New challenges for higher education: global and Asia-Pacific perspectives

With rapid socio-economic changes, twenty-first century higher education is facing major challenges to its governance systems, curriculum, mission focus, external relations, research, and financing. A theoretical framework to analyze these post-massification challenges is suggested, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region as well as global issues. Five main topic areas provide the basis for the theoretical framework: massification, privatization, accountability and governance, internationalization, and ranking and world-class universities. Some discussion of the possible effects of the financial crisis that commenced in 2008 is provided.     

我国大学排名研究的回溯与反思

改革开放以来,我国大学排名问题研究大致经历了萌芽、发展、繁荣与争鸣四个阶段,研究主题主要涉及大学排名的内涵、大学排名的作用与价值、国内外大学排名比较研究、大学排名的评价主体以及大学排名策略研究等方面。然而,我国大学排名研究存在着重复性研究偏多、实证性研究缺失、研究内容缺乏深度、本土化研究不足等问题,亟待加强。     

Reputation and reality: ranking major disciplines in Australian universities

League tables that rank universities may use reputational measures, performance measures, or both. Each type of measure has strengths and weaknesses. In this paper, we rank disciplines in Australian universities both by reputation, using an international survey of senior academics, and with actual performance measures. We then compare the two types of measures to see how closely they match. The criterion we use for both sets of measures is ‘international academic standing’. We find a high correlation between the survey results and the various measures of research performance. We also find a correlation between the quality of student intake and the survey rankings, but the satisfaction levels of recent graduates do not correlate well with the rankings by academics. We then construct an overall measure of performance, which gives very similar rankings to the survey results, especially for the top-ranked institutions.

Disseminating the right information to the right audience: cultural determinants in the use (and misuse) of rankings

Rankings and league tables, or Report Cards (RCs), of Higher Education Institutions have become a global phenomenon. Their purpose, it is claimed, is to help “student-consumers” make informed decisions. Yet the degree to which RCs succeed in helping students in their college choice is disputed. Even though RCs are intended for all, which information is sought and how it is used may differ between potential students hailing from different social, economic and cultural backgrounds. In particular, RCs may neglect certain cultural determinants that influence students’ college choice behaviour. The article reviews the literature on the cultural determinants of college choice and especially the use of RCs in the ambit of cultural determinants. In the United States, possibly because of evident educational gaps between ethnic groups in society, the issue of cultural perceptions in college choice has been addressed, albeit scantly. In Europe, this field of study is virtually non-existent, despite increasing indications that second and third generation immigrants still lag behind in terms of higher education participation and graduation rates.

Student Success in First-Year University Physics and Mathematics Courses: Does the high-school attended make a difference?

This paper considers school factors that contribute to a successful transition from high school to first-year university Physics courses at the University of British Columbia by employing a two-level hierarchical model. It is assumed that there is a relationship between student performance and the high school they graduated from. It is shown that school location and type affect student performance: students from public schools in the Metro Vancouver area perform better in first year compared to students from independent schools and schools in distant communities. The study also considers rankings of schools based on student performance in first-year university Physics and Calculus courses. These university-based rankings differ significantly (essentially in reverse order) from the well-known Fraser Institute rankings based on measures internal to high schools.     

Ranking dynamics and volatility

Scientific journals are ordered by their impact factor while countries, institutions or researchers can be ranked by their scientific production, impact or by other simple or composite indicators as in the case of university rankings. In this paper, the theoretical framework proposed in Criado, R., Garcia, E., Pedroche, F. & Romance, M. (2013). A new method for comparing rankings through complex networks: Model and analysis of competitiveness of major European soccer leagues. Chaos, 23, 043114 for football competitions is used as a starting point to define a general index describing the dynamics or its opposite, stability, of rankings. Some characteristics to study rankings, ranking dynamics measures and axioms for such indices are presented. Furthermore, the notion of volatility of elements in rankings is introduced. Our study includes rankings with ties, entrants and leavers. Finally, some worked out examples are shown.     

A modification of the h-index: The hm-index accounts for multi-authored manuscripts

In order to take multiple co-authorship appropriately into account, a straightforward modification of the Hirsch index was recently proposed. Fractionalised counting of the papers yields an appropriate measure which is called the h_m-index. The effect of this procedure is compared in the present work with other variants of the h-index and found to be superior to the fractionalised counting of citations and to the normalization of the h-index with the average number of authors in the h-core. Three fictitious examples for model cases and one empirical case are analysed.     

我国档案微信公众号榜单的发展、特点与趋势

以微信公众号为代表的社交媒体在各类主体中得到广泛的应用,为档案事业的发展起到重要推动作用。档案微信公众号榜单则成为评价档案微信公众号传播影响力的重要参考。回顾档案微信公众号榜单创建的背景与过程,分析榜单的现状及影响,总结榜单的特点,有利于明确榜单发展趋势。     

社会学视野下的大学排名现象

大学排名的产生、发展有着深刻的历史、社会与现实背景,对大学及其利益相关者产生了广泛的影响。运用社会认同理论及分层理论对大学排名现象进行分析,可发现隐藏在其背后的真实原因。