HIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY最新文献

We explored the relationship between board characteristics and sustainability of higher education institutions in the United Kingdom (UK). We analysed 153 UK universities using data for the year 2019. Our analysis revealed that board size, the number of students on the board, and the number of academic members on the board were found to have significant and positive relationships with sustainability. Also, the composition of the sustainability committee was shown to have a significant and positive impact on sustainability score. However, the relationships between board gender diversity, the number of external members on the board, and the number of board meetings held during the year with sustainability score were not significant. The results provide guidance to universities for developing their sustainability practices.

This study used critical discourse analysis to explore how higher education administrators in the United States talk about how they assess and support online programmes. Specifically, we hoped to analyse administrators' perceptions of their responsibilities over online programmes, faculty and students, to attain where they may need more training. Therefore, we explored the perspectives of 11 administrators at both the mid-level administrative and campus senior administrative levels who oversee online programmes in U.S. higher education. Our findings suggest that mid-level administrators hold pivotal roles in communicating needs, administrators are not viewing their online faculty holistically, current online programmes assessment is insufficient and concern for student engagement is often neglected. Implications for research and practice include additional investigation of the online faculty experience and the development of administrative training specifically focused on the needs of online programming and online faculty support.

This paper addresses the perceptions and mechanisms of doctoral student job decisions regarding the pursuit of careers in the government sector in China. Through the lens of social cognitive career theory (SCCT), we analysed 30 semi-structured interviews that had been conducted with doctoral students from two prestigious Chinese universities who wish to work as civil servants. This study describes doctoral students' understanding of careers in government employment from the perspectives of work content, promotion channels and professional norms. The mechanisms influencing student career choices include personal goals, self-efficacy, outcome expectations and environment. The clear goal of political ambition and work–life balance directly drives doctoral students to choose government institutions for employment. The diploma signal of doctoral degree itself and  academic training give doctoral students a high sense of self-efficacy, which is necessary for their choice of employment in the government. Occupational safety, occupational benefits and occupational value constitute the expectations of positive outcomes providing doctoral students with good feedback. In the current environment, the labour market situation and the impetus of universities combine to form a push force and the preferential recruitment policies of the state form a pull force, which jointly promote doctoral students to make decisions to work in government sector. In this paper, the fact that the Chinese government introduced the ‘special selected graduates’ scheme for doctoral students from prestigious universities in hope of recruiting intellectual elites to improve the quality of civil servants and the modernization level of social governance. Universities encourage PhD graduates to enter the government, hoping that this would enhance their social influence and reputation, thereby safeguarding their status as prestigious universities. From an institutional perspective, the process of doctoral students becoming civil servants can be said to be a form of cooperation between the government and universities.

The globally expanding doctoral education and the diminishing availability of academic job opportunities have prompted an increasing proportion of PhD graduates to seek employment beyond academia, drawing a growing scholarly interest. However, the existing literature on doctoral career pathways tends to be fragmented and dispersed, given the idiosyncratic individual and educational characteristics of doctorates grappling with the complex structural factors. To depict a comprehensive picture of the diversifying employment trajectories of doctorates across various geographical, disciplinary and sectoral contexts, this study conducts a systematic review, scouring 831 pertinent journal articles from the Web of Science. Following a set of inclusion criteria, 31 papers were ultimately selected to identify the key factors shaping employment trajectories of PhD graduates at structural (national supply and demand), institutional (employers' perceptions) and individual (doctorates' characteristics) levels. Drawing on the boundaryless and value-based career theories, the authors develop a four-dimension analytical framework, within which the findings of the 31 papers in East Asian and Western contexts are analysed. Overall, stakeholders in Western systems generally recognise the trend of PhD graduates securing non-academic employment, whereas East Asian nations appear less receptive to this agenda. Meanwhile, due to their strong emphasis on research skills utilisation and employment stability, PhD graduates in certain economies find it challenging to pursue satisfying and successful careers, warranting increased attention. Building on the findings, we propose a four-quadrat model in an effort to provide a tool for evaluating the capacity to absorb doctoral workforces of specific systems by categorising the doctoral professions. Highlighting shared patterns observed across various higher education systems and distinct trends prevalent in specific economies, this paper addresses key topics in doctoral education and doctorate employment literature such as labour market conditions, employment outcomes, job satisfaction, skills (mis)matches and sustainable careers.

To its traditional missions of education and research, the entrepreneurial university adds a ‘third mission’: knowledge transfer (KT), which aims to contribute to the economic and social development of the university's environment. To this end, it is the role of government to implement regulations and design policies that push universities to be more entrepreneurial. In addition, an entrepreneurial university should interact with industry and society as a whole and implement a clear strategy—endorsed at the highest level—to incorporate the function of KT. However, there has been a lack of critical reflection in the literature about the ways in which universities implement the strategy, and administrators and coordinators, who play a pivotal role in implementing it, are usually underrepresented in university research. The exploratory research presented here addresses this gap by focussing on the current vice-rectors and KTO directors in charge of implementing KT strategy at Spanish universities. Our findings suggest that the respondents think KT is an objective shared by the government; however, they do not perceive it to be an objective for top and middle managers in universities.

Building on cognitive schema theory, this study investigates the relationship between experienced and observed harassment in a university setting. It also examines two moderators—organizational identification and perceived justice. Using a cross sectional survey, data were gathered from 276 academics and staff in a private university with approximately 9000 students located in the southeastern United States. The results suggest that employees who personally experience workplace harassment are more likely to observe others as being targets of harassment. They also suggest that organizational identification and perceptions of organizational justice moderate the relationship between experienced harassment and observed harassment. Overall, the findings support the important role of schemas in understanding how pre-organized cognitive templates can impact perceptions of observed harassment in an academic context, and also stress the central roles of organizational identification and perceived justice in managing harassment. With respect to practical implications for higher educational institutions, human resource managers must work hard at making sure that faculty, staff and students perceive their universities to have fair systems in place so they can have trust in their institutions, thus increasing the likelihood that individuals will more likely disassociate their own negative experiences from the harassment schema. Managers should also implement programmes to build positive organizational cultures or school spirit.

More and more empirical studies address doctoral candidates' health. Yet, the mechanisms linking supervision and doctoral candidates' health often remain unclear. We start to fill this research gap with classifications of supervisors produced by latent class analysis, which were introduced into structural equation models with motivation towards the dissertation research as a mediator to predict doctoral candidates' health satisfaction. We used data from more than 200 doctoral candidates from a German university. Three types of supervisor support were extracted (poor support: 18.4%; good support: 26.4%; very good support: 55.2%). Poor support was significantly negatively associated with doctoral candidates' levels of motivation and health satisfaction. The relationship between poor support and health was partly mediated by motivation. By means of the advanced statistical models, mechanisms linking supervision and doctoral candidates' health could be identified and research on the dimensions of (very) good supervisor support could be expanded.

The concept of value, in a context of higher education institutions (HEIs), simply refers to meeting or exceeding customer requirements and expectations. HEIs have a fundamental role in the dissemination of knowledge, in addition to developing new skills and awareness for future professionals, in relation to local, regional and national issues. The aim of this research is to analyse the academic activities and outcomes influence on value generation perception in a public university students' perspective. A survey, built from a structured questionnaire, was carried out in a Brazilian HEI, the Federal University of Santa Maria, with students who are in their course final stage. Data collection came out with a valid sample of 389 respondents. It was analysed using descriptive statistics, exploratory factor and regression analyses. The findings suggest that among the services and resources that the university may offer to its students, the ones that present the most impact refer to cognitive and social abilities emerging from specific teaching practices and strategies from the professors. This research presents useful insights and applicable elements from which public managers can utilize to enhance engagement, create value and build a more rigorous and relevant practice.

Since March 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant challenges to higher education internationalisation by disrupting long-standing practices, accelerating the adoption of digital technologies, and pushing universities further into the ‘digital turn’. Nevertheless, it remains unclear to what extent higher education institutions (HEIs) have systematically integrated digitalisation into their broader internationalisation strategies. Therefore, this scoping review aims to trace the evidence in the international scientific literature on the intersections between COVID-driven digitalisation and HEIs' internationalisation strategies. The focus lies on teaching and learning, cooperation, support structures, and leadership processes. We reviewed 45 studies from an initial selection of 648 sources retrieved from Scopus and Web of Science. Results showed that digitally supported internationalisation strategies are often associated with more cost-effective, inclusive and sustainable models. Despite ongoing calls for comprehensive approaches, the systematic adoption of virtual internationalisation strategies remains largely a normative subject.