The Changing Structure of British Higher Education: How diverse is it?

With the passage of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act the British system of higher education formally moved from a binary to a unitary structure. However, ever since successive governments have argued for a diversified model of higher education within which institutions should pursue contrasting goals. This article offers an interpretation of the key ingredients of institutional diversification and constructs alternative structural models of higher education. It proceeds by exploring the changing structure of British higher education since the creation of the unitary model. The argument is that there has been a steady emergence of flexible sectors, which both converge and diversify. However, there is a danger that the 2011 White Paper, rather than sustaining flexible sectors, could intensify the nascent shift in the direction of stratification marked by increasing differentiation between sectors as they converge internally.     

Education policy borrowing in China: has the West wind overpowered the East wind?

Recent education reform in China reflects the global trend of education policy borrowing from Anglophone countries such as the USA. The reform in China essentially advocates shifting from knowledge reproduction and didacticism to knowledge construction by students through a learner-centredness approach. Aware of the trend of borrowing policy from ‘Western’ countries, some educators in China use the proverb ‘the West wind has overpowered the East wind’ to describe this phenomenon. This paper examines the cultural factors that influence education policy borrowing in China by drawing upon Johnson’s metaphors of the ‘politics of selling’ and the ‘politics of gelling’. This paper argues that there exist fundamental cultural differences between Western and Chinese perspectives on the nature and transmission of knowledge that make education policy transfer in China challenging. This paper further proposes that China borrow education policy judiciously by integrating foreign and indigenous sources of knowledge, teaching and learning.     

The Changing Structure of British Higher Education: How diverse is it?

With the passage of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act the British system of higher education formally moved from a binary to a unitary structure. However, ever since successive governments have argued for a diversified model of higher education within which institutions should pursue contrasting goals. This article offers an interpretation of the key ingredients of institutional diversification and constructs alternative structural models of higher education. It proceeds by exploring the changing structure of British higher education since the creation of the unitary model. The argument is that there has been a steady emergence of flexible sectors, which both converge and diversify. However, there is a danger that the 2011 White Paper, rather than sustaining flexible sectors, could intensify the nascent shift in the direction of stratification marked by increasing differentiation between sectors as they converge internally.

     

The Role of Religious Higher Education in the Training of Teachers of Russian ‘Orthodox Culture’1

This article provides an ethnographic account of the tensions arising from the different ways of building authority as teachers and the role of higher education in establishing teachers' legitimacy in Russia through the specific example of religious education. After state atheism was abandoned in 1991, an unprecedented demand for religious knowledge appeared in Russia, in particular in relation to Russian Orthodoxy. Since the Russian context of Orthodox education lacks shared standards, there is considerable latitude in the criteria determining norms and rules. Seeking to increase its influence, the Russian Orthodox Church aspires to have Orthodox catechism taught in a systematic way both in parishes and in secular schools. In practice, the Church is encouraging professional pedagogues to submit their curriculum proposals that would be suffused with Orthodoxy and at the same time be eligible for adoption in all settings and institutions. Thus, in order to educate teachers of religion, the Church has made available multiple, diverse sources of religious knowledge (self-learning, various courses offered by the eparchies, Spiritual Academies, and other institutions of higher education). But the legitimacy of these sources is often questioned, for instance by asking whether the institution that delivers diplomas of religious higher education has been granted formal state recognition. The teachers' quest for being acknowledged as competent technicians of religious education leads to competing claims for the authenticity of the sources of their training.     

Questioning the Role of Technology in Higher Education: Why is this the Road Less Traveled?

This paper analyzes four issues that influence teaching and learning in college classrooms. These issues include the idea that using instructional technology in higher education should not be questioned; relationship between the corporate community and higher education; and effectiveness of distance learning as an instructional delivery system. The fourth issue, and possibly the most important, is developing a rich and deep understanding for the meaning of computer instructional technology, its relationship to teaching and learning, and the role it plays in shaping the context of what it means to be “educated.” A critical perspective, supported by the literature, is used to analyze these issues in the context of the college classroom. The paper closes with 20 questions intended to generate thinking and discussion about making thoughtful, informed and contextualized instructional decisions.     

The Role of Continuing Education in the Ongoing Changes in Higher Education in the Twenty‐First Century

Reflecting a French perspective, the author presents a scenario whereby universities in the Twenty‐First Century will devote a considerable portion of their time and effort to continuing education (or training) as part of an essential effort to make lifelong learning available to all. This shift in emphasis will, among other things, lead to the transfer of certain specializations from initial education (undergraduate education) to continuing education to be offered on demand in reaction to the needs of business partners and of the labour market. The importance of co‐operative links with enterprise, business, and industry, is bound to increase and to become a crucial cornerstone of higher education in the future. As increasing numbers of adults‐‐mature learners‐‐will be (re‐)entering higher education through continuing education programmes, university pedagogy must adapt itself to these students who will be studying and working simultaneously. University research will also be affected by the emphasis on continuing education. The future of the university is bright provided it opens itself up to society at large, develops an entrepreneurial spirit, and is able to engage in dialogue in the broadest sense.     

Examining the Meaning of Vague Quantifiers in Higher Education: How Often is “Often”?

Research in Higher Education - Researchers, assessment professionals, and faculty in higher education increasingly depend on survey data from students to make pivotal curricular and programmatic...     

Who Benefits from the Massification of Higher Education in Taiwan?

The objectives of expanding higher education are to foster advanced personnel and realize the concept of achieving equal access to education. The problems created by the expansion of higher education in many countries, including Taiwan, in fact indicate a divergence from originally anticipated objectives. Such problems include the uneven allocation of resources, tuition differences between public and private schools, and vicious competition in the face of declining student enrollments, all of which contribute to concerns about educational quality issues. Of additional interest is whether Taiwan's focus on university enrollments of disadvantaged ethnic groups has created a trend toward greater educational opportunities for its aboriginal people. Nevertheless, the distribution of resources is increasingly concentrated on elites from high socioeconomic backgrounds and in a few public universities. All of these factors have facilitated an increasing class reproduction in higher education. The original elites continue to enjoy a wealth of resources. Yet while more and more students gain access to higher education, their institutional teaching quality and learning environment still fall behind that of the elites.     

Whose Quality Conventions? The Application of Convention Theory in Higher Education

Internationally, demands for greater certainty over the quality of higher education are multiplying. This article argues that convention theory offers insights for considering quality in higher education in an increasingly market‐based system. Examples from the Australian higher education system are used to show how quality conventions can be mapped at varying system levels and across varying actors and how the existing taxonomy of quality in higher education can be located in a wider social and economic framework. It is suggested that this approach assists in identifying those quality conventions which may become dominant across stakeholder groups.     

Unravelling Quality in Higher Education: What Say the Students?

Abstract

The extant literature on quality assurance in higher education points to a dearth of empirical studies on students’ conceptions of quality in higher education. This interpretivist article reports on a study that explored the conceptions of quality in higher education by final year undergraduate students in six academic disciplines at Makerere University, Uganda. Data for the article was collected from 50 final year students in eight discipline-specific focus group discussions and was analysed using thematic analysis. Four conceptions of quality in higher education were evident from the participants’ responses, namely: quality as transformation (value-added); quality as fitness for purpose; quality as excellence; and quality as consistency/ perfection (zero-errors). Nevertheless, transformation and fitness for purpose featured as the dominant conceptions of quality in higher education and these conceptions of quality did not take place in a vacuum. The students rationalised transformation and fitness for purpose by what they perceived the purpose of higher education to be. The multiple and yet competing purposes of higher education occasioned the two definitions of quality in higher education. Therefore, consensus on the meaning of quality can be hastened by arriving at a common purpose of higher education in a given society rather than engaging with the notions of quality themselves. This thinking presupposes the idea that the purpose of higher education varies across time and space and the definition of quality in higher education should be responsive to the prevailing purpose(s) of higher education in a given society.     

Dearing is Dead – Blunkett is Born? The Future Funding of Higher Education

The Dearing Report's most substantial and rigorous piece of work on funding has been rendered irrelevant by the government's decision to adopt a different approach which Dearing had not considered. Much time, effort and money could have been saved if the government had made its objectives clear before the Report was finalised rather than on the day it was published.
Yet the Dearing chapters on funding are not wasted because they provide the case for a student contribution to tuition costs on the grounds of equity. These arguments are examined and supported in the paper. The Report is criticised for missing the opportunity to argue for credit-based funding in relation to both the public and student contributions.
The reasons for the government preferring its particular mix of means-tested fee and loan instead of means-tested maintenance grant are explained in terms of its political objectives. The effect of the government's proposals is that no student or parent pays more now for higher education than under existing arrangements. The extra private costs are incurred by graduates in repaying their additional loans out of their future income.
Finally, the misplaced emphasis on dealing with the full-time student funding problem led the Committee to give insufficient attention to other students. The adoption of a genuine lifelong learning model of higher education might have generated more relevant proposals not only on funding but elsewhere.     

Russian in the University Curriculum: A Case‐study of the Impact of the First World War on Language Study in Higher Education in Britain

The outbreak of the First World War and the emergence of Russia as Britain’s ‘glorious ally’ swiftly changed public attitudes in Britain, which had been largely, but not entirely, hostile to Russia. The sense that Britain needed to cure its ‘abysmal ignorance’ of Russia, coupled with the strong desire to replace Germany, the enemy, as a trading partner with Russia led to the initiation of the teaching of the language at eight or more university‐standard establishments. The material and intellectual foundation of the nascent departments of Russian was a partnership between commercial‐financial and academic interests. Money from business sources was crucial in the introduction of Russian teaching at several of them. It was, however, only at Nottingham that the commercial sector actively tried (unsuccessfully) to control the behaviour of the college by restricting promised funding. Meanwhile, partnership with technical schools in recruiting teachers was a significant feature of the introduction of Russian to the higher and further education sector. Staff recruited consisted of both British scholars and expatriate Russians (or other Slavs). Russian departments or divisions were often actively supported within the university by specialists in other fields, who were strongly of the opinion that any serious university system should accommodate the study of a society and culture as significant as that of Russia. When it became clear after the October Revolution that Russia would not continue to support Britain, France and America in the war against Germany, the withdrawal of interest external to the universities did not cause the immediate demise of Russian studies in higher education; they were by this time established firmly enough to survive for intellectual reasons alone, and indeed they survive to this day in most of the institutions discussed here. University College, Nottingham, later to become the University of Nottingham, exemplifies in microcosm the principal trends and features of the national situation.     

The Structure of Higher Education Impacted by Distance Education

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Welfare Reform: Can Higher Education Reduce the Feminization of Poverty?

In this paper we address what is meant by feminization of poverty. We also provide a very brief historical review of poor women, their children, and their need for financial assistance. Furthermore we identify some of the obstacles women face while trying to become self-sufficient and how women attempt to overcome these obstacles while relying on government aid. A strategy used by some of these women on welfare is to attend college and earn a degree. We show how this group of women now faces a major obstacle with a recent reform in the welfare system. Finally, we offer some suggestions as to how policies and practices of institutions of higher education can help female students on welfare, thereby reducing the feminization of poverty in the United States.     

“My Heart Is in the East and I Am in the West”: Enduring Questions of Israel Education in North America

By examining writing about Israel education since the founding of the State, this paper highlights three questions that have surfaced repeatedly in Jewish educational discourse: What is the purpose of teaching American Jews about Israel? Who is best equipped to teach American Jews about Israel? How can Israel education foster positive identification with Israel without whitewashing over the imperfections of the Jewish State? By exploring how each question has manifested in Jewish education, it examines why—for very different reasons—these questions have endured over time, and considers what it might take to arrive at lasting conclusions about them.     

The 'Gender Dimension' of both the 'Narrow' and 'Broad' Curriculum in UK Higher Education: Do women lose out in both?

This article draws on data from a qualitative research study undertaken in an old UK university. The main aim of the study was to measure the impact of gender issues on the university campus, an important part of which was the issue of the curriculum. Individuals were found to operate either a 'narrow' or 'broad' definition of the term 'curriculum'. In either case, there was found to be a 'gender dimension' involved. In male-dominated disciplines a 'narrow' definition of the term 'curriculum' was predominantly in use-appropriate discipline content and an unproblematic body of knowledge, which is to be transferred to students largely by lecturing. The difficulties to be overcome in order to undertake a gender-sensitive evaluation of the curriculum in these departments stemmed from the evaluations of the staff of what the problem was and where it was located. In disciplines that accepted a broader definition, which included the 'informal' curriculum, the gendered division of labour in the domestic sphere was repeated in the university, with the result that the division 'rational/emotional' became an aspect of the masculine/feminine divide. Men as well as women felt that men were less inclined to undertake the emotion work involved in supporting student learning. In this male-dominated society, 'emotion work' such as the pastoral support of students remained virtually invisible, and went largely unrewarded.