Technical efficiency and productivity for higher education institutions in Sweden

This study investigates technical efficiency and productivity for Swedish higher education institutions (HEIs). One identified problem in previous research concerns adjusting efficiency scores for input quality. This problem is avoided using grades from upper-secondary schools. A second problem concerns heterogeneity with respect to subjects and institutions between HEIs. Using the Swedish national resource allocation system, students are weighted according to subject. For research production, a bibliometric index that allows for differences in publication tradition is used. A third problem when using the data envelopment analysis approach is the lack of statistical inference. Bootstrapping is used to approach this problem. The results indicate an average inefficiency of 12% and a productivity increase of around 1.7% per year.     

Early withdrawal from higher education: a focus on academic experiences

Early withdrawal from higher education (HE) programmes can be detrimental for the students and institutions involved. Quantitative research has often concentrated on demographic and social antecedents (e.g. gender, prior education). Other factors may be more open to intervention e.g. students’ academic experiences in HE. Using data from an institutional survey (N?=?1170), logistic regression tested a range of academic experiences, regarding their relationship to contemplation of withdrawal (‘COW’: a recognised marker for actual withdrawal). COW was associated with student perceptions of low one-to-one contact with staff; non-traditional delivery methods; low peer-interaction; and high assessment load. Interestingly, COW was not associated with overall contact hours, large classes, or personal tutoring. The contributing factors explained 5.1%–8.6% of variance in COW, suggesting they may be meaningful levers for optimising retention. The paper discusses links to existing literature, future research directions, and applied implications for institutions.     

法国高等教育管理体制变革中的教师学术职业

法国作为中央集权管理体制的典型代表,正经历着高等教育分权的变革。大学自治对教师职业存在的重要影响,在学术责任、聘任与晋升制度、质量评估等方面,表现为教师流动性低、教学与研究结合困难、评估缺乏激励性、学术职业前景黯淡等。增强大学的自主性、改革僵化的管理体制是解决学术职业发展中的矛盾的重要前提。     

Constructing academic identity in the changing Russian higher education context: preliminary perspectives

ABSTRACT

Currently, Russian academics are facing significant demands because of a new, urgent requirement to pursue their research in accordance with international standards. Until recently, these academics were used to working within a familiar community and communicating their research via the Russian language, but now, they are expected to move beyond that and function on a global level, which can challenge their academic identities. A qualitative study was carried out in a research-intensive Russian university. The aim was to explore academics’ experiences and perceptions of the dynamic changes in their academic work with a particular focus on the limitations and pressures they meet in their career path towards global research. The data were collected by means of reflective journals during a course on English for academic purposes. Thematic analysis was employed for data analysis. The results showed that global trends turned out to be unachievable for Russian academics due to the lack of specific knowledge, attributes and skills required to do research globally. This might be the first study from Russia contributing to the literature on academic identity construction. The article provides insights into the experiences and perceptions of Russian academics and offers a research agenda for further investigation to bridge identity shifts in academia. In terms of practical purposes, the results will be used as a source of preliminary data within a broader research project aimed at supporting Russian academics in their research in an international English-speaking academic context.     

Mapping the terrain: Teach For America,charter school reform,and corporate sponsorship

In this paper we illustrate the relationships between Teach For America (TFA) and federal charter school reform to interrogate how policy decisions are shaped by networks of individuals, organizations, and private corporations. We use policy network analysis to create a visual representation of TFA’s key role in developing and connecting personnel, political support, and financial backing for charter reform. Next we examine how the networks unfold at a local level by zooming in on a case study of New Orleans. By mapping out these connections, we hope to provide a foundation for further investigation of how this network affects policies.     

Student characteristics and academic performance in higher education: A review

This is a review of the recent literature on student characteristics and their predictive potential for academic achievement. Results are not optimistic, often contradictory, and on the whole account for little variance beyond that accounted for by tests of intellectual ability. Researchers often use different performance criteria and so results are not comparable. However, there has been much complex, diverse, and unique work done on personality and motivational factors but no clear trends have emerged. Other factors investigated have been home and class background, study habits, previous withdrawal, and expectations. The review concludes by demonstrating the usefulness of the cluster analysis approach which indicates groups of students with similar patterns of characteristic criteria.     

关于当前高等师范院校学生德育工作的思考

文章分析了当前高等师范院校德育工作的地位和存在问题，结合德育工作的现状提出了具体的建议和对策。     

Competition unleashed: horizontal differentiation in German higher education

Unlike in the US and other western countries, the higher education market in Germany has been sheltered from competition. This changed recently, when a governmental ‘excellence initiative’ began to allocate substantial supplementary funds dependent on higher education institutions’ performance, in 2005. This study is aimed at assessing differentiation tendencies arising from the acute need to become more discernible in an increasingly competitive environment. Based on a content analysis of the full sample of German higher education institutions’ mission statements, we measure the degree of horizontal differentiation among institutions, applying correspondence and cluster analysis techniques. We conclude that horizontal differentiation is not incisive to date, and identify idle potential for creating a more perceptible brand personality.     

加强作者队伍建设提高学报学术质量--关于提升地方高校理科学报学术质量的思考

提高高校理科学报学术水平的根本途径在于加强作者队伍建设。加强地方高校理科学报的作者队伍建设要从自身实际情况出发，抓好以下几个主要方面：发现学术新秀，指导年轻作者写好论文，跟踪各学科科研热点，依靠本校科研优势创办品牌栏目。     

Performing support in higher education: negotiating conflicting agendas in academic language and learning advisory work

ABSTRACT

This article critically explores neoliberal administrative priorities and the ways in which they shape and constrain academic language and learning (ALL) advisory practice in the Australian higher education sector. Drawing on semi-structured interview data collected from in-service ALL advisors working in Australian universities, we highlight a disjuncture between the participants’ understandings of effective practice and the institutional framing of ALL advisory work as a mechanism to improve accessibility of higher study and retention of diversifying student cohorts. The data indicate the potential for institutional priorities to generate dilemmas in advisors’ daily practice as they are tasked with performing support via formats considered antithetical to meeting students’ needs and fostering productive approaches to study. Under these circumstances, participants characterised collaboration between advisors and content specialists in the pursuit of more embedded approaches as dependent on individual endeavours and stymied by a lack of institutional support. We call for renewed consideration of the formats and affordances with which advisors work in order to better align ALL advisory practice with the holistic development of students’ academic literacy skills.     

Absence of the academic from higher education policy

This article argues that the individual academic is all but absent from the assumptive worlds of policymakers in UK higher education. It is taken for granted in research on academic identity that those who work in higher education as teachers and researchers refer to themselves as, and indeed are referred to by others as, ‘academics’. Evidence is drawn from a study of policymakers in the UK to demonstrate that the word ‘academic’ is not a part of the lexicon of higher education policymaking. Moreover, the concept of the academic is cast into shade by an overwhelming emphasis on ‘the student experience’, and, from another direction, by a location of professional academic accountability at the level of the higher education institution rather than the individual. The article concludes with an exploration of what work this absence of the academic in policy does in disrupting the possibilities for engagement between the worlds of academia and policymaking and in perpetuating the discourses of marketisation and new management in higher education. It also suggests understanding the assumptive worlds of policymakers is a crucial counterbalance to a growing body of literature on academic responses to change, some of which has tended towards the self‐referential.     

Realigning capital portfolios: international students' educational experiences in higher education

This paper reports on first year experiences of international students who use English as an additional language (EAL) in higher education in Australia. It examines how valued resources can foster a positive educational experience of these students from sociological perspectives. It draws data from an interview study, exploring narrative accounts of 17 EAL international students from nine countries about their educational relations and strategies across their first year of study. Their narratives were analysed through Bourdieu's concepts of field, habitus, capital and legitimation, as well as tools of narrative inquiry. The paper finds that the students took up strategies to realign their capital portfolios with new rules of the game. Their decisions were dependent on their personal trajectories and conditions on offer. This paper suggests that more effort needs to be made to understand international students' differentiated access to valued resources in higher education.     

Internationalising higher education: comparing the challenges of different higher education institutions in Malaysia

Internationalisation of higher education in Malaysia is seen as a means for improving and empowering higher education so that the higher education institutions in the country can become comparable to the best in the world. While the government has spelt out the directions as well as some of the targets for internationalisation, higher education institutions in the country have been internationalising for different reasons and with different levels of priority and intensity. Public universities, especially the older ones, have been engaged in internationalisation as part of their academic growth and development. Concurrently, a variety of private institutions of higher learning has evolved since the opening up of private higher education from the 1980s. These include private universities that have been established by large corporations, smaller private colleges that have been elevated to the status of degree-conferring institutions as well as branch campuses of foreign universities. The objective of this paper is to examine the different concepts and challenges of internationalisation faced by the different types of higher education institutions in the country, using the case study approach. It was found that in each of these cases, the concept of internationalisation and the challenges faced are different, although funding is raised as a problem in three of the four cases. These different challenges imply that current policies may have to be fine-tuned in order to address the different needs of these institutions in their respective efforts to internationalise.     

More than access: MOOCs and changes in Chinese higher education

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an analysis of the conceptualization of massive open online courses (MOOCs) by major influencers in Chinese higher education. Using critical discourse analysis, predominantly from university resources, a map of the discursive construction of MOOCs is presented and interpreted. The centralized orientation of decision making in Chinese higher education is reflected in how MOOCs have been introduced, envisioned, and utilized in China. With the increase of Chinese MOOCs, elite universities are able to capitalize on their comparative advantages, which may be counter to the true intent of MOOCs, which is to raise teaching standards across sectors. This paper serves to illuminate how MOOCs may reinforce the status of elite universities, thereby having the opposite effect to their real intention of democratizing higher education for the masses. The strategy of using MOOCs to improve teaching quality and augment the worldwide reputation of Chinese institutions is central to China’s reinvigorated focus on higher education, which counters the widely held perception, and intention, that MOOCs are vehicles for widening access.     

Internationalisation of higher education: European experiences

‘Internationalisation’ is generally defined as increasing cross-border activities amidst persistence of borders, while ‘globalisation’ refers to similar activities concurrent to an erosion of borders. Study mobility is viewed as the most visible component in this framework in Europe with ERASMUS as the largest scheme of temporary mobility. ERASMUS was a trigger for a qualitative leap of internationalisation strategies and policies since the 1990s: towards cooperation and mobility on equal terms, and towards systematic and strategic internationalisation. The ‘Bologna Process’ aimed to make higher education more attractive to students from other parts of the world and to facilitate intra-European mobility; however, many other activities are needed to stimulate mobility, and the Bologna Process pursues many other objectives. It remains to be seen whether supra-national and national policies and institutional strategies will continue to opt for wide-ranging cooperation based on mutual trust or whether the ‘competition paradigm’ will determine the scene.     

Generating,comparing, manipulating,categorizing: reporting,and sometimes fabricating data to comply with No Child Left Behind mandates

This article ethnographically examines the ways in which No Child Left Behind (NCLB) links local practices to the centralized processing of data through its narrowing of procedures and measurements aimed at accountability. Framed by actor-network theory, it draws upon data consistently collected between June 2005 and October 2008, and then intermittently through October 2010, to consider the ways in which policy technologies, such as standardized testing, bring together New York City (NYC) public schools, district administrators, for-profit educational support businesses, and government officials to address the accountability requirements of NCLB. This article reveals how, through a range of sophisticated mechanisms that support the generation and comparison of data, NYC schools become reduced to data calculation and management centers. NCLB’s standardization, privatization, and marketization encourage local policy actors to become complicit in standardizing and quantifying academic assessment through their reliance on services and products marketed to schools and districts that are not meeting academic benchmarks. These services, mostly offered by for-profit vendors, help keep schools in compliance with policy requirements, but replace a focus on student learning with the production, management, and sometimes the fabrication, of data.     

Inclusive and exclusive education in Sweden: principals' opinions and experiences

To support the national and international aims of inclusion, special teacher training in Sweden was replaced in 1990 by special educator training. These special educators would supervise the teachers in their school and would not exclusively teach students. The aim of this study was to investigate what the principals of 14 municipal compulsory schools in Stockholm County thought about the organisation and realisation of special education in 1996 and 2006 respectively. According to the results, there were fewer segregated groups in these schools in 2006, but an increasing number of students were placed in segregated groups that were common to several schools or municipalities. Principals at schools with teaching teams usually saw the special educator as a coordinating and supervising resource while others preferred the special teacher function. The former approach led to a more inclusive school and the latter in the direction of exclusion.     

The changing academic environment and diversity in students' study philosophy,beliefs and attitudes in higher education

Student populations in higher education in Australia and elsewhere in the developed world have experienced significant diversity over the past two decades. The existing literature has provided limited clarity about the effects of this diversity on the dimensions underpinning students' study philosophy domain. Based on a large data set from a leading Australian university, this paper analyses students' study philosophy, beliefs and attitudes towards teaching and learning. Factor analysis explored themes (or dimensions) within the survey. Multivariate analysis of variance used these dimensions as dependent variables with age, sex, ethnicity, study discipline, study level, academic performance and sex/ethnicity interaction as grouping variables to identify significant sources of variations. Deep learning, expediency and responsibility reflected the students' study philosophy domain. Deep learning and responsibility varied with ethnicity and academic performance. Expediency differed according to ethnicity, study discipline and academic performance. Students in business-related disciplines displayed greater expediency than peers elsewhere, treating education like any other commodity. The contribution of this study lies in its rigorous analysis of the impact of the diversity of the student population on the study philosophy domain, compared to the existing literature.