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The paper analyses the influence of COVID-19 on Portuguese institutions' intake of international students and their responses to the pandemic. Two dimensions are considered: quantitative impact on international enrolments and higher education institutions' strategies for the recruitment and support of international students. The first dimension is analysed through national statistics and comparison of enrolments over the past five years. Then, the institutional strategies implemented to encourage recruitment of new international students and to support existing ones during the lockdown are explored. Statistics show that COVID-19 had a negative impact on international enrolments, although less severe than expected. Growth has continued, but at a much slower pace than in the past few years. The slowdown in growth was much more pronounced in polytechnics than in universities. Additionally, the measures implemented by Portuguese higher education institutions suggest that these have coped with COVID-19 as an opportunity to rethink and redefine strategies.

This article analyzes international students' assessment of remote teaching and learning (T&L) during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal. While all students have suffered the consequences of campus lockdowns and distance teaching, international students represent a particularly vulnerable group since, even under normal circumstances, they already have to deal with the challenges of new academic and living conditions. In Portugal, most international students come from Portuguese-speaking (designated as Lusophone) countries. Students' experiences were gathered via an online cross-sectional survey (N = 672), and the quantitative analysis compared Lusophone and non-Lusophone students and undergraduate and postgraduate students. Non-Lusophone students were more negative about remote education than Lusophone ones, being less interested in continuing to study online and giving a more negative assessment of the T&L experience than their counterparts. For them, cultural immersion is probably as important as degree attainment. Postgraduate students reported a lesser increase in study time and rated the pedagogical aspects better than undergraduate students, which suggests, by comparison, a better adaptation to the remote regime. Implementing flexible and hybrid education solutions is critical to maintaining international students' interest.

Purpose: Internationalisation is one of the significant manifestations of the ongoing transformation of doctoral education. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the perspectives of Portuguese universities and doctoral students regarding the importance of internationalisation and the strategies to achieve it in doctoral education. Design/methodology/approach: A sample of 118 doctoral programme websites from 27 universities (15 public, 12 private) served as the data source of university perspectives of internationalisation. Doctoral students' perspectives on the same topic were collected through 31 interviews, 27 conducted in seven focus groups and four individually, with first-year doctoral students from three Portuguese public universities. Content analysis was performed on the two sets of data. Findings: According to university and doctoral students' perspectives, internationalisation assumes an important role in Portuguese doctoral education and is being integrated through specific strategies. Strategies for attracting and recruiting international students appear to take a back seat compared to strategies which offer students international experience through immersion in international environments in their home institutions. While expressing the potential impediments, undesirable side effects and conditions that internationalisation must meet, students seem to take a critical stance towards it and towards the institutional strategies designed to promote it. Originality/value: This paper addresses a topic which does not appear to receive much attention in doctoral education research and, to this extent, advances knowledge on the internationalisation of doctoral education.

Growing numbers of students from non-Portuguese speaking countries, designated as 'non-Lusophone students', signal the diversification of the international student population in Portugal. Until recently, international students came almost exclusively from other Portuguese-speaking countries. Employing social network analysis, the paper analyses the enrolment patterns of non-Lusophone students in Portuguese higher education -- by institution type, qualification and discipline -- to understand what aspects in particular attract these students. Findings indicate that public universities are mostly attractive for their doctoral degrees, in various disciplines, with students coming from very diverse regions. Public polytechnics enrol few non-Lusophone students, continuing to rely on the traditional Portuguese-speaking public. Private institutions attract Western and Southern European students, to integrated masters in Health programmes. Implications for institutions in other semi-peripheral countries intending to diversify their international students are highlighted: the identification of their strengths, at discipline or degree level, and the target-publics likely to find their programmes appealing.

Over the past few years, Portugal has become a proactive recruiter of international students (Sin, Antonowicz and Wiers-Jenssen 2019). Portuguese institutions have been the preferred choice of students from the former Portuguese colonies coming through agreements with the Portuguese government (França, Alves, and Padilla 2018). Consequently, in 2017-18 around two-thirds of international students came from Portuguese-speaking countries, such as Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Guinea Bissau and East Timor (DGEEC 2018). Despite the growth of international student migration and the active recruitment of international students by host countries, there are only a handful of studies that investigated institutional strategies for integrating international students, or their experiences, in the host country (see for example Mosneaga and Agergaard 2012; Urbanovic, Wilkins, and Huisman 2014; Nada and Araújo 2018a; O'Connor 2018). Also in Portugal, research on this topic is rather scarce, and existing studies mainly focused on students' perceptions (Campos and Lima 2012; Alves 2013; Nada and Araújo 2018a, 2018b). This paper, while also reporting on student experiences, adds the institutional perspective of top and middle managers. It aims to investigate institutional strategies for the integration of international students and student experiences in this regard. The research questions to answer are: What strategies do institutions employ to integrate international students, if any, and are these effective? Do international students feel integrated socially and academically in the institution? What are the reasons for their perceptions? This will allow inferring opportunities and challenges of integration policies and experiences, and formulating some possible ways forward to improve international students' experience.

Public institutions in Portugal have not invested in strategies to attract international students until recently, when the adoption of new legislation and a national strategy for internationalization created more appealing conditions for it. This article aims to study the strategies institutions employ to recruit international students in a country less attractive than the major receiving countries and the main challenges they encounter. The study draws on interviews with top and middle managers in two public universities. The findings identify three types of strategies: institutional branding, revision of admission procedures, and curricular adjustments. The main challenges are the creation of institutional structures with an exclusive remit for international students and the choice of teaching language, despite a prevailing opinion that the Portuguese language should be maintained as a competitive advantage.

This article analyzes international students’ assessment of remote teaching and learning (T&L) during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic in Portugal. While all students have suffered the consequences of campus lockdowns and distance teaching, international students represent a particularly vulnerable group since, even under normal circumstances, they already have to deal with the challenges of new academic and living conditions. In Portugal, most international students come from Portuguese-speaking (designated as Lusophone) countries. Students’ experiences were gathered via an online cross-sectional survey (N = 672), and the quantitative analysis compared Lusophone and non-Lusophone students and undergraduate and postgraduate students. Non-Lusophone students were more negative about remote education than Lusophone ones, being less interested in continuing to study online and giving a more negative assessment of the T&L experience than their counterparts. For them, cultural immersion is probably as important as degree attainment. Postgraduate students reported a lesser increase in study time and rated the pedagogical aspects better than undergraduate students, which suggests, by comparison, a better adaptation to the remote regime. Implementing flexible and hybrid education solutions is critical to maintaining international students’ interest.

This paper analyses the patterns of international student enrolments in Portugal to understand what makes Portuguese higher education attractive. Employing a database of enrolments in Portuguese higher education institutions in 2017/2018, it uses correspondence analysis to characterise the flows of students coming from different countries and the variation by institution type, qualification level, disciplinary area and location. Attractiveness is not homogeneous. Portuguese-speaking students from Africa tend to enrol in undergraduate degrees, but depending on country of origin they prefer certain institution types. European students are attracted to Health-related programmes in private institutions. Chinese and Brazilian students seek primarily postgraduate qualifications in public universities. Thus, different publics choose Portuguese higher education for different reasons, suggesting that attractiveness is multifaceted and varies by students' country of origin. The implications are that institutions in countries which are emerging players in international student recruitment need to carefully identify their target publics and distinctive assets.

The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between academic inbreeding in Portugal and research collaboration, using co-authored publications as proxies. As previous research has shown that inbreeding is detrimental for research collaborations, it is hypothesised that academic inbreeding will lead to smaller research networks and, consequently, to fewer co-authored publications outside the institution of affiliation. Relying on a large data set which merged information on academics, their inbreeding status and their publications, binomial negative and fractional models were estimated to test the hypothesis. Findings show that inbred academics have smaller research networks; while they publish most co-authored papers, the relative weight of publications written in collaboration with institutional colleagues is the highest. In contrast, non-inbred academics with foreign PhDs have larger co-authorship networks. However, they publish most single-authored papers and the weight of their international co-authorships is heaviest.

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.

The integration of coursework in doctoral programmes is becoming increasingly common worldwide. In Portugal, too, coursework is now part of many doctorates and is usually assigned to the first year. This paper aims to understand if coursework is also an element of the relatively recent industrial doctorates in Portugal and, in this case, if it represents an added value for the training and experience of doctoral candidates in a primarily research-based degree, but driven by the shared interests of industry and academia. The perceptions of students enrolled in industrial doctorates were gathered through focus groups. Findings suggest that students tend to believe that compulsory coursework does not add much value to their training, although its relevance seems to increase when students are given the possibility of choosing courses which are related to their research topic or when courses have a practical orientation. These findings invite a reconsideration of curriculum design in doctoral degrees in the direction of increased flexibility and more personalised learning plans.

This article explores the perceptions of Portuguese students enrolled in industrial doctorates, regarding potential conflicts that may arise from their supervision, their research topic and their research outputs. The study uses data collected from focus groups and subjected to content analysis. The findings suggest that industrial doctoral students recognise a divergence between university and industry, mainly regarding research outputs, and particularly industry's need to keep data confidential and the university's need to disseminate knowledge via the publication of articles. Convergence was noted at the level of joint supervision, sometimes facilitated by the fact that academics were also entrepreneurs. The success of this kind of collaborative doctorate depends on compromise between the two parties and on how students can manage this relationship. Therefore, their perspectives are an important source of information worth consideration.

In Portugal, research productivity is nowadays essential for the positive assessment of academics, research units and study programmes. Academic inbreeding has been highlighted in the literature as one of the factors influencing research productivity. This paper tests the hypothesis that inbreeding is detrimental for research productivity, measured through the number of publications listed in Scopus. The study resorts to a database provided by the national Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education (A3ES), which comprises all academics teaching in all Portuguese institutions in the academic year 2015/2016. The sample selected for the analysis contains all academics with a PhD in Sociology (N=289). The study uses a special regression model for the analysis: the negative binomial logit hurdle. This was necessary given the large amount of academics with no publications or citations in Scopus, which were the dependent variables to assess research performance. The analysis provides separate results for the probability of inbred academics of having no papers/citations, and for the probability of producing more papers/citations than the non-inbred. Findings suggest that academic inbreeding, defined at the institutional level, has no negative effect on research productivity, contrary to what was expected. However, when defined at the national level, academic inbreeding is detrimental for the recognition and the impact of research: academics with a foreign PhD are more likely to have citations compared to academics who obtained their PhD in Portugal. A tendency was also noted that inbreeding might be more detrimental to research productivity in faculties of Economics than in Social Sciences and Humanities.

This study explores Portuguese academics' acceptance of employability as a purpose for higher education further to the Bologna reforms, focusing on their understandings of employability and their teaching practices. The data were gathered through focus groups in which participated around 70 academics from 3 disciplinary areas, belonging to different institutional types. Findings suggest that there are different degrees of acceptance of employability as a purpose for higher education, varying by discipline and type of institution. Irrespective of the differences in perceptions of employability, all academics engage in teaching practices associated to the development of employability, although with different ends in mind. While Computer Engineering and Management academics aim to train professionals fitting into specific employment, for Arts academics such teaching methods aim to introduce students to artistic practice. These findings warn against equating employability with crude indicators of employment and using it as a performance indicator.

This article analyses whether Brazilian graduates feel that their higher education programmes have contributed to the development of civic competences (ethics, critical thinking and respect for diversity), necessary to become active citizens in a democratic and fair society. The analysis considers disciplines and students' socioeconomic and cultural background, employing official data (2014, 2015 and 2016) from the National Test of Student Performance (Enade). Findings show that students of higher socioeconomic backgrounds tend to concentrate in programmes which lead to more prestigious and powerful positions in society. Curiously, it is these students who feel less confident that their degree contributed to the development of the above civic competences than their colleagues from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. These findings question whether higher education fulfils its mission to promote holistic human development for all students. These competences are particularly critical for privileged students who will be better positioned professionally to tackle societal injustices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how far the key Bologna objective of student mobility has been achieved in Portuguese higher education institutions and the main factors shaping it. It analyzes credit mobility, outgoing and incoming, between Portugal and Europe. Although mobility overall has risen, incoming mobility has grown faster, making Portugal an importer country. Portugal's attraction power is explained mainly by its location, climate, and leisure opportunities. For outgoing mobility, employability is the main driver, explained by high unemployment and an uncertain home labor market. The main obstacle is financial, so country choice is increasingly based on proximity and living costs. Another important constraint is curricular inflexibility of Portuguese higher education institutions. The findings suggest that mobility in Portugal is far from reflecting Bologna's policy goals, making the 2020 mobility target of 20% an ideal rather than an achievement.

Internal quality assurance systems are expected to improve the institutions' core mission of teaching and learning. Using data gathered through an online survey, distributed in 2014/2015, to the teaching staff of all Portuguese private and public higher education institutions, this paper examines the impact of internal quality assurance systems on teaching and learning from the perspective of academics. Findings suggest that Portuguese academics feel that, despite the positive contribution of internal quality assurance towards an increased awareness of teaching quality issues at their institutions, the practical effects of these systems have been more related to increasing bureaucracy than to substantive improvements in teaching and learning. The use of information with a view to improvement and teaching staff involvement in the development of quality assurance were found to induce positive changes in teaching and learning, in academics' perceptions. Based on the findings, the paper makes recommendations for institutional practice.

This paper reports the results of preliminary research into how Portuguese academics and employers perceive the responsibility of different higher education stakeholders-students, teaching staff, higher education institutions, employers, and policy-makers-for developing graduate employability. The study was conducted 8 years after the implementation of the Bologna Process, the reform that placed employability firmly on the agenda of higher education institutions (HEIs) in Portugal. This paper aims to assess the extent to which higher education is held responsible for developing employability, and to characterize the activities undertaken by the two actors to achieve that end. In particular, with respect to academics, we characterize curricular and other changes to study programmes, and, with respect to employers, their participation in activities undertaken by HEIs meant to ease the transition of students to the labour market. The data comes from a survey responded to by 684 Portuguese academics and 64 employers. Academics and employers alike were found to attribute high responsibility for developing employability to higher education, suggesting that the political message of the Bologna Process regarding the relation between higher education and the labour market has been assimilated. However, the activities reported by both types of respondents indicate only an average commitment to developing employability. Here, the low participation of employers in internal institutional activities is noteworthy, suggesting that the recognition of employers as stakeholders in higher education, as advocated by policy-makers, has yet to happen in Portugal.

The paper examines comparatively the curricula of six Physics MSc degrees from three countries (England, Portugal and Denmark) in the European policy context driven by the Bologna Process, which advocates degree comparability and student-centred learning. Degree programme descriptions were analysed and interviews were conducted with students and lecturers from the selected degrees, exploring their teaching and learning practices and experiences. Findings reveal predominantly country-based differences in degree curriculum regarding students' freedom to decide their learning path. Curricular flexibility and student input appear high in the English and Danish degrees and low in the Portuguese ones, despite attempts--so far little feasible in practice--to empower students to tailor learning to their interests. In drawing attention to the force of national pedagogic traditions in shaping curricula, the paper has implications for the degree comparability and student mobility advocated by recent European higher education reforms.

The paper analyses the impact of programme accreditation in Portugal further to the operations of the Agency for Assessment and Accreditation of Higher Education, which were initiated in 2009. Tracking the evolution of study programmes, the paper found that, out of the initial 5262 programmes on offer in 2009/2010, 40% have been either discontinued or not accredited as of July 2015. The analysis revealed differences between the private and the public sectors, with higher proportions of discontinuations and closures in the former. For the discipline with the highest percentage of non-accredited programmes (Law), the main reasons for denied accreditation were analysed. The identified reasons were related to a lack of academic quality, for example, the programmes' lack of compliance with legal requirements regarding teaching staff qualifications and full-time employment, the blurred identity of programmes, undifferentiated between university and polytechnic sectors, or curricular inconsistencies. The paper suggests that the identified reasons are likely to be symptomatic of the quality shortcomings in the provision of higher education programmes in Portugal. The data provide evidence that programme accreditation has had a powerful impact, reducing the number of programmes, increasing the number of PhD holders among teaching staff and raising institutional awareness of quality.

Cross-border higher education (CBHE) has been changing the organizational boundaries of higher education institutions (HEIs). This study aims to analyze the shifting boundaries of Portuguese HEIs through the lens of the identity concept in organization theories, considering three contexts with different levels of regulation: African Portuguese-speaking countries, Brazil, and Europe. These different regulation contexts allow to analyze how the level of national regulation influences CBHE, how this relates to the shifting boundaries of HEIs, and how the public or private character of the institutions plays a role in influencing boundary shifts. This research indicates that shifting boundaries through CBHE are influenced by institutional identities shaped by different rationales and conditioned by local policy contexts. Public universities have refrained from creating campuses abroad or from franchising activities, and their international activities seem driven by academic and cultural rationales. Public polytechnics, more recent than universities, seem more open to embarking on CBHE, suggesting the existence of a malleable identity. Contrary to the public sector, private institutions have created campuses abroad, mainly in African Portuguese-speaking countries, apparently following an economic rationale to guide their CBHE activities.

The paper examines to whom Portuguese students attribute responsibility for the development of employability, and what extra-curricular activities they undertake to improve their employability. Particular focus lies upon how far students internalise responsibility for employability and if/how they seek to position themselves in the job market. The data was obtained through a survey of 828 Portuguese students. The analysis explored differences among student groups (higher education sector, gender, age and discipline). The attribution of responsibility was primarily to students themselves and to higher education institutions as key vehicles for employability development, echoing the theoretical conceptualisation which sees employability as an individual ability/responsibility. Yet, the observed variations provide empirical support for the conceptualisation of employability as complex and multi-dimensional. The study also revealed relatively high engagement with extra-curricular activities, evidencing that students not only assume responsibility for employability, but are proactively seeking to gain positional advantage in the job market.

In Portugal, the agency for assessment and accreditation of higher education has recently included in its remit, beyond programme accreditation, the certification of internal quality assurance systems. This implies lighter touch accreditation and aims to direct institutions towards improvement, in addition to accountability. Twelve institutions have already undertaken the certification, and both self-assessment and external assessment reports are available. Based on the qualitative analysis of the nature of institutional strengths and weaknesses highlighted in these evaluation reports, the paper aims to understand whether the identified strengths and weaknesses are related to procedural and organisational matters or to cultural change (values and beliefs), in turn offering an insight into the quality culture(s) which characterise higher education institutions in Portugal. Findings suggest that the quality culture of the analysed institutions is somewhere between responsive and reactive. Overall, all reports dwell more on the prioritisation of formal and structural procedures, both regarding strengths and weaknesses. External reports point towards more weaknesses related to stakeholders' participation. Both aspects are more frequent in polytechnics than in universities. These findings suggest that polytechnics are more reactive, whereas universities are more responsive. Therefore, accountability apparently continues to be, for the time being, a more pressing concern than improvement.

Purpose: The paper presents and analyses quantitative data on student perceptions about the employability of the first degree, and their trajectory choices on graduation. The purpose of this paper is to assess the value of the first degree as a positional good in Portugal, further to the degree's reduced duration after the implementation of the Bologna Process. Design/methodology/approach: In total, 828 students responded to an online survey administered between September 2013 and February 2014. Students came from 17 institutions, public and private, universities and polytechnics, across the country. Differences in student perceptions were analysed by higher education sector, study level and gender through descriptive statistics. Findings: The majority of surveyed students, across sectors, study level and gender, assessed as negative the impact of the implementation of the Bologna reforms on the employability of the first degree. This had implications for students' intended choices on graduation, as the majority consider enroling in a master degree (except for polytechnic students). Additionally, a large proportion of students felt unprepared to enter the labour market after the first degree. Research limitations/implications: The size and distribution of the sample pose limitations for the generalisation of results to the student population. Practical implications: The findings suggest that enrolments in master degrees are likely to keep rising, a valuable piece of information for institutions and policy-makers responsible for regulating higher education in Portugal. Originality/value: Opinions about the value of the first degree have generally been based on qualitative research or anecdotal evidence. This study brings a quantitative perspective on the first degree's value for different groups of students.

The paper analyses employability as a floating signifier--a construct that accommodates different and often contending meanings. A preliminary analysis of scholarly literature identifies two opposed interpretations of employability--an individual responsibility versus a comprehensive context-aware construct. These are subsequently applied to the discourse of the major interests in the Bologna Process: policy-makers; institutions and academics; students; and employers. Their standpoints are examined from two dimensions: How far is responsibility for employability individualised? and What is higher education's role in fostering employability? As a concept, employability commands little consensus. Rather, it is interpreted in the light of each interest group's concerns. As to higher education's role, utilitarianism characterises all but academic actors' views. Applying the concept of a floating signifier to employability as it is debated within the Bologna Process--a policy arena for competing interest groups to dispute meaning--reveals a finer, more nuanced understanding of how policy comes to be and, in particular, the importance of discourse and conflicts over meaning as factors intrinsic to it.

In recent years, initiatives for the improvement of teaching quality have been pursued both at European and national levels. Such is the case of the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance (ESG) and of legislation passed by several European countries, including Portugal, in response to European policy developments driven by the Lisbon Strategy and the Bologna Process. This paper is concerned with the institutional level implementation of European and national policies which target the quality of teaching staff. It reports on the findings of a study conducted in order to analyse if Portuguese higher education institutions are taking measures to improve and assure the quality of teaching staff in compliance particularly with the ESG. Findings suggest that this compliance is only partial. Although mechanisms exist for the selection, recruitment and appraisal of academics, other instruments and measures meant to continuously improve teaching staff quality, such as institutional support for skills development, pedagogic training, material infrastructure and motivation strategies, such as awards and recognition, are still incipient.

This study argues that student-centred methods in the teaching of physics can be beneficial for students' enculturation into the discipline and into a physicist's profession. Interviews conducted with academics and students from six master degrees in physics in three different European countries suggest that student-driven classroom activities, collaborative learning and problem-solving, or integration in research groups/projects enable students to engage in practices similar to those which are part of professional scientists' routine. Through interactive, participative methods reminiscent of cognitive apprenticeship, students develop a range of abilities necessary in a physicist's career: capacity of explanation, argumentation and defence of claims; analytical reasoning; capacity to critically review literature; ability to discern research paths worth pursuing; writing skills; and interpersonal skills. These give them a first taste of what it is like to be a physicist and ease their transition into a professional physics career.

This paper analyses how middle managers perform and experience their role in enacting policy in Scottish higher education institutions. The policy focus is the quality enhancement framework (QEF) for learning and teaching in higher education, which was launched in 2003. The data-set was collected between 2008 and 2010, during the evaluation of the QEF by means of focus groups with middle managers at nine Scottish institutions. The metaphor of a policy implementation staircase helps to situate middle managers' position in enactment, and analyse their experience of the role. Despite the values of collegiality and ownership upheld by the QEF, middle managers' accounts of their practices reveal that their position at the interface between university management and core academic activities continues to be a delicate one, marked by contradictory allegiances to institutional strategies and the concerns of academic colleagues. While emphasising middle managers' pivotal role in the implementation of the QEF policy, the data paradoxically suggest that the systemic positioning of middle managers is more influential in shaping their role of mediation than the values of collegiality and ownership promoted by this enhancement approach to quality specific to Scotland.

The non-binding nature of the Bologna Declaration and loose policy-making and implementation through the open method of coordination (OMC) have led to varied national responses to the Bologna Process. The OMC has allowed countries room for manoeuvre to interpret Bologna policy and attach different degrees of importance to it. Looking at the interplay between agency and structure in policy implementation, this article aims to illustrate the localised character of Bologna policy implementation driven by national priorities and political agendas, a reflection of the "policy as text" metaphor (Ball, 1994). The analysis is driven by an agentic understanding of the policy process, highlighting "actors" perceptions, perspectives, preferences, actions and interactions' (Trowler, 2002). Three different country reactions are examined--England, Portugal and Denmark, described as selective acquiescence, creative commitment and strategic conformity to capture the essence of the cases in question. In analysing the countries' responses, the article considers national readings of Bologna, motivations behind responses to the Process, as well as its reception and implementation at national level.

The paper analyses whether the type of institution from which students graduate has an impact on their unemployment propensity. It uses official data on the Portuguese higher education system, for 2018, at the program/institution level, which provides information on graduate unemployment, as well as demographic and socioeconomic background information. A fractional probit model on graduates' propensity for unemployment is estimated. Results suggest that polytechnic graduates face higher unemployment propensity than university graduates, maintaining inequalities present in students' previous trajectories. Policies targeting socioeconomic segregation need to address not only access to higher education but also the transition to the labor market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new perspective for higher education policy research. It introduces the concept of "policy object" to designate the discrete preoccupation(s) of a policy text (e.g. a new governance regime, a quality system, or new degrees) and suggests that actor conceptualisations of the policy object intersect with other elements in the policy process to shape enactment and outcomes. First, the "policy object" concept is described. It is argued that the policy object does not have an objective existence and two concepts are proposed to explain it: "ontology" and "enacted ontology". The former refers to what actors believe the policy object "is", a socially-construed context-determined conceptualisation, whereas enacted ontology refers to what the policy object "becomes" further to enactment under the influence of ontology. Second, the paper presents the findings of a comparative study of master degrees further to the Bologna process in different national and institutional settings to illustrate the policy object approach. This research puts forward arguments to suggest that the policy object could be an important variable to consider in policy research. This somewhat different lens, inviting fine-grained attention to a specific policy object (its ontologies and enacted ontologies), could bring additional insight into policy outcomes.

This paper investigates institutional policies and academic practices of student assessment in four Portuguese higher education institutions (HEIs) in the wake of European policy developments driven by the Bologna Process. Specifically, it examines the correspondence between European policy recommendations related to student assessment (promotion of student-centred learning by the Bologna Process and the European quality assurance standard and guidelines on student assessment) and actual assessment procedures in the investigated Portuguese HEIs. It concludes that despite student-centred methodologies having started to make inroads, it does not emerge clearly how far changes (and practices) have been driven by recent European policy. Another notable aspect is that despite apparent institutional compliance with national or European orientations meant to improve the student experience of assessment (as reflected in policy documents), academic practices and students' experiences sometimes tell a story of resistance and enduring academic beliefs and traditions.

This paper explores the relationship between epistemology, sociology, and learning and teaching in physics based on an examination of literature from research in science studies, history and philosophy of science, and physics pedagogic research. It reveals a mismatch between the positivist epistemological foundation which seems to underpin the teaching of physics at the undergraduate level and the tentative nature of knowledge and the primarily social-constructivist process of knowledge creation which characterise the practices of professional physicists. Attention is drawn to the consequences of neglecting this mismatch, which is detrimental to students' understanding of the nature of the discipline, their conceptual development, and the acquisition of skills essential not only for a scientific career but also for students' development as individuals and citizens. The paper argues for the explicit contemplation of disciplinary epistemology in physics teaching and in pedagogic research to improve student learning and for the avoidance of the dangers of epistemological essentialism.

Student-centred learning has gradually come to the foreground of the Bologna Process. In parallel, learning outcomes have been advocated as key degree descriptors, illustrative of student-centred approaches. This paper examines learning outcomes in their diverse understandings and enactment in three European countries--England, Portugal and Denmark--further to Bologna policy developments. Resorting to a conceptualisation of the intersection between global and local policy fields and to policy theories highlighting the interpretative nature of policy processes, the implementation of learning outcomes is analysed from the perspective of different policy fields (European, national and institutional). Variation in understandings and usage has been observed especially between the institutional fields in the three national contexts, as well as between academic practice and student experience. A discrepancy has also emerged between the policy discourse which highlights students' centrality in a learning-outcomes-based approach and the limited relevance of learning outcomes to students.

This article compares the national-level requirements for master degree provision in England, Denmark and Portugal following the implementation of the Bologna Process, and ponders upon the reconcilability of these requirements in cross-national initiatives (e.g. joint degrees). In all three countries, master degrees have to comply with the national qualification frameworks, which have been verified against the Framework for Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area. Other regulations apply, however. In Denmark and Portugal, higher education degrees are tightly regulated by legislation, while the "Academic Infrastructure" developed by the Quality Assurance Agency in the UK acts as a broad reference for degree design, giving English institutions a high degree of freedom. Findings reveal the existence of contradictory requirements which have arisen further to policy adaptations, made possible by the non-legally binding character of Bologna and its loose policy mechanisms. (Contains 1 table.)

This article aims to describe how academics in England, Denmark and Portugal understand the Bologna Process, their attitudes towards the initiative, and how understandings and attitudes determine action. It shows how contextually and culturally determined academic understandings, expectations, preferences, priorities and constraints are key influences in the process of educational change envisaged by the Bologna Process. Second, inspired by the implementation staircase metaphor which illustrates different actors' perceptions conditioned by their location on the path of the policy, the article presents three different examples of interplay between national authorities responsible for policy-making in the wake of the Bologna Process and the institutional field responsible for policy implementation. It reveals variations from country to country with regard to bottom-up and top-down initiatives, both at the level of actors' expectations and of actual measures to implement Bologna policy. This article comes in response to the frailty of an empirical base for the understanding of Bologna from an institutional and academic perspective. (Contains 1 note.)

This article aims to analyse variances between some emerging projections for the master degree at high policy level and the diverse interpretations and forms observed in its implementation in the aftermath of the Bologna Process reforms. It thus examines European and national-level discourses regarding the master's place and purpose and, simultaneously, discusses the variation noted across Europe in the degree's implementation and its conceptualisation, facilitated by generic European guidelines and largely influenced by national traditions of higher education degree organisation. The article highlights some tensions between a growing emphasis on the lifelong learning dimension of the master in top policy-level discourses and some functions the degree currently fulfils. It also suggests that the master does not enjoy the distinctiveness of qualifications like the bachelor or the PhD. These factors raise questions around the master's comparability across Europe and approaches to facilitate mutual recognition, presenting an argument for a revisited conceptualisation of Bologna around transparency rather than convergence.

The research dimension of higher education programmes is usually discussed in association with doctoral studies. Against a background of scarce literature investigating research in a Master's degree, this article aims to analyse the place of research in Master's qualifications, first, as envisaged by official European and national documents acting as reference frameworks for degree design (i.e. qualification frameworks) and, second, in its practical manifestations in Master of Science (MSc) degrees in Physics in three national contexts (England, Portugal and Denmark). It highlights different understandings of the importance and roles assigned to research in Master's degrees by national policy actors in the three countries. Simultaneously, it argues that research is an essential component of MSc degrees in Physics, perceived as a gateway to a Physics research profession on account of disciplinary specificity. Research translates into a number of concrete practices, of which the Master's thesis is the main manifestation, with, however, variation in the purpose of research (instrumental or an end in itself). The article discusses implications of these different understandings and expressions of research in Master's programmes for the comparability of higher education degrees and ensuing recognition and student mobility in the European Higher Education Area, as envisaged by the Bologna process reforms. It is suggested that similar studies could be performed in other disciplines to make up for the gap in evidence and scholarship on the research dimension of Master's programmes and their degree of convergence. (Contains 1 note.)