Tertiary Education and Management最新文献

Institutional Research associations across the world are re-imagining and redesigning their professional development and capacity building activities. This paper outlines the professional development activities of the Association for Institutional Research (AIR) in the United States (est. 1966), the European Association for Institutional Research (EAIR) (est. 1978), the Southern African Association for Institutional Research (SAAIR) (est. 1994) and the United Kingdom and Ireland Higher Education Institutional Research Network (HEIR) (est. 2008) and argues that a more sophisticated approach to IR is needed, informed by systems thinking, aimed at proactive engagement with policy-makers and managers, organisational learning, direct links to institutional strategy (‘a seat at the table’), and the analysis and use of larger volumes of data.

Using student evaluations of teaching (SETs) as a quality assessment tool have long been a highly debated topic among both practitioners and scholars of higher education teaching. Rather than focus on whether SETs provide reliable measurements of quality, we explore what happens when SETs are implemented as or intended as quality development tools. We report from a qualitative study of how higher education teachers and managers perceive and use SETs as part of developing their own teaching, and focus on how the dialogue around teaching, which was intended as a part of the quality assessment procedure, is actualized (or not) in practice.

British higher education is ranked among the best in the world, but some of its core values are under strain. Knowledge and critical thinking can be undermined by biased mind-sets, especially when engaging with the social media. Research demonstrates that false news goes viral much more quickly than true news. Political correctness and the woke movement can militate against freedom, especially in gender-related matters. Surveys show that many staff and students have a lower sense of wellbeing than the rest of the population. Conscious of these problems, the Government has responded with an Act to place extensive new obligations on certain types of online service providers, requiring them to protect their users by managing risks relating to illegal and harmful content. A separate Act has also been passed to protect freedom of speech in universities. The issue of staff and student unhappiness is much less amenable to legislation because it is so multi-faceted. However, it is a very important issue for a healthy, democratic society that fosters cooperation, trust and community. It needs to be addressed.

This paper presents the findings of the push and pull factors that cause professionals to leave academia. Previous research has mostly focused on academic professionals’ intent to leave their current organisations and largely neglected occupational turnover, that is, the cases where faculty abandon an academic career. The study included 40 semi-structured interviews and a national survey (N = 410) conducted in 2017. The interviewees consisted of three groups: previous faculty members who left academia, members of universities’ upper management (deans, vice-rectors and HR managers) and upper managers and HR managers of public and private organisations employing previous academic faculty members. The survey was sent to all scholars who had left academia in Finland during 2010–2015. The qualitative empirical analysis suggests that most of the internal push factors that caused the academic professionals to leave were inversed external pull factors that lured them away from academia. However, it also hints that in many cases, certain individual factors seem to mediate the two. In practice this means that individual factors, such as lack of interest in research and/or teaching and unwillingness to compete in some positions, also contribute to the decision to leave academia.

How can a new generation of students be equipped to take up positions of responsibility in a dynamic global environment, serving as leaders and citizens who will further the good of societies around the world? As the institutions responsible for educating the next generation of citizens and leaders at a formative time in their intellectual and personal development, universities have an important role to play in shaping those who will shape society. While many universities emphasize their desire to raise up future leaders for our challenging times, programmes that actively seek to help students develop qualities of character required for responsible leadership are rare. This article discusses the importance of character in leadership education and draws on a case study programme at the University of Hong Kong, which made use of a creative combination of in-person and online learning to help students grow in their intellectual understanding of leadership as well as in the self-knowledge and virtues of character required to enact responsible leadership in their own lives. The article describes the pedagogical methodology that was employed and presents the results of an exploratory, quasi-experimental longitudinal study of the programme's impact, which was designed to establish proof of concept. The analysis of qualitative data supports the potential of such programmes to make a positive contribution to students' intellectual understanding of leadership as well as their leadership identity and ethical formation¹.

As interest increases in the educational quality of higher education institutions (HEIs), less is known about how the mergers and acquisitions (M&As) of these HEIs affect educational quality. In this study, we investigate the association of M&As on the educational quality of HEIs and the role of institutional incentives in this relation. We argue that M&As in HEIs can positively affect the educational quality of these institutions, although this relationship is substantially sensitive and moderated by institutional incentives. Ultimately, M&As can negatively influence educational quality if the incentives do not encourage HEIs to improve and maintain high standards in educational quality continuously. We empirically examine our theoretical framework using a longitudinal dataset on a fixed-effects model from 2007 to 2015 with M&As of Brazilian HEIs, and the results consistently support our arguments.