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Programmes to encourage the return of migrants living with irregular status are prominent in many OECD countries. Bearing titles like ‘assisted voluntary return and reintegration’ (AVRR), they are often rationalized as a more humane alternative to forced deportation. Critics question their voluntariness, suggesting they are actually an extension of the deportation apparatus. While broadly sympathetic to these criticisms, this paper offers a novel perspective on AVRR. We argue AVRR is reshaping what we call the political imaginary of deportation. Focusing on the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a leading architect of AVRR, we insist scholars take seriously the visual images and narratives through which voluntary return is discursively constructed. First, we discuss the political imaginary, and clarify what this concept brings to deportation studies. Second, we present a mapping of the political imaginary of deportation as this appears within IOM information campaigns concerning AVRR. We organize this material in terms of three analytics: returnees as activists, return journeys as homecoming, and deportation as self-reinvention. In the eyes of many activists and migrants, deportation has very negative and painful connotations. We show that IOM reimagines the landscape of deportation in a positive light. We call this move the deportation twist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The finance of higher education faces a clash between technological advance, driving up the demand for skills, and fiscal constraints, given competing imperatives for public spending. Paying for universities is also immensely politically sensitive. This paper sets out core lessons for financing higher education deriving from economic theory, including the desirability of loans with income-contingent repayments. Subsequent discussion includes a general strategy for OECD countries derived from the theoretical analysis, and reforms in England in 2006 which illustrate the strategy. The paper concludes with discussion of the appropriate role of government in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Higher education systems globally have seen major increases in women's participation and the overall trend in OECD countries has been a transition from the traditional male majority in enrolments to a substantial female majority. Prompted by a recent reversal of this trend, this paper explores gender differences in participation in higher education in 27 OECD countries between 1971 and 2015. While increased participation by women was thought to be part of the solution to persistent gender inequalities we argue that this is not an inevitable outcome. Our argument is based on an analysis of changes in the gender composition of the student population, using available secondary data. We explore how changing gender differentials are linked to the concurrent massification of HE, changing distribution of enrolments by field of study, changes in sex segregation by field, features of national education systems and wider social structural differences related to gender. Our analysis examines the complex interaction between discipline-specific levels of sex segregation and overall levels of gender parity. We argue that that sex segregation needs to be considered alongside women's long-standing higher participation rates to understand why the latter has not triggered a transformation in the gendered division of labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Learning gain' has become an increasingly prominent concept in debates about the effectiveness of higher education across OECD countries. In England, interest has been heightened by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)'s major research initiative on learning gain, launched in 2015, and by the new Teaching Excellence Framework which assesses learning and teaching and student outcomes. HEFCE's novel research initiative has funded a set of experimental projects across the English higher education sector for the first time. This paper presents preliminary findings from one such project at the University of East Anglia (UEA). The project trials and evaluates three approaches to identifying and measuring learning gain using data from cohorts of students across different discipline areas during 2015-2016 and 2016-2017. It builds upon previous work carried out at UEA in developing self-efficacy assessments and applying concept inventories. Student marks provide a simple comparator as a third approach to measuring learning gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the notion of a ‘just imaginary’ for social inclusion in higher education. It responds to the current strategy of OECD nations to expand higher education and increase graduate numbers, as a way of securing a competitive advantage in the global knowledge economy. The Australian higher education system provides the case for analysis. Three dilemmas for social inclusion policy in this context are identified: questions of sustainability, aspiration and opportunity. The paper argues that while social inclusion policy has ‘first-order’ effects in higher education, ajustimaginary is required for more inclusive ‘second-order’ effects to be realized. It concludes that transformation of the current imaginary will require a more robust theorization of relations between social inclusion and higher education, to give new and unifying meaning to existing practices and to generate new ones. Short of this, social inclusion may be little more than justimaginary. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper is a macro study on higher education R&D and its impact on productivity growth. I measure the social rate of return on higher education R&D in 17 high-income OECD countries using country level data on the percentage of gross expenditure on R&D performed by higher education, business, and government sectors over the period 1981–2006. Empirical results suggest that lagged R&D performed by higher education is positively affecting productivity growth in all specifications. The long-run propensity of productivity growth to R&D performed by the higher education sector is also found to be positive and significant while it is found be insignificant to business R&D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to lay out future scenarios related to the impact of the intensification of competition between universities and research centres of OECD countries on the stocks and flows of university graduates in Latin America. In conditions of intensified competence, it is possible that the ways in which Latin American countries, universities and university professionals participate in the processes of international mobility will change significantly. This paper proposes different scenarios, combining hypotheses about the global dynamics of skilled mobility and migration of graduate students (conditioned by the behaviour of the demand in developed countries), about their main impacts on Latin America, and about the responses that Latin American governments and universities could make to face this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing female educational attainment across OECD countries is making hypogamy a widespread phenomenon. This trend provides an opportunity to re-examine the effects of educational assortative mating on children's educational outcomes. This research explores the effects of hypergamy, homogamy, and hypogamy on gender differences in children's expectation of university graduation and actual college graduation. For the first purpose, logistic regression with country fixed-effects is applied to individual-level data from PISA 2015; a similar analysis is carried out for the second purpose with data from the European Social Survey. Three characteristics make us expect higher female advantage among children of hypogamous couples: higher probability of mothers being the main family breadwinner; higher probability of gender value conflict, eventually leading to family breakup and the father's absence; and the possibility that the father's occupation discourages sons from pursuing higher education. A systematic female advantage is indeed found among children of hypogamous couples in terms of expectation of college graduation and actual college graduation. Among the possible mechanisms behind this female advantage, only the father's and the mother's occupation could be explored with the data at hand, but none of them explain this advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to outline a new approach to the comparative analysis of student finance systems based on social rights, an approach widely applied in other areas of social policy. It focuses on rights codified in national legislation and financed by central governments, and the collection of indicators measuring formal eligibility and entitlements using model family analyses techniques. We illustrate the usefulness of the approach by exploring the relationship between the generosity and the degree of low-income targeting of student support in 21 OECD countries. The results show that student support is less generous in countries that concentrate benefits on students from low-income families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the association between age at tertiary graduation and outcomes of the first phase of the working career in Italy by using a rich longitudinal dataset built merging EU-SILC survey data with individual administrative records on working careers. Labour market outcomes is observed at the entry and along the 10-year period from graduation. No large differences in weekly and annual earnings and worked weeks emerge across individuals who attained the degree at different ages, thus showing a negligible direct penalisation related to graduating not at typical age in Italy. In particular, no statistically significant associations emerge as concerns the link between age at graduation and total earnings obtained during the 10 years from graduation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the literacy and numeracy proficiencies of higher education (HE) degree holders in 21 OECD countries based on primary analysis of the national data sets collected via the OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) 2012 study. The differences in the graduates’ average literacy and numeracy proficiencies amongst the OECD countries are substantial. Depending on the country, a smaller or greater proportion of a young highly educated age group does not have sufficient skills in literacy or numeracy to cope with many of the everyday tasks requiring the use of that skill. The PIAAC study challenges existing evaluation practices of the effectiveness of HE in fostering individual skills and puts into perspective the attempts to lift national average skill levels by increasing the HE sector’s intake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is currently engaging in a worldwide feasibility study entitled International Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO). This feasibility study seeks to develop measures that would assess student learning outcomes that would be valid across different languages, cultures, and higher education institutions. Drawing on anticolonial perspectives, this article provides a critical policy analysis of the AHELO project. Based on a review of the AHELO texts, it presents two themes: (1) crisis and imperial logic in policy production and (2) Anglo-Eurocentrism as global designs and colonial relationships. It argues that, through AHELO, OECD is striving to construct a global space of equivalence for teaching and learning in higher education, and in so doing, perpetuates coloniality in global higher education. It concludes by noting some comparative observations between AHELO and Programme for International Student Achievement in terms of the increasing role of global knowledge for policy tools in educational policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]