Responding to environmental challenges: an initial assessment of higher education curricula needs by Australian planning professionals

Environmental planning education has become crucial given the projected implications of climate change for human settlements and nature. However, despite the identified importance of educating planners with regards to sustainability and environmental issues, there has been limited discussion of the topic within literature. In particular, there has been little consultation with planning professionals about their perception of environmental planning curricula needs. This article addresses this need through the survey of planning professionals in Australia. Perceived gaps in environmental knowledge and skills of planners were identified. The key knowledge gaps highlighted included climate change and water management. The key skill gaps highlighted included critical thinking and independent inquiry. Implications for urban planning curricula including the need to revise planning curricula are discussed. The study has implications for and interest to other professional degrees of which environmental sustainability is a component.     

The role of transnational networking for higher education academics

Amidst rapid socio-economic change, higher education (HE) academics across the world face major challenges to its organisation, finance and management. This paper discusses the role of transnational networking in higher education. Data from 40 interviews with geographically distributed academics engaged in learning and teaching transnational networks (TNNs) were analysed. The findings show that in an increasingly globalised higher education system, transnational networking goes beyond conference attendance to entail multiple combinations of offline and online activities. We do not think that current concepts of communities of practice or networks of practice accurately describe these phenomena. Instead, we suggest that these activities entail different and varying levels of tangibility, more accurately defined by us as TNNs. Moreover, we argue that the term ‘network’ in this context facilitates the individualistic pursuit of a career increasingly essential in a pressurised higher education environment.     

Issues and challenges in higher education leadership: Engaging for change

It is proposed from this study that engaging productively with others to achieve change has never been more critical in educational environments, such as universities. Via semi-structured interviews with a cohort of senior leaders from one Australian university, this paper explores their perceptions of the key issues and challenges facing them in their work. The study found that the most significant challenges centred around the need for strategic leadership, flexibility, creativity and change-capability; responding to competing tensions and remaining relevant; maintaining academic quality; and managing fiscal and people resources. Sound interpersonal engagement, particularly in terms of change leadership capability, was found to be critical to meeting the key challenges identified by most participants. In light of the findings from the sample studied some tentative implications for leadership and leadership development in university environments are proposed, along with suggestions for further empirical exploration.     

New challenges for higher education: global and Asia-Pacific perspectives

With rapid socio-economic changes, twenty-first century higher education is facing major challenges to its governance systems, curriculum, mission focus, external relations, research, and financing. A theoretical framework to analyze these post-massification challenges is suggested, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region as well as global issues. Five main topic areas provide the basis for the theoretical framework: massification, privatization, accountability and governance, internationalization, and ranking and world-class universities. Some discussion of the possible effects of the financial crisis that commenced in 2008 is provided.     

试论高等教育质量的跨国比较

本文从方法论角度,探讨高等教育质量跨国比较的背景、复杂性和可行性。认为：经济全球化、高教国际化互动条件下质量问题的凸显,为高等教育质量跨国比较提供了动因;跨国比较的任务就是要从个性中辨析共性,区分出可比较的和不可比较的质量因素,客观地界定跨国比较的范围,运用系统科学方法进行比较。     

中国高等教育的国际化:挑战与对策

国际化是世界高等教育发展的一大趋势,也是高等教育跨越国界的交流、合作与竞争过程。在经济全球化的背景下,中国经济的高速发展急需各类具有国际意识和能力的高素质人才;然而,我国高等教育在培养目标、课程设置和教学方法等方面都尚未完全适应经济发展和社会转型的需要。我国宜采取"自上而下"政府主导、院校参与的高等教育国际化战略,既需要政府部门通过法律、政策等手段引导和规范,同时也需要高等院校以提高学生"全球能力"为核心进行系统改革以促进国际化水平。     

When China opens to the world: A study of transnational higher education in Zhejiang, China

The economic transition in China since the late 1970s has led to not only drastic social transformations but also rapid advancements in science and technology, as well as the revolution in information and communications technology. In order to enhance the global competence of the Chinese population in coping with the challenges of a knowledge-based economy, the higher education sector has been going through restructuring along the lines of marketization, privatization and decentralization. Responding to the the challenges of globalization, the Chinese government has opened up the education market by allowing overseas universities to offer programmes on the mainland. This article sets out in this wider policy context to examine the current developments of transnational higher education in China, with particular reference to how students in Zhejiang province enrolling in these overseas programmes, especially those offered by Australian providers, evaluate their learning experiences. This article will also discuss the major concerns raised by the respondents in our study regarding the newly emerging transnational higher education programmes, with particular reference to examining how far these new programmes would affect the regulatory framework in Chinese higher education.     

跨国高等教育发展的理念创新初探

全球化背景下跨国高等教育的产生、发展具有必然性,它在我国的进一步发展是必要和可行的。积极应对跨国高等教育的挑战,要从树立跨国高等教育的历史必然观、正确认识跨国高等教育在促进我国高等教育跨越式发展中的作用、树立新时代的教育主权观、正确看待高等教育的公益性与盈利性、树立高等教育的市场意识、产业意识和服务意识等方面进行教育理念创新。     

Framework and operationalisation challenges for quantitative comparative research in higher education

The increasing availability of data on higher education systems, institutions and their members creates new opportunities for comparative research adopting a quantitative approach. The value of future studies crucially depends on the capability to recognise and address some major methodological challenges existing in quantitative comparative research in higher education. The higher education context presents in fact specific features that can hinder comparisons, and political and social processes occurred in recent decades further enhanced complexity. This article aims to discuss key challenges that are currently met in quantitative comparative research in higher education while developing the conceptual framework and in research operationalisation, to discuss possible solutions and the value of configurational and multilevel analytical approaches in identifying meaningful objects of comparisons, to take into account the complexity of the higher education context and in identifying causal relationships.     

Including young people with disabilities: Assessment challenges in higher education

Within a European context, facilitating the increased participation of marginalized groups within society has become a cornerstone of social policy. In higher education in Ireland this has generally involved the targeting for support of individuals representing groups traditionally excluded on the grounds of socio-economic status. More recently, people with disability have been included in this consideration. This approach has tended to focus on physical access issues and some technical supports. However, access is multi-faceted and must include a review of pedagogic practices, assistive provision (technological and personal), student’s engagement with their workload (e.g. recording) and evaluation procedures: achieving accreditation levels commensurate with ability. This small-scale Irish study examined the experiences of two groups of young people with physical disabilities and with dyslexia in two higher education institutions. It was apparent that for students with physical disabilities and with dyslexia, assessment practices were fraught with additional limitations. Assessment practices were mediated for these students through the physical environment, the backwash effect of assessment on curriculum, the availability and use of assistive technology, and through the attitudes of staff and students. It can be concluded that access issues within higher education have been inadequately conceptualized and as a result failed to address fundamental issues around assessment for students with physical disabilities and with dyslexia.     

Financial challenges in higher education: community college leadership style and ranking

A large number of new community college presidents will be hired in the next 5 years due to vacancies. New leaders must be prepared to lead their institutions through the challenges facing community colleges. Forty-one community college presidents in North Carolina participated in our research (70.7% response rate). We found that community college presidents’ perceptions of their management styles all fall within the “team management” orientation according to the Blake and Mouton Managerial Grid (Blake & Mouton, 1964). We then examined the financial management challenges faced by community college presidents and found empirical evidence regarding how community college presidents rank six of the most critical financial challenges identified in the literature. Presidents’ rankings of the six most critical financial challenges showed that the three most pressing concerns are maintaining student access during times of increasing educational costs, managing enrollment during times of decreasing state funding, and lowering costs without damaging academic quality.     

Globalization and its challenges for developing countries: the case of Turkish higher education

This paper examines the challenges faced by the Turkish higher education system and exposes the inequities and realities educators in a developing nation must struggle with as they try to find a prestigious spot in the knowledge-production industry. After a brief overview of the literature that illustrates how globalization penetrated into each stage of development of Turkey’s modern institutions of higher education, the paper presents a discussion, based on national and international statistics, of the challenges these institutions face as a result of globalization, namely increasing demands for higher education; faculty shortages; the internationalization of higher education; research and knowledge production; and the process of financing higher education.     

素质教育对英语教学的挑战

21世纪需要高素质的人才,高等教育肩负着培养跨世纪人才、提高大学生综合素质的重任,而教师又是实施素质教育的关键所在,所以21世纪的外语教学必须进行改革,而对挑战。     

新世纪高等教育的新使命:促进科学教育与人文教育的融合

新世纪,日益走向社会和时代中心的高等教育肩负着更为艰巨的使命--促进社会全面进步、促进人的全面发展,促进"两个全面发展"的有机结合.     

A new indicator for higher education student performance

The debate on academic achievement is a heated issue that involves all the higher education contexts. This paper attempts to provide an indicator that can make the measurement of university student performance easier and that can be easily applied to different systems, making comparisons more fair. The Italian University System is used as a starting point to make several considerations on the current measures and to build up a new performance indicator. Then, a generalization for other marking systems is shown and finally a quantile regression is performed to investigate some determinants of the new performance indicator, also with respect to the current one.     

通识教育:我国高等教育改革的新走向

通识教育理念是对狭窄的专业教育思想的反正 ,是对教育本质认识的深化 ,是当前我国文化素质教育的深入和落实。通识教育的实施 ,需要加强通识课程师资队伍和相关规章制度的建设 ,除正式课程外 ,非正式课程即校园文化建设也是非常重要的一条途径