Tertiary Education and Management最新文献

Colleges and universities spend considerable time and resources developing strategic plans, often using outside consultants. These efforts typically focus on identifying and replicating best practices of other institutions, rather than finding distinctive opportunities. This results in increasing conformity across similar colleges and universities and results in a commoditization of education. This article describes how colleges and universities can use blue ocean shift processes to develop value innovation, breaking the tradeoff between differentiation and cost minimization, and opportunities to use sensemaking to identify a distinctive and sustainable niche in their educational offerings. This involves a focus on creating programs that are attractive to students who would not otherwise be interested in the institution. We then provide a case study of how one institution used the blue ocean shift process to differentiate its educational programs and offerings. We provide evidence demonstrating the impact of the blue ocean shift and comparative enrollment increases for the institution.

The COVID-19 pandemic has influenced nearly every aspect of people’s lives, and has set new conditions for universities to operate their internationalisation practices. Together with the rapidly changing global environment, higher education internationalisation has reached a crossroads. Through a constructivist grounded theory design, this study explores experts’ thoughts about the coronavirus crisis’s influences on the internationalisation of higher education and its future direction, taking different national and regional contexts into account. Interviews with 20 world-leading scholars in the field suggested that COVID-19 has had complex effects on university internationalisation and it is necessary to consider such effects beyond the simple distinction between challenges and opportunities. New approaches to conceptualise and implement internationalisation are essential, while the logic of capitalism remains powerful. When looking at the future, many factors other than the coronavirus will exert their force. New conditions have raised new requirements for internationalisation, and therefore, new knowledge is needed to maintain its relevance and sustainability.

E-learning was abruptly adopted as a strategic response to the sudden closure of institutions of learning induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. In contrast to the conventional voluntary adoption of e-learning, this study aims to explore a new trail by drawing challenges of e-learning eclectically from recent literature to develop an alternative theoretical model of future preferred mode of learning against the background of the sudden closure of institutions of higher learning induced by the COVID-19 pandemic. The theoretical model was validated via an empirical study based on the responses obtained from 352 Malaysian undergraduates. Results from the multinomial regression revealed that the model was significant (p-value < 0.01). Moreover, Information and Communication Technology infrastructure positively predicted whereas bottom 40% household income category and disadvantages of e-learning negatively predicted undergraduates' future preference for blended learning (relative to 100% conventional classroom learning). Being male and possessing discipline for e-learning positively predicted whereas living in semi-urban area and disadvantages of e-learning negatively predicted undergraduates' future preference for 100% e-learning (relative to 100% conventional classroom learning). This study adds to the body of knowledge by way of an alternative theoretical model of undergraduates' future preferred mode of learning, which may facilitate future meta analysis on similarities and differences in challenges related to e-learning during the closure of institutions of higher learning across different countries. This study concludes with some reflective thoughts in terms of theory, practice and policy about one important lesson learned from this unprecedented closure of institutions of higher learning, which is readiness for blended learning to deal with future unexpected crises.