Understanding the higher education student in Europe: a comparative analysis

Higher education is of considerable importance to policymakers across Europe. Indeed, it is viewed as a key mechanism for achieving a range of economic, social and political goals. Nevertheless, despite this prominence within policy, we have no clear understanding of the extent to which conceptualisations of ‘the student’ are shared across the continent. To start to redress this gap, this article explores four key aspects of contemporary higher education students’ lives, considering the extent to which they can be considered as, variously, consumers, workers, family members and political actors. On the basis of this evidence, it argues that, despite assumptions on the part of European policymakers that there are now large commonalities in the experiences of students across Europe – evident in pronouncements about Erasmus mobility and the operations of the European Higher Education Area – significant differences exist both between and within individual nation-states.     

The Evolution of Government Policy on Widening Participation

This paper examines the evolution of government policy in England on widening participation. It traces government policy on widening participation in relation to social class from Robbins (1963 ) through Dearing (1997 ) to ‘The Future of Higher Education’ (2003 ) and the passing of the Higher Education Act (2004). The paper concludes that there is a lack of participation in policy formulation by certain key groups, particularly those directly affected by widening participation policy. In addition, although the government's widening participation policy has generally progressed, it has done so within an overly bureaucratic system of control that fails to give higher education institutions the autonomy they need. There are also occasions when aspects of policy seem to be taking backward steps. Moreover, while the government adopts a rhetoric of strategic rationality, policy on widening participation often appears to be ad hoc, piecemeal and lacking a cohesive, evidence‐based rationale. Finally, there are times when New Labour appears to lack the political will to implement radical policies.     

Sustainability and distance learning: a diverse European experience?

Higher Education (HE) is experiencing disruption from technologies, demographics, the globalising world and longer life expectancy. Historically Higher Education has had a legacy of being seen as the requirement for an educated ‘elite’, there has been a policy ambition set in various countries (including the UK) for it to become the expectation for much wider segments of the population as a whole. As students become ‘everyone’ and learning becomes ‘all the time’ Distance Teaching and Research Institutions have a tremendous opportunity but there are also many disruptions and barriers to overcome. Higher Education institutions have an important role within Education for Sustainable Development and sustainable lifestyles; one of the important goals and targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development goals for 2030. Higher Education can contribute to sustainability in many ways – social, technical and environmental; globally and locally. In particular distance-learning universities due to the flexibility in the learning process, use of technologies, and inter-disciplinary approach to teaching and learning, constitute key factors in education for sustainable development. But what will this contribution look like? In this paper, the responses from senior leaders in four major European distance-learning universities are presented, compared and discussed. The tentative conclusions draw out some strategic imperatives for sustainable higher education in the twenty first century.     

Stickiness in academic career (im)mobilities of STEM early career researchers: an insight from Greece

Higher Education - Academic and policy discourse has idealised academic mobility despite studies showing that it can have adverse effects on individuals’ experiences and contribute towards...     

Foreign policies of U.S. higher education institutions: Accident or design?

Based on a content analysis of The Chronicle of Higher Education from 1984 to 1989, the authors find that current foreign policy decisions of higher education institutions are being made reactively within four policy arenas: research, students, investments, and academic programs. The authors conclude that a comprehensive foreign policy should be included in an institution's strategic planning process.He has served recently as Visiting Professor of Higher Education at the University of Georgia. Previously he was Director of the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education. Carolyn P. Griswold has a M.Ed. from Georgia State University and is a doctoral candidate in the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia. Phyllis Wyatt-Woodruff is Director of Enrollment at Paine College and a doctoral candidate in the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia. Patricia Gregg is on the staff of Clayton State College and is a doctoral candidate in the Institute of Higher Education at the University of Georgia.     

Unifying Higher Education for Different Kinds of Europeans. Higher Education and Work: A comparison of ten countries

This article discusses the European Union's ongoing campaign to create a common European Higher Education Area against a set of comparative results on the current state of university education within the envisioned area. Our data on 25,000 university graduates from ten European countries reveal both similarities and differences between these countries in the relationships between education and the world of work, degree structures, actual study duration, quality of education, and student mobility. Our results show that university education is interwoven with various social, cultural and economic factors. There are various national peculiarities that have evolved over decades in response to the problems thrown up by the expansion of higher education. Therefore, in order to be successful, pan-European higher education policy has to take into account the constant functional and institutional diversification of 'mass higher education' as well as the persistent cultural differences and regional inequality within Europe.     

Is it Possible to Live a Philosophical,Educational Life in Education,Nowadays?

I consider if and how far it is possible to live an educational philosophical life, in the fast‐changing, globalised world of Higher Education. I begin with Socrates’ account of a philosophical life in the Apology. I examine some tensions within different conceptions of what it is to do philosophy. I then go on to focus more closely on what it might be to live a philosophical, educational life in which educational processes and outcomes are influenced by philosophy, using examples taken from published sources and from conversational interviews with philosophers carried out by myself with Kenneth Wain, Bas Levering and Richard Pring. I then outline the directions of current European policy for Higher Education. Finally I discuss how far current policies and trends leave room for doing philosophy of education, concluding that it is possible, but only for individuals who are very much in sympathy with current policy trends or who are creative in constructing smoke screens.     

“高教三十条”的形成：一种多源流理论的分析视角

2012年,教育部出台了“高教三十条”。它的形成是多种因素共同作用的结果。通过运用多源流理论进行分析,我们发现：人才培养质量堪忧、科学研究水平堪虞、社会服务能力堪虑构成了“问题流”;官员和学者呼吁提高高等教育质量构成了“政策流”;科学发展观的提出构成了“政治流”。2011年,胡锦涛同志《在清华大学建校100周年上的讲话》是“高教三十条”形成的“政策之窗”。     

我国高等教育的投资与投资环境问题

高等教育所具有的产业属性决定了它能够成为投资主体对象，高等教育的大众化发展方向和良好的投资收益率强化了政府，社会主民众对高等教育的投资力度。目前，高等教育投资结构中财政性投入和非财政性投入并举；居民对大学生提供的生活保障费用和大学生在上学期间所放弃的个人收入应核算为对高等教育的消费性投资。高等教育投资的宏观社会环境，政策环境和微观组织环境良好；观念问题，经济不发达等仍是影响对高等教育投资的主要因素。宏观投资环境的改善，宏观政策的落实，微观政策的选择是解决高等教育投资与投资环境问题的基本思路。     

Supercomplexity and the university: Ronald Barnett and the social philosophy of Higher Education

Ronald Barnett's modern classic Realizing the University in an Age of Supercomplexity (published December 1999), has had a crucial impact internationally on the field of Higher Education research and development since the book was published now nearly 20 years ago. Bridging an academic oeuvre across almost 30 years with close to 30 published volumes, Realizing the University in an Age of Supercomplexity plays an important role in the development and transformation of Barnett's social theory of Higher Education into a social philosophy of Higher Education. In the book Barnett performs an important move from a focus on knowledge and epistemology to a focus on being and ontology in relation to Higher Education practices. Barnett shifts his fundamental perspective and view on the relation between universities and the wider society from one of caution and worry to a perspective of hope and vision that fully embraces the future of Higher Education. This way, Realizing the University in an Age of Supercomplexity has not only paved the way for Barnett's own development of a social philosophy of Higher Education, but also contributed invaluably to the rise and maturing of philosophy of Higher Education as a research field in its own right.     

高等教育促进正向社会流动的策略研究

高等教育有利于促进正向社会流动,对我国社会阶层分化和变动起到重要和特殊的积极作用。通过对高等教育促进正向社会流动策略的研究,有助于更多社会中下阶层接受高质量的高等教育,从而实现自身的正向社会流动。     

The neoliberal turn in Higher Education

Recent writing on Higher Education has seen much policy and practice attributed to the advent or impact of neoliberalism. This paper examines the origins and meaning of the term, its application to Higher Education and Higher Education research, and the issues and critique that have been raised in this context. It is argued that neoliberalism is just one more in a whole series of ‘fright terms’ used in an attempt to galvanise opposition and resistance to the current directions of Higher Education policy and practice.     

民间慈善基金会组织对美国高等教育的影响

慈善基金会是美国社会颇富特色的一种民间组织,在美国高等教育的发展历程中扮演着重要和独特的角色。民间慈善基金会组织的产生源于美国独特的社会文化背景、富人群体的涌现、政府部门的税收政策以及源远流长的宗教信仰等,它们以促进社会公共福利和资助社会慈善公益事业为宗旨,其类型分为独立基金会、公司基金会、社区基金会、运作型基金会。民间慈善基金会组织自产生以来就十分重视和支持美国高等教育的发展,它们在增加美国高校办学经费、促进高校科学研究、关注高校弱势群体、保障高校教师生活、推动和促进美国医学高等教育发展等方面发挥了积极的作用,成为推动美国高等教育快速向前发展的特殊群体和重要力量。     

‘Creative destruction’: knowledge economy policy and the future of the arts and humanities in the academy1

Policy conceptualizations of the global knowledge economy have led to the channelling of much Higher Education and Research and Development funding into the priority areas of science and technology. Among other things, this diversion of funding calls into question the future of traditional humanities and creative arts faculties. How these faculties, and the disciplines within them, might reconfigure themselves for the knowledge economy is, therefore, a question of great importance, although one that as yet has not been adequately answered. This paper explores some of the reasons for this by looking at how innovation in the knowledge economy is typically theorized. It takes one policy trajectory informing Australia’s key innovation statement as an example. It argues that, insofar as the formation of this knowledge economy policy has been informed by a techno‐economic paradigm, it works to preclude many humanities and creative arts disciplines. This paper, therefore, looks at how an alternative theorization of the knowledge economy might offer a more robust framework from within which to develop humanities and creative arts Higher Education and Research policy in the knowledge economy, both in Australia and internationally.     

博洛尼亚进程述论

作为欧洲高等教育改革重大举措的博洛尼亚进程,即欧洲高等教育区建设进程,是在高等教育国际化和欧洲经济政治一体化的背景下产生的.它以建构欧洲高等教育区为目标,旨在加强各成员国之间高等教育的可比性和兼容性,增强欧洲高等教育的吸引力和竞争力,提高欧洲高等教育的质量,重塑欧洲高等教育的辉煌.1999年6月,欧洲29国教育部长共同签署<博洛尼亚宣言>,提出建设欧洲高等教育区的具体构想、行动纲领和工作计划.其后,经过历次会议特别是5次部长峰会的评估和改革,逐步形成"学位体系建设、质量保证、学位互认、促进流动、联合学位、终身学习、社会维度和机会均等、提升就业力、全球化背景下的欧洲高等教育"等新的行动目标,并在学制改革、质量保证、学分互换、学位互认等方面取得明显进展.2007年的伦敦会议明确提出,要建设"全球化背景下欧洲高等教育区".从<索邦宣言>欧洲高等教育区的设想到EHEA的形成规模,从当初的4个发起国到现在的46个成员国,博洛尼亚进程走过了10年,其内容不断丰富,目标日益完善,原则广受认同,且一直处于发展、改革和完善之中,致力于协调进程在各国实施进度的差异、保持进程趋同化发展中的多样性、寻求不同民族和国家在区域性合作和竞争中的平衡.     

The Comprehensive University in International Perspective

Initiatives taken to democratize secondary education, business and industrial demands for manpower with sophisticated technological training, and the hope on the part of large numbers of citizens from the more modest levels of society for upward social mobility have placed new and serious strains upon the traditional structure of higher education in the Federal Republic of Germany. The Draft Plan for a Comprehensive System of Higher Education is considered by many observers to be a significant official response to the university crisis. In this study, Dr. Eilsberger, a staff member of the Federal Ministry of Education and Science, analyzes the Draft Plan and compares it to similar strategies in several other countries. His article first appeared in Die Deutsche Universitats-Zeitung vereinigt mit Hochschul-Dienst, June 1, 1972.     

Travels in extreme social mobility: how first-in-family students find their way into and through medical education

ABSTRACT

Higher education is understood as essential to enabling social mobility. Research and policy have centred on access to university, but recently attention has turned to the journey of social mobility itself – and its costs. Long-distance or ‘extreme’ social mobility journeys particularly require analysis. This paper examines journeys of first-in-family university students in the especially high-status degree of medicine, through interviews with 21 students at an Australian medical school. Three themes are discussed: (1) the roots of participants’ social mobility journeys; (2) how sociocultural difference is experienced and negotiated within medical school; and (3) how participants think about their professional identities and futures. Students described getting to medical school ‘the hard way’, and emphasised the different backgrounds and attitudes of themselves and their wealthier peers. Many felt like ‘imposters’, using self-deprecating language to highlight their lack of ‘fit’ in the privileged world of medicine. However, such language also reflected resistance to middle-class norms and served to create solidarity with community of origin, and, importantly, patients. Rather than narratives of loss, students’ stories reflect a tactical refinement of self and incorporation of certain middle-class attributes, alongside an appreciation of the worth their ‘difference’ brings to their new destination, the medical profession.     

Predictors of student success in Higher Education: Secondary school internal scores versus national exams

In many countries entrance to Higher Education is determined by the performance of students in secondary school and/or the scores obtained in national exams. The relative weight of these two scores on the admission decision is a relevant policy topic, given its implication on who is admitted to university. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relative predictive power of these two measures on the academic performance of students in Higher Education. It makes use of a dataset of Bachelor students from Portuguese Higher Education institutions with detailed information about their characteristics and past achievement results. The measure of academic achievement considered is the Bachelor's final average score. The main finding is that the scores given by teachers in secondary school are better predictors of subsequent performance than the access exam scores. The relevance of factors like working status, social support and gender vary with the reputation of the degree and the type of Higher Education institution, university versus polytechnic. A noteworthy result is that the added predictive contribution of parents' education is always negligible when past success measures are already taken into account.     

After globalisation: A reconceptualisation of transnational Higher Education governance in Singapore and Hong Kong

Research on transnational Higher Education governance has provided a thesis explaining how East Asian states have successfully selectively blended elements of globalisation in Higher Education with their pre‐existing regulatory regimes. However, this paper argues that the thesis overlooks the significance of local politics in understanding the formulation of Higher Education policy, thus insufficiently acknowledging the indeterminacy that arises in the globalisation process. To address this argument, this paper examines the transnational Higher Education development in Singapore and Hong Kong and explains how political resistance and corresponding policy changes that emerged in these two societies help reconceptualise transnational Higher Education governance.     

Accessing higher education: the dilemma of schooling women,minorities, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in contemporary India

This article focusses on the growth of higher education within the framework of preferential treatment and supportive measures for the benefit of different social groups, namely, the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, minorities and women. It also reviews the educational policy discourse which assigns several functions to higher education. Some of these are: equity for the Scheduled Castes and Tribes; mainstreaming for the minorities, and equality for women. It demonstrates that the educational policy fails to integrate these functions which remain sectoral aims even at the conceptual level. Further, in the multi-cultural and multi-ethnic Indian society, the parametres of gender, caste, class and region are crucial in determining access to higher education. Again, gender becomes the all inclusive negative parameter conferring cumulative and competing disadvantages on women. Lastly, the educational policies and programmes are unable to encompass the complex social reality within a single framework and are, therefore, unable to bridge the gap between policy and practice.First published inHigher Education Reform in India, eds. Philip G. Altbach and Suma Chitnis (New Delhi: Sage Publication India Pvt. Ltd.).