Internationalization of the postdoctorate in the United States: analyzing the demand for international postdoc labor

The American academic research enterprise relies heavily on contributions made by foreign nationals. Of particular note is the large number of international postdocs employed at universities in the United States (US). Postdocs are among the fastest growing group of academic staff in the US, and over 50 % of all postdocs in the US are temporary visa holders. While academic mobility is sometimes understood using a ‘push–pull’ model, we argue that demand for educational migrants must be considered. Drawing from Marginson’s (Handbook on globalization and higher education. Edward Elger, Northampton, 2011; Marginson and Rhoades in High Educ 43:281–309, 2002) work, we develop a model for assessing local, national, and institutional (or local) variables that may shape the employment of international postdocs at universities in the United States, and we operationalize the model through a panel regression analysis using data covering the period 1989–2009. We find that the passage of time and federally supported research and development expenditures are strong predictors of postdoc employment. Institutional characteristics predict changes only in the subsample of private universities.     

Global inequality in the academic system: effects of national and university symbolic capital on international academic mobility

The global academic system is hierarchically structured between a center, a semi-periphery and a periphery. We analyze to what extent the position of a country and a university within this hierarchy of scientific reputation shapes doctoral students’ chances of international mobility. We conducted an exploratory experimental study using fake applications of international doctoral students sent to German sociology professors, who were asked to serve as supervisors during a planned research visit. Our fake applicants come from the core and periphery of the global academic system: Yale, Pennsylvania State University, National University Singapore, and Vietnam National University Hanoi. The results show that applicants from both US institutions get more positive and more personal feedback than the other applicants. This points to the importance of national scientific reputation. Moreover, we can show that universities’ symbolic capital seems to be more important than the quality of a department.     

美国院校研究的价值取向及其对我国的启示

院校研究的价值取向是院校研究中的一个重要理论问题。从美国院校发展的历史来看,院校研究的价值取向和院校的发展目标是一致的,学术质量和办学效益是美国院校研究的价值取向。我国院校研究起步较晚,这是和我国高等教育的发展特征相联系的。我国大学同样面临着学术质量和办学效益两个重大问题,院校研究必然需要围绕这两个重大问题来展开。     

美国高校学术失信问题初探

以美国大学为背景的研究表明学术失信在大学生中很常见,并且有学术失信行为的学生有增长的趋势。学术失信是指在学术情景中蓄意进行欺诈与作弊的行为．美国学者通过研究提出了导致学术失信出现的个人因素和学校因素．并提出鼓励学术诚信应采取的策略。     

University Leaders’ Strategies in the Global Environment: A Comparative Study of Universitas Indonesia and the Australian National University

In a global environment in which global, national and local nodes relate freely within common networks, all research universities must pursue strategies for building global capacity and facilitating cross-border staff and student movement and research collaboration. The study compares readings of the global environment, global and international activities and relationships, and global capacity and strategy, in two leading national universities, one in a middle level developing country (Indonesia) and the other in a middle level developed country (Australia). The main tool of investigation was interviews with parallel groups of institutional leaders and leaders of academic units and research centres, in conjunction with study of the national and local contexts. It was apparent that in both cases, while global elements are increasingly important in university strategy, mission and identity, resource capacity remains highly dependant on national government and students. This belies the romantic myth of the ‘stand-alone’ corporate university in the global marketplace. The two cases also differ in some respects. While both universities are peak national institutions, and each respects the other, the Australian university is more strongly placed in the global environment and practical dealings between them are asymmetrical. The study helps to illuminate the dynamics of global stratification and hierarchy between developed and developing nations and institutions in higher education.     

美国高等教育发展进程中的院校研究

“院校研究”是流行于美国高等教育领域的一个重要术语。美国高等教育发展进程中的每一次重大变化都对院校研究实践产生了直接或间接的影响。院校研究在美国的产生和发展源于来自高等学校内部和外部两个方面的驱动力。高等学校基于改进院校管理的需要是院校研究得以产生的内在动力，而政府和社会公众对于高等教育质量和效益的关注所施加于高等学校的压力，则是推进美国院校研究大规模、制度化开展的根本原因。几十年来，院校研究的功能和领域不断扩展，为美国高等学校改进管理决策、提高办学效益、履行说明责任、赢得外部支持发挥了应有的作用。     

Between the local and the global: organized research units and international collaborations in the health sciences

Organized research units—also known as centers, institutes, and laboratories—are increasingly prominent in the university. This paper examines how ORUs emerge to promote global agendas and international collaborations in an academic health center in North America. The roles these units play in helping researchers work across institutional and national boundaries are identified and analyzed. The concept of boundary organizations is employed to explain the features of ORUs and the challenges they face. Findings provide insight into how such units operate between local and global mandates, interest groups, and sources of influence, helping to extend university research into the global space.     

International academic staff in UK higher education: campus internationalisation and innovation in academic practice

Abstract

Amidst opportunities for universities to consider international academic staff in supporting internationalisation and innovation in academic practice, there is very little research to provide insights into their attitudes towards institutional approaches and frameworks in place to enable this. This article focuses on this research gap, suggesting that this academic community might enhance the development of internationally-informed and innovative pedagogic practice. The research reported within the article constitutes a preliminary study, set within a UK higher education case study setting. Methods included focus groups and themed in-depth interviews with a sample of 34 international academic staff from over 15 countries. The findings and discussion provide insights into the perspectives and experiences of international academic staff in relation to the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning and other institutional practice. Innovative pedagogic practice as enabled by international academic staff is discussed, as are approaches to the internationalisation of the curricula. The findings are relevant to the UK higher education context but also to the global context: academic institutions need to consider whether curriculum and processes are limited and limiting in favour of a narrow cultural lens.     

美国研究型大学国际化评估指标、策略及对我国的启示

2001年和2006年,美国教育委员会（ACE）先后两次对美国研究型大学的国际化现状进行了全国范围的问卷评估。评估内容涉及明确承诺、专业提供、组织架构、外部资金、大学对师资的投入、国际学生和学生项目等六个维度。评估报告总结了高度活跃的研究型大学的国际化策略选择,为活跃度低的研究型大学的工作改善提供了建议与借鉴。其评估指标具有以下特点：遵循分类指导的原则;内容指向学校的组织策略;体现了品质与绩效兼容并蓄的价值取向及对研究型大学国际化的改善功能。对我国大学国际化评估指标的构建具有启示作用。     

Substantive growth and innovative organization: New categories for higher education research

The existing international literature on higher education centers on the transition from elite to mass higher education, the changing relationship between governments and universities, and the differentiation of the institutional fabric of national systems. These important institutionalized concerns lead to an unbalanced research agenda if other basic features are not pursued. Two additional fundamental features need expanded attention: substantive academic growth, with its roots in the research imperative and the dynamics of disciplines; and innovative university organization, a sharply growing concern among practitioners as universities seek greater capacity to change.Proliferating at a rapid rate, modern academic knowledge changes fields of study from within, alters universities from the bottom-up, and increases the benefits and costs of decisions on the inclusion and exclusion of various specialties. The long-term trend from simple to complex knowledge, arguably more important than the trend from elite to mass higher education, forces universities to position themselves between knowledge expansion and student expansion, with emphasis increasingly placed on the knowledge dimension. Innovative universities explore new ways of organizing knowledge and of more effectively exploiting the fields in which they are already engaged. Greater awareness of new means of knowledge organization will help universities make wiser choices in the twenty-first century.     

Vulnerability,gender and resistance in transnational academic mobility

Focusing on Tanzanian and Mozambican PhD students funded by Swedish development aid, this article investigates how everyday academic work life is gendered in Sweden and in the students’ home academic departments. In particular, it focuses on the role of ‘important others’, such as international donors, universities, colleagues and family, in enhancing or alleviating vulnerability and how this shifts across spatial contexts. Integral to this is exploring how obstacles are managed and negotiated by PhD students, and how they articulate capability and therefore resist a position as a victim. The results indicate the glonacality of vulnerability as something that stretches over institutional and national boundaries, and how vulnerability can be (re)produced at local university level despite the good intentions of donors and universities operating ata global level. In addition,a translocational and intersectional perspective highlights how situations of vulnerability are gendered and radicalised differently in different academic contexts.

     

海外学习结果评估:来自美国高校的经验启示

进入21世纪以来,高等教育国际化的进程不断加快,众多美国高校将开展海外学习项目作为促进学校国际交流的重要方式。为监测项目的实施效果、保障学生学习质量,美国高校陆续开展了海外学习的结果评估,并在过去数十年中取得了一定成果,逐渐完善了评估流程与方案,并开发了相应的评估测量工具。我国高校的海外学习项目起步较晚,但发展迅速,而我国高等教育界却鲜有针对海外学习结果评估的研究。因此,从美国高校的实践中汲取经验具有重要意义。     

Condescension and critical sympathy: Historians of education on progressive education in the United States and England

Although progressive education was an international phenomenon, historical interpretations of it may be affected on the national level by academic and institutional contingencies. An analysis of how US and English historians of education interpret progressive education reforms in their respective countries identified a strain of condescension toward progressive education in history of education scholarship in the US, which often resulted in misrepresentations of the historical record. English historians of education tend to regard progressive education with critical sympathy. These findings are possibly explained by different institutional and academic circumstances of historians of education in England and the US.     

研究型大学的过去、现在和未来

研究型大学作为一个复杂的机构肩负着多种学术和社会责任。它们不仅是服务于文化、科技和社会的国家大学,同样也是引领全球智慧与科学走向的国际机构。研究型大学的重要地位早已被广泛熟知,但是大多数国家都没有意识到它们的复杂性以及建立和支撑它们所需要的资源。研究型大学面临着一系列的挑战,这主要来自于市场化的压力,维护自身自治地位的压力和掌控重要学术决策权的压力。稳定的资金支持是一所研究型大学成功的关键。     

美国学业指导制度变迁研究及对我国的启示

根据学业指导的发展程度,美国高等教育经历了前学业指导、初级学业指导和现代学业指导3个阶段,其操作模式又可分为诊疗型模式和发展型模式.美国学业指导体系根据形式发展,逐渐给予了有特殊需求的学生足够的关注与尊重,其中对国际学生、有转专业意向学生、首代大学生以及女性的学业指导对我国高等教育有一定的启发意义,中国的学业指导制度虽出现了各种萌芽并有了一定的初期发展,但总体状况并不尽如人意.中美学业指导差距的根本原因在于美国文化崇尚个性,尊重个体,而中国高等教育中学生的主体地位并不突出.通过比较发现美国学业指导变迁对我国具有一定启示:转变教育观念,树立学生的主体地位;探索适合中国国情的学业指导模式;挑选部分学业指导工作已有一定基础的高校,加强投入,展开试点工作;做好学业指导与就业指导的统筹规划.     

Linkage and academic exchange experiences at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology

Linkage and cooperation with other universities in the domain of education, research and training is viewed as one of the important activities in many universities. Since its creation in 1962, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) has maintained contacts with foreign universities in the region and other parts of the world through academic linkage and cooperation projects. This is necessary and has been found to be useful in keeping abreast of changes and innovations in research, teaching, as well as in program and staff development. The purpose of academic and research linkages is to encourage and promote transfer of knowledge and expertise which is often facilitated through two way exchange and cooperative visits by faculty and students of participating universities. Visits are generally designed for the purpose of field experience, cooperative research, and teaching. In order to keep pace with the changing and ever expanding frontier of knowledge, the need for international linkages and exchanges is receiving increased interest. The goal of these exchange and linkage agreements is a stable and self financed institutional relationship promoting productive, cooperative research and curriculum development. Donor agencies, generally identified jointly by participating universities, provide funds for equipment, reference materials, and exchange fellowships. Each participating university provides counterpart funds by absorbing substantial costs of salaries, benefits, overheads, and administration.     

Student equity’s starring role in Australian higher education: not yet centre field

The field of Australian higher education has changed, is changing and is about to change, repositioned in relation to other “fields of power”. It is a sector now well defined by its institutional groupings and by their relative claims to selectivity and exclusivity, with every suggestion of their differentiation growing. The potential of a “joined-up” tertiary education system, of vocational education and training (VET) and universities, has the potential to further rework these relations within Australian higher education, as will lifting the volume caps on university student enrolments. Moreover, Australian universities now compete within an international higher education marketplace, ranked by THES and Shanghai Jiao Tiong league tables. “Catchment areas” and knowledge production have become global. In sum, Australian universities (and agents within them) are positioned differently in the field. And being so variously and variably placed, institutions and agents have different stances available to them, including the positions they can take on student equity. In this paper I begin from the premise that our current stance on equity has been out-positioned, as much by a changing higher education field as by entrenched representations of social groups across regions, institutions, disciplines and degrees. In taking a new stance on equity, the paper is also concerned with the positioning in the field of a new national research centre with a focus on student equity in higher education. In particular, the paper asks what stance this new centre can take on student equity that will resonate on a national and even international scale. And, given a global field of higher education, what definitions of equity and propositions for policy and practice can it offer? What will work in the pursuit of equity?     

Academic quality,league tables,and public policy: A cross-national analysis of university ranking systems

The global expansion of access to higher education has increased demand for information on academic quality and has led to the development of university ranking systems or league tables in many countries of the world. A recent UNESCO/CEPES conference on higher education indicators concluded that cross-national research on these ranking systems could make an important contribution to improving the international market for higher education. The comparison and analysis of national university ranking systems can help address a number of important policy questions. First, is there an emerging international consensus on the measurement of academic quality as reflected in these ranking systems? Second, what impact are the different ranking systems having on university and academic behavior in their respective countries? Finally, are there important public interests that are thus far not reflected in these rankings? If so, is there a needed and appropriate role for public policy in the development and distribution of university ranking systems and what might that role be? This paper explores these questions through a comparative analysis of university rankings in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US.     

Explaining Scientists’ Plans for International Mobility from a Life Course Perspective

We identify factors influencing young scientists’ plans for research stays abroad by embedding theories of social inequality, educational decision making, and migration into a life course framework. We test the developed model of international academic mobility by calculating a structural equation model using data from an online survey of scientists employed at German universities below the rank of full professor. We find that earlier international mobility mobilises scientists to plan a research stay abroad. This turns out to be a potential channel of social inequality reproduction, as individuals from a high social origin in particular spend time abroad in their early life course. Moreover, scientists’ research contexts play a vital role: Internationalised institutional environments and academic disciplines as well as personal international networks create opportunity structures that ease research stays abroad. Similarly, the current social context matters: Parenthood decreases the likelihood of plans for international mobility among female scientists. This may entail long-lasting gender inequalities. Finally, young scientists striving for an academic career are more likely to plan a research stay abroad than those with exit plans. Our results show that beyond the current context, both past life events and future life goals shape scientists’ decisions about international mobility.