Positioning higher education for the knowledge based economy

This article questions the assumption that increasing competition among higher education institutions is the best method of achieving a strong higher education sector in developing countries. It notes that there has been increasing emphasis on the importance of higher education institutions for sustainable development, particularly because of their importance to the global knowledge economy. For the same reason, the appropriate management of the relationship between the state and higher education institutions is vital to a strong and dynamic future for these institutions. This paper proposes a menu of options for higher education governance, grouped around ‘state-centric’ and ‘neo-liberal’ models of development. The ‘state-centric’ model proposed is based on a variety of examples of high performing Asian economies, in particular, while the ‘neo-liberal’ model is based on emerging trends in higher education management in countries such as Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. The paper suggests that despite pressure across the globe to encourage a market among universities, this may not always be the most efficient use of resources, or the best way to integrate universities in a country’s drive for economic growth.     

Changing Facets of Korean Higher Education: Market Competition and the Role of the State

During the past several decades, the Korean higher education sector has experienced tremendous expansion, while the quality of teaching and research has not improved very much. Despite the fact that higher education had to rely on the private sector for most of its finance and provision, market competition among higher education institutions has, until recently, been heavily restricted by the government. We argue that the government should try to incorporate more market-based policies in order to upgrade the quality of teaching and research at higher education institutions. An earlier version of this paper has been presented at the workshop, ‘Upgrading Korean Education in the Age of Knowledge Economy: Context and Issues’ sponsored by Korea Development Institute and the World Bank, October 14–15, 2002, Seoul, Korea. We are grateful to the workshop participants and anonymous referees to this journal for their comments and suggestions.     

Institutional lifecycles in British higher education

Summary The twentieth century has witnessed exponential growth in the provision of higher education and this growth accelerates the dynamic of institutional change. The change structures discussed in the present paper can be summarized in a cyclical model of development as presented in Figure 8. Long-term development along familiar, accustomed lines is no longer the universal or ‘normal’ expectation — if indeed it ever was. Morphological change is probable, though the direction of that change may take time to clarify. One thing seems clear: the political and economic pressures on universities are much more intense now than they have ever been and these pressures can be expected to cause metamorphoses, mutations, births and deaths amongst our ‘population’ of higher education institutions.     

Desperately seeking science (and technology?)

This paper describes sources of science and technology education in a metropolitan area. The sources are classified into three groups: government or semigovernment, private organisations and tertiary institutions. Issues relating to these sources include the adquacy of the provision of information for interested adults, the ‘user pays’ principle in relation to some of these sources and the notion of ‘public understanding of science’.     

A case of korean higher education reform: The brain korea 21 project

The purpose of this paper is to examine current status, issues, and visions of higher education reform in Korea by focusing on ‘Brain Korea 21’ (BK21). ‘Brain Korea 21’ (BK21), is a major higher education reform project initiated by the South Korean government to prepare Korean human resources for the 21^st century. ‘Brain Korea 21’ (BK21) aims at fostering world-class graduate schools and high quality scholars by providing funds to higher education institutions. In this paper, societal, economic and educational changes which led to the initiation of BK 21 and its implementation processes are described first. Then, some resistance and controversies against BK 21 are discussed. Major achievements of BK 21 are highlighted and future directions of higher education reform in South Korea are addressed.     

Internationalising a learning environment instrument for evaluating transnational online university courses

This article describes the adaptation and validation of the Constructivist OnLine Learning Environment Survey (COLLES) for use in the transnational higher education context. As higher education becomes a more global phenomenon, ‘borderless’ education, either online or by distance education, is becoming a reality and there is a need for remote evaluation of course delivery and student learning. Curtin University of Technology is managing supported online delivery of Business Studies Degree and Diploma courses to four partner institutions of the African Virtual University, an initiative based in Nairobi, Kenya. Evaluation of students’ learning has included an online survey about the provision of resources and the quality of the learning environment in the various computer-based classrooms. Embedded in this instrument has been the adapted COLLES, providing a concomitant opportunity to test the properties and usefulness of the learning environment instrument. Problematic issues surrounding adaptation of the instrument have included the consequences of modifying the wording and establishing or confirming the meaning of the latent constructs in partially online courses and for transnational students. The process of establishing the validity and reliability of the scales is discussed.     

Managing differentiation of higher education system in Japan: connecting excellence and diversity

This article presents recent reform processes in Japanese higher education, concerning the tensions emerging within the system regarding ‘excellence’ and ‘diversity’. The article particularly focuses on how Japanese universities have reacted to the recent ‘competition’ and ‘differentiation’ policy promoted by the government, drawing on recent survey results conducted with academic managers at Japanese universities. It is interesting to examine the case of Japan, a historically diversified and differentiated national system, which has been changing rapidly with recent national ‘top-down’ policy reforms, followed by more recent and new bottom-up institutional initiatives. The study shows that universities are trying to achieve excellence, fulfilling different functions at the same time, aspiring to be excellent in teaching, research and social contribution without having institutional capacity to meet these expectations. Appropriate internal governance and external mediation mechanisms need to be created at the institutional level to manage diversification of the higher education system as a whole.     

Higher education and gender roles in Japanese society: An assessment of disparity

Conclusion The 1947 education reform and mass education after the period of high economic growth have greatly influenced women's higher education attainments. These changes are beginning to transform women's views towards education and more women with higher education attainment are entering the labour marker. However, as previously indicated, many obstacles to equal opportunity and results in the labour market still remain for women. Higher education for women has never had the same social impact as that for men. So far as the academic career of women is regarded as having ‘symbolic value’—it has a close relationship to marriage in Japanese society. Women's higher education is a social way of maintaining a sub-culture and traditional gender norms. Ph.D. in education (dissertation: ‘The gender roles of Japanese women’) from the University of California in 1993. At present affiliated to the PHP Research Institute (Japan) as a senior research associate. Areas of interest include comparative higher education, educational policy, and gender and education. Her most recently published works in English are ‘Higher education in partnership with industry: the necessity to employ off-the-job-training system’ in theInternational journal of lifelong education (vol. 12, no. 2, 1994) and ‘The gender roles of Japanese women: an assessment of gender roles of Japanese housewives in the United States’ inPHP research report (vol. 9, 1995).     

School–Parent Partnerships in Singapore

In an era of rapid global economic and social change, educational institutions like schools and universities are struggling to keep their curricula and programs relevant. Singapore’s schools are no exception, especially when education is viewed as the essential element for maintaining the nation’s global competitiveness in ways that are totally disproportionate to its size. The current shift from an ‘efficiency-’ to an ‘ability-’ driven paradigm in education, however, is increasing uncertainty and raising the stakes in an already pressurized system where schools, educators and students constantly compete for top academic awards and rewards. The concept of “partnership” in Singapore education is a significant, relatively new, trend that has caught on among local schools only since the late-1990s, with the focus on creating better “total” learning environments for students. This paper analyses the challenges of matching rhetoric with professional practice with regard to school–home partnerships in Singapore, and concludes that the key to authentic collaboration lies in the mutual appreciation and valuing of diversity as well as a deep sense of shared responsibility by all parties concerned.     

Strategic planning directions of Malaysia’s higher education: university autonomy in the midst of political uncertainties

In Malaysia, the national government has seen fit to steer higher education policy in a direction that is in the ‘national interest’. This notion of ‘national interest’ is best exemplified by the changing relationship between the State, higher education institutions and the market. Since the late 1960s, we saw the gradual but steady erosion of university autonomy with the increasing dominance of the State. The recently launched National Higher Education Strategic Plan 2020 and the National Higher Education Action Plan, 2007–2010, which operationalised the Strategic Plan, promises greater autonomy for the universities. While this increased autonomy for universities could be regarded as Malaysia’s response to deal with emerging issues in higher education management and governance, the amendments to the University and University Colleges Act, 1995 have not resolved the issue of wider autonomy from the Malaysian treasury regulations for public universities. For the State, in the present climate of political and economic uncertainty, giving full autonomy to the public universities is seen to be inappropriate and untimely. The State considers public universities as still heavily dependent on the State for resources, and thus the need for regulation and supervision.     

Market orientation in managing relationships with multiple constituencies of Croatian higher education

In this paper, market orientation in Croatian higher education (HE) is discussed within the context of stakeholder-oriented management. Drawing on existing studies, the ‘classical’ empirical model, describing the market orientation of generic nonprofit organisations, has been adapted to the contingencies of the Croatian HE sector. Empirical testing of the model, based on primary data drawn from the majority of public institutions of higher learning in the country, reveals inadequate market orientation toward the relevant stakeholders. Although social market orientation currently does not exist in Croatian HE institutions, the empirical results confirm that it might be possible to initiate a ‘virtuous circle’, in which relevant market orientation and stakeholder management practices, directed toward one or other of the stakeholders, simultaneously enhance orientation toward the other stakeholders. Unfortunately, the current situation in HE is not satisfactory, which could hinder the implementation of development of knowledge society in Croatia.

Faculties of education and institutional strategies for knowledge mobilization: an exploratory study

The goal to enhance the impacts of academic research in the ‘real world’ resonates with progressive visions of the role of universities in society, and finds support among policy makers who have sought to enhance the ‘transfer’, ‘translation’, ‘uptake’, or ‘valorization’ of research knowledge in several areas of public services. This paper reports on an exploratory study of the strategies used by selected Canadian and international faculties of education to mobilize research knowledge. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with senior administrators of 13 faculties of education, the analysis reveals several themes. Academic leaders recognize knowledge mobilization as a desirable institutional mission, but they identify a number of barriers to greater efforts in this area. Although a number of strategies are employed, changes across multiple organizational dimensions to encourage and support knowledge mobilization were reported at only two institutions. These results are relevant to faculty administrators, scholars, and policy-makers interested in understanding the role of academic institutions in the mobilization of research knowledge to the broader education community.     

Different but equal? Assessing European dual HE systems

In higher education dual systems, graduates are qualified to apply for jobs in same professional fields along two separated educational routes. The research problem is whether the rival applicants for professional positions are treated equally in the labour market despite their different qualifications. From the graduates point of view, to be equal means to have an opportunity to be employed in accordance with one’s professional skill. Applying European survey data, the article tests to what extent the ‘distribution of work’ between university and non-university graduates seems to be based on educational qualifications or actual competence. Among 4,000 German, Dutch, Finnish, and Swiss graduates primarily in business and administration and engineering, only slight and occasional evidence of ‘status-based recruitment’ was found. All in all, the research suggests that from the view of graduate employment, the European dual HE systems work very much following the principle of ‘different but equal’.     

Dynamics of National and Global Competition in Higher Education

The paper explores the dynamics of competition in higher education. National competition and global competition are distinct, but feed into each other. Higher education produces ‘positional goods’ (Hirsch 1976) that provide access to social prestige and income-earning. Research universities aim to maximise their status as producers of positional goods. This status is a function of student selectivity plus research performance. At system-level competition bifurcates between exclusivist elite institutions that produce highly value positional goods, where demand always exceeds supply and expansion is constrained to maximise status; and mass institutions (profit and non-profit) characterised by place-filling and expansion. Intermediate universities are differentiated between these poles. In global competition, the networked open information environment has facilitated (1) the emergence of a world-wide positional market of elite US/UK universities; and (2) the rapid development of a commercial mass market led by UK and Australian universities. Global competition is vectored by research capacity. This is dominated by English language, especially US universities, contributing to the pattern of asymmetrical resources and one-way global flows. The paper uses Australia as its example of system segmentation and global/national interface. It closes by reflecting on a more balanced global distribution of capacity.     

Undisciplining Knowledge Production: Development Driven Higher Education in South Africa

South African higher education institutions are increasingly under scrutiny to produce knowledge that is more relevant to South Africa’s social and economic needs, more representative of the diversity of its knowledge producers, and more inclusive of the variety of the sites where knowledge is produced. Only a small percentage of South Africans are graduates of universities or technology institutes, and these graduates are not representative of the diversity of the South African population. As a result there is a shortage of skills to address the country’s reconstruction and developmental needs. This places a burden on higher education institutions to expand access to their programmes, and to ensure that their programmes are relevant to the developmental context. Policy makers have found in the Gibbons [Gibbons, M., et al. (1994). The New Production of Knowledge. The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. London Sage Publishers] thesis on ‘Mode 2 knowledge production’ a rationale for the transformation of higher education through the inclusion of practices which are less abstract, less discipline bound and closer to those processes which characterise the diversity and distribution of knowledge production in the wider society. Nowotny et al. [Nowtony et al. (2001). Re-thinking Science. Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press.] have taken Gibbons’ thesis further and have described society itself as becoming increasingly ‘Mode 2’. In a Mode 2 society, differentiation is replaced with integration, and networks of knowledge producers conduct their work in transdisciplinary teams across widely distributed sites. Such ‘transgressivity’ both pushes knowledge production systems forward and distributes and diffuses knowledge more widely throughout society. In this paper, it is argued that there is a need for higher education practitioners to engage critically – and constructively – with the knowledge bases of policy directives to ensure that the new teaching and learning processes and systems adequately prepare students for the complexity and diversity of South African society, and enable them to contribute meaningfully to its reconstruction and development.     

When state centralism meets neo-liberalism: managing university governance change in Singapore and Malaysia

With strong intention to enhance the global competitiveness of their university systems, both the Singapore and Malaysia governments have introduced reforms along the lines of ideas and practices embedded in neo-liberalism. In the last decade or so, we have witnessed reforms being introduced to the higher education sectors in these Asian states, particularly when corporatization and incorporation strategies are adopted to transform national/public universities. With particular reference to how academics evaluate the impact of the reforms on their academic life, this article reports and analyses findings generated from campus visits and field interviews conducted in Singapore and Malaysia from 2007 to 2009. Although the senior management of corporatized/incorporated universities in these Asian states has been given more discretion to decide how to operate their universities, most of the front line academics that we interviewed have not experienced major differences in university governance after the reforms took place. Instead of feeling ‘emancipated’ and ‘empowered’, many academics feel more pressures and control from the university administration and government ministries. Despite the fact that both the Singapore and Malaysia governments have tried to embrace the ideas and practices of ‘neo-liberalism’ to transform university governance, academics still see the state’s reluctance in withdrawing from steering/controlling higher education development. Such observations clearly reflect the ‘clash’ of two major governance philosophies, namely, ‘state centralism’ and ‘neo-liberalism’. In short, this article critically examines how far the proposed university governance reforms by adopting the corporatization/incorporation strategies have actually transformed university management and academic life style in Singapore and Malaysia.     

Outcasts on the Inside: Graduates, Employability and Widening Participation

The drive to widen access and participation in higher education is rapidly transforming the sector. Despite this, through an interplay of social, cultural and gender-related factors, students from ‘widening participation’ backgrounds can all too frequently become, within their own institutions, ‘outcasts on the inside’: formally accepted by the university without ever acquiring, still less embodying, the traditional social and cultural advantages bestowed by HE. Thus, the irony of widening participation would seem to be that by entering higher education an already disadvantaged educational habitus should be reinforced not transformed. Based on a three-year ethnographic study, this paper explores the factors motivating widening participation students to enrol in higher education, the nature of their experiences, and the extent to which higher education represents an attempt at social repositioning.     

Learning to ‘become somebody well’: Challenges for educational policy

This article argues that education has a role in promoting young people’s wellbeing. It draws on research on young people’s lives to highlight the changing world for which educators prepare young people. While older educational agendas such as literacies and numeracy remain significant, it is argued that education is increasingly important for its role in assisting young people to develop the capacities and skills that will enable them to live well and that will enhance social cohesion. Although these more recent social agendas are often acknowledged in significant policy documents, their enactment in schools is compromised by economistic policy imperatives that see young people primarily in terms of their capacities to attain labour market skills that will ensure Australia’s international competitiveness. I make a link between the work that young people do to make themselves, and wellbeing, highlighting the role that education plays in shaping identities — and in enabling them to ‘become somebody well’. The article concludes that health and wellbeing are marginalised in school curricula not because of a ‘crowded curriculum’ but because not all elements are given equal value within our current policy frameworks.     

Becoming a Woman Through Wicca: Witches and Wiccans in Contemporary Teen Fiction

The article examines Cate Tiernan’s ‘Wicca’ series. This series and the ‘Circle of Three’ books by Isobel Bird explore the experiences of teenage girls who embrace the pagan religion, Wicca. The texts reflect the growing interest in spirituality expressed by many young people and extend the literary representation of witchcraft. Tiernan produces stories of spiritual growth entwined with fantasy and romance. The series operates within a moral and religious framework that allows girls to feel positive about their bodies and their sexuality and acknowledges the complex moral decisions many young people face. Christine Jarvis is Dean of Education and Professional Development at the University of Huddersfield. She worked in community, adult and further education before moving into teacher education. Her doctoral thesis at the University of Leeds examined the educational uses of popular romantic fiction and she has published work on education and popular culture, romance, teen fiction and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.