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This study describes a key feature of modern, democratic policy making, namely the relation between stakeholder input and policy output. In the Nordic countries, there are long traditions for and democratic values attached to the dialogue between the government and civil society when developing policies for the educational sector. The case presented here is the hearing process held by the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research in 2017 prior to the launch of a white paper on quality culture in higher education. The potential coherence between input by stakeholder groups and the quality measures proposed in the white paper is investigated. The theoretical framework comprises the concept of 'uploading' borrowed from research on EU policy making and discursive institutionalism to analyse the representation of input by stakeholder groups when they attempt to 'upload' their priorities into the white paper. The methodological approach is content analysis of the hearing responses and the white paper. The findings show that stakeholders from the higher education sector and employer groups had a higher degree of coherence with the proposed measures in the white paper, and universities and colleges had a lower degree of input that was represented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017, China released its building list of First-class Universities and First-class Subjects (Double First classes), which should get great support for development for many years into the future. This paper examines the academic performance of eight universities that are currently listed as having First-class Subjects of economics, in international papers and domestic papers, and compares their academic performance with another eight non-listed universities. The comparison shows that in general only three listed universities have obvious advantages among the 16 sample universities, while four listed universities do not show advantages, with one of them unexpectedly lagging behind. In contrast, several non-listed universities perform obviously better among the sample universities. In addition, several other aspects of this Double First-class list are also found to be less objective, scientific, or rigorous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advancing the assessment of undergraduate and graduate student learning outcomes is essential for the future of higher education. After illustrating the value of this research area, this article examines contemporary limitations and the need for taking stock and charting promising directions. It introduces six papers which look at foundational issues, contexts, applications and implications. The article emphasizes the need for ongoing reviews in this field to clarify policy relevance and opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning in the mid-1980s, European governments have increasingly implemented performance-based funding systems for higher education. While a focus on the transnational pressures that contributed to the widespread adoption of performance-based funding in Europe accounts for the impetus for performance-based funding policies, it fails to address how and why the resultant performance-based funding policies are as distinct and different as they are. In this paper, I argue that an institutional logics perspective offers a theoretical account of the performance-based funding policy formation process. I use the United Kingdom (UK), Germany, and France as case studies. I contend that in these three cases, different local logics drove the performance-based funding policy formation process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graduate outcomes are becoming increasingly prominent within higher education (HE) policy, driven by national governments keen to demonstrate 'value for money'. The majority of HE policy in this area uses narrow economic metrics, such as employment status and salary, often derived from national surveys of graduates. This paper uses critical realist philosophy to develop a set of foundational concepts (graduate functionings, graduate capabilities and graduate outcomes) that illuminate the key characteristics and mistakes of this HE policy. It is shown that the narrow economic metrics used in policy are graduate functionings not graduate outcomes—they describe how graduates function in the world, rather than how HE influences these functionings. Using graduate functionings to assess the quality and value of HE is an ontological mistake. This judges HE institutions by what graduates do, which may or may not be influenced by HE, rather than considering what HE institutions actually contribute and change. This means that HE policy risks producing inaccurate and misleading conclusions. The paper concludes by recommending how policy could adopt these foundational concepts to better assess the quality and value of HE, offering more appropriate accounts of how HE impacts graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the approaches employed for attracting international full-degree students in three countries on the periphery of Europe/the European Economic Area: Norway, Poland and Portugal. These countries, considered semi-peripheral regarding international student recruitment, have shorter traditions for incoming mobility than countries that are major recruiters and which have been the focus of previous research on attracting international students. The paper analyses national policies and strategies, focusing on their emergence, rationales and instruments. The study is comparative, aiming to find commonalities and differences in the approaches of these countries further to the changing global environment in higher education. The major finding is that semi-peripheral countries appear to employ different strategies and resort to other comparative advantages than the largest student recruiters, exploiting political, cultural or geographical aspects rather than educational assets. The findings highlight the need for these countries to identify their distinctive attraction capacities and assets, as well as to be purposeful in choosing their target recruitment regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education professional associations (HEPAs) are well-established agents of knowledge production and have been influential in shaping higher education policies and practices. In the context of US international higher education, HEPAs have contributed to the rise of 'internationalization' as a discursive practice. Proposing an analytical framework that takes up Foucauldian analysis of discourse and studies in governmentality, this paper examines a corpus of ACE and NAFSA reports in order to trace the emergence of internationalization and its lines of transformation as both a regime of truth and a regime of practice in the context of US higher education over the last 30 or so years. The findings of this study illustrate that since its emergence in the 1980s, HEPAs have participated in the transformation of internationalization from a discourse of exchange to a discourse of competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese higher education has been actively developed in recent decades as a major engine of national prosperity. This investment has spurred substantial and growing interest in understanding student and graduate outcomes. After discussing this policy context, the paper deploys an international lens to analyse evaluation mechanisms being used and developed in China. Specific initiatives are discussed to particularise each mechanism and to help link them with international developments. The paper's final section reviews China's apparent progress in this field and concludes by considering the growing role of technology in future policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite their common historical roots, two higher education systems in Latin America differ dramatically in their financing mechanisms. In Argentina, the national government completely subsidizes undergraduate programs in public institutions, while Chile relies mostly on tuition fees charged to individuals attending public institutions. Through quantitative and qualitative secondary sources, this paper shows that class interests (structural approach) and economic policies (ideational approach) played a major role in explaining comparative policy outcomes in these nondemocratic regimes. The article makes an explicit contribution to the understanding of comparative policy choices in nondemocratic regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today, more than 70 million people globally are classified as displaced and another 25.4 million are classified as refugees. Among refugee populations, only 3% will access higher education (UNHCR in Tertiary education, 2020. https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/tertiary-education.html). Those left behind include the resettled refugee population in the USA, who are simultaneously included and excluded from higher education (AACRAO in Supporting Syrian refugee access to US higher education, 2016. https://www.aacrao.org/resources/newsletters-blogs/aacrao-connect/article/supporting-syrian-refugee-access-to-u-s–higher-education). This paper argues that while many higher education institution (HEI) initiatives do address this issue, a lack of awareness and absence of a standardized protocol itemizing the specific needs of this population further excludes them from accessing and succeeding in higher education. This paper first outlines the specific needs of resettled refugee students and the barriers they face trying to access higher education. Second, it examines how HEIs in the USA have worked to promote the access, inclusion, and success in higher education of refugee students who have already been resettled in the USA. Third, it provides policy recommendations for additional support mechanisms that should be considered for students from refugee backgrounds. The findings, conceptualized within a capabilities and social justice perspective, indicate that initiatives established by HEIs with external partners have the potential to provide access channels for resettled refugees to enter tertiary education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK Government's Green Paper (BIS in Fulfilling our potential: teaching excellence, social mobility and student choice. BIS, London, 2015), White Paper (BIS in Success as a knowledge economy: teaching excellence, social mobility and student choice. BIS, London, 2016a) and Higher Education and Research Bill (, 2016) appear to be premised on a normative student ideal in UK higher education policy. This ideal student presupposes a transactional model of student engagement, which relies on the accumulation of knowledge capital by a systemic subject. The current government vision forms part of a long-term shift away from the discourse of social democracy since the policies of the 1960s. This shift towards neoliberal political economy is reflected in the legislation to establish the Office for Students, United Kingdom Research and Innovation and the Teaching Excellence Framework (BIS 2015, 2016a; BIS in Teaching excellence framework: technical consultation for year two. BIS, London, 2016b). Rather than adding to the transactional view of student engagement based on the neoliberal student ideal, this article explores the democratic idea of a higher education multitude in which there might be a more nuanced pedagogic and socio-technical understanding of student engagement for further policy developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While interdisciplinarity has been widely addressed in higher education policies and university strategies across countries, universities and colleges are struggling with the implementation at the programme level. For instance, extant literature implies many barriers to establishing interdisciplinary degree programmes (IDPs). However, there is a lack of both conceptual understandings and empirical investigations on how these barriers can be resolved through appropriate management. Our paper addresses this research gap by constructing an analytical framework for understanding the cause of barriers in the context of establishing IDPs and managerial approaches to overcome them through the lens of managing organisational innovation, and applying it in an empirical study of two cases of establishing IDPs at a Finnish research university. Our study yielded four conceptualised and tested propositions on key factors that middle-level university managers should consider for both preventing and resolving barriers to establishing IDPs. It suggests that while managers should plan IDPs that largely fit the institutional environment and bring foreseeable benefits to participants in the programmes, the art of their management lies in leveraging all relevant resources to enhance institutional compatibility, to change peoples' perceptions about profitability and to empower other participants' agency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the causes and outcomes of two university reforms during the single-party era in Turkey (1923–1946), focusing on the implications of the reforms in terms of higher education governance models—the state-control and academic self-governance—that are ultimately characterized by the balance between the type and degree of central control and university autonomy. The paper argues that the degree of ideational controversy and institutional strength in the given policy field considerably affected the reform processes and outcomes, reconciling historical institutionalist assumptions with ideational institutional approaches. The process-tracing analysis shows that the university reform of 1933 was mainly triggered by the ideological and political dissidence between some of the academic staff and the ruling and intellectual elite who wanted to heavily control the university and ended up with the transition to a heavy state-control regime. The principal driving force behind the 1946 reform was to adapt the country to the changing external political conditions after the end of WWII, aiming to lend a democratic face to the regime, which, in combination with other factors such as the growing opposition from academic circles, led to the institutionalization of academic self-governance model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities around the world are facing unprecedented challenges as a result of the corona virus. There has been global devastation of the entire education sector with long-term closure of schools. The health crisis and the accompanying education crisis continue, and the end of the crisis is not certain. The immediate response everywhere to the outbreak of the virus was closure of university campuses, disrupting almost all academic activities everywhere. After the immediate reaction, as a short-term response, universities began offering some core programmes in education and research by adopting digital technology. While some feel that online methods have improved overall access, many argue that they exacerbate existing inequalities in access to higher education and research among several groups of population. As the global health emergency is still continuing, it is widely noted that we need to develop, after initial immediate responses, short-term, medium- and long-term plans for developing robust higher education and research systems that contribute to knowledge development, reducing inequalities, and which can face future uncertain emergencies. The paper reviews some of the important developments that have taken place, and different perspectives that are emerging on the responses needed for the transformation of higher education in the post-COVID era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the intensely competitive international higher education sector, universities can still play a role in providing public good through building social solidarity and mobility in volatile and increasingly divided societies. This paper draws on a longitudinal narrative enquiry that follows 22 students from asylum-seeking backgrounds in Australian universities—a distinct group within the category of forced migration whose university experiences have rarely been studied. It explores the students' visceral realities and tensions as they attempt to navigate government and institutional policies and practices which fail to recognise the unique category and needs of this distinct group. The paper develops a conceptual frame comprising a critical theory of recognition (Axel Honneth) and the feminist developments of recognition (Nancy Fraser). It explores how competing discourses are being played out in Australian universities about the educational needs of students from asylum-seeking backgrounds. Finally, it critically reflects on the role of universities' policies and practices in enabling and/or constraining public good through recognising the unique needs of students of asylum-seeking backgrounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using empirical data from over 1500 respondents (drawn from across the UK) to a survey on academic freedom, and the Times Higher's World University Rankings, this paper is a comparative assessment of the relationship between professed levels of de facto protection for academic freedom by teaching and research staff in individual UK universities, and their institution's excellence, as evinced by world university rankings. The study reveals that normative protection for academic freedom is strongest in Russell Group universities and weakest in post-1992 institutions. Additionally, the professed level of protection for academic freedom reported by respondents to the survey is shown to have a positive relationship with the World Rankings' positions of their institutions. Furthermore, the study considers whether academic freedom may be a prerequisite for, or defining characteristic of, a world-class university. Finally, the paper assesses the possible policy implications of this research for universities and their leaders, and higher educational policy makers, within the UK and beyond, seeking to improve the Times Higher's World Ranking positions of their institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the quality assurance (QA) system in Taiwan that has recently undergone major reforms. In particular, this paper draws on the practice and impact of the QA system on Taiwan's higher education institutions (HEIs) related to higher education policy reforms. The Taiwanese government has distributed expenditure, and restructured higher education (HE) according to the results of the QA system conducted by the Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan. To explore the government's policy strategies and performance criteria related to the QA system, this paper interviews policymakers and academics from four universities used to examine the process behind the formulation of QA policies and the influences of the QA system on HEIs. This paper identifies a number of changes to the academic profession and organisations that occurred within HEIs, resulting in new forms of management in HEIs, and which can be seen as unanticipated consequences of the QA system, beyond the government's expectations. Furthermore, the changes triggered by the QA system have not only intensified competition between universities but have also influenced HE policies in turn. These perspectives offer a different way of conceptualising the QA system in Taiwan's HE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efforts to widen the participation in higher education for disadvantaged and under-represented groups are common to many countries. In England, higher education institutions are required by government to invest in 'outreach' activities designed to encourage such groups. There is increasing policy and research interest around the effectiveness of these activities and how this might be evaluated. This paper reports the results of a project designed to explore concepts of 'success' and 'impact' with two generations of practitioner-managers working in this field, including extended telephone interviews with ten active in the mid-2000s, and online questionnaires from 57 engaged in the mid-2010s. The paper concludes that the drive to 'measure the measurable' may be undermining successful activities, while unhelpful inter-institution competition has replaced the co-operative ethos and wider social justice aims that dominated ten years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multiple refugee crises are taking place simultaneously in several regions of the world. Despite the fact that large numbers of refugees are children and youth, research on policy discourse related to the educational access of refugees beyond remains limited. This situation is particularly acute in the USA even though over 3 million refugees have resettled in that country over the course of the last three decades. In this paper, we take a policy-as-discourse approach (Ball in Education reform: a critical and post-structural approach, Open University Press, Philadelphia, 1994; Discourse Stud Cult Politics of Educ 36(3):306–313, 2015) to analyze policies related to post-secondary education access among refugees in the USA. This analysis reveals refugees' status in US policy as an invisible group, frequently confounded with other groups under the euphemistic umbrella term "New American." Moreover, in these policies, refugees are represented as economic burdens, and their economic independence is presented as the key priority of relevant US policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary aim of the paper is to examine how global university rankings have influenced the higher education sector in Taiwan from the perspective of academics. A qualitative case study method was used to examine how university ranking influenced the Taiwanese higher education at institutional and individual levels, respectively, thereby providing insights into the challenges that a group of academics faced. As for institutional level, the paper discusses how universities used rankings as a tool of quality assurance, and the extent to which rankings intensified competition between universities in Taiwan. In regard to individual level, the paper focuses on how faculty members had to abandon their teaching duties under the climate of competitiveness and achievements brought by rankings. It concludes by arguing that the effects of global ranking have caused inequality in Taiwan's higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High profile, university excellence initiatives are becoming increasingly popular national R&D policies globally, with 23 nations implementing some form of an excellence initiative from 1995 to 2013. While differing in tactics, their common strategy is to fund accumulated advantage in science productivity, intentionally stimulating a world-class university among selected best universities to lift their capacity to compete internationally with the world's most research-intensive universities. Here a ten-year difference-in-differences statistical evaluation of rates of scientific publications of Taiwan's much-publicized, university excellence initiative "World Class University Project" yields findings unanticipated by the policy design. Significant financial resources provided to the selected and designated "World Class Universities" (WCUs, treatment group) did increase their volume and rate of publication of scientific papers overall and in more prestigious journals, but not at the policy's anticipated accelerated rate. Also, interestingly the non-selected, less research-intensive universities (control group) also increased their publication rate in parallel and sometimes more than the WCUs over the same period. A possible diffusion effect of institutional norms, greater inter-institutional competition, and isomorphism around science productivity generated by the implementation of the policy is examined and discussed in light of the global spread of university excellence initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, the Canadian federal government announced its first-ever international education strategy. Referencing Cerna's (2014) typology of interactions between national policies and university strategies, this paper examines the implications of this changed national policy context on institutional level internationalization strategies, particularly on international students' recruitment and retention. We specifically examine how university strategies acknowledge governmental policies; what organizational changes they make in response to government policy and what opportunities and challenges university staff identify in meeting policy objectives. The paper presents results from a scan of universities' websites and a survey administered to university staff from a representative sample of Ontario's universities. It concludes that the government-institutional policies' synergies are far more complex than Cerna's (2014) typology suggests, reinforcing the need for newer models examining multi-level and multi-actor contexts within which both higher education and governments operate and develop international policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taiwan's government has launched policies rewarding universities for their faculty's publication rates in journals listed in the Social Science Citation Index or the Taiwan Social Science Citation Index with the goal of improving international visibility and global competitiveness. Consequently, a 'publish or perish' situation has arisen, affecting university hiring, promotion, and reward systems across disciplines. This article illustrates how higher education policies re-oriented faculty research performance in two departments - anthropology and education policy - within one national university in Taiwan. In each department, faculty journal publication rates were calculated for 1993, 2003, and 2013. Then, in-depth interviews were conducted among senior faculty. Research findings indicate that Taiwan's new higher education policies have impacted academic culture and research practices in the social sciences and humanities. Although faculty visibility via publication has improved, this may be at the expense of local impact and social relevance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fairness is one of the most important quality criteria of assessments and a necessary condition for valid test score interpretations. In this paper, we describe findings related to an assessment of N = 7664 beginning business and economics students at 46 universities across Germany using a domain-specific higher education entry test. From the perspective of test fairness as defined by the internationally established validation standards outlined by AERA et al. (Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing, AERA, Washington, DC, 2014), we identify which students had particular difficulty completing the test, taking into account gender- and language-related influence factors in the assessment of their test performance. Our results highlight the particular challenges in admissions testing in higher education. One of these challenges is finding a suitable way to address the disadvantages experienced by various groups of students to guarantee fairness and ethical integrity when developing and administering tests. Current migration developments and the overall internationalization of higher education have led to an increasing heterogeneity of student bodies. These challenges are therefore of particular relevance for education policy and practice when it comes to ensuring fairness when assessing learning outcomes for all student groups. This also applies in the context of commonly used standardized assessments and established examination practices in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher education and the professional development of teachers has become a prominent topic in recent policy discussions worldwide. However, many educational changes have been carried out without clear reference to the results of empirical studies evaluating the efficiency of teacher education programs. This paper aims to contribute to this discussion. It provides an overview on the current knowledge derived from empirical research on the structure of the professional competence of teachers and competence development during teacher education. First, a description of a theoretical framework for the professional competence of teachers and their impact of competence measurement with pre- and in-service mathematics teachers is given. Then, the competence development of teachers at the transition from teacher education into teaching practice and the relation to instructional quality and student learning gains is described. Finally, implications for policy are outlined, emphasizing the necessity of a sound knowledge base in teacher education, which has to be complemented by professional noticing accounting for situated facets of teacher competence. Due to the dynamic acquisition of teacher competence through practical learning opportunities in early career teaching, strong professional development measures are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The US-led invasion in 2003 created opportunities for Iraq to establish American-style universities. Drawing on policy borrowing and educational transfer theory and using interviews as the primary method of data collection, this study examines how the American-style universities are rationalized and appropriated by various actors at national, sectoral, and institutional levels. The analysis shows that the rationales for establishing American-style universities in post-2003 Iraq differ by how each was funded and politically and financially supported. The new American-style universities in Iraq in this study represented something for both the USA and for Iraq. For the USA, they are a source of public diplomacy and soft power, and for Iraq, an instrument that promises peacebuilding, social cohesion, transition to democracy, reforming the local higher education system, legitimacy, and probably a tool to 'revolutionize' Iraq's higher education and bring back its glory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study synthesized the effect of performance-based funding (hereafter, PBF) through multi-stages of a systematic literature review based on 36 articles. In addition, this study analyzes how policy design relates to the effectiveness of PBF in individual states. Similar to other meta-analyses, this study found that PBF policy is not effective in improving completion and equity of higher education institutions in the US. Further, this study assumed that there might be some positive effects of PBF on institutional performance in the states that maintained it for more than seven consecutive years. Specifically, this study assumed that some policy details such as institutional types, funding method (baseline or bonus), share of funding linked to institutional performance, and funding metrics were related to policy effects. However, this systematic review found that a majority of evaluative studies arrived at inconclusive results across different types of policy designs. One notable finding is that 2-year institutions show more positive results than 4-year institutions. In addition, this study found that statistically significant effects are both positive and negative. Based on the findings of the selected evaluative studies, this review concluded that PBF policy is not very successful in improving institutional performance across different types of policy designs in each state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research explores responsible investment practices at Canadian and international universities. We analyze universities' Statement of Investment Policy and Procedures and Responsible Investing Policies to understand how responsible investing is included and how this varies by region. Our results show that most university investment policies are lacking in content and specificity. We compare four different regions, Canada, the United States (USA), the United Kingdom and Ireland (UK-I) and Australia New Zealand (ANZ) in terms of responsible investment integration. We find a clear international hierarchy, with the UK-I as the most advanced region in responsible investing integration, followed by Canada and ANZ with the USA a distant last place. We develop recommendations which act as tools to help mobilize university knowledge in responsible investing, drawing on globally recognized frameworks, in two areas: governance and policy. Our recommendations are broadly applicable to any post-secondary institution and also expand to other sectors attempting to incorporate responsible investing. Implications for universities and areas for future research will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores possible reasons for cancel culture in higher education in the Arab world. Specifically, through Q methodology, it investigates the perceptions of twenty-one academics of different nationalities and from different backgrounds working in various universities in the Arab world as to the causes and their professional experiences of cancel culture. The aim is to contribute to a necessary discussion of cancel culture and its impacts on Arab higher education, with the hope of strengthening the region's academic freedom. The data reveal that several political and social issues engender cancel culture in Arab universities. In effect, results indicate that academics working in higher education in the Arab world embrace a 'culture of safetyism' to keep themselves, their students and the societies in which they live 'emotionally safe'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore scientific mobility patterns, we leverage a rich bibliometric dataset on Taiwanese academia. We investigate the movement and productivity of 21,051 highly active researchers who published while affiliated with Taiwanese higher education institutions based on 30 years' worth of publication and affiliation records from 1991 to 2020. The analysis shows evidence of brain drain in Taiwan since the 2010s, with the U.S. the top destination for researchers moving from Taiwan (as well as the largest source of inbound researchers). China comes a close second to the U.S. as the top destination for outbound scholars. Studying how Taiwan's universities recruited talent after the country adopted the 2005 excellence initiative, we discover that the numbers of scholars recruited by World Class Universities (WCUs) and non-WCUs surpringly converge with WCUs exhibiting a dramatic decrease in new recruits. Our evidence uncovers that inbound scholars, after their move, are more productive than non-mobile colleagues; however, this effect declines over time. We discuss implications for the study of excellence initiatives, their (un)intended consequences, and mechanisms of talent circulation that greatly impact research production and research university development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To date, no empirical study has focused on understanding the evolution process of China's college admission policies and clarifying its hidden evolution logic. Based on the advocacy coalition framework (ACF), this study determines different advocacy coalitions and their belief systems during the evolution process of independent enrollment policy, as well as various driving forces that affect the process. The social network analysis methods are adopted to delineate alliance structures formed by actors with different policy beliefs in the policy subsystems which change over time. This study chooses news reports included in the China National knowledge infrastructure (CNKI) database as the data source, and identifies 328 related news reports to be coded in the analysis. This article not only provides the evolution logic of independent enrollment policy, but also bridges the research gap and therefore enriches the broad literature on the application of Advocacy Coalition Framework in Eastern countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Next generation' issues are attracting considerable attention in higher education (HE) policy and programming. This is particularly true in Africa, where depleted academic capacity, insufficient levels of doctorate-qualified staff, and the steady retirement of many experienced lecturers and researchers place a particular urgency on identifying, training and nurturing new cohorts of research and teaching staff across the continent's HE and research institutions. Recent contributions to the debate have also raised concerns about the extent to which doctoral study has been 'casualised', interrupted by the demands of employment, and hampered by inadequate supervision and support to develop and undertake research, resulting in fragmentary research and long times to completion. This paper presents the results of a survey of African and European doctoral students alongside a desk review of current funding programmes, bringing new evidence to this debate, particularly around what it is to be a doctoral student in different regions of Africa and how this is currently supported. In doing so, it highlights issues to be considered in future programmes to strengthen doctoral study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Worldwide, markets challenge academics to keep their professional competency constantly improving. While in some countries governments, universities and individual scholars synergize their efforts to improve conditions for professional development, in others the stakeholders act in a chaotic and uncommitted manner. This paper examines the efforts of Cambodian policy-makers aimed at making structural alignments of interests, strategies, and resources at governmental and institutional levels in response to sporadic changes in academic labor markets. The qualitative research data shed light on a range of asynchronies generated by underinvestment in academic competence improvement and reliance on random actors that make choices in accordance with political circumstances, rather than professional norms. The Cambodian case stimulates thinking on what might be required to align national and institutional personnel policies and enhance opportunities for continued improvement of academic competence in a resource-deficient higher education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the development of the Postsecondary Institutions Rating System (PIRS) by the United States federal government from 2013 to 2015. PIRS generated debate and opposition, which ultimately resulted in a significant transformation of the initiative. The present analysis identifies and explores key assumptions regarding higher education access, affordability, and quality embedded in this policy agenda. We argue that, as a rating mechanism, PIRS involves different and at times conflicting notions of quality, one of the most salient being 'value for money.' The ratings system also emphasizes and promotes the concept of employability through its proposed outcome measures. Analyzing PIRS requires not only an exploration of its technical implementation and potential outcomes, but also a conceptual analysis. For this, we relied on discourse analysis of documents the U.S. government has generated or made publically available, and of the responses among different policy stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the development of a system of easily readable and comparable qualifications within a single Qualifications Framework in the European Higher Education Area (QF-EHEA) as part of the Bologna process. Employing a path dependence approach, combined with new understandings of critical junctures and incremental policy change, as our conceptual lens, we find that multiple self-reinforcing events between the 1998 Sorbonne Declaration and the 2005 Bergen Communiqué, in the form of Declarations and Communiqués, guided implementation of the Bologna policy process, along with elements of incremental layering. We also see evidence that policy formation and implementation are self-reinforcing in the context of the development of the QF-EHEA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2017 was a landmark in Taiwanese higher education when the quality assurance mechanism transitioned from being external to internal. Given that the external quality assurance mechanism was criticised for violating the autonomy of universities, the 2017 self-accreditation policy aimed to resolve the controversy and internalise a quality culture into every university. This study engages in a critical policy analysis and examines the peculiar conceptualisation of policy problems, thereby revealing the micro-politics in the QA studies. In this article, we draw upon Carol Bacchi's concept of problematisation to explore the national QA transition. We propose that any investigation into the transition from an external to internal mechanism needs to delve into the historical-political context because the change is fabricated by complex interplays between various discourses, structures, and relational networks. By examining policy problematisation, we argue that more attention within higher education policy studies should be focused on the articulation of the framed problem, particularly given its impacts on the shape of university practices in quality management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decolonization of higher education policy and practice has become an increasing concern and interest in recent years. This article provides a critical review of the application of decolonization to higher education. It discusses what its proponents mean by the term and how they seek to apply it in practice. It identifies outstanding issues with its usage and considers what the direction ahead may be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In both higher education and other policy sectors, agencies have become a popular instrument adopted by governments to regulate the behavior of universities from a distance. This paper addresses this apparently common trend by proposing a typology of these agencies that assumes that evaluation agencies' autonomy is dependent upon not only legal powers but also the government's capacity to behave as a principal and to design, over time, coherent systemic governance modes. This typology is assessed through a comparative analysis of the roles and functions of evaluative agencies within the field of higher education in the UK, France, and Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been suggested that higher education policy across the world is currently framed by a common set of assumptions. As a result, policy makers have a restricted sense of the options that are open to them. This paper looks to the paradigm of critical realism in order to open up alternative perspectives for policy makers. The argument specifically focuses on policy around student engagement, building on earlier theorising in this area. Student engagement is seen to be constituted by the agency of learners within educational settings, supported as this is by the social relations maintained by learners. The argument opens up alternative framings for policy in ways that take account of the reflexivity and relational goods that sustain the engagement of students in their studies, addressing areas such as teaching and learning, extra-curricular activity, human resources, the character of institutions and student protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'student engagement' has become ubiquitous in mainstream discourses concerning higher education in the UK and beyond. The term is used to denote a desirable set of practices and orientations in students which should be worked towards or encouraged in order for teaching in higher education to be deemed successful - as such, it has enormous influence in the higher education (HE) as part of a discourse which carries powerful ideological force in the sector. However, as Kahn (Br Educ Res J 40(6):1005-1018, 2013) points out, it is a concept which is weakly theorised in the literature. This paper will interrogate the concept in order to deepen understanding of how the term operates. I will argue first that the notion often relies on typological categories which tend to posit the individual as the primary site of student engagement and secondly that this is primarily identified in interlocution or observable interaction. Drawing on the work of Gert Biesta, I will argue that this position reflects a broader trend towards 'learnification' in higher education, which positions teaching as problematic and inherently repressive. I seek to build on this critique by arguing for a reframing which recognises the sociomaterial and radically distributed nature of human and non-human agency in day-to-day student engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy implementation is crucial because if the policy is not implemented as planned, the policy objectives will not be achieved, and the whole policymaking process can be considered a total waste of time, energy, and resources. Regarding the essential nature of policy implementation, this study was focused on exploring factors hindering the effective implementation of the research policy in Cameroon universities. The study was guided by the following questions: (1) How do university lecturers perceive university research? (2) What do research administrators perceive as factors hindering the implementation of the research policy in universities? The sample population was made up of 60 lecturers and 20 research administrators. The findings revealed that the following factors are hindering the effective implementation of the research policy: lack of autonomy, failure to involve implementers in the policymaking process, inadequate resources, and inadequate monitoring and evaluation. Moreover, this study found that research findings are not implemented, lecturers are not satisfied with the extent to which research objectives have been achieved, and there is inadequate extrinsic motivation to engage in research activities. From the insightful findings, implications are given to enhance the implementation of the research policy in universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Setting out against the context of the rise of anti-globalism and the resurgence of nationalism, the first half of the article reviews and discusses the debates of anti-globalism and the resurgence of nationalism as well as their effects on educational development. The second half of the article provides the overview of the special issue. More specially, it will highlight the major arguments presented by the contributors, who are experts in higher education policy and governance studies. The arguments particularly examine how the governments in the Asia–Pacific region have promoted nationalism, on the one hand, and globalisation, on the other hand. Next, we review how nationalism has resurged in higher education policy debates where globalisation is widely contested in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In December 2010, a comprehensive reform (Law 240/2010, or 'Gelmini reform') changed the institutional governance and internal organization of Italian state universities. This paper investigates the redefinition of the state role in the light of public management reform narratives, linking them to the Governance Equalizer Model to evaluate how the on-going reform process has affected the power sharing arrangement and coordination mechanisms in the Italian higher education system thus far. Rhetoric of reform was influenced by the New Public Management narrative; Law 240 was presented as a fundamental change to the traditional Italian governance regime, based on detailed state regulation and academic self-governance. In practice, contradictions between the rhetoric of the reform and the effectiveness of implementation are evident: Italian reform complies more with the Neo-Weberian narrative and it did not have any substantial impact on power distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The governance of higher education has been changing across Europe, most notably in response to the reform agenda that has been pervading many higher education systems. This wave of reforms has given enhanced visibility to external stakeholders, which has been often received with contrasting views. Some regarded it as a factor that would undermine institutions' mission, while others viewed it as a rhetorical change, which would hardly have an impact on institutional life. In this paper, we analyse the introduction of external stakeholders in governance and quality assessment processes by looking at the Portuguese experience, and more specifically at their contribution to the implementation of internal quality assurance systems. We use empirical data collected from four higher education institutions under the framework of the IBAR project, subsumed in the form of barriers to and good practices for the implementation of policies and procedures for quality assurance. The results suggest that although the presence of external stakeholders has become more visible, it is yet to be fully reflected in the way institutions are governed or the way in which they manage their internal quality assurance processes and mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The massification of higher education in Ukraine is a fact, while financing the system is still an issue. External pressures from the central government and the market require changes in university governance. Europeanization of the educational system and adherence to the principles laid down by the Bologna Declaration add to already existing challenges faced by universities. This paper offers classification, typology, and portrayal of the higher education landscape in Ukraine, and elaborates on the complex intertwinement of state and higher education institutions. It considers universities as collegiums and bureaucracies, and suggests the university political system as a viable form of organizational structure for the task of reforming universities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The higher education (HE) subsystem in Ethiopia has passed through a series of policy reforms in the last 10 years. Key reform areas ranged from improving quality and relevance of programmes to promoting equality in access to and success in HE. Despite the effort underway, gender inequality has remained a critical challenge in the subsystem. This makes it imperative to question the way in which the problem of gender inequality is framed in the equity policies and strategies put in place. This paper reports on the analysis of two policy documents from the Government of Ethiopia. Drawing on Carlo Bacchi's 'what is the problem represented to be' approach to critical policy analysis, the study reveals the inherent limitations in how the problem of gender inequality is understood and framed. The findings show that gender inequality has largely been equated with disparity in enrolment, and the policies are silent on structural impediments that underlie the problem. The drawbacks of the gender equity policy instruments are partly linked with the neoliberal policy elements endorsed in the reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional mutual recognition agreements (MRAs) are one of the policy instruments employed in global and regional trade agreements to facilitate the mobility of skilled labour. While such agreements have been noted in the literature examining cross-border academic mobility, little is known about how they impact higher education. This paper examines the formation of professional MRAs in North America since the passing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), focusing on three fields: engineering, architecture, and accounting. In the three professions, asymmetries characterizing the NAFTA partners led to system-level reforms in Mexico. The paper discusses how and why the institutional arrangements governing professional higher education in the country were ‘harmonized’ with those of the United States and Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy-making in Canadian post-secondary education is rarely the subject of intensive, systematic study. This paper seeks to identify the distinctive ways in which Canadian post-secondary education policy decisions were constructed and implemented, and to posit an analytical framework for interpreting policy-making process in post-secondary education. Our focus is on post-secondary policy initiatives between 1990 and 2000. During this period, the federal government, under Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chrétien undertook some unprecedented initiatives in the post-secondary education field. The paper discusses aspects of the 1993 election campaign, the Income Contingent Repayment (student assistance) proposal in 1994, the federal deficit cuts of 1995, the return to fiscal surplus in 1997, and the introduction of the following federal plans: the Canada Foundation on Innovation, the Canada Research Chairs Program, and the Millennium Foundation Scholarship Program. The paper concludes with the presentation of a conceptual framework designed to enhance understanding of the public policy-making process in post-secondary education and, potentially, other policy fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a synthetic overview of the complex dimensions that shape the interrelations between the massification of higher education systems and their structure and composition. Many higher education systems worldwide expanded extensively in the last decades, and have undergone wide and deep structural changes. Most notably, the diversity of many higher education systems has increased dramatically, both horizontally and vertically. We address in this paper the following issues: external and internal boundaries of higher education systems; top-down and bottom-up forces; globalization and supra-national trends; flexibility; and public and private sectors. These themes highlight most crucial issues to which higher education policy makers are advised to pay attention to when deliberating what are the best ways to implement the expansion of their higher education systems, and what should be the desirable diversity in their national contexts.Higher Education Policy (2007) 20, 373–389. doi:10.1057/palgrave.hep.8300158 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]