Student’s local top-up higher education choices

Making decisions about education choices is challenging and difficult for students. Utilising the theory of reasoned action, we specify and estimate a conceptual framework that captures the cognitive process of decision making of students in choosing top-up higher degrees in Hong Kong. Top-up higher or bachelor’s degrees are top-up undergraduate programmes forming a progression route for sub-degree graduates to earn bachelor’s degrees. We argue that attitudes, subjective norms and perceived value influence a student’s top-up higher education choices. Our results show that family members, educators, job availability and security, social image and difficulty of curriculum play critical roles in influencing students’ decision. We also find differences between females and males, between business and non-business students and between Year 1 and Year 2 students in higher education choices. These findings underscore the importance of educational institutions developing effective policies for promoting top-up higher degree programmes by taking cognisance of gender, the field of study and year of study differences and for policy makers to understand the dynamics of higher education.     

Japan’s English-medium instruction initiatives and the globalization of higher education

This article analyzes a recent initiative of Japan’s Ministry of Education, which aims to internationalize higher education in Japan. The large-investment project “Top Global University Project” (TGUP) has emerged to create globally oriented universities, to increase the role of foreign languages in higher education, and to foster global human resources. The TGUP identifies 37 universities: 13 as “top global universities” intended to compete in the top 100 university world rankings and 24 “global traction universities” intended to lead the internationalization of higher education in Japan. Despite the substantial funding behind this initiative, little research has been conducted to evaluate the potential impact of this policy on language planning in higher education in Japan. This paper addresses this gap in its exploration of the TGUP, including key changes from previous internationalization policies. It then presents an analysis of publicly available documents regarding the policy, collected from all 37 of the participant universities. Findings indicate a positive departure from older policy trends and the emergence of flexible, unique forms of English language education in Japan’s universities.     

The Coalition’s higher education reforms in England

Abstract

The Coalition Government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in office from 2010 until 2015 sharply increased the maximum tuition fees for UK and EU undergraduates at English universities to £9,000. Although this is often portrayed as a radical change, it is argued that the reform was an evolution rather than a revolution. Common pessimistic predictions, such as the claim there would be a big fall in the number of full-time students, were wrong. However, the policymaking behind the increase in the fee cap was rushed, and this contributed to shortcomings such as a decline in part-time students. The article considers a series of political mistakes made by the Liberal Democrats, including making the abolition of tuition fees a key part of their election strategy in 2010 when the party’s leaders lacked faith in the policy. The article also notes that critics of the Coalition’s higher education reforms were largely ineffectual because they lacked a strong intellectual case or a clear alternative and fixated on fees to the exclusion of other important issues. The piece ends by asserting that the Coalition’s plan to remove student number controls was a change of overlooked importance.     

Teacher’s use of iPads in higher education

Mobile devices (e.g. iPads or galaxy tab) are increasingly being used in educational contexts. There has been growing investment in higher education institutions in Hong Kong by the HKSAR Education Bureau in relation to educational uses of mobile technology. However, current research into educational applications of this technology is limited. This article reports results of a qualitative study that investigated how higher education teachers use iPads to facilitate their practice. The study results provide insight into both the educational affordances of iPad technology and the ways in which teachers’ personal or private theories mediate these affordances. The study outcomes contribute to theoretical understanding of higher education teacher changes through adoption of mobile technology. Furthermore, the outcomes provide a set of recommendations for applications of iPads and similar technologies in higher education and ways to support teachers to effectively adopt such technology in their practices.     

Quality Street: encountering higher education’s accountabilities

This article offers a new approach to quality, focusing on the dimensions that gather around it. The mismatched goals of controlling and improving higher education continue to trouble the conceptual clarity of accountability. Quality in higher education emerges as something agreed upon (to varying efficacy) through accountability measures, rather than dictated or scheduled. A concept of purchase (the connectedness of accountability with quality) informs discussion. Following an overview of what quality means logically and in the operational context of high rates of access to and participation in higher education, the argument proceeds to a schema of complementary types, or personages, of accountability (transactional, political, bureaucratic, institutional and disciplinary). Throughout, the desire to be viewed well and self-awareness interplay, rendering the various approaches to quality assurance presences to be acknowledged in their own right.     

Listening to children’s voices on intercultural education policy and practice

The overarching purpose of this research is to investigate native and immigrant children’s experiences of intercultural pedagogical practices in Cyprus schools. It also explores their suggestions for the improvement of policies and practices for intercultural education. Last but not least, it examines whether Cypriot and immigrant students share similar or different conceptualisations and understandings regarding the above aspects. To this end, interviews were carried out with 40 pupils, aged 11–12, of five primary schools, which presented high concentrations of immigrant students. On the basis of our analysis of our data, the children appeared to perceive intercultural education in terms of culturally responsive discussions, collaborative learning and language learning.     

From ‘brain drain’ to ‘brain bridging’: transnational higher education development and graduate employment in China

ABSTRACT

In the past few decades, the internationalisation of higher education has become an increasingly popular trend across different parts of the globe. The fierce global competition and the aggravating unemployment rate, coupled with low teaching and research quality revealed by universities in mainland China, have inevitably compelled a growing number of Chinese students, in particular the financially-able ones, to pursue higher education overseas or to enrol in transnational higher education offered in mainland China. Realising the severe problem of ‘brain drain’ and having a strong conviction to transform its higher education system to become more international for enhancing the global competitiveness of its higher education system, the Chinese government has made different attempts to enhance higher education quality by learning and incorporating new ideas and practices from overseas institutions, particularly encouraging the development of transnational higher education to change the higher education landscape. With particular reference to examining the way these students evaluate their future prospects in choosing different alternatives for further studies in higher education, this study sets out against the context briefly outlined above to critically analyse the motivation of students who choose to study abroad or enrol in Sino-foreign cooperation universities. This study also discusses the extent to which the internationalisation of higher education would affect the situations of ‘brain drain’ and graduate employment in China.     

The moral dimension in Chilean higher education’s expansion

Chilean higher education has expanded greatly in recent decades, primarily through drawing on the private contributions of students and families, and an increased number and variety of institutions. In the context of attempts to address criticism that the sector is not free, public or high-quality enough, this article examines the association between education and its moral and ethical dimensions, and their separate yet complementary consideration alongside economic development, through the two centuries of the Chilean state’s existence. Since the beginning of the current decade, discontent with the framing and performance of higher education as a whole has grown. The overview traces this process not as fresh crisis, but part of a social question pondered repeatedly in the past and supported with varying success through educational and political initiatives. This historical (and historiographic) approach illuminates the limits of conceiving of higher education as either an economic good or as a human right, and an overlooked need to support its benefits through policy. Not simply an interpenetration with economic thinking, but also a lack of sufficient appreciation of Chile’s fundamental and singular character, present as challenges in understanding expanded access’s function and its prospective contribution to growing debates around ethics and inequality.     

Stakeholders’ views of South Korea’s higher education internationalization policy

The study investigated the stakeholders’ perceptions of South Korea’s higher education internationalization policy. Based on the research framework that defines four policy values—propriety, effectiveness, diversity, and engagement, the convergence model was employed with a concurrent mixed method sampling strategy to analyze the stakeholders’ perceptions. According to the findings, the stakeholders perceived that the government’s internationalization policy to date has contributed to the international competitiveness of Korean universities by and large in a quantitative manner. Their views however signaled that the government should consider the quality and identity of Korean higher education institutions when designing and implementing internationalization policy. Based on the implications that the findings have in the policy context, this study suggested two points for future policy research into Korean higher education internationalization: (1) develop a glonacal definition of world-classness for Korean universities and (2) build up a mixture model of centralization and decentralization for the government-university relations, which encourages internal self-governance of Korean universities.     

Affirmative action in Romania’s higher education: Roma students’ perceived meanings and dilemmas

This qualitative paper explores Roma students’ perceptions on the policy of assigning ‘special places’ for Roma in Romania’s universities. Findings suggest that Roma see themselves as occupying a precarious social space, concerned not as much to hide perceived merit violation but to handle (alleged) inadequacies given by their stigmatized ethnicity.     

Funding and the attainment of transformation goals in South Africa’s higher education

The link between the funding of higher education and the attainment of higher education transformation goals in South Africa, especially access by students from previously under‐represented communities, is the main focus of this paper. Specifically, the paper examines three questions: (a) How does public funding of higher education encourage (or discourage) the attainment of higher education transformation goals in South Africa? (b) What challenges do frequent tuition fee increases pose to the attainment of higher education transformation goals? (c) How can South Africa’s higher education be made affordable for indigent (mostly black) students? The paper concludes that although South Africa’s higher education funding formula is generally geared towards attaining the goals of transformation, several of its aspects are inimical to the achievement of these goals. Further, declining public funding of higher education and frequent tuition fee increases by public universities vis‐à‐vis higher education’s natural inclination to reproduce, and even to exacerbate, existing social disparities and inequalities do not bode well for the attainment of transformation in South Africa’s higher education. This is aggravated by existing high levels of poverty and inequality mostly affecting the majority of the communities that were marginalised during apartheid.     

A question of autonomy: Bourdieu’s field approach and higher education policy

The concept of field forms the centre of Pierre Bourdieu’s relational sociology and the notion of ‘autonomy’ is its keystone. This article explores the usefulness of these underexamined concepts for studying policy in higher education. It begins by showing how Bourdieu’s ‘field’ approach enables higher education to be examined as a distinct and irreducible object of study. It then explores the value and limitations of this conceptualization through analyses of policy during two contrasting moments of transition in the same field. First, the insights offered by a field approach are illustrated by analysing the new student debate over the creation of new universities in early 1960s English higher education. This shows how the field’s relatively high autonomy shaped the focus and form of policy debates by refracting economic and political pressures into specifically educational issues. Second, considering contemporary changes in policy highlights how the erosion of the social compact underpinning higher education has increasingly fractured autonomy, necessitating the development of Bourdieu’s conceptualization. A distinction between positional and relational dimensions of autonomy is introduced to capture an increasing disjuncture between the origins of the actors running higher education and of the principles they are adopting, respectively. These concepts are utilized to illuminate the effects of current moves towards marketization and managerialism in higher education on principles, practices and identities within the field.