HIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY最新文献

In the context of globalisation and ongoing educational reforms, universities are of increasing importance as central platforms for knowledge creation and talent cultivation. The mission statements articulated in institutional narratives play a crucial role in shaping the cultural identity and public image of universities. This study applies Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis (CACDA) to examine the ‘About’ sections of 147 ‘double first-class’ Chinese universities and the top 150 US universities. Using AntConc for keyword, collocation and concordance analysis, this study identifies recurrent rhetorical strategies and sociocultural themes in institutional self-narratives. We outline a stratified systemic functional transitivity module to connect clause-level choices with identity work in mission texts. The findings reveal that while Chinese and American universities emphasise a global vision and research excellence, Chinese institutions place a stronger emphasis on national identity and cultural heritage. In contrast, American institutions focus more on liberal education and community engagement. These differences reflect distinct cultural, economic and political contexts in higher education, offering insights for cross-cultural academic collaborations. The study contributes to higher education research and practice by linking corpus patterns, clause-level realisations and organisational identity claims in mission discourse. This combined linguistic approach not only deepens theoretical understanding of identity construction in higher education but also informs more effective institutional communication.

Increasingly, reviewers are asked to engage with citation-based indicators, yet we know little about how those numbers are actually translated into judgements. This article builds on an extensive literature review in which the author identifies “chains of reasoning” that connect metrics with factors such as quality, prestige, recognition, and career potential. The study analyses 174 negative habilitation review reports (2012–2021) from four disciplines in Poland—Art History, Sociology, Mathematics, and Materials Engineering—to map how reviewers reason with metrics in practice. We identify and code passages where quantitative indicators are transformed into qualitative claims and reconstruct the “chains of reasoning” that link numbers to evaluative conclusions. The prevalence of metric-based reasoning varies sharply by field—from about 4% of reviews in Art History to 71% in Materials Engineering—while Mathematics and Sociology occupy intermediate positions. Across disciplines, metrics are interpreted primarily as signals of recognition or visibility and influence or uptake; direct inferences from metrics to intrinsic quality are comparatively rare. Reviewers sometimes inspect citation contexts (e.g., self-citations) and time lags, but explicit reflexivity about the limitations of indicators is infrequent. Crucially, metrics never stand alone: even the most metric-intensive reviews combine numbers with content-based critique. We catalogue nine recurring reasoning types and show how a uniform policy that mandates attention to metrics yields heterogeneous, discipline-specific evaluative practices. The article advances scholarship on responsible research assessment by explaining how metrics travel from numbers to judgements and by offering practical guidance: use indicators as contextual evidence, make interpretive assumptions explicit, and calibrate benchmarks to disciplinary evaluative cultures.

The study investigates the impact of parenthood on the careers of PhD holders who work outside academia, with a focus on gender differences. It analyses the dialogues between professional and parental roles of 38 Spanish PhD holders from various disciplines, their interaction with social discourses about parenthood and the outcomes of these dialogues to identify the impact of parenthood on participants' careers. Dialogues and discourses about parenthood that emerged from the data were organised into three participant profiles: PhD holders for whom parenthood was central, composed mostly of women; PhD holders who ‘fitted’ parenthood into their trajectories, composed mostly of men; and childfree PhD holders, with a more balanced gender distribution. Many participants acknowledged that non-academic careers offer better opportunities for balancing parenthood and work than academic careers. The study highlights the importance of examining dialogues and social discourses to understand how personal and societal factors influence career decision-making processes.

Transnational education (TNE) programmes frequently encounter tensions between maintaining academic rigour and addressing local contextual realities. This case study examines a part-time dual-award MSc in Financial Technology (FinTech), jointly delivered by a UK public university and a private higher education institution (HEI) in the Philippines. Framed through the glonacal agency heuristic, the paper explores how curriculum design and delivery are shaped by global academic standards, national regulatory frameworks and local student needs. Drawing on institutional reflections and student feedback, the study analyses the programme's adaptive curriculum strategy, quality assurance mechanisms and industry-aligned content. The dual-award structure, where each institution confers its own qualification, requires careful coordination to meet the standards of the UK's Quality Assurance Agency (QAA), the UK's Office for Students (OfS) and the Philippines' Commission on Higher Education (CHED). Findings reveal that local agency plays a decisive role in ensuring contextual relevance, particularly for the challenges faced by mid-career professionals balancing part-time study with urban constraints. The paper contributes to the TNE literature by illustrating a practical model of cross-border delivery that integrates academic compliance, student responsiveness and collaborative governance.

The paper argues that glocalisation can offer an interpretative lens to understand transnational education and it applies this perspective to a case study of a foundation year delivered through a transnational partnership in China. It builds on the literature that frames transnational education in China as a hybrid or cultural mixture, largely shaped by a regulatory framework that requires educational partnerships in the mainland to involve both local and overseas institutions. The concept of glocalisation fosters analytical strategies that examine the different ways in which local, national and global forces interpenetrate, refract and generate tensions. The case study demonstrates that a foundation year in China is not simply a replication of similar formats developed in the United Kingdom. Through examples of tensions surrounding the use of English as a medium of instruction, attendance monitoring, the reception of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) ideals, and the development of AI policies, the study highlights significant processes of divergence between the foundation year delivered at the Chinese campus and similar programmes at the overseas institution. The paper concludes that individual agency and creativity play a key role in mediating these tensions within local arrangements.

‘Learning and development’ is a crucial student outcome yet has been unexplored in the context of psychological ownership. In a highly competitive era, students assume that the sole motive of being in the institution is to focus on studies while they seldom understand that real learning happens when they psychologically own the institute and the learning environment. This study assesses the drivers of student learning and development, including psychological ownership, engagement and commitment, using the theoretical underpinnings of social identity and social exchange theories. Data were collected from 317 full-time management postgraduate students in India through a structured survey questionnaire. Serial mediation was tested using the bootstrapping method in the PROCESS macro. We found psychological ownership to significantly drive students' learning and development. Further, engagement and commitment serially mediated the relationship between psychological ownership and learning and development. Our contribution is novel as we study the relationships among these variables in the Indian higher education setting. Our study has key theoretical and practical implications.

Educators working in Chinese transnational education programmes are faced with competing institutional stressors. Being successful in such learning environments requires more than subject matter expertise. Educators are being asked to reconsider how classes are being taught and to build stronger connections with learners. This article incorporates insights from two Chinese transnational education programmes, one in Chengdu and the other in Dalian, to examine how faculty are managing these challenges. Although faculty perspectives are important to the article's framing, the analysis is meaningfully informed by learner insights, which are used to interpret classroom experiences and support practice-based reflections. Educators reflect on the challenges of working with imported curricula, whereas learners share their experiences of having to adjust to unfamiliar educational settings. Classroom observations and interviews show how teaching approaches influence learner participation, suggesting a need for culturally responsive pedagogy and curriculum localisation. The article contributes to institutional strategies in Chinese transnational education.

The emergence of the AI era has shaken higher educational institutions (HEIs) due to its enormous potential or detrimental impact on academic culture. Educational leaders and policymakers have attempted to create policies as part of stringent measures while navigating the legal and ethical implications of AI implementation. In light of contrasting views on current AI debates in the Philippine educational arena, this study aims to determine the trajectories, trends, and futures of AI policies in the Philippine context. This study applied content analysis of publicly available documents, websites, social media posts, narratives of HEI leaders, and other relevant memoranda related to AI. Due to the limited AI policies in HEIs in the country, this is a preliminary analysis of available documents. It examined the trends covered by the scope of AI policies in light of the uniquely diverse sociocultural context of the Philippines, while considering the technological limitations compared to developed nations. This study examined proposed AI government policies, AI university policies, the ethical ramifications of AI on HEI curricula, and the current impact of AI on employment and job market demands. Moreover, to determine AI trajectories in Philippine HEIs, document reviews were conducted to identify the existing efforts of educational policymakers and legislative bodies to systematise AI policies for legal and ethical actions to enhance quality assurance in the HEI teaching–learning environment. Based on the document analysis, the study revealed that Philippine universities' AI policies exhibit pedagogical, operational, and governance dimensions of the Ecological Education Policy Framework. However, a fourth dimension, the normative dimension, was uncovered as Filipinos uphold cultural diversity, community-oriented practices, and traditional identity. A reflection from a four-part typology of university AI policies and practices shows that Philippine HEIs are between Keepers and Experimenters due to disaggregated AI policies, and at most, left to department-level policymaking. The AI policy implications and AI framework are offered for potential futures of AI in the Philippines.