HIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY最新文献

When a pronounced taste for science leads researchers to self-select themselves in academia, higher education systems must be able to protect it. By relying on the economic theory of higher education, the international mobility and the sociology of science literature, we compare the working condition in the four major European higher education systems: the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy. Remuneration level especially its variable component is of paramount importance for all researchers. Job security in terms of tenure-track positions and habilitation process as well as the career length are relevant for early-career scholars, whereas the institutional prestige and the funding availability together with the disciplinary-centre approach as well as the language biases are significant conditions for international researchers specifically. According to the target, policymakers should rely on specific leverages to increase a country competitiveness.

Access to higher education is often competitive, and much attention has been placed on the question of admission decision-making in such high stakes situations. We identify various approaches to distributive justice and consider these under the framework developed by Pike distinguishes between ‘egalitaria’ (everyone gets the same); ‘necessitia’ (people get what they need); ‘desertia’ (people get what they deserve); and ‘marketia’ (the market decides what people get). Considering applicants in context is one approach to deciding admissions designed to enhance fairness and support social justice. This approach is practiced in a range of countries including the United Kingdom, the United States and Japan and operates under names such as Contextual Admissions (CA), Holistic Assessment (HA) or Holistic Review (HR). This thought piece considers the philosophical/normative and practical reasoning approaches that underpin CA. We use the case of English higher education to illustrate the political and philosophical debates, to highlight practical challenges and potential limitations and to identify further considerations for realising the benefits of contextualising university applicants.

English university admissions increasingly make use of contextual offers, where applicants with certain socio-demographic characteristics can be offered marginally lower entry conditions. This paper presents novel insights on the impact of contextual offer policy on one institutions' patterns of enrolment in 2022/23 via a mixed methods contribution analysis. We present evidence that the policy contributed to widening access for targeted students despite the institutions' small and highly selective intake. This effect appears to be driven by increasing applicants' likelihood of accepting an offer and allowing a small number of students to enrol despite narrowly missing standard offer criteria. While contextual offer policies thus appear to be an effective tool for improving targeted students' enrolment at an institution, further research is needed to understand the impact of contextual offers on student outcomes and experiences.

The paper outlines the history of the different uses of ‘quality’ in higher education. Emphasis is given to the United Kingdom, but consideration is also given to a range of international contexts. Three different uses of ‘academic quality’ are identified (the state-driven, sector-derived, and the traditional academic uses) and their relationship to fundamentally different priorities, values, criteria, purposes and practices is established. The notion of a concept as it applies in the paper is then explained before four alternatives to the thought that there is more than one concept of academic quality are evaluated and ultimately rejected. It is argued that those different uses of ‘academic quality’ are not minor changes in emphasis, but fundamentally different uses of the words rooted in different concepts of academic quality with different implications for measurement and/or evaluation. The identification of those three concepts of academic quality is then put to use in critically analysing the current situation in relation to quality in higher education, involving discussion of the implications of the operation of different concepts of academic quality and reflection on how we might revise our approach to thinking about academic quality as a result.

This research explores how boundary-spanning efforts in higher education can be expanded through the digital space and contribute to sustainability in higher education. By employing a qualitative case study design, we examine the journey of a Turkish public university's open education faculty, focusing on how the university has leveraged its open education mission and the developments in digital space to span boundaries and contribute to societal development constantly. Alongside reviewing institutional documents, we interviewed with 12 faculty members at the case institution. Benefitting from an inductive descriptive thematic analysis approach, we categorised related strategies and experiences into three themes: key agents, drivers and challenges and sustainability. The findings reveal that universities can better position themselves in the digital education space if the leadership embraces a clear vision regarding digital evolvement. Also, national regulations influence the digital development of universities and lead them to push boundaries in generating new teaching-learning, research and service platforms. Our research demonstrates that by enhancing digital environments and online technologies, universities can extend their collaboration with different stakeholders and maintain boundary-spanning efforts to improve their societal contribution. Further discussions and recommendations are made on the role of digital space in boundary spanning and sustainability in higher education.

Drawing on the concept of the Production of Space this article examines how sustainable development agenda was localised—in design, operation and students' lived experiences—in two international education programmes at two universities in Japan. We analysed relevant programme documents, interviews with faculty members, students' reflective notes, as well as the authors' autoethnographic journals. The findings show that the local and institutional context influenced the SDGs curriculum design (representations of space or the conceived space). The virtual and physical learning spaces, the pedagogy and the operation of the programme (spatial practice or perceived space) shaped students' interaction and learning outcomes (representational space or the lived space). As instructors attempted to adopt SDGs in their teaching (through perceived space) and as students tried to gain interdisciplinary knowledge through SDGs (through lived space), both parties negotiated and challenged the programme design shifting the conceived spaces. Our study contributes to a deeper understanding of the localisation of SDGs within the internationalisation of higher education by employing Lefebvre's spatial analysis. This approach reveals the complex socio-spatial dynamics at play, offering insights into how educational environments are constructed and experienced.

Considerable scholarly attention has been devoted to how gender, race and various other demographic factors shape the odds of majoring in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs. Such work has identified sizable disparities in access to STEM fields across various dimensions. In turn, these empirical findings have informed productive discussions about the social and institutional mechanisms that prevent marginalised groups from entering STEM, along with the potential strategies that could be used at multiple levels (e.g., government and institutional) to address them. Despite the increasing size of this literature, little energy has been devoted to examining the extent to which uptake of transfer pathways is associated with the odds of eventually majoring in a STEM field. Does transfer divert students away from STEM fields? Does it primarily function as an ‘on-ramp’ for students from other disciplines to enter STEM? We find that students who travel transfer pathways into the university sector are less likely to major in STEM, but those that travel transfer pathways into the community college sector are more likely to major in STEM. We identify some of the mechanisms that could be contributing to these trends and highlight some prospective strategies for addressing the potential structural barriers faced by students wishing to enter STEM.

Amid growing concerns about social mobility in Britain's higher education system, our study delves into universities' role in addressing the social gap within the financial and professional services sectors. The social reproduction theory underscores how upper-class students often benefit from greater exposure to dominant cultural and educational practices, providing them with a competitive advantage in navigating the higher education landscape. To combat these challenges, Higher Education Institutions (HEI) have invested heavily in Employability Development Opportunities (EDOs). Drawing on primary data from finance and accounting students and employability officers at one of these HEIs, our research aims to investigate which EDOs are perceived as most relevant for students to succeed in the financial and professional services industry. First, we confirm that both work experience and real-life activities are most valuable and unavoidable, prompting business schools to include compulsory exposure to the finance industry as part of the curriculum. Second, we find that career development activities are useful as a starting point but not enough for students to secure an internship. Finally, while previous literature shows that extra-curricular activities do not significantly impact student employability, we argue that some of these activities, for example, the Finance Society, are as valuable as real-world exposure. Indeed, the Finance Society was found to be the most helpful source of information, advice and networking for finance students.