HIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY最新文献

In Poland, doctoral education remained outside the mainstream of public policy interest for many years. The 2018 reform is the first major change in the systemic approach to education at this level. Significant deregulation at the national level has introduced new requirements for conducting doctoral education and the need for its new organisation. The reform aimed to decrease the number of doctoral candidates while enhancing the quality and effectiveness of PhD education. For the first time in history, doctoral education has begun to be subject to a real external evaluation of its quality, too. The legal status of PhD candidates was also redefined, aligning them more closely with young researchers. The 2018 Act granted universities considerable autonomy in organising doctoral schools, resulting in diverse structural solutions and management models. Doctoral education is also influenced by the new rules of scientific evaluation and the instability of rules in this area; financing of the science and higher education sector; and first experience in conducting doctoral schools. The paper analyses the adopted system solutions against the background of policy changes in Europe. It also presents the initial conclusions from the implementation of new systemic solutions.

The impact of academic inbreeding on research productivity remains unclear. This study examines a critical yet often overlooked distinction: How the link between inbreeding and publication activity differs when academics' primary focus is teaching versus research. Focusing on highly productive Russian PhD holders, our findings reveal a complex picture. For research-focused academics, inbreeding is related to greater accessibility of different resources to achieve international visibility and recognition via international monographs, and to the greater teaching and administrative workload. For teaching-focused academics, inbreeding is associated with lower publication activity in the top-tier journals and higher publication activity in lower-quartile journals. We observe that mobile teachers have less access to the resources of the academic system, which may be seen as a factor of their lower productivity. Our study challenges simplistic views on academic inbreeding, demonstrating that its relationship with publication activity is multifaceted.

This study focuses on the interpretation and implementation of artificial intelligence policies in higher education for mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. The researchers applied a conceptual comparative review of regulatory frameworks and institutional discretion by utilising Policy Implementation Theory and Multi-Level Governance. From the results, we see that mainland China follows a centralised top-down approach emphasising more consistency and harmony. Yet, Hong Kong and Macau are adopting more flexible and decentralised systems based on institutional autonomy and soft legal coordination. The findings present how different governance models deal with ethics and stakeholder engagement as well as how policies are implemented in these three locations. Moreover, this study contributes to artificial intelligence policy research by highlighting regional differences within the country, and it suggests theoretical insights into the complex processes of artificial intelligence integration into higher education.

Given the emphasis on critical thinking across the undergraduate curricula, research on argument visualisation has significant implications for designing learning activities in higher education. This systematic review examines research on the use of argument maps or diagrams by postsecondary students. The goals were to identify the themes, research questions, and results of systematically identified studies, and to assess the current prospects for meta-analyses. Relevant databases were searched for qualitative, observational and experimental studies. We coded 124 studies on research design, mapping software, student attitudes, collaborative mapping and thinking skills. There were 102 empirical studies, of which 44% assessed student attitudes toward argument mapping, 40% investigated collaborative argument mapping and 51% examined the quality or structure of student-constructed argument maps. The causal relationship most frequently investigated was the effect of argument mapping on critical thinking skills. We present the results from selected studies and consider their significance for learning design.

Over the past three decades, global experience in higher education (HE) has shown that designated quality assurance (QA) mechanisms have been unable to deliver the desired quality improvements in the HE landscape; as a result, quality has not become an embedded culture in most higher education institutions (HEIs). This gap may stem from a disconnect between QA management and leadership practices, particularly where leadership fails to emphasize key quality imperatives (moral, professional, competitive, and accountability) that are essential to embedding quality as an institutional culture. This study examined the role of leadership in promoting quality imperatives at three public universities in Ethiopia, involving 1029 academic staff. The findings indicate that leadership at the departmental level plays a critical role in advancing quality imperatives, thereby enhancing overall quality enhancement. Furthermore, the study offers practical mechanisms for addressing quality imperatives and provides fresh insights into the existing leadership approaches, an area of research that remains underexplored in Ethiopia's HE sector or similar systems in the HE landscape.

Considering the significantly lower percentage of Female Faculty Members (FFMs) compared to Male Faculty Members (MFMs) in Iranian universities, this cross-sectional mixed-methods study aims to identify and prioritise the barriers preventing women's entry into academic positions. Specifically, it explores the challenges faced by female PhD holders in securing such roles. The qualitative phase of this research involved in-depth interviews with 32 faculty members from public universities. These interviews led to the identification of four main categories and 20 initial sub-barriers. In the quantitative phase, a survey was administered to 358 faculty members from public universities in Tehran, and the collected data were analysed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), resulting in the refinement and validation of four main barriers and 18 sub-barriers. To assess gender-based differences in the perceived importance of these barriers, the non-parametric Mann–Whitney U test was employed due to the non-normal distribution of the data. In the final step, the identified barriers were prioritised using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), conducted separately for FFMs and MFMs. This study deepens our understanding of the structural and perceptual barriers that women face in accessing academic positions and provides evidence-based strategies to address these challenges and promote gender equity. As a key theoretical contribution, this research introduces the concept of the ‘Glass Dam’ to describe the subtle and invisible barriers that impede women's entry into professions such as academic roles.