Meritocratic Epistemic Communities: An Alternative Policy Paradigm for Higher Education

This paper attempts to propose an alternative policy frame for higher education policy by demonstrating the inadequacy of the market approach adopted by the 2011 English higher education policy in addressing the economic and social agenda, and by reframing higher education as a mechanism that selects and distributes talents to vocational sectors in a way that achieves socially optimal outcomes. The paper shows why government control is more appropriate than market mechanism in managing higher education cost, how effective screening and distribution of talents can be achieved through deliberation among epistemic community members and how the alternative policy frame supports a social justice agenda. The idea of a meritocratic epistemic community for screening and educating talents is central to this new frame as it facilitates the creation of a common space where competing stakeholders of one vocational sector gather together to deliberate on the merits of the future workforce.     

Educating child practitioners: a (re)turn to the university disciplines

This paper analyses a specific disjunctive policy space in Scotland involving the current key children's social and educational policy agenda, Getting it Right for Every Child (GIRFEC), and a recent national report on teacher education, the ‘Donaldson Report’. In four main parts, the paper first introduces and applies in policy review and analysis a capitals frame to identify the policy–practice discontinuities currently inherent in the ‘GIRFEC-child practitioner education’ policy space, exemplified by the Donaldson Report. Then, the same capitals frame is applied to examine the capitals resources demanded in the particular ‘child–child practitioner education’ policy space previously delineated. Next, examples of policy disconnects amongst current child practice and practitioner education policy production and implementation, which warrant a concerted integrative cross-sector project to ensure coherent social and intellectual capital relations at all levels, are discussed. Finally, the paper calls for the governing professional registration bodies and universities involved in the education of child-sector practitioners to engage in the redesign of university programmes underpinned by principles of transdisciplinarity and transprofessionalism. The methodology is policy sociology and policy text analysis.     

新建本科院校"工程师逼近型"培养模式刍论——以工科专业为研究中心

在中国高等教育大众化进程中,新建本科院校发挥了巨大的作用。新建本科院校选择一种科学合理的人才培养模式有利于提高人才培养质量,同时对经济与社会发展都有着积极的意义。对于新建本科院校来说,确定人才培养目标、选择人才培养模式,还不能超越经济和社会发展水平,也不能脱离新建本科院校的现实情况。素质教育思想与高等教育大众化趋势要求新建本科院校培养宽口径、厚基础的全面发展的高质量人才,我国经济与社会发展水平和新建本科院校的地方性特点要求新建本科院校培养具有创新精神与实践能力的人才。综合理论与现实的要求,我们认为以工科专业为主的新建本科院校应建立一种"工程师逼近型"培养模式。     

Higher Education and Fair Employment in Northern Ireland

As equal opportunities are assuming greater significance in higher education this paper examines the issue of fair employment in the two universities in Northern Ireland. The development of higher education and the evolution of fair employment policy which seeks to promote greater equality of opportunity in employment between Protestants and Catholics, are outlined. The employment practices and profiles of Northern Ireland's two universities are considered. Under the 1989 Fair Employment Act employment monitoring is a legal requirement for the two universities. The paper concludes by noting that other UK higher education institutions should undertake monitoring as a means of implementing equal opportunities policy.     

On the Margins or Moving into the Mainstream? Higher Education in Further Education in England

As many students are now enrolled on higher education programmes in further education today as the total of all higher education students – whether in universities, advanced further education or teacher training – at the time of the Robbins Report in 1963 when the advance towards mass higher education first got under way. These programmes make a vital contribution to the diversity and, in particular, the accessibility and flexibility of higher education provision in England in 2009. Yet higher education in further education receives limited, and dwindling, policy attention. It is sometimes treated as a marginal, and even anomalous, provision. Yet the realisation of a truly lifelong learning system will depend crucially on the local delivery of higher education that is perhaps better tailored to social demand and economic imperatives.     

Will gender equality ever fit in? Contested discursive spaces of university reform

Similar to other European countries, the introduction of non-academic, especially managerial, criteria in higher education has shaped and altered Austrian universities since over a decade. This paper presents the results of a frame analysis of Austrian higher education debates from 1993 until 2010. It outlines how reforms in higher education were prepared and enhanced by a new policy discourse, with a special focus on the way gender equality is framed in reform debates. Our article describes three core frames: ‘from local to global’, ‘from ivory tower to business’ and ‘from civil servant to excellence’. We cluster these three frames around imaginations of space that are embedded in the normative foundations of academia, and discuss how this links up with arguments for gender equality. We furthermore propose to analytically separate two conceptions of the university: the ‘entrepreneurial’ and the ‘managerial’ university.     

文化资本理论视野下助学贷款的社会流动功用研究

以社会流动与文化资本为理论基础,基于问卷调查所得数据,采用描述性统计与Logistic回归等分析方法,对助学贷款的社会流动功用进行了实证分析。研究发现,随着高等教育费用的快速增长,经济资本成为个体获得文化资本的必要条件之一,经济资本匮乏的贫困生获取文化资本时,在数量与质量两方面都处于劣势;但绝大多数贫困生获得助学贷款后,打破经济资本拥有不足对其文化资本追逐活动的制约,获得数量更多、质量更高的文化资本,从而在社会地位市场的竞争中具有更强的竞争力。助学贷款通过文化资本这条路径,间接发挥着促进贫困生向上社会流动的功用。为了更好发挥助学贷款的社会流动功用,研究最后提出了加快助学贷自身发展等一系列的政策建议。     

Developing a Curriculum Guarantee for Overseas Students

The intemationalisation of Australian higher education during the 1980s was largely a response to what was perceived as an economic imperative: the need to create an export culture. As a policy initiative, the response has been remarkably successful with Australian higher education institutions attracting a significant number of overseas students, particularly from the Asian region. Yet this economic policy context has often obscured the necessity to provide for overseas students in a way that is consistent with the liberal democratic values that are so much part of the culture of Australian universities. This paper argues that those values should be reasserted so that overseas students are regarded not so much as the end products of a business transaction but as individuals with real needs and concerns that must be addressed.     

Reconsidering the social and economic purposes of higher education

In this article I seek to reconsider the social and economic purposes of higher education. It begins with the premise that there appears to be a general trend towards governments positioning higher education primarily in terms of the economic role that it can fulfil. Such a trend, however, has attracted considerable criticism. In this article I argue that the problem for higher education is not it having an economic role, but the narrowness of the way in which that role is often conceptualised. Drawing on critical theory I explore the interrelation of economic and social factors within higher education and the wider society in which it is situated. This article argues for a redefinition of the purposes of higher education to ensure that both universities and workplaces are sites of human creativity and that the profound and exciting work within institutions of higher education benefits all members of society.     

高校视角下成人高等教育函授站管理机制提升研究--以浙江省为例

高校在异地设置成人高等教育函授站是招生规模扩大后的一种常见管理模式。高校和函授站之间共生互补,但同时二者也面临寻求最大经济效益和保持一定的社会口碑之间的矛盾。从高校的视角,探索教育部门、高校和函授站在成人高等学历教育管理的联动关系中各自的位置和功能,全方位、多层次地研究函授站的目前的运行状态和管理机制,运用调查统计和比较分析等方法,关注函授站管理机制提升的研究和规范目标,教育部门、高校和函授站只有形成良性循环的管理链,才能促使成人高等教育体系的可持续发展。     

Where Soviet and neoliberal discourses meet: the transformation of the purposes of higher education in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia

This paper studies transformations in the role of higher education in Russia as represented in official Soviet and post-Soviet policy documents between the 1950s and 2013. The focus is on the categories defining the purposes and tasks of higher education in the larger context of society and economy. There is a basic dichotomy in relation to the purposes and role of higher education, between vocational training (which is seen as a determining factor in the economic development) and personal development/education (seen as a condition of social development). The balance of these two poles, economic instrumentalism and social instrumentalism, changes throughout the history. The Soviet documents emphasized the importance of both, with the predominance of the social instrumentalism. The transitional period of the late 1980s and early 1990s is characterized by increasing humanistic discourse in regard to higher education. Later post-Soviet documents, reflecting neoliberal policies, largely abandon social instrumentalism and more exclusively promote the economic role of higher education. Economic instrumentalism is the meeting point of two historical eras, with their respective ideologies and political agendas. Connecting Soviet and neoliberal discourses highlights the importance of historical legacies in regard to the economic, applied nature of higher education, and underlines the crucial role of the state, which facilitated acceptance of neoliberal agendas in Russian society. The analysis also contributes to further understanding of the nature of the neoliberal reforms globally and in post-socialist countries.     

Changing higher education: converging policy-packages and experiences of changing academic work in Sweden

The past two decades of international higher education reform are often described by researchers as having produced new managerial and neoliberal policy turns that have brought about a fundamental global shift in the way institutions of higher education are defined, run and justify their institutional existence and practices. Universities in Sweden were felt able to offer some possible resistance and based on ethnographic research at three Swedish universities this idea is explored in the present article. The article suggests however that resistance has been circumscribed through a coordinated collection of policies and that as elsewhere, the proliferation of competition based on quasi-markets and the standardisation of quality assurance through new accountability systems predominates, with significant effects on universities, their interactions and agents, and the relative social positions, influence, status and relationships of these agents.     

地方普通高等学校办学定位探讨

地方普通高校是我国高等教育的重要组成部分，其办学定位如何直接决定着我国高．等教育的质量和水平。本文在对高等学校办学定位内涵分析的基础上，提出了地方普通高校的办学定位应具备的特征和依据，指出地方普通高校应面向地方经济社会发展的需要，开展应用技术研究，重点培养高等专业性、技术性人才。     

高等教育评估引导高校发展的现实路径与展望

新时代背景下我国经济社会发生着深层次的变革,使高校对社会的教育贡献度有了新的更高要求,而我国高等教育评估制度对高等教育的发展具有突出的引导和激励功能,从政策引领、专业指导和综合服务等多个方面引导高校实现其服务国家战略的核心价值。文章在回顾我国高等教育评估发展历程和实现路径的基础上,阐述了审核评估的特点与内涵,并以审核评估为例分析了教育评估通过引导高校合理确定目标定位、优化资源配置、建立质量保障体系和密切联系社会等方面促进高校提升办学质量,推动内涵发展的主要表现,并从完善教育评估工作,建立学校自我评估制度和树立高校职能协调发展的价值导向等三个方面展望了高等教育评估工作的发展方向。     

西部民族地区高校服务地方经济社会发展研究

有效地服务地方经济社会发展,是对西部民族地区高校的迫切要求。借鉴国外大学服务地方经济社会发展的经验,文章分析了西部民族地区高校服务地方经济社会发展的途径。同时,就西部民族地区高校服务地方经济社会发展,从国家、政府、高校三个方面提出了政策建议。     

Classical Political Economy and the Role of Universities in the New Knowledge Economy

Higher education has become the new star ship in the policy fleet for governments around the world. The public policy focus on higher education, in part, reflects a growing consensus in macroeconomics of 'new growth' or 'endogenous growth' theory, based on the work of Solow, Lucas and Romer that argues that the driving force behind economic growth is technological change (i.e. improvements in knowledge about how we transform inputs into outputs in the production process). Knowledge about technology and levels of information flow are now considered critical for economic development and can account for differential growth patterns. In short, universities are seen to be a key driver towards the knowledge economy. Accordingly, higher education institutions have been encouraged to develop links with industry and business in a series of new venture partnerships. This emphasis in higher education policy also accords with initiatives to promote greater entrepreneurial skills and activity within so-called national systems of innovation. This paper focuses upon the economic importance of higher education as a key component of the knowledge economy. It discusses the genealogy and contributing strands to the newly emerging discourse and considers universities in the knowledge-driven economy by reference to the UK White Paper Our Competitive Future. It also considers the arguments advanced by Joseph Stiglitz (ex-Chief Economist of the World Bank) for the 'analytics of the knowledge economy' and discusses universities in terms of 'knowledge cultures'. Finally, the paper provides a critique of the policy discourse of the knowledge economy as a basis of the new challenges facing universities under knowledge capitalism.     

Unspoken Exclusion: Experiences of continued marginalisation from education among 'hard to reach' groups of adults and children in the UK

Despite UK government initiatives aimed to address social exclusion, local experience of those who have the poorest access to economic and social resources is that they continue to be marginalised from education and other mainstream institutions, and excluded from a voice in designing remedial initiatives. This paper draws on the experiences of particularly women and children in a study undertaken with non-English-speaking and other culturally excluded groups in two inner-city areas. It aims to explore both common and discrete experiences of social exclusion in relation to mainstream institutions; and to locate these within a frame of some current social and education policy interventions. The paper contributes to a growing literature that seeks to examine the local effects of new policy initiatives.     

Curricular reform and the changing social role of public higher education in Costa Rica

This paper traces how various dominant social, economic, and political philosophies are played out in debate over and changes in the general studies curriculum at the University of Costa Rica. This investigation reveals a close link between dominant ideologies and the general studies curriculm. Specifically, the general studies program implemented in the 1970s which emphasized teaching about national problems and social responsibility, is currently being challenged by neoliberal policies and perceived competition from private universities. Latin American universities have traditionally served as battlegrounds of competing social, political, and economic philosophies. The debate over general studies serves as a unique opportunity to observe how competing social roles of higher education are played out in the university setting. The author concludes that the debate over general studies is really about the role and status of the University of Costa Rica in an environment thatvalues privatization; individual, as opposed to societal, benefit from higher education; and professions such as management.     

The power of institutional isomorphism: an analysis of the institutionalization of performance-based pay systems in Korean National Universities

The purpose of this study was to analyze the introduction of the performance-based pay system (PPS) in Korean national universities through the perspective of institutional isomorphism. Using three isomorphism concepts of coercive, mimetic, and normative, and further framing the PPS within the overarching theoretical frameworks of governmentality, neoliberalism, myth, and policy convergence, this study explored the historical and social background of the PPS, the reason the Korean government pursued the PPS form used in the US higher education, and the main factors that affected its introduction in Korean national universities. The result of this analysis shows that while the institutionalization of the PPS in Korean national universities seemed closely associated with the radical political, economic change in Korean society, it was in fact an exemplar of isomorphism from the US model of public and private higher education. This isomorphic activity functioned simultaneously as a norm, social order, and myth within Korean higher education while faculty displayed an anti-isomorphic tendency against the power of the institutional isomorphism of PPS in national universities.