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This paper will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the different models put forward currently for quality assurance in British higher education, and the different purposes inherent in these models. They have been proposed by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council, the Standing Conference of the Arts and Social Sciences, the Labour Party Discussion Paper ‘Quality Assured’ and the Government White Paper of May 1991. Particular reference will be made to the degree that they propose different buffers between the parties involved. The latter include government, the funding councils, the system of higher education, individual institutions of higher education, staff, students, employees and society.

This paper investigated project-based governance (PBG) in China’s higher vocational education (HVE) with a main research question asking how PBG works in China’s HVE. Using case study as a research strategy, the paper examines the application and effect of the PBG model on Chinese HVE within the analytical framework of PBG-based agency theory. Twenty-three faculty members from both administrative and academic departments in College Plateau (pseudonym) were recruited to participate in a person-to-person interviews. They were expected to share their observations and perspectives on the PBG model as applied to HVE. As supplementary materials, the Chinese government’s policy documents and statistics, as well as institutional policy documents, were also looked at for a brief discussion of governance of China’s HVE. The results showed that the PBG model has greatly challenged the traditional administrative, distribution and personnel systems, as well as the college-enterprise cooperation model, and academic performance of higher vocational colleges (HVCs). These changes have brought higher academic achievements and greater social resources to College Plateau. However, they have also caused many negative effects, such as homogeneity of organizations and the Matthew effect among HVCs.

The paper focuses on the contradictory results on the effect of social background on choice of field of study (field stratification) in expanded higher education systems. We predicted that the contradictory results stem from variations in institutional selectivity and curricular policy. Based on two surveys conducted in 1999 (4146 students) and 2014 (7384 students) in the Israeli expanded higher education system, this paper analyzes changes in the ratio of continuing-generation college students in fields of study offered by institutions with varying degrees of selectivity. The results show a decrease in the selectivity of the second-tier institutions in the second analyzed period, accompanied by an increase in field stratification. We suggest that this increase stems from the differential curricular policies of second-tier higher education institutions. In the second period, the second-tier institutions initiated labor market-oriented programs for the less popular fields, thus opening them to first-generation students. In popular and lucrative fields, some of them regulated by professional associations, the second-tier institutions kept to the traditional orientation of the programs, and attracted less qualified continuing-generation students. We discuss the implications of the findings on social stratification.

This Special Issue has chosen the major focus to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected higher education development and governance. The collection of articles in this Special Issue is organized with three key sub-themes, namely, student mobility, teaching and student learning, and university governance. Papers selected in this Issue were presented at different international conferences examining how the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in late 2019 has affected higher education development from international and comparative perspectives. During the international research events, authors contributing their papers to this Special Issue indeed benefitted from the exchanges and dialogues from international peers. Drawing insights from the papers collected in this Special Issue, this introductory article concludes by drawing the implications for future development of international education.

Any institutional policy will only be a paper tiger unless the intended recipients of the policy know and understand it. Student anti-bullying policies at universities in Australia have been researched to determine the quality and usability of the content, but research is lacking in how students understand and use these policies. Bullying amongst students has been identified globally as an issue at universities; however, little has been done to determine students’ knowledge and experience of bullying and the related policies and services universities provide. The aim of this paper is to fill that gap in knowledge, with the hope that by understanding a student’s perspective, identified blocks to reporting may be eliminated. This study surveyed 297 Australian university students about their knowledge of their university’s anti-bullying policies existence and location, their personal and witnessed experienced of bullying, how they handled it, and their knowledge and thoughts on how bullying information is presented to students at their university. The results found students lacked knowledge about anti-bullying policies and practices in their university. The results also highlighted assumptions students make about what their university offers in regard to policies and services. This paper indicates that universities need to publicise their policies and better educate their students on bullying and their related anti-bullying policies.

Though various measures of mobility rate for colleges, e.g., bottom-to-top mobility rate, status maintenance rate, and middle-class mobility rate, have been introduced, they have rarely been reviewed together to see the whole picture of intergenerational mobility, particularly in non-Western societies. This paper fills this gap and characterises mobility rates for 17 different college tiers in South Korea using the Graduates Occupational Mobility Survey for 36,192 graduates from 2007 to 2010. It documents two main results. First, mobility rates are higher for males than for females in all three measures, indicating colleges in South Korea are less effective as a social ladder for females. Second, many selective colleges are more likely to play a role as a glass floor than a social ladder due to their lower low-income access, and ‘selective public’ colleges are the engines of upward social mobility for students from the bottom three quintiles. Though people believe education is the single greatest hope to achieve upward social mobility, these findings cast doubt on the idea that college attendance alone can promote social mobility. This paper does not necessarily identify causal relationships that can be manipulated to improve mobility rates; however, it documents various patterns of interest to policymakers.

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.

Numerous higher education institutions apply a full costing system in their accounting model due to the imposition of formal agents (governments/funding institutions), or by suggestion of informal agents (associations). This paper analyzes whether the rationale applied by these agents to justify the use of the full costing rather than the direct/variable system is consistent with the theoretical bases underlying both costing systems. Methodologically, we review the mainstream literature that explores the links between the management accounting model and the use of its informative outcomes for the decision-making in higher education institutions. We conclude that there exists a gap between the theory-based statements and the information needs of these institutions. Remarkably, the full costing system falls short of adequateness for these institutions, which need information for their managerial decision-making process rather than for other industries' decisions such as stock valuation. Thus, this paper contributes to a critical view on the use of full costing systems and calls for redirecting current practices towards other more effective partial costing systems. Our findings have implications for academic, managers and policymakers interested on the implementation and improvement of managerial accounting in public higher education institutions.

This paper discusses the precariousness of an academic profession in contemporary Slovakia and Poland. Although some of the patterns have been previously studied, this analysis sheds new light on the problems of Polish and Slovak academia as seen by foreigners, who, according to official policy, are expected to contribute to the excellence of Polish academia. In reality, low wages and underfinanced universities often make their work very difficult. The analysis is focused mainly on the issues related to low salaries and ways that allow foreign-born employees to secure extra income necessary to maintain the desired standard of living. Even if, for some interviewees, local salary is sufficient to live in CEE, other academics have higher demands because of their family situation (e.g., “international children”), extra travel expenses for private purposes, or spending on bilingual education in Poland or Slovakia. Foreign-born academics living in Poland and Slovakia compensate for low salaries in three distinct ways discussed in the paper — by taking various academic and non-academic extra jobs, acquiring external funding from their home country’s government, or relying on family economic resources.

Using sociocultural theory as the theoretical stance and autoethnography as the tool, this paper explores how transnational, lived experiences and political, economic policies in higher education have re/shaped a transnational intellectual’s identities and mobility. Instead of simply confirming transnationals’ identities are multiple, complex, and recurring during the transnational process, this paper fills a gap in the existing literature by informing that transnational identity development can be used as an analytical tool to advocate for social justice and to develop teacher education programs in different international settings. It also indicates that sustainability of the multiple identities requires critical thinking and intellectual agency. Finally, the paper proposes a conceptual framework to study transnational identities and mobility.

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.

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.

The number of international students studying for a degree program in China was approaching a quarter of a million in 2017, roughly ten times that in 2003. China, a developing country, has become one of the biggest destinations for international student mobility (ISM). Thus, how it has managed to achieve this within only one and a half decades, what it plans to do with such a success, and what that means for the world remain open for interpretation. This increase is an economical grow which demonstrates the country’s success in governance and generosity in international aid, while it is also a result of an internationalization policy of higher education which is viewed by central government as an arena for exercising soft power in world politics. It is difficult when trying to reach a persuasive conclusion without a comprehensive review of what happened in this period via a thorough examination of ISM data in a context of rapid policy change. This paper consists of four sections to identify the key driver(s) behind this sharp rise of student numbers from overseas. The first section is an introduction with a brief review of both theoretical and empirical aspects, followed by a short discussion on methodology. The second section is a review of key policy documents impacting on the development of ISM in modern China. The third section provides a general picture of ISM policy in China by analyzing official data. The final section reflects on the findings of the present study and concludes the paper.

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.

Though government funding has shrunk, Nepal’s higher education (HE) sector has expanded in the last three decades in terms of the establishment of new institutions and the implementation of a series of projects funded by the World Bank. Using neoliberal instrumentalism as a theoretical framework and critical policy sociology as a methodological tool, this paper analysed key policy documents produced by the World Bank and the Government of Nepal for implementing three most recent HE projects in Nepal. The paper argues that a new version of human capital theory, which stems from neoliberal instrumentalism in education, has guided HE policies and practices of Nepal. Though a number of reform strategies are implemented with the aim of increasing performance and competition, the HE sector has become increasingly unresponsive to the needs of Nepali communities and societies.

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 This paper has been developed with support for a postdoctoral fellowship from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), Grant Number SFRH/BPD/85724/2012 and with support from the Polish National Research Council (NCN) through its research Grant (UMO-2013/10/M/HS6/00561).

The emergence of private higher education (PHE) in China has resulted from the increasing demand from the public for higher education, and the requirements of private businesses in the socialist market economy. This paper examines the development of the PHE in China since 1949, and in particular the commencement of the Opening-up and Reform Policy for the period 1978–2018. Drawing from national documents and transcripts of interviews with senior managers, the paper explores the challenges PHE currently faces and the policies which have addressed the challenges especially in the last 10 years. It is suggested to improve the role of the university constitution in governance practices of the university.

Universities now routinely promote value statements in order to express their beliefs and moral principles – adopting the practice of many commercial organisations. However, such value statements have rarely been collated or studied across the sector, which is what this paper sets out to do. Focusing on English universities, current value statements were collected and thematically analysed in order to assess what values universities in England claim to embrace; whether there are patterns in these value statements; and how these values are used to characterise the ‘business’ of higher education. A small number of key themes are used to typify value statements across a majority of institutions and differences between sub-groups of universities are identified. The paper concludes by questioning why universities adopt and publicise value statements and what role they might play in universities’ projections of themselves.

Higher education estates are large and valuable assets that affect diverse stakeholders. Despite recent growth, data on university estates has received little concerted attention from national and international statistics bodies. This paper examines and contrasts the evolution of universities and their estates in the UK and Poland, in the light of the degree of central government control versus institutional autonomy. Given increased international competition for students, staff and research funding, the paper argues that universities and their stakeholders would benefit from more transparency, the development of an agreed set of estate definitions, standards and regular statistical reports. Data based on agreed standards would provide a basis for comparative analysis and help to run better university estates and facilities, thereby enhancing HEI efficiency, effectiveness and environmental sustainability.

Can Australia’s Ph.D. graduates be better utilised in the non-academic workforce? There has been a historic structural decline in the ability of Ph.D. graduates to find work within academia for the last couple of decades (Forsyth in A history of the modern Australian University, New South Press, Sydney, 2014). Around 60% of Ph.D. graduates in Australia, now find jobs outside the academy, and the number is growing year on year (McGagh et al. in Securing Australia’s future: review of Australia’s research training system, https://acola.org.au/wp/PDF/SAF13/SAF13%20RTS%20report.pdf , 2016). The Ph.D. is a degree designed in the early twentieth century to credential the academic workforce. How to make it fit contemporary needs, when many, if not most, graduates do not work in academia, is a question that must be addressed by higher education managers and policymakers. Progress has been slow, partly because of the lack of reliable data-driven evidence to inform this work. This paper puts forward a novel hybrid quantitative/qualitative approach to the problem of analysing Ph.D. employability. We report on a project using machine learning (ML) and natural language processing to perform a ‘big data’ analysis on the text content of non-academic job advertisements. This paper discusses the use of ML in this context and its future utility for researchers. Using these methods, we performed an analysis of the extent of demand for Ph.D. student skills and capabilities in the Australian employment market. We show how these new methods allow us to handle large, complex datasets, which are often left unexplored because of human labour costs. This analysis could be reproduced outside of the Australian context, given an equivalent dataset. We give an outline of our approach and discuss some of the advantages and limitations. This paper will be of interest for those involved in reshaping Ph.D. programs and anyone interested in exploring new ML methods to inform education policy work.

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.

Despite new empirical insights on the topic, the role of the universities in regional development is far from clear. Some regions with strong universities manage to benefit from technological spillovers, while others fail to develop strong industry–university connections, which leaves the research potential of the university largely unutilized. This paper investigates the role played by universities in the development of industrial clusters in two peripheral regions in Norway and the Czech Republic. In so doing, we contrast between a more and a less successful case scenario shedding light on key contextual factors, including the importance attributed to top-down versus bottom-up approaches. The paper contributes with new empirical insights on the role of higher education institutions in regional cluster development.

This paper addresses the issue of universities’ engagement in peripheral regions, taking into account both endogenous (university) and exogenous (regional peripherality) characteristics. The paper aims to deconstruct the university – periphery interplay in the form of a novel analytical framework and to pilot the framework empirically. The pilot mapping of six Norwegian and Czech universities onto the peripheral regions resulted in two implications. First, due to regional lag effects on the industrial – post-industrial development scale and institutional profiling, universities’ regional role is contingent on path dependencies, suggesting that both exogenous and endogenous characteristics should be given equal consideration. Second, the universities’ positioning in peripheral regional surroundings produces some variants in which universities’ engagement is not pivotal for improving regional attributes. This is either because of the incapacity of unlocking the path-dependent effects of regional periphery structures or because of limitations in research capacity, constraining the respective regions’ progress to the knowledge/service society paradigm. Further explorations of these issues may create an impetus for comparative studies on the role of universities in regional development, particularly with respect to peripheral units.

This paper applies agency theory to explore the contractual relationship between higher education institutions (HEI) and HEI-contracted for-profit education agents in international student recruitment, bridging a gap in the existing literature by investigating the underlying issues surrounding these relationships. Building on insights and findings from previous studies related to this topic, our analysis shows that HEI–education agent relationships are often undermined by goal conflicts and information asymmetries that significantly constrain the possibilities for optimal contractual options to monitor and incentivise agents. The present analysis shows that hybrid governance models that include elements from both behaviour- and outcome-based contracts are often most efficient in managing HEI–education agent relationships. The paper critically evaluates how insights from agency theory can help to mitigate these problems and identifies specific inherent frictions that may make government interventions desirable in overseeing the use of education agents.

Regional engagement of universities encompasses a wide number of activities. To a large extent, the literature has emphasised innovation and technological transfer as the main focus of university partnerships. Based on a broad project data carried out in Latin America, this paper points out that social engagement is the most remarkable activity in Latin American universities. This role played by these universities is quite distinctive and could be considered a model for other regions, especially in developing countries. This paper aims to analyse how universities in Latin America interact with civil society in order to meet multiple demands and needs.