Consumerisation in UK higher education business schools: higher fees,greater stress and debatable outcomes

For many UK higher education business schools, the continued recruitment of UK, EU and international students is crucial for financial stability, viability and independence. Due to increasingly competitive funding models across the sector, many institutional leaders and administrators are making decisions typical of highly marketised consumer environments. Thus, this paper explores academics’ perceptions of the impact of consumerisation in UK higher education business schools. To achieve this, 22 business school academics were interviewed within three UK higher education institutions (HEIs) in the North of England. Participants had a minimum of three years teaching experience. Data was analysed using template analysis taking an interpretive approach. The findings indicate that academics perceived the introduction of tuition fees to have been the catalyst for students increasing demonstration of customer-like behaviour: viewing the education process as transactional, with the HEI providing a ‘paid for’ service. It is argued that these changes in UK higher education have created tensions between university leaders and academics, creating genuine dilemmas for those with decision-making responsibilities who must balance academic integrity and long-term institutional financial viability.     

China-Europe Higher Education Cooperation: Opportunities and Challenges

This article introduces Frontiers of Education in China’s special issue on China-Europe higher education cooperation. It is more than simply an introduction to the five studies collected for the special issue. Rather, it provides an overview of higher education cooperation between China and Europe from the perspective of opportunities and challenges. Such background information will help readers not only better understand the studies included in the special issue, but also link these studies to a bigger picture of China-Europe higher education cooperation.     

新时代背景下我国特殊教育事业发展需求分析--基于2016-2019年全国两会特殊教育提案的文本分析

从我国的基本国情来看,教育政策不仅是政府有序开展教育工作的重要手段,也是推动教育事业快速发展的有力保障。全国两会是人民参与政治生活、推动国家决策科学化的主要平台。全国两会代表所提交的教育提案内容反映了民众教育需求的变化,并且在一定程度上推动人民意愿向政策性、制度性保障的转化。21世纪以来我国特殊教育事业呈现出快速发展的良好势头,但距新时代党和国家提出的"办好特殊教育"目标仍有一定差距。文章采用文本分析方法,运用语义网络分析技术,对2016-2019年全国两会特殊教育提案的答复文本进行分析,厘清了我国特殊教育事业发展的三大热点话题及其核心思想,就对三大热点话题的发展思路提出了相关建议。     

Being highly internationalised strengthens your reputation: an empirical investigation of top higher education institutions

In an educational context characterised by globalisation, reputation constitutes a crucial issue for today’s higher education institutions. Internationalisation of higher education is often seen as a potential response to globalisation and, consequently, higher education has become increasingly internationalised during the past decade. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between internationalisation and reputation in top higher education institutions. Results reveal that internationalisation positively influences a university’s reputation but also moderates the relationship between the institution’s reputation and its institutional performance with regard to research quality, teaching quality and graduate employability.     

Unfreezing higher education institutions? Understanding the introduction of quality management in teaching and learning in Germany

Quality management (QM) in teaching and learning has strongly “infected” the higher education sector and spread around the world. It has almost everywhere become an integral part of higher education reforms. While existing research on QM mainly focuses on the national level from a macro-perspective, its introduction at the institutional level is only rarely analyzed. The present article addresses this research gap. Coming from the perspective of organization studies, it examines the factors that were crucial for the introduction of QM at higher education institutions in Germany. As the introduction of QM can be considered to be a process of organizational change, the article refers to Kurt Lewin’s seminal concept of “unfreezing” organizations as a theoretical starting point. Methodologically, a mixed methods approach is applied by combining qualitative data derived from interviews with institutional quality managers and quantitative data gathered from a nationwide survey. The results show that the introduction of QM is initiated by either internal or external processes. Furthermore, some institutions follow a rather voluntary approach of unfreezing, while others show modes of forced unfreezing. Consequently, the way how QM was introduced has important implications for its implementation.     

Turbulence in Bolivia’s normales: Teacher education as a socio-political battlefield

In line with broader politics of change at the national level, the Morales government aims at a radical restructuring of the governance mechanisms for the teacher education sector and a socio-political redirection of its curriculum, as teachers are perceived to be potential agents for decolonization and for developing social justice—or vivir bien (to live well). Morales’ policies are not uncontested, and the tense socio-political state of affairs and political power plays are reflected in Bolivia’s normales, teacher education colleges. They have become a socio-political battlefield where political affiliations, union strategies, and historically embedded institutional cultures all influence the way new generations of teachers are trained, and the way former and current policy initiatives are mediated and adopted. Given the complex and historically embedded socio-political context of struggles and tensions at and around the institutional level, the government still has a long way to go to change the continuing habits of the normales and to put its government’s new ideals of transformation and decolonization into practice.     

Performance-based university funding and the drive towards ‘institutional meritocracy’ in Italy

Many countries, including Italy, are increasingly managing their public higher education systems in accordance with the New Public Management principle that private-sector management practices improve efficiency and quality. A key mechanism has been the introduction of performance-based funding systems designed to reward ‘high-performing’ institutions and incentivise ‘lesser-performing’ institutions to improve. Instead of improving efficiency and quality across the board, however, we argue that performance-based funding systems naturalise longstanding structurally determined inequalities between institutions by recasting national higher education systems as competitive institutional meritocracies in which institutional inequalities are redefined as objective indicators of intrinsic ‘merit’ or worth. We illustrate how performance-based university funding systems naturalise pre-existing inequalities between universities drawing on the case of Italy, a country characterised by longstanding inequalities between its northern and southern regions which demonstrably impact on the apparent ‘performance’ of universities. The concept of institutional meritocracy captures the illusory nature of this performance game.     

A reinterpretation of institutional transformations in European higher education: strategising pluralistic organisations in multiplex environments

The paper draws on institutional theory with special attention to recent contributions that aim at developing its micro-foundations. We address the question of how individual higher education institutions deal with institutional pluralism. We develop an analytical framework inspired by institutional theory, the sensemaking perspective in organisation theory and strategy-as-practice to connect the macro-transformation processes of the organisational field and the micro-processes of organisational strategising.     

中国私立大学演变及对中国高等教育的反思

中国私立大学的产生与发展虽然历经坎坷,但在普及高等教育、引进大学制度、提高办学效率和促进社会转型等方面做出了重大的社会贡献;同时,其演变也可以折射出中国高等教育的发展轨迹。因此,通过对中国私立大学的演变进行回顾和反思,可以更好地认清中国高等教育在大学使命、大学精神和大学制度等根本问题上的症结所在,从而为中国的大学改革指明方向。     

Professional encounters with the post-WWII immigrant: a privileged prism for studying the shaping of European welfare nation-states

Abstract

This introductory article argues that practices of professional thinking and acting on the presence of the immigrant offer a privileged analytical prism through which to study how post-WWII European welfare nation-states have been shaped and crafted. As such, study of the formation of post-WWII welfare nation-states where one usually does not look for them is suggested: that is, beyond the bureaucratic logic imposed by the state itself. Consequently, a wedge is driven into the mundane professional practices embedded in the immigrant/welfare nation-state nexus, through which may be observed the very heterogeneous production of problems and solutions with immense effect on human lives, communities, and societies. These practices demonstrate the boundary work of the welfare nation-state that shapes it and gives shape to the construction and reconstruction of immigrant children and their families as problems and, thus, objects of integration and professional intervention. In this sense, the prism offers a new approach to writing histories of immigrant children’s education and the shaping and crafting of welfare nation-states that displaces both objects of study to professional practices of their making. In the first part of the article, the privileging of this analytical prism is substantiated historically and theoretically. In the second part, the four contributions constituting this themed issue are introduced. Finally there is a discussion of how the four contributions demonstrate the analytical prism’s cross-national relevance and historical sensitivity, adding new histories of how immigrant children’s education has been caught up in the immigrant/welfare nation-state nexus.     

Student Learning in Higher Education: Where We Are and Paths Forward

This special issue originated from ongoing discussions on how research in the past decade has or has not informed current theories on student learning in higher education. The contributions to this special issue each present a discussion of conceptual and methodological directions with possible connections or suggested dead ends in the major research traditions of the field. The special issue closes with two commentaries in which senior researchers critically discuss the contribution of the special issue regarding the question of where we might theoretically go in the field of student learning in higher education research.     

论成人高等教育制度建设的价值取向——基于制度伦理的视角

制度伦理是成人高等教育制度建设的理论基础,成人高等教育发展需要制度伦理作为重要的理论支持。本文尝试从制度伦理视角解决成人高等教育发展中面临的一些问题,并在此基础上探讨成人高等教育制度建设的若干价值取向。     

The cathedral’s ivory tower and the open education bazaar – catalyzing innovation in the higher education sector

ABSTRACT

Will open education replace traditional higher education, or augment it? Digital innovation in the higher education sector is fuelling speculation about the transformation of higher education and the future role of universities. Much of the speculation makes questionable implicit assumptions about current and future business models in the higher education sector. This conceptual paper applies an innovation management perspective to critically examine the use and misuse of the business model concept in the context of digital innovation in the higher education sector. Using Raymond’s metaphor of the cathedral and the bazaar which contrasted traditional commercial software development (the cathedral) with open source software development (the bazaar). We analogise this relationship with the relationship between ‘cathedral-type’ business models in traditional higher education (e.g. universities) and ‘bazaar-type’ business models in open education (e.g. open educational resource publishers). Using the historical perspective we now have on the software industry’s evolution we critique the ubiquitous replacement narrative of destruction and disruption of the sector, and propose an alternative narrative of interdependence and mutual innovative catalysis. We predict that higher education ecosystems will be based on synergistic relationships between organisations that represent many gradations on the continuum between ‘cathedral-type’ and ‘bazaar-type’ organisations.     

Renewed commitments in a time of vigilance: sexuality education in the USA*

Over the past 20 years, the USA has seen more than its fair share of controversy with respect to education about sexuality, sex and intimate relationships. Attention has focused on content (abstinence-only vs. comprehensive instruction), delivery (by teachers, parents, health professionals or community educators) and context (within school and beyond). In recognition of this fact, Sex Education invited the development of a virtual special issue comprising a sample of its most impactful papers on these and related topics. The 2016 Presidential election results and recent legislative action in the USA point to the importance of thinking broadly about teaching and learning about sexuality inside and outside of schools and of considering sexuality as it intersects with categories of difference, privilege and penalty, including ability, age, immigration, race, gender and class. This paper, developed as an introduction to the virtual special issue, opens with a discussion of the journal’s contributions to the ongoing discussion of pleasure and desire in sexuality education. From there, we turn to the question of what is possible given the material and ideological conditions of schooling and then to opportunities for teachers and learners outside the conventional classroom. We follow with a discussion of the place of intersectional analyses in sexuality education research, and conclude with some thoughts on sexuality education research at this political moment.     

The activation,appropriation and practices of student-equity policy in Australian higher education

Current national reforms in Australian higher education have prioritised efforts to reduce educational disadvantage within a vernacular expression of neoliberal education policy. Student-equity policy in universities is enmeshed in a set of competitive student recruitment relations. This raises practice-based tensions as universities strive to meet specific institutional targets for low-socio-economic status (SES) and Indigenous student participation, whilst broadening participation more generally within the sector. This paper seeks empirically to trace the activation and appropriation of federal policy through two sites of higher education policy practices: a state government-sponsored equity practitioner body and two differently positioned universities, Dawson and McIllwraith, as they engage with low-SES schools. Working together Dorothy Smith’s insights into the textually mediated activation of local practices, Levinson and colleagues’ concept of the local appropriation of authorised policy, and Bourdieu’s notion of the contested field, we demonstrate that the generation of state level and institutionally specific policies for student-equity practices not only articulates to federal policy, but also appropriates the ruling relations of mandated policy. Further, the scope of these creative local appropriations is organised within a hierarchical academic field through which particular institutional imperatives, as well as the needs of low-SES students, are negotiated. The analysis demonstrates the vernacularisation of policy in the national rearticulation of global discourses, in appropriation at the level of the state body and in the practices of equity workers.     

Learning across silos: Design Factories as hubs for co‐creation

Collaboration through innovation is central to the discussion of how today's universities can respond to new interdisciplinary challenges, competitive environments and stakeholder complexity. Innovation hubs represent a dynamic example of how the public sector, including higher education, is responding to the need for new methods and perspectives that foster desired intra‐institutional change. This study examines one of these types of platforms, the Design Factory Global Network originating at Aalto University, in order to shed light on key enablers and barriers to furthering collaborative efforts within higher education. Based on 25 in‐depth interviews with 17 Design Factories, including perspectives from students, staff and educators, the findings show that institutional policy fostering flexibility, securing a physical cross‐disciplinary and multi‐purpose collaborative space, upper level support and building community are all vital in ensuring design‐driven experimentation that contributes to the effectiveness of higher education.     

On stratification in changing higher education: the “analysis of status” revisited

This article seeks to shed light on current dynamics of stratification in changing higher education and proposes an analytical perspective to account for these dynamics based on Martin Trow’s work on “the analysis of status.” In research on higher education, the term “stratification” is generally understood as a metaphor that describes a stable vertical order. In sectors that are experiencing considerable change, such an order is still in the making. In following Trow, we propose to look at stratification as an open ordering process that constructs verticality. We distinguish between sector and field stratification, i.e., between stratification through coercive regulation by the state and through status judgements by a wide range of stakeholders. Within the last decade, field stratification has grown in importance as governments in continental Europe have provided universities with more leeway. Specific devices (rankings, etc.) channel such judgements and construct images of how a field appears. By applying this concept to two empirical cases from German higher education, we will show how devices redefine verticality in higher education through specific field images. First, master rankings in business administration/economics expand the topological boundaries to include degree programs outside national sectors, raise the importance of alumni and increase the recruitment of female students. Second, the Excellence Initiative triggers the construction of a new unregulated sector of doctoral education; excellent graduate schools model themselves along the scales of the field image as selective, interdisciplinary, international, and part of a holistic university image.     

高等学校《本科教育教学质量报告》透视(笔谈)

教育部拟建立全国高等学校教育教学质量年度报告发布制度,表明我国对高等教育质量的期待已从学校层面上升到了国家意志层面。2011年9月底,39所"985工程"大学首度公开发布了各自的《本科教育教学质量报告》,说明我国高教界已开始对社会期待和问责作出回应。尽管不能说各大学不重视,但它目前还没有很好地发挥信息平台、质量保障和管理监督的功能。作为创建具有中国特色的高等教育质量保障制度的重要举措,它还有待于从质量标准、报告内容和形式等方面进一步规范和完善。     

The Creation of a Vocational Sector in Swiss Higher Education: balancing trends of system differentiation and integration

The article discusses the establishment of a vocational sector in Swiss higher education as a complement to the existing two‐tier system of cantonal Universities and federal Institutes of technology. The origins of this new player, its missions and organisational features are discussed. This overall discussion is placed into the context of changing landscape of Swiss higher education policy characterised by increasing pressures for geographical reorganisation of the higher education sector under the auspices of a more direct role of the federal government. The article makes two points. First, it argues that the creation of a vocational sector in Swiss higher education combines two contradictory trends. On the one hand, this new sector tends to provide differentiation at the system level, through the creation of a new, more marked‐oriented sector of higher education. On the other hand, system differentiation at the system level is threatened by increased demands for greater inter‐institutional cooperation and system integration, emanating principally from the federal level. Second, the article also argues that the distinction between ‘academic/scientific’ vs. ‘vocational/professional’ education generally referred to when studying the emergence of non‐university sectors in higher education, is not pertinent for the analysis of the Swiss case. Two reasons are brought forward to sustain this argument. First, this distinction reinforces an artificial binary divide, no longer relevant to assess the evolution of higher education institutions placed in a context of academic and vocational drifts. Second, the ‘academic’ vs. ‘professional’ opposition does not take into consideration the political organisation of the country and how this impacts on policy making in higher education; a crucial element in the Swiss context.     

Participation and equity in higher education: are we going back to the future?

The December 2008 special issue of the Oxford Review of Education provided a review of education policy during Tony Blair’s tenure as Prime Minister. This paper forms a response to the ten contributions to that special issue and discusses some of the issues raised in them. While a few positive aspects of education under New Labour were identified in the special edition, it focused more on the failures of New Labour than its achievements. A common theme to emerge from the papers included the government’s pursuit of neo‐liberal market policies at the expense of its professed commitment to social justice. While accepting that the government’s failure to tackle the differences in educational outcomes between advantaged and disadvantaged pupils constitutes a major failing, the present author argues that significant achievements, such as early years provision, were neglected in the special issue. He also discusses the electoral considerations facing New Labour and the personal role of Tony Blair in determining policy. The paper goes on to consider whether New Labour’s education policy has changed since the departure of Blair and identifies some hints of a potentially more progressive approach developing under Brown. It concludes by suggesting that contributing towards a debate about alternatives to Blairite policies should now become a priority for the ‘educational establishment’.