Research policy and the changing nature of Australia's universities

Two central features of Australian universities are a strong research base and a structural organisation which reflects a close relationship between teaching and research. Current policy deliberations have produced recommendations in the national interest for the future development of Australian university research which are incompatible with these two central features. The recommendations consolidate the recent trend towards greater centralisation, co-ordination, selectivity and concentration of university research and its funding. Although certain sectors of Australian university research will benefit from the changes, the recommendations reflect neither a longer term view of the total higher education system, nor a sufficient concern with preserving the excellent and productive qualities of the current system. Their implementation will mean the adoption of research goals inimical to the fundamental purposes of universities; a less flexible and more conservative research system; a re-orientation of the research role of universities so that it is less harmonious with their teaching role; and a potentially harmful differentiation of academic staff, subject areas and institutions. In responding to the new demands of government, universities face a challenge in preserving their current strengths and core functions.     

Academic identity and autonomy in a changing policy environment

The article draws on two research projects to explore the implications of policy change in the UK for academic identities within a predominantly communitarian theoretical perspective. It focuses on biological scientists and science policies. It examines the impacts of changes upon the dynamic between individuals, disciplines and universities within which academic identities are formed and sustained and upon individual and collective values central to academic identity, namely the primacy of the discipline in academic working lives and academic autonomy. Challenges to these have been strong but they have retained much of their normative power, even if the meaning of academic autonomy has changed. Communitarian theories of academic identity may need to be modified in the contemporary environment but they do not need to be abandoned.     

高等教育与省级公共支出政策

在公共财政体制下 ,高等教育产品供给方式应实行政府主导的混合提供方式。以河北省为例 ,研究省级公共支出政策得出的结论是 :财政支出应继续作为高等教育投资的主渠道之一 ,但应从支配性转向引导性 ;地方高等教育公共支出主体应为省级财政 ,需坚持效率原则与发展原则的统一 ,突出强调高等教育公共支出的内部结构优化。     

The British response of higher education to changing educational perspectives

The primary purpose of this paper is to examine the objectives of higher education provision in Britain. The perspective of ‘educationists’ are compared with those of ‘economists’. In particular, the paper argues that the Department of Education and Science (DES) has moved substantially in the direction of the economists' approach to educational resource allocation. The paper also argues that the partticular characteristics of higher education (HE), where it is state-provided and free at the point of consumption, imbue it with the properties of a Niskanen-type bureau. This paper suggests that the current DES policy with its considerable implications for HE resource allocation can be rationalised in terms of the human capital approach and the problems of managing a bureau.“A professor was supposed to be a venerable kind of person, with snow-white whiskers reaching to his stomach. He was expected to moon around the campus oblivious of the world around him. If you nodded to him he failed to see you. Of money he knew nothing; of business far less. He was, as his trustees were proud to say of him, ‘a child’.On the other hand, he contained within him a reservoir of learning of such depth as to be practically bottomless. None of this learning was supposed to be of any material or commercial benefit to anybody. Its use was in saving the soul and enlarging the mind” (Leacock, 1922).     

The Networked University: The structure,culture, and policy of universities in a changing environment

Tertiary Education and Management - The universities in Europe are finding themselves in a turbulent environment. They are exposed to global and European developments. This article links changes in...     

从公共政策分析的角度看流动儿童教育政策

随着我国的城市化规模扩大,大量的流动儿童随迁进入城市生活,这就带来了一个新的问题——流动儿童教育问题。为了解决这一问题,国家制定了相应的政策,采用三种途径解决这一问题。然而,这些政策在实际当中却遇到了困难,无法从根本上解决问题。本文试图从公共政策分析的角度对流动儿童教育政策的进行分析,为政策制定者提供参考。     

对我国基础教育中环境教育政策的回顾和前瞻

本文对我国基础教育中环境教育政策的演化轨迹进行了回顾 ,并根据环境教育政策的目标选择、内容、性质和表现方式变化呈阶段性的特点 ,将我国基础教育中的环境教育政策划分为起步阶段、发展阶段、重新定向阶段、深化扩展等四个阶段。通过对各阶段环境教育政策的分析 ,揭示了我国基础教育中环境教育政策在进一步发展中亟待解决的一些问题     

Formation of community adult education policy in a. changing society in Taiwan

Community adult education (CAE) has just started to develop in Taiwan. From policy formation which directly affects the administration of CAE, the author discusses how CAE is promoted in a changing society. The major approach applied is documental analysis based on a review of policy context. Through analysing two main policy packages for adult education, the author points out the drawbacks of developing CAE in Taiwan and then raises recommendations for improving its policy formation. Taiwan's experience in policy formation of CAE may be helpful for deciding how to improve the provision in a changing society and for countries with similar situations.     

完善公共教育政策,促进教育机会均等

教育政策作为一项公共政策，其促进“教育机会均等”，是国际教育发展的一般趋势和共同追求，本通过回顾“教育机会均等”的理论历史，结合我国教育实践和有关政策，指出现行教育政策中存在着不平等成份，探讨改善义务教育发展中的不平等现象，我们的教育政策改革应力求最大可能的平等。     

New public management as a global education policy: its adoption and re-contextualization in a Southern European setting

In the education sector, new public management (NPM) has crystallized in policies such as school autonomy, professionalization of school principals, standardized evaluation and teachers’ accountability, and it has been widely disseminated by international organizations, such as the OECD, which enjoy a great prestige when it comes to frame education reforms in European countries.

This article analyses the way NPM has been constructed as a global education policy, and its adoption and re-contextualization into the Spanish education context. This article shows that the reasons for adopting NPM are not so different from those prevailing in other countries where these policies have been implemented before. Counter-intuitively, although NPM is a reform programme traditionally initiated by conservative governments, in the Spanish education field, as also happened in other Central and Northern European countries, it has been adopted and regulated with social democratic governments. In all these countries, social democrats have tended to embrace NPM as an attempt to address the legitimacy crisis of the welfare state and of public services in particular.

Nonetheless, in Spain, the NPM reforms have been re-contextualized and regulated in very uneven and paradoxical ways. For a combination of political, institutional and economic reasons, the final form adopted by the NPM approach is far from the model advocated by the international community and is deeply contradictory.

Our arguments are based on intensive fieldwork that include, on the one hand, interviews with key education policy-makers and stakeholders and, on the other, document analysis of policy briefings, press releases and legal documents.     

Financing higher education by loans and fees: theorizing and researching the private effects of a public policy

Whilst research has looked at the effects on students of the introduction of higher education loans, the implications for their families have, for the most part, been ignored. This paper examines some of the possibilities and problems in studying the private effects of this public policy. Difficulties are identified in the use of approaches derived from family studies, research on family-education dynamics, and rational action theory. Not only does some of this work have a strong culturalist emphasis, but where economic matters are included, the significance of, and distinctions between different kinds of family financial assets tend to be ignored. The suggestion is that recent changes in the system of funding higher education in the UK are consistent with some forms of family assets and obligations, but challenge others. It is argued that the promotion of privatization, in education and elsewhere, and of individual investment in human capital, not only fails to acknowledge the importance of collective private intergenerational transfers. It also increasingly depends upon the state and the financial services working in combination.     

Systemic adaptation to a changing environment: Towards a next generation of quality assurance models

Quality assessment has been part of thefeedback mechanisms of European highereducation systems since around 1980. Due tointernal dynamics, `erosion' of theeffectiveness of first-generation qualityassessment systems has led to loss ofcredibility (legitimacy) of these systems inthe late 1990s. External dynamics alsonecessitate designing a next generation ofquality assurance systems. They include notablya loss of transparency (hence, legitimacy) ofthe European higher education system throughincreased internationalisation (most notablythrough the Bologna process) which puts new,increased demands on institutional arrangementsfor quality assurance.In this paper, we first intend to schematisethe developments of quality assurance in highereducation by introducing a phase model of theeffects of internal and external dynamics.Next, we will analyse this phase model from theperspective of argumentative policy inquiry.Finally, we will contrast policy developmentsin higher education with one other example,viz. environmental policy in the Netherlands.The conclusions of this comparison, as well asthe new challenges set for quality assurance inhigher education by the Bologna process, arethe subject matter for the final section of ourpaper.     

Reforming further education teacher training: a policy communities and policy networks analysis

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s teacher preparation for the schools sector in the United Kingdom was subject to a series of reforms and innovations including the establishment of new institutional arrangements to oversee the sector, namely the Teacher Training Agency (TTA – now the Training and Development Agency, TDA). Since 2002 the arrangements for training teachers in the broadly defined learning and skills sector have also been subject to scrutiny and a wide‐ranging reform agenda has been put forward by the Government. This paper examines the key reforms using a three stage model to analyse the policy development process and discusses the functions and status of the sector skills council, Learning UK (LLUK), in order to examine its relationships with external stakeholders. Contrasts are made with the approach adopted by the TTA during the reform of teacher training for school. The paper concludes with a tentative assessment of the progress of the reform agenda and the identification of a number of salient issues that warrant further research.     

强化公益主题与环保理念的艺术创新教育

艺术教育应以其敏锐的目光深刻地把握社会发展的现状,走在时代发展的前列,教育和引导学生形成良好的生活习惯和社会公德意识。本文试图探索艺术创新教育如何以公益主题与人文关怀为动因．以专业教学为依托,以创新活动为载体,用鲜活的艺术作品及育人方式,提高学生综合素质．创造社会效益。