfirmation and satisfaction). The results show that the illusion of control is positively associated with unrealistic optimism, which leads to disconfirmation and dissatisfaction. Study 2 was a between-subjects design experiment (condition (N = 102) vs. control (N = 102)) that tested a stimulus to mitigate the illusion of control in this context. The results of Study 2 show that explaining to students their inability to control some variables during the presentation helps to reduce the illusion of control. This influences lower unrealistic optimism and disconfirmation, leading to higher satisfaction after the presentations. When testing moderating effects of demographics among these relationships, we found that gender moderates the effect of the stimulus used to reduce the illusion of control, with females showing a significantly higher decrease in this bias in comparison with male students. Based on these findings, we provide recommendations that can help to decrease the illusion of control in the context of higher education, with benefits for students and educators.

This article analyses how the future has been discussed in Swedish higher education and research policy, providing an overview of public inquiries during the period 1970–2020. Expanding on the conceptual framework of German historian Reinhart Koselleck, the article approaches discourses on the future through the analytical lens of sociology of expectations. The findings demonstrate that all inquiries that attempt to advance arguments for policy change address the future—with temporal perspectives usually limited to the coming 15–20 years—whereby the future is conceptualised as an unknown and complex ‘knowledge society’, characterised by acceleration, high demands and fierce competition. A number of inquiries discuss the future development based on empirical data like shrinking age cohorts among potential students, while others describe threats and challenges based on needs for creating a sense of urgency. Inter- and multidisciplinarity, with respect to such future needs in both research and education, is consequently a key area of discussion throughout the period in question. Several other themes emerge as prevalent, including technological change and digitalisation as well as broader issues of how to organise the curriculum and lifelong learning. The historical analysis presented in this article is crucial for ongoing university debates, as it is demonstrated that temporal dynamics and future imaginaries have been highly formative for the development of Swedish higher education and research.

After the return to on-campus teaching post-Covid, reports of student disengagement and low attendance are common and anxieties over the relationship between lecture recordings and attendance have re-emerged, leading some educators to remove recordings. To understand the potential impact of such decisions, this study explored how neurodivergent and disabled students use recordings using a qualitative survey approach. Reflexive thematic analysis emphasised the need for learning flexibility and questioned traditional lectures. Neurodivergent and disabled students raised concerns over accessibility, highlighting the crucial nature of recordings beyond attendance. For example, features such as pausing or speed adjusted were described as vital for managing learning among disabled and neurodivergent participants. Our findings do not support an uncritical view of lecture recordings. Participants discussed the self-discipline required for effective use and responses reflected prior concerns discussed in the literature regarding recordings leading to focusing on lectures to the detriment of other sources of information. However, despite challenges, we found multiple examples of students using recordings to maintain engagement as a successful self-regulated learner. In line with Universal Design for Learning, our findings support the provision of lecture recordings as an inclusive and accessible technology for all students, not just those with declared disabilities. All data and analysis code is available at https://osf.io/ue628/.

Abstract

College and university rankings have received considerable attention throughout the world. To date, very little inquiry has examined the role of these rankings in shaping international student enrollment, which is surprising given many institutions’ desire to recruit these students. The present study explores this issue by examining data from U.S. News and World Report’s rankings of national universities and liberal arts colleges. Specifically, it explored how changes in each of these rankings over time were associated with changes in international student enrollment; as a comparison, it also considered these same relationships among domestic students, who comprise the vast majority of U.S. undergraduates. Within a total analytic sample of 4,698 observations from 502 institutions, improvements in national university rankings consistently predict increases in international student enrollment, and these relationships are stronger at universities that were ranked more favorably. Improved rankings are also sometimes associated with increases in international student enrollment at liberal arts colleges. Regardless of institutional type, the link between rankings and international student enrollment has become even stronger in recent years. In contrast, the corresponding patterns for rankings and domestic student enrollment are weaker, nonsignificant, or occasionally in the opposite direction.

Although many higher educational institute (HEI) psychoeducational courses teaching positive psychology interventions report benefits to mental well-being upon completion, they have not typically addressed whether such beneficial effects are sustained long-term beyond the period of the courses. Here, we report a pre-registered follow-up of 228 undergraduate students, from a variety of disciplines, who took a positive psychology course 1 or 2 years previously. Overall, group analysis revealed that students who had taken the course did not continue to show the originally reported benefits at follow-up. Students who had taken the course scored higher on mental well-being than other students tested using a university-wide survey, but they were also higher at baseline 1–2 years earlier indicating a sampling bias. An exploratory analysis, however, revealed that 115 students (51% of the group) who had continued to practice the recommended activities taught during the course maintained their increased mental well-being over the period of follow-up. We therefore suggest that continued engagement is a key factor in sustaining the long-term benefits of positive psychology courses. Implementation of such courses should therefore include provision and mechanisms for maintaining future student engagement.

Traditionally, universities stand for independent, high-quality, and curiosity-driven research and education. Yet, since neoliberal reforms in the 1980s, they have been increasingly exposed to external pressures towards more efficiency and economic value orientation. To manage the tasks corresponding to these market-based values, a new and fast-growing group of professional staff has emerged. Some authors argue that they challenge academic norms, or academic professional logics, while importing market norms, or market logics, through previous employment in and current relationships with the private sector. We empirically test this assumption based on original survey data of three groups of professional staff of universities and associated medical centers in the Netherlands: business developers, grant advisers, and research policy officers. We asked them about their ideas about universities to capture their institutional logics. Respondents also indicated previous employment and the strength of their professional relationships. Using multiple linear regression models, we find that professional staff with private sector experience indeed have stronger market logics. We find the same for those with stronger relationships with private sector companies. Yet, on average, the academic professional logic of professional staff is considerably higher than their market logic. Additionally, the effect of private sector experience and stronger relationships with private sector companies on the market logic is moderate. Thus, our data suggests that professional staff do not challenge academic norms. Therefore, there seems to be little need for meeting them with skepticism regarding their role in unwanted organizational change.

In Australia, much like other colonized locations such as Canada, New Zealand, and the USA, the colonial legacies embedded within higher education institutions, including the history of exclusion and the privileging of Western epistemologies, continue to make universities challenging places for Indigenous PhD scholars. Despite this, and while the numbers of Indigenous PhD scholars remain well below population parity, they are carving a space within the academy that is shifting the academic terrain and enriching the research process. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Indigenous PhD scholars working in the field of health and a qualitative survey of doctoral Supervisors and Advisory Committee Chairs, this paper explores the doctoral experience of Indigenous scholars. What becomes apparent, through this research, is that despite ongoing experiences of racism and alienation, these scholars are finding ways to circumvent inadequate supervisory processes, systems support, and research paradigms, to carve a path that centers Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing.