Higher education,unbundling, and the end of the university as we know it

Unbundling is the process through which products previously sold together are separated into their constituent parts. In higher education, this dynamic has been driven primarily by financial motivations, and spearheaded by the for-profit sector, but also has pedagogical motivations through its emphasis on personalisation and employability. This article presents a theoretical analysis of the trend, proposing new conceptual tools with which to map the normative implications. While appearing to offer the prospect of financial viability and increased relevance, unbundling presents some worrying signs for universities: first, the removal of possible synergies between teaching and research, and between different modes of learning; second, the undermining of the ability of institutions to promote the public good and ensure equality of opportunity; and third, the threat of hyperporosity to the conducting of basic research with long-term benefits.     

Public by Day,Private by Night: examining the private lives of Kenya's public universities

This article examines the emergence of the public university in Kenya as a key provider of private higher education, characterised mainly by the phenomenon of the “private public university student.” It probes the broader socio-economic reforms circumscribing the privatisation of Kenya's public universities and the local and global forces responsible for these reforms. From the enrolment patterns of Kenya's public universities, where state-subsidised students are becoming a diminishing minority and where a range of exclusive programmes for private students (mainly taught in the evenings) are a growing trend, it may be argued that a new kind of private university is emerging; namely, private universities owned by public universities.     

Research assessment as a pedagogical device: Bernstein,professional identity and Education 1 in New Zealand

Recent restructuring of research funding for New Zealand’s higher education institutions is ‘outputs‐driven’. Under the Performance Based Research Fund, units of assessment of research quality are individuals, every degree teacher receiving a confidential score of A, B or C (if deemed ‘research active’) or ‘R’ (‘Research Inactive’). Despite its relatively high number of A and B rated individuals, Education’s collective ranking was low. I interviewed staff and draw on Bernstein to explore how this process affects professional identity formation, a process involving engagement with changing ‘official’ external identities. I overview Bernsteinian concepts, historicise Education’s changing official identities and illustrate how these enabled and constrained participants’ self‐definitions before, during, and immediately after, the quality evaluation. The imposition of audit culture reproduces old theory/practice binaries.     

Who ‘owns’ the university? Institutional autonomy and academic freedom in an age of knowledge capitalism

The neoliberal reframing of universities as economic engines and the growing emphasis on ‘third stream’ commercial activities are global phenomena albeit with significant local variations. This article uses the concept of ‘ownership’ to examine how these processes are impacting on institutional self-understandings and academic–management relations. Drawing on ethnographic research from New Zealand, including recent disputes between academics and management, we ask, ‘who owns the modern university’? In conclusion, we show how debates over ownership provide a lens for examining wider tensions around institutional autonomy and academic freedom.     

Anticipated developments: East Africa's private universities and privatisation of public universities in the global context

Abstract

The growth and development of private universities has been one of the most dramatic features of African higher education in the last two decades. Using the three East African countries of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda as a case in point, this analysis examines the extent to which developments in the region echo international trends, as well as how they illustrate contrasts. The analysis focuses on three key themes: (a) growth and historical antecedents; (b) institutional developments in terms of continuity and innovation; and (c) internationalism. While only relatively recent phenomena, private universities in East Africa and the increasing privatisation of public universities mirror developments in other parts of the world with a longer tradition of private university developments in terms of growth and historical antecedents, continuity and innovation in institutional development, as well as in internationalism. However, there are some situations in which the East African case is exceptional.     

Markets in education: the impact of school choice policies in one market context in New Zealand

The publication of Trading in Futures and When Schools Compete helped give empirical support to the view that choice policies increased differences between schools. However, dispute about this research and changes in policy mean that our understanding of the impact of school choice policies in New Zealand remains partial. This paper aims to address continued uncertainty about the impact of school choice policies in New Zealand. It presents the results of a study that drew upon qualitative data gathered in interviews with school principals and on administrative data on the enrolment patterns in the same competition space explored by the Trading in Futures research. The data show that periods of greatest instability in enrolments occurred around the time of change in regulations.     

从原则到语境——两种理论境域的分歧与思考

新公共管理与多中心治理理论是70年代末以来具有广泛影响的理论主张,本文简单阐述了新公共管理与多中心治理两种理论,同时评介了这两种理论对高等教育领域的影响,并提出了一些可资借鉴的经验.     

试论数学教学中的尝误、领悟、顿悟

从教学实践和心理学角度来探讨数学教学过程中学生的思维活动，以图改进教学方法，提高教学质量．     

谈公共规制与市场经济、公共经济及国有经济

公共规制是所有公共规则和制度的总和,它可以是约定俗成的标准、法则或习惯,也可以是单方面的或经过有关利益人相互协议规定下来的共同遵守的条款、标准、法则或习惯。研究公共规制有必要理顺它与其起作用的载体的关系。在我国公共规制起作用的诸多载体中,市场经济、公共经济以及国有经济三个方面的研究很有现实意义。     

Culturally reimagining education: Publicity,aesthetics and socially engaged art practice

Abstract

This paper sets out to reimagine education through a cultural perspective and explores education as a performative practice that establishes certain borders of ‘public’ belonging. Wide-spread debates about the public dimension of schools and universities have focused on how economic rationales need to be replaced with alternative visions of education. This paper seeks to contribute to this revisioning of the public in education by reclaiming education as a specifically cultural endeavour, one tied to practices that are at once both performative and aesthetic. To this end, I draw on theoretical notions of publicity that highlight its performative character. I then offer a reading of a socially engaged art project in order to suggest ways in which this performative character of publicity can be seen to be educational. This paper argues that education itself emerges through various cultural enactments that delineate the contours of who counts as a public and who does not.     

美国营利性大学发展的动因、困境及启示

20世纪70年代以来,美国营利性大学顺应社会发展趋势,以市场需求为导向,抓住时机进入资本市场;关注弱势群体,获得政府政策支持,实现快速发展。然而,2010年以来,美国营利性大学在经历了约40年的发展后陷入了教学质量降低、新生数量减少、大学理念与公司理念矛盾逐渐凸显以及在资本市场上的表现不佳等困境。目前,我国已有一些民办高校选择登记为营利性高校,开启了我国营利性民办高校的办学之路。文章通过梳理美国营利性大学发展的动因,分析其面临的困境,为我国营利性高校的发展提供以下启示:顺应时代潮流,为营利性大学发展营造良好社会环境;发挥体制机制优势,处理好政府、市场和营利性高校的关系;以转型为契机,探索营利性大学内涵式发展道路;加强政府监管和第三方评估,实现资本逐利性与教育公益性的平衡;积极发挥资本市场的作用,同时注重风险防范。     

From teacher-education university to comprehensive university: Case studies of East China Normal University,Southwest University and Yanbian University

Three different “logics”—that of the internal strategies of the institutions, the economic pressures of the socialist market economy and the political policies of the state drive the development of a university. The dynamic interaction and coexistence of the three logics has determined the transformation models of teacher-education or normal universities in China. This paper aims at describing and analyzing both the process and the forces that led to these transformations by taking East China Normal University (ECNU), Southwest University (SWU) and Yanbian University (YBU) as examples. Reliance on government and market resources has put these universities into a dilemma: On the one hand, they wanted to retain their original features so as to preserve their leading position in the “teacher education” market, and on the other, they needed to merge, expand, restructure and enhance their quality as they pursued overall development. The case analyses show that the teacher-education university’s need for self-development, which is the internal determinant, plays a critical role in its transformation. At the same time, the socioeconomic environment and national policies influence the institution while it displays considerable capacity for self-adjustment.     

Higher education for public value: taking the debate beyond New Public Management

Many higher education (HE) system reforms in the past decades have been built on the paradigm of New Public Management (NPM). However, these reforms have not allowed HE to fully take its value for society into account. In recent years a growing call can be heard to orient the HE sector towards more collaboration, a focus on a larger set of socio-economic objectives instead of on performance alone, less pressure, more trust and legitimacy. In this article, it is stated that NPM has not sufficiently enabled the creation of public value (PV) by the HE sector. This article provides (1) insight into the flaws of NPM, (2) an understanding of PV for HE and (3) a new model to study HE reforms built on the concept of PV.     

Substance-exposed newborn infants and public health law: Differences in addressing the legal mandate to report

Prenatal exposure to illicit substances is a finding that typically requires reporting to a child protective services agency. We examine whether there is differential reporting to two public agencies, and whether it varies by race/ethnicity and region. We also study predictors of indicating a maltreatment report as credible. Data on positive neonatal toxicology reports were obtained from the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). Variation in reporting rates by race/ethnicity and region were compared with Pearson chi-square analysis. Multivariate logistic regression examined factors related to the likelihood of DCFS indicating a report as credible for maltreatment. IDPH recorded 1838 reports of substance-exposed newborn infants while DCFS only recorded 459 reports. There was a greater percentage of whites than blacks reported to DCFS as compared to those reported to IDPH (p < 0.001). There was a greater percentage of whites than blacks found to be indicated by DCFS as compared to those reported to IDPH (p < 0.001). Infants reported in rural areas were indicated less often (OR:0.34, 95% CI:0.17–0.67, p = 0.002) than those from urban areas. In conclusion, there was variation in reporting patterns between the two agencies. To optimize health outcomes for substance-exposed newborn infants (SEIs), the law should be clarified to provide clear standards for reporting and managing SEIs. Clinicians should ensure they are acting within the confines of existing law, and should engage in an interprofessional process with a broad array of stakeholders to develop statewide drug testing and reporting protocols.     

From autonomy to quality management: NPM impacts on school governance in Switzerland

This article reviews the impact of discourses on ‘New Public Management’ (NPM) on compulsory schooling in Switzerland during the last two decades and traces its implementation in the Canton of Bern. The analysis suggests that while NPM reformers initially promoted increased school autonomy, the introduction of market elements and school choice, the focus subsequently shifted to a concern with school management, supervision and accountability. NPM-guided reforms led to the introduction of headteachers and quality management procedures in a majority of cantons. Ethnographic research in the Canton of Bern shows that NPM-influenced decentralisation policy results in a growing standardisation of schools' conditions and processes. Additionally, lay school boards as traditional, democratically legitimised bodies of local supervision are coming under threat.     

简论市场经济与公共管理制度创新的关系

作为改革进程的两个重要方面,市场经济和公共管理制度创新,相互影响密切联系。在深化改革的实践中,必须高度重视市场经济与公共管理制度创新,应努力实现它们的协调同步,充分发挥它们的相互促进作用。     

Sustainability science and the university: pitfalls and bridges to interdisciplinarity

Interdisciplinarity plays a major role in the debate about the sustainability of human societies, in general, and about the crisis and the future of the University. If the twentieth century can be identified as an era of specialization in Academia, there is a tendency now to add interdisciplinary spaces to the traditional disciplinary research and training organization. Non-academic research institutions (NARIs) are showing more flexibility than universities to respond to problem-oriented demands. This article analyzes the current prevalence of a rigid disciplinary academic framework and discusses its limitations in the face of complex demands, such as sustainability science (SS) and technology. Examples from the Brazilian graduate programs in SS are presented to describe some institutional pathologies that usually affect the attempts to achieve interdisciplinarity and SS and technology. Among the main conclusions, are the need for more interaction among universities and NARIs and the need to integrate disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, rather than continue to deal with them as opposites.     

Different approaches to the professional development of principals: a comparative study of New Zealand and Singapore

One of the key factors that contribute to effective management of schools is the professional development of principals. The role of the principal has become more complex with the dynamic and constant reforms in the educational environment. The present study focuses on the professional development of principals in New Zealand and Singapore. The identified categories for comparison include similarities in knowledge on leadership, models and skills that are important for aspiring principals. Differences include the selection process, programme design, modes of learning, futuristic projects and visits to other institutions. The study contributes to our understanding of key dynamics in the professional development of aspiring principals by identifying categories for comparison and discussing their relevance for analysing similarities and differences between these. The study also points to relevant interactions between professional development and the local environment.     

From Students to Consumers: reflections on the marketisation of Portuguese higher education

A progressive attempt to replace traditional public administration values and concepts by others that are closer to private management can be observed in the replacement of the service user concept by that of consumer or client. This redefinition's more implicit or explicit intent is to increase consumers'/clients' status, their capacity to choose and make rational choices in the market, and, ultimately, to ensure that organisations fulfil their needs. Influenced by this tendency, higher education institutions (HEIs) also started to see students as clients or consumers and to influence their choices by trying to define HE demand. This is evident in the shift in their external communication strategies: ‘institutional information’, based on HEIs' prestige, is being progressively replaced by ‘marketed information’, based on economic consumer logic. In trying to understand how students are perceived by Portuguese HEIs, we undertook qualitative research based on the content analysis of undergraduate degrees' announcements in newspapers. Major findings evidence that their content: (1) can be classified in a continuum bounded by two poles: the use of ‘institutional information’ and the use of ‘marketed information’; (2) show the presence of a social representation of students as clients or consumers; (3) seems related to HEIs' nature (public vs. private), positioning in the HE system (universities and polytechnics) and ‘symbolic capital’ (traditional vs. new institutions).     

Camus,habitat and the art of seeing

The early essays of Camus have been underexplored as educational texts. The discussion here introduces these texts for educational consideration. The analysis uncovers themes which link to existing educational research on Camus. As these are autobiographical texts they also provide new insight on the genesis of Camus’ thinking on subjects of interest to education, and Camus’ own educational journey into the absurd. The discussion here suggests the lyrical essays explore the connections between learning and the natural landscape, and as a result, they suggest a concept of education based around seeing the world a certain way; a communion with the natural world as a basis for understanding and happiness.