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Changes to degree programs in Information Systems are often attributed to quickly-evolving technology and the subsequent changing needs of the employers who hire IS graduates. In this paper, we explore other social and economic factors that were the inspiration for curriculum changes by assigning them to one of four eras in the IS timeline. Using enrollment figures and archival data, we identify both legitimate reasons and misconceptions that led to fluctuating programming requirements, the rise and fall of trendy courses, and the wholesale elimination of programs and faculty positions. We conclude the paper by using our findings to speculate what the future of IS education could look like and how degree programs should prepare for the next era of IS academia.

The Information Systems discipline has long suffered an identity crisis. It has also been prone to program sustainability issues as a technology focus has waxed and waned over the last 50 years. This paper suggests a new approach to teaching Information Systems, utilizing the notion of "fundamental and powerful concepts." Using digital disruption as a fundamental and powerful concept, the authors argue for the core IS course and the courses that make up the major to be developed and centered around the transformation of business models, products, and services caused by emerging digital technologies. The paper includes an outline for the core IS course and the other courses in the major and concludes with a suggestion that the fundamental and powerful concept of digital disruption be used as an approach to teaching Information Systems.

How has education for refugees been shaped by broader dynamics of educational privatization? This paper argues that the invoking of the 'refugee crisis' narrative has been a crucial force in facilitating the privatization of this sector. The urgency of crisis helps to naturalize private actors' participation in refugees' education as equal partners to host governments, multilateral agencies, and civil society. Consistent with Stephen Ball's (2012) distinction between privatization in and of education, the privatization of refugee education also advances through two dimensions: the creation of a new space -- a new 'market' -- for private actors, and the infusion of market and business principles such as 'innovation' into all aspects of education. The crisis narrative has created a new 'horizon of taken-for-granted' (Hall, 1993), where it is simply natural that private actors must participate in the assumption of the traditional responsibilities of the state in providing education for refugees.

The purpose of this research is to analyze the mission statements of business colleges operating in the United Arab Emirates. To this end, written and visual documents in the websites of business colleges were surveyed to collect data on components of mission such as philosophy, contribution, markets, and distinctiveness. Content analysis was used to analyze the data and the components of mission were classified or measured on a simple scale. The cost of tuition was also examined as, considered together with other findings, it can help point to the business strategy followed by colleges. The findings reveal clusters of colleges sharing similar characteristics and following strategies of differentiation or cost leadership in a segmented and crowded business education market. Predominantly privately-owned and characterized by a market philosophy but often with little distinctiveness business colleges are essentially teaching-oriented institutions. The need for return on investment and profit in a competitive education market has resulted in high tuition fees especially among better-known and internationally-accredited colleges. International accreditation is becoming important as the quality of education receives more attention. One limitation of this research is that conclusions are drawn on the basis of material found in publicly available documents only. The framework used in this research to analyze organizational mission of colleges of business in UAE can be helpful in carrying out similar research of tertiary institutions elsewhere.

In this paper, we put in dialogue the local dimension of a nation-state with the global challenges faced by universities worldwide. We focus on the case of Denmark, a nation that was exceptionally active in implementing international university reforms and where digitalisation is a high priority of the public sector governance. The article seeks to contribute to speculative research and critical studies by presenting a mixed-methods study that explores higher education teachers' views about desirable and realistic future scenarios in Denmark. The study draws on data from a survey applied at a large Danish university, analysed both quantitatively (N = 755) and qualitatively (N = 53). The findings show that teachers share clusters of concern about uncontrolled digitalisation and teaching automation, commodification of education, and modularisation of university courses, the latter being a contested but realistic perspective in the latest political reforms. They reaffirm the mission of the university as preparing students for solving real problems and contributing to the challenges of the present time. The paper concludes with a call for university management to recalibrate future imaginaries to the values expressed by the teachers, and the university they wish to create.

This article is a condensed analysis of the developing sustainability crisis of Australian universities. It is based on an address to National Council of the National Tertiary Education Union, Melbourne, 3 October 2014. Thanks to all my fellow-members, who have kept my hopes for the modern university alive.

In Britain and New Zealand the neoliberal assault on universities has shifted from new public management and funding models to the special status of the public university. The project aims to complete neoliberal business initiated 25 years ago by more fully marketising and financialising universities, starting with 'unbundling' and outsourcing and culminating in new forms of privatisation, rent-extraction and rebundling. This paper analyses two documents commissioned beyond government to create political momentum for this project: "Avalanche is Coming" and "The University of the Future." These both capture the zeitgeist of reform while simultaneously creating the university futures that they portend. We examine the market-making work they perform in reimagining and reinventing universities ahead of policy reform. We argue that claims made to support fundamental restructuring of public universities lack substance or evidence. Rather, each is underpinned by different configurations of ideology and self-interest that together envelope universities in new agendas of marketisation, financialisation and privatisation. We suggest that in this latest restructuring of public universities critics should pay more attention to the work of consultancies and think tanks alongside the micro-details of market making. By doing so, they too might reimagine public universities, but for a different political project.

This paper examines how international schools negotiate the competing demands set forth by the discourses of ideological 'internationalism' and 'market-driven' multinationalism. This was accomplished through a critical discourse analysis of the mission statements of 46 Association of American Schools in South America (AASSA) member international schools. By identifying the interdiscursive and intertextual elements of the mission statements, we found that the potential tensions emerging from these competing discourses are often obfuscated, thus creating the semblance of congruency. This paper argues that by not acknowledging and disentangling these competing discourses, international schools may be subject to potentially detrimental consequences, which include marginalising their social and political possibilities and perpetuating neoliberal hegemony.

The study sought to provide an understanding of the quality assurance challenges and opportunities faced by private universities in Zimbabwe. The study analyzed the factors determining provision of quality higher education in private universities and the resultant effects of failing to achieve the minimum acceptable standards. The author employed the case study method which falls within the qualitative research paradigm. The major techniques used were documentary analysis, direct observation and participant observation by the author. The results showed that financial constraints and poor corporate governance were the major factors leading to failure by private universities to uphold high quality standards. The study also highlighted the need for an effective national quality assurance agency in making sure that only institutions with the necessary financial, material and human resources should be allowed to operate as private universities.

Between 1970 and 1990 enrolment in Newfoundland and Labrador schools dropped by 22 percent. The first wave of major educational reform (1990 to 2000) saw massive reductions in public school expenditures and the reduction of more than 1650 teachers. Facing continued enrolment loss and a large current account deficit, in 2004, government again consolidated school districts. In this paper I examine the 1997 and 2004 reforms and argue that the "rationalization" agenda set by government was aggressive--driven primarily by fiscal and corporate factors. While the reforms accomplished their corporate goals, they also resulted in educational and organizational costs which should be weighed against potential benefits. (Contains 2 tables and 4 footnotes.)

Privatisation and commercialisation in education encompass a range of interrelated practices, including the outsourcing of educational services as well as increased reliance on commercially produced resources for the delivery of learning and assessment. An increase in these practices has accompanied the shift from centralised systemic management of schools and specific programs like English as an Additional Language/ Dialect (EAL/D), to school autonomy whereby principals control budget expenditure decisions, ostensibly in response to the needs of their school population. The intersection between school autonomy, commercialisation and delivery of the specialised service of EAL/D is the focus of this paper. This paper presents the findings of a survey with EAL/D teachers in Australia, in relation to the extent to which they are experiencing commercialisation and the impact this is having on the delivery of a longstanding service designed to ensure equity of outcomes for English language learners. The data suggests that the use of commercial products in schools may not be aligned with appropriate educational practices which target language learning needs. There is a strong need for further research in the uptake and use of commercial products for specialist language support. This will elucidate the extent to which EAL/D as a specialisation is being impacted by the use of commercial products both in the appropriacy of the products and in the deprofessionalisation of specialist EAL/D teachers.

This paper explores how special educational needs (SEN) and social class can become intertwined in post-primary school choice in Ireland. The paper draws on data generated during a three-year ethnographic study of a DEIS school. Data are analysed using Holland et al.'s (1998. Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press) "positional identities," "authored selves" and "figured worlds" in order to examine how learner identities and school choice processes can become informed by emergent school cultures being formed and re-formed by neoliberal marketisation of education and how these actions are taken up in the identity work of young people and their families. Soft barriers and their contribution to aspects of school stratification by social class and SEN in this setting are explored. Finally, the paper calls for recognition of the responsibilities of every school to own diversity in their own settings.

Employing neoliberal governmentality as a conceptual frame, this paper presents evidence from the mushrooming English language academies from Pakistan to demonstrate that how neoliberal rationality as a normative order of reason governs the minds of learners and teachers without governing. Drawing on the analysis of an open-ended interview protocol and semi-structured interviews, the findings suggest that learning more English is believed to render them competitive in the current linguistic market. The rationality is deeply interwoven with the logic of the market. English is considered instrumental for social survival, a tool that promises all forms of social, cultural, and economic capital. The paper discusses that how the knowledge that neoliberal rationality internalises, apparently governs participants' discourses, actions, and their self-technologies. Self-technologies manifest in their conduct of relentless self-development and self-entrepreneurship. Recurrent neoliberal lexicon embodies their subjectivities. The power of neoliberalism 'inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives' (Foucault [1980]. "Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings", 1972-1977. New York: Pantheon Books). The study concludes that the transformative potential and promises attached to English learning are facile because English does not exist in some neutral social space; instead, it operates in a polarised society where the roots of socioeconomic inequalities are fundamentally structural than access to English.

In society, there is widespread and growing acceptance of the value of cooperation between industry and universities being collaborative Research and Development (R&D) domain and industrial policy the fuel of knowledge-based economies. In this paper, different domains of cooperation between the University and Industry as well as their generated benefits for each partner are identified. These benefits have been assigned to each domain of cooperation, showing a large number of benefits associated to collaborative R&D. Leading us to make a statement - collaborative R&D is the key cooperation domain for sustainable long-term university-industry partnerships. Suggestions are given about how to continue this research study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paper-based biosensors offer low-cost platforms for fast and easy detection of a biomarker in clinical diagnostics and other fields such as food and environmental monitoring. Since paper is a versatile substrate that enables passive solution flow and is biocompatible, it is suitable to use as a biosensing platform. This perspective article discusses current trends of paper-based biosensors in terms of fabrication and detection techniques in clinical diagnostics. Recently, low performance and manufacturing limitations on large scale are factors limiting microfluidics biosensors commercialization. Key aspects and methods to enhance performance and increase commercialization are proposed in this perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of fillers at the surface of cellulosic paper is an interesting and industrially-commercialized but not very well-known concept, in which the filler particles are essentially added to the voids of the fibrous matrixes. This so-called “surface filling” can be achieved by the use of fillers together with a polymer solution via film press or size press, an approach that is distinct from both wet-end filling and conventional coating of paper. As an easily practicable process, surface filling has some advantages over direct wet-end addition of fillers, such as minimizing the adverse effects of filler addition on paper strength. Efficient surface filling is somewhat dependent on the specific characteristics of both fillers and fibrous matrixes. Surface filling may provide interesting possibilities for the papermaking discipline; for example, it would open the door to maximizing the cost-effectiveness of paper mills, and efficiently adding new functionalities to cellulosic paper. From both practical and fundamental points of view, systematic exploration and understanding of surface filling of cellulosic paper would be of great significance to the papermaking industry.

In Anglophone neoliberal jurisdictions, policy highlights the private goods associated with higher education but largely neglects the sector's contributions to public good not measurable as economic values, including non-pecuniary individual benefits and collective social outcomes. Governments are silent on the existence and funding of most public goods. The paper reports on understandings of the public good role of higher education in England after nearly a decade of full marketisation. The study, part of a cross-national comparison of 11 countries, consisted of a review of major policy reports, and 24 semi-structured interviews in universities (13) and among higher education policy professionals (11) including regulators, national organisations and experts. England has no policy language for talking about outcomes of higher education other than attenuated performative outputs such as graduate salaries, research impact, knowledge exchange and widening participation, understood as individual access to education as a private good. Awareness of multiple public goods has been suppressed to justify successive fee increases and the imposition of a market in the centralised English system. This has coincided with a shift from direct government funding and collaborative stewardship by state and institutions, to student funding and top-down regulation. Nevertheless, most interviewees, including regulators, advocated an open-ended public good role and provided many examples of public goods in higher education, though the concepts lacked clarity. The policy notion of a zero-sum relation of private and public outcomes, corresponding to the split of private/public costs, was rejected in favour of a positive-sum relation of private and public outcomes.

The PC display market has evolved rapidly in recent years, with new technologies and capabilities like high dynamic range (HDR), motion blur reduction and ultra‐high variable refresh rates being introduced at a rapid rate. However, when it comes to choosing a display, consumers are often at a disadvantage. How can they better understand the capabilities of each display, and trust the specs provided by the manufacturer? For display OEMs, having consistent, measurable display performance parameters around which to qualify and promote their products is also beneficial to product development and commercialization. For the past six years, the Video Electronics Standards Association (VESA) has released multiple front‐of‐screen performance standards to help consumers and OEMs meet these needs. This paper will review the compliance test specifications for several of these standards, including the newest update to VESA's HDR standard, DisplayHDR v1.2, which will be launched in the first half of 2024. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The story of the WE enterprise, also known as ME to WE or WE Charity, presents us with a cautionary tale for teachers who welcome social enterprise into schools as a way of bringing community engagement and social justice into their educational programs. Our paper is a cautionary tale that, like all such tales, opens with the statement of a warning about social entrepreneurship in schools. As the narrative unfolds, this warning is disregarded, and the violator ultimately experiences an unpleasant fate. Using the large-scale data available on Instagram, this paper reveals in detail how WE represented itself, how others perceived it, and how it worked in and with schools to achieve its corporate goals. We conclude the tale by discussing how, by delinking education from corporate interests, schools may serve equity and the public good instead of creating brand fanatics in the service of elite interests.

This article draws on a qualitative comparative research study of global citizenship education (GCE) in two primary schools, an international school in Singapore and an independent school in Australia. This paper focuses on the implementation of GCE within the two specific school contexts, Singapore and Australia, examining the tensions which existed between neo-liberal market rationales and the critical democratic ideologies at each site. The paper explored in-depth how the neo-liberal market agenda influenced and shaped the societal imaginaries specifically in relation to their GCE commitments. Despite each schools' commitments to critical democratic GCE ideals, they were very mindful about being distinctive and remaining competitive within their respective educational markets. To that extent, the schools were neo-liberal market actors. Empirical data shows the complexity of a more hybridised or a continuum existence between these two ideologies, thus providing a more nuanced insight of the binary within the school sites.

This paper uses critical discourse analysis of English higher education institutions' policy statements about access to explore the changing ways that institutions have used language to shift their market positionality away from widening participation for all and the process of higher education to "fair access" (i.e. social mobility for the "brightest") and the outcome of producing "professionals". Analysis is drawn from the Access Agreements two sets of sampled institutions (ten large prestigious pre-1992 universities and ten former polytechnics, known as post-1992 universities) at two points in time: 2006-07 (the first wave of Access Agreements) and 2012-13 (the first set of Access Agreements in the new funding regime).

The last 5 years have seen a growing number of universities use social media services such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to engage with past, present and prospective students. More recently still, a number of universities have published policy or guidance documents on the use of social media for a range of university-related purposes including learning, teaching and assessment. This study considers the social media policies of 14 universities in the United Kingdom (UK) that are currently in the public domain. It addresses some of the ways in which Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are responding to both the positive potential of social media as well as its perceived threats. Drawing inspiration, if not actual method, from critical discourse analysis, this study argues that marketisation has been the main policy driver with many social media policies being developed to promote university "brands" as well as protect institutional reputation. The creation and implementation of social media policies are therefore playing a role in helping universities manage both the risks and the benefits of social media in the context of an increasingly marketised Higher Education (HE) environment in which protecting institutional reputation has become a priority. However, in the defence of the metaphorical institutional "share price", some policies constrain both academic autonomy and the possibilities for innovation and risk-taking. (Contains 3 figures.) [This paper was published in the ALT-C 2012 Conference Proceedings.]

Paper-based analytical devices (PADs), thanks to the versatility, cheapness, availability, biodegradability, and porosity of paper, have emerged as flexible sensing platforms for determining various analytes. However, lack of selectivity can be a problem in complex analysis conditions and samples. To improve the selectivity and specificity of PADs, they can be integrated with molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs). The high selectivity of the sensor is the essential feature for biomarker analysis because the reliable and accurate determination of biomarkers provides valuable information about various diseases, especially cancer. Therefore, MIP-PAD systems offer a good option for biomarker analysis. This way, it is possible to achieve point-of-care tests, early diagnosis, and affordability. This review points out the significant processes of MIP-PAD fabrication and characterization (paper selection and fabrication, synthesis of MIP). The most recent applications of MIP-PADs for biological samples are explained and discussed in detail. Lastly, the commercialization of MIP-PADs is evaluated. This study is the first in the literature to assess MIP-PADs for biomarkers analysis. • The evaluation of MIP-PADs for biomarker detection. • Comprehensive research for fabrication and characterization of MIP-PADs. • The successful sensor applications of MIP-PADs for biological samples. • The place of MIP-PADs in commercial applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]