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This study aims to assess the practice of institutional autonomy at Jimma University in Ethiopia. The study employed a mixed approach by collecting research data through a questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and document analysis. Two hundred and thirty-two randomly selected instructors and academic leaders were contacted through the questionnaire, and nine purposively selected informants were interviewed. The quantitative data were analyzed by using mean values, standard deviations, and independent sample t-tests, while the qualitative data were examined by identifying common codes and emerging themes. The findings indicated that organizational, academic, and financial autonomy practices were lower than formal autonomy. On the other hand, staff autonomy was relatively at a medium level, and the overall practice of institutional autonomy at Jimma University was poor. Thus, living autonomy was found to be different from formal autonomy. The study also found that the influence of the internal and external environment might contribute to the divergence. As a result, legal provisions could not guarantee the university's living autonomy, but the relationship between the environment and the university does. Therefore, in exercising university autonomy, educational leaders and managers should take the interface between the university and its environment into account.

This article examines the independent and interaction influence of organizational climate and the type of autonomous colleges on the academic performance of students. Organizational climate encompasses various elements such as leadership styles, communication patterns, and staff morale, collectively shaping the institutional environment. Autonomous colleges, with their capacity for innovation in curriculum design, pedagogical methods, and assessment practices, provide a unique context for this analysis. To explore the effect, researchers employed a quantitative approach, surveying 480 students across 12 colleges (both government and non-government) in Odisha, India. Questionnaires assessed student perceptions of organizational climate and academic achievement. Additionally, researchers collected student result sheets and surveyed college staff to gain a well-rounded perspective on the college climate. Data analysis using ANOVA and Scheffe tests identified significant effects. Major Findings of the study confirm that a positive organizational climate, regardless of college type, is associated with higher student academic achievement. Interestingly, students in government autonomous colleges achieved higher scores than those in non-government ones. The most significant finding, however, is the interaction effect. Students in government autonomous colleges with a strong learning environment achieved the highest scores, while those in non-government autonomous colleges with a weak environment achieved the lowest.

In 2012, the Vietnamese government enacted the institutional autonomy policy to support the reform process of the higher education system. The autonomy policy signifies the transfer of decision-making authority from ministries to public universities to increase university performance and competitiveness in the globalized knowledge economy. This paper examines the nature of autonomy as a new form of governance in Vietnamese higher education through the lens of agency theory. I used thematic analysis to analyze policy documents released by the Vietnamese government between 1993 and 2021. The findings indicate autonomy means Vietnamese public universities have authority to make decisions on primary activities; yet they must be accountable for their decision-making and responsible for funding sources. The study contributes to the literature on comparative and international higher education by providing a better understanding of autonomy in a post-Soviet context and informing a transformative approach to policy practices for the higher education reform.

The construction of an organization aims to enhance the performance and versatility of the organization for society. Consequently, as a platform for training human resources, universities have to develop constantly, following the community's insistence. In 2022, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology specified there are 21 state universities with legal entities. The status of a state university with a legal entity presents extensive autonomy in the field of academic, asset, and financial management. Besides, the universities also carry an obligation for university management to develop their institution, which is in accordance with Formal Model of Educational Management by Bush (2011). This model implies that organizations have a hierarchical structure and that predefined goals are pursued using a reasonable way. This study aims to identify the dominant variables for the state university with legal entity development. The method that used in this study is literature review by Tranfield, Denyer, & Smart (2003) with a case analysis involving a number of universities. The analysis results found that the dominant variables in the universities' development included the organization structure, working mechanism or organizational guidelines, the organizational climate and culture, along with the use of technology devices.

Corporate norms and values, characterised by an enterprise ethos, became the new parameters that defined the academic environment. Academics are increasingly becoming concerned about the commodification of higher education and its impact on academic quality and the standards of quality graduates. The voices of South African academics and their experiences within the neoliberal university governance remain underexplored in the current literature. This study aimed to enhance understanding and contribute to knowledge by exploring lecturers' experiences within a corporatised academic work environment. This study took place across public and private higher education institutions in South Africa. A cross-sectional, qualitative, interpretative phenomenological research design was employed. Data was collected by means of semi-structured interviews with a diverse sample of 20 lecturers. The data analysis followed the principles of interpretative phenomenological analysis. The findings of the study identified three key areas that triggered feelings of frustration with management: (1) participants experienced a lack of management's understanding of governing academic work environments, (2) an erosion of their collegial culture, and (3) a lack of transparent communication. Contribution: A key contribution of this study, which set it apart from other studies, was lecturers' perceptions that their professional identity, collegiality, autonomy, and academic freedom were in crisis.

In response to COVID-19, post-secondary institutions went through a widespread transition to online and remote learning to address the immediate effects of disruption in the teaching and learning environment. This study aims to map the changes and challenges in the areas of responses to students' psychological needs, responses to students' academic needs, and responses to minoritized students' needs from institutional leaders', teaching faculties', and teaching assistants' perspectives via a qualitative approach. The results suggest that institutional leaders and instructors perceived a decrease in academic motivation and increase in social isolation among students during COVID-19 especially from minoritized backgrounds. Implications and guidance on future university policies and programs to help preserve educational quality of instruction and mitigate educational inequities are discussed. [Note: The page range (1-24) shown on the PDF is incorrect. The correct page range is 18-41.]

In this article we share our learning experiences on the organizational design barriers we perceived to have encountered with scenario planning in higher education for program development. Our perceived barriers discussed include misalignment of culture and change intervention; constructing organizational reality and meaning making; knowledge creation and transfer of knowledge; and short term versus long term outcomes. Our retrospective analysis contributes to the understanding of the complexity of change in higher education and adds to the knowledge base on using scenario planning in a bureaucratic, hierarchical context. Our experiences are incongruent with implicit assumptions that scenario planning can be used in any context (Balarezo et al., 2017), and illustrate some important constraints to consider before using this type of forward-thinking intervention. We provide recommendations for using scenario planning and for transformational change in higher education. These changes have implications for more creative, future-oriented educational planning processes for improving higher education teaching and learning experiences.

Academic freedom constitutes an integral part of traditional university values that ensure the proper functioning of universities in pursuing truth and inculcating civic values. In a globalized world where Higher Education (HE) policy is the result of the interaction of local, national, and international levels, the positions of international organizations on questions of academic freedoms deem significant. Within global discourses on HE, literature contrasts the World Bank's human capitalist to UNESCO's humanistic approach. Through Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of both organizations' documents, the paper presented a genealogical analysis of academic freedom that challenged the existence of static, opposite, and binary positions. Transformations, ruptures, juxtapositions as well as gaps, limits, and exclusions were detected within and across International Organizations' discourses. Juxtaposition of economic and humanistic rationales as well as academic freedom protection and neoliberal policy interventions have muted discursive conflicts and inherent contradictions. The failure of UNESCO to address contemporary threats to academic freedom emerged from the appearance of neoliberal transnational governmentality as an inevitable social regularity that delimits what can be said and cannot be said about academic freedom. Through coercive funding schemes and technologies of differentiation, surveillance, and monitoring, the WB created the space for such transnational governmentality, and placed faculty members under its gaze resulting in undermining academic freedoms and de-professionalization of academics.

Third Mission (TM) drives universities to a purpose beyond their traditional role, especially in local socioeconomic and innovation ecosystems. To investigate the issue, we consider an exploratory and comparative study of two different governance systems of public universities (Southeast Brazil-region 1 and Texas-US-region 2). The comparison took into account data from international universities' rankings performance to address TM and the structure of financial sources to address financial decentralization. The available evidence seems to suggest a positive association between the level of financial decentralization and the capability of the system of HE to deliver TM outputs. Universities under decentralized governance structures, which permit more autonomy to manage their resources, presented better results in most selected TM indicators. These findings reinforce the general belief that the governance arrangements that allow exploring synergies within local business ecosystems are more appropriate for ensuring organizational changes in the direction of entrepreneurial action.

In its pursuit of global university rankings, Indonesia introduced a series of higher education policies, one in 2014 to grant autonomy to a select group of universities, and another in 2017 to tie financial and promotional incentives to scientific publications for all researchers. To examine scientific productivity surrounding these policies, we use bibliometric data from Scopus spanning three decades from 1990 to 2020. We investigate the patterns of publication and collaboration and analyze them across journal quartiles, academic fields, and researcher cohorts. Our findings reveal that publications increased dramatically for both autonomous and non-autonomous higher education institutions after 2014. Single-university authorship was common practice and skewed publication quality towards Q3 and Q4 journals, while co-authorships with foreign organizations pulled the shift towards Q1 journals consistently across all fields. New researchers starting in 2014 published fewer Q1 and more Q3 and Q4 publications than the earlier cohort. We highlight policy implications on the need for a balance between publication quantity and quality and call on Indonesian policymakers to introduce holistic higher education reforms rather than introducing reforms that focus on the performance of the university for ranking purposes.

The New Education Policy (NEP), 2020, adopted by Government of India, envisages significant and far-reaching reforms in higher education sector in India. In this article, I foreground certain peculiar features of the process of massification of higher education in India, including privatisation and fragmentation. I locate the political economy of higher education in India in tensions inherent in centre-state relations and the pressure to respond to popular aspirations on the one hand and maintain standards on the other. The NEP, 2020 does not appear to acknowledge these historical processes. Instead, they appear to rely on a corporate model of BoG-driven governance of higher education institutions to drive the envisaged changes.

Background: The higher education institutions will achieve autonomy traversing the path of graded accreditation. The autonomy of higher education is linked with the quality of education and accreditation. Higher education institutions will not only achieve autonomy but will sustain it in ever-changing external and internal environments. Purpose: The purpose is to design strategies for the sustenance of autonomy in higher education institutions. Method: The paper is based on an exploratory qualitative study conducted during 2020. The research objectives emanate from the review of the literature and the experiences of the researcher. The research objective is further explored from the literature review to formulate the research questions. The population for the study constitutes the autonomous higher education institutions of the country including engineering, management, pharmacy, and polytechnic institutions. The researcher selected a purposive sample to gather the information and views of the respondents. Respondents were selected from all over India, all types of institutions, and all levels of the institute. The researcher designed a comprehensive, concise, precise, and accurate structured and semistructured research instrument based on the literature, experiences, and focus group discussion. This research instrument was validated on content and construct in a group of six persons working in the area of autonomy. Then it was prepared in the Google form which was validated by forty respondents. The respondents are principals, heads of departments, senior faculty members working in national-level institutes, higher education institutes, and technical institutions. The instrument was mailed to more than 8000 respondents out of which 954 respondents provided information. The information is provided by principals, deans, heads of departments, and senior faculty members. Secondary information is also used to fill up the gap to achieve the research objective. The information received from structured instruments is compiled using Microsoft Excel Sheet to calculate the weighted mean and percentage. Results: The strategies for sustaining autonomy at central government, state government, regulatory body, institute, teacher, and student levels are evolved. Conclusion: To reap the full potential of autonomy and its sustenance strategies at different levels of hierarchy need to be effectively implemented on continuous basis.

This paper is to analyze the 2007 reform of the higher education system in Portugal (RJIES), which ambitioned fundamental changes in the governance of universities, the option given to higher education institutions (HEIs) to be transformed into public foundations being only one element of the reform. Based on desk research, the key elements of the reform, the process of designing and introducing it and an assessment of its impact are presented. We may conclude that the governance reform has led to more effective management of universities regardless of their legal status, but the new, foundation form has not fulfilled the expectations regarding the more autonomous and flexible operation of the transformed HEIs, due, to a large extent, to the financial restrictions brought about by the global crisis.

Several European countries have made it possible for public universities to become foundation universities. The transformation has also involved a change in their governance model with external actors taking important decision-making positions. We believe that these changes also imply a transformation of the organisational culture of the said universities. This study examines the transformation of a Finnish and a Hungarian university into a foundation one based on documents, interviews and questionnaire surveys. We found that for both universities there is strong pressure to move towards a corporate culture, but that change is not happening without resistance at either university.

The purpose of this article was to critically explore the experiences and lessons of governance in higher education systems in the Commonwealth of Asia, and most importantly how these experiences and good practices can be applied to the governance and management of higher education in Commonwealth nations, especially in the Commonwealth of Africa. In order to address the purpose of this research study, systematic secondary research was conducted through a keyword search strategy. Using the gathered data, discussions were made on the various governance and management aspects in three Commonwealth Asian countries namely Malaysia, Singapore, and India in aspects and issues such as university autonomy, quality assurance, university-based research development, funding, institutional differentiation, and governance reforms proved salient for discussion. It is important to note that this article is not attempting to address higher education across geopolitical contexts by comparing governance practices between Commonwealth Africa and Commonwealth Asia; instead, it aims to share good practices for the common good and to generate a contextual application of higher education governance practices between the Commonwealth of Asia and the Commonwealth of Africa.

This article examines the concept of academic autonomy within the "Yugoslav model" of higher education as a peripheral system characterised by an eclectic mix of elements from different systems, resulting in mutations with unique features during its development. The hitherto under-researched history of this higher education model has by no means been uniform or linear; because of this complexity, the focus here is limited to the case of Slovenia but considers the broader context. The focus is on the understanding, legislation, and (non-)implementation of academic autonomy as articulated between 1945 and 1991. The concept was inherited: it was never used in the legislation of federal socialist Yugoslavia yet was used in political and public debates. Our analysis relates these debates to the rapidly changing legislation and the broader socio-political context. Although the "Yugoslav model" has vanished, its traces and ashes, including old contradictions and dilemmas, remain partly present in the higher education systems of independent states that emerged on the territory of the former federation. The principle that knowledge of the past is the key to understanding the present and approaching the future is confirmed in this case as well.

When the higher education policies and practices of various countries in the world are examined, it is seen that higher education systems are open to innovations and improvements in order to meet the changing and developing needs of society. However, the problems experienced by higher education institutions in Turkey significantly limit both the solution of social problems and the provision of social development. From this point of view, this study aims to comprehensively address the existing problems that prevent higher education institutions from reaching the desired level in Turkey. In the current study, the main problematic areas in higher education in Turkey were determined by document analysis technique. In this context, the study deals with the problems of supply, demand, and imbalance in higher education; the problem of faculty members; autonomy and accountability; and internationalization in higher education are discussed. The results of the study show that higher education in Turkey is insufficient in many aspects to deal with the problems experienced. The study draws attention to some points that need to be addressed in the struggle with the problems experienced in higher education and ends with some regulation suggestions.

Since the implementation of the Excellence Initiative and the Excellence Strategy, German higher education institutions have been restructuring university governance, especially those selected as Universities of Excellence. This study uses a holistic and mission-related integrated governance approach to conduct a qualitative analysis of the governance transformation of German Universities of Excellence, aiming to provoke discussion on transforming governance to optimize organizational effectiveness and sustainable development of German higher education institutions. Transforming governance of German Universities of Excellence involves mission statements, strategic goals, institutional strategies, research, teaching, the third mission, internationalization, global engagement, governance relationships and structures, institutional leadership, funding, autonomy, innovation, digital transformation, quality assurance, and sustainable development, aiming to enhance accountability, performativity, transparency, openness and organizational effectiveness with efficient administrative management in alignment with institutional missions, vision, core values, and strategic goals.

The term tertiary education has gained prominence in recent policy debates in the UK [Morgan (2023). "Labour 'would review whole landscape' of tertiary education." "Times Higher Education," 28 November. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/labour-would-review-whole-landscape-tertiary-education]. This paper presents findings from a review of the use of the term in academic and policy papers in the UK over the last 80 years. The analysis reveals the role of international organisations in defining this term initially as a synonym for post-compulsory education before using it as a statistical measure which became a normative guide for many member states. More recently, the term tertiary education has been used as a descriptor of systems of educational governance and by the World Bank for specific systems of organisation. Using these definitions as a guide, the review demonstrates differences in government policy in the four nations of the United Kingdom: England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Here there is evidence of periodic and partial policy change, but little sustained full engagement with this agenda. The review suggests that if future tertiary education policy initiatives are introduced they should cover all potential learners once they have left the compulsory phase of education and should be advanced by regional bodies with involvement from learners, employers and community representatives allocating funds from a single tertiary education budget.

This paper offers a historical analysis of organizational identity development at a particular Dutch university, the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. Our analysis contributes to the discussion on what factors contribute to organizational identity maintenance and evolution. Whereas the literature suggests a rather straightforward development, with national and institutional governance arrangements offering more institutional autonomy and providing significant scope for identity development and profiling, this case study shows that these relationships between identity, governance, and autonomy are not that obvious. In this particular case, the opposite happened. Despite more autonomy, VU Amsterdam was not able to maintain its historically distinctive identity, nor was it able to replace this with a new, unambiguous identity. External factors (demographics) and internal dynamics (leadership strategies) explain the anomalies.

Agreements between national public authorities and higher education institutions serve as a governance instrument in many European countries. In Norway, these agreements are currently undergoing change, as the state now invites the institutions to propose their own goals and parameters in the agreements. This study seeks to understand the negotiation process for new agreements and assess how higher education institutions expect the new agreements may affect their institutional autonomy in practice. The methodology includes analysing negotiation documents and interviews with key institutional officials to understand their expectations of the new agreements. The findings indicate that Norwegian higher education institutions have enjoyed both substantive and procedural autonomy during the negotiation process. However, it is anticipated that the new agreements will have a limited impact on institutional autonomy in practice, except for their role in legitimising internal strategic priorities. As a result, this study raises concerns and contributes to a deeper understanding of how agreements between public authorities and higher education institutions serve as instruments for governing higher education.

Legislative professionalism is central to the politico-institutional context of postsecondary policy adoption in state governments. The core argument in existing research is that as legislative professionalism increases, structural capacity for decision-making increases. Evidence for this argument is mixed, exclusively quantitative, and assumes a bureaucratic logic. The goal of this study is to deepen understanding of legislative professionalism by examining how policy stakeholders perceive the postsecondary policy environment in a "citizen legislature." The study draws on 26 in-depth interviews with higher education stakeholders in Nevada. The findings contribute empirically to the literature by demonstrating that legislative professionalism can be understood in terms of the meanings assigned distinctive legislative environments. The results also make a conceptual contribution to this literature by showing how loose coupling in interorganizational relations and bounded rationality shape the policy environment--in ways that yield benefits for some institutions and disadvantages for others.

Referring to failures in policy-driven public governance research this paper looks at strategising in higher education. It expands horizons for understanding university strategies in a more nuanced way than hitherto has been done. Deploying systems theory, it shows how different temporalities co-exist in strategies and how their change reflects the university's capacity to meet future contingencies. Extending the current research on strategising, the paper uses the present's past, the present's future, the future's present and the future's future as temporal categories to understand strategies. It shows how strategies evolve from traditional linear planning orientation to a novel potentiality-seeking mode with unique meanings attached to unknown futures. It claims that universities develop such responsive contingency awareness to construct a leeway for their self-governance in the face of unexpected future conditions. This change is characterised by the emergence of a potentialising organisation seeking to turn indeterminant futures into its developmental resources.

Through an analysis of Allahabad University's functioning, this article argues that independent India's ideas of federalism reimagined university education. New visions of the educated person - linked to ideas about the ideal citizen - changed the kinds of disciplines and universities being funded. With support from industrial elites to buttress the new nation-state's development plans, the state prioritised technical education over arts and humanities to serve a unified economic policy. This change manifested through increased scrutiny over university functioning and crackdowns on student protests. The Indian postcolonial state's "centralised" federalism to manage the national economy and promote national integration impacted university funding. Ultimately, decisions about university funding were tied to the state's vision of the ideal apolitical citizen student, who would contribute to national development. This article highlights the complicated relationship between capital, the postcolonial nation-state, and university autonomy.

Drawing on evidence from documents and semi-structured interviews with members of the Catalan system of higher education, this research explores how intermediary organizations (IOs) facilitate the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), conceived as a global policy framework, in local contexts. We observed that, despite the voluntary nature of SDGs-related policies, most Catalan public universities embraced the SDGs. Two contextual factors likely facilitated their effective engagement with this global initiative: first, the autonomy granted by regional and national governments to the higher education sector when it comes to social responsibility, and, second, the willingness and ability of higher education institutions (HEIs) in Catalonia to work with the SDGs. The key element added to these contextual factors was the collaboration stimulated by meso-level actors, namely Catalan intermediaries. The Catalan case exhibits a process whereby IOs effectively engage with HEIs, forging a platform for collaboration; in turn, this led the local government to delegate the task of promoting the SDGs to IOs. This paper contributes to the debate in global higher education policy-making as it discusses the policy implications of the involvement of intermediary actors in bringing global policy frameworks to local level.

Abundant research has shown the influence of social background on university dropout. However, there is little research that considers the different progression options for analysing the structure of the decisions that students make. This article explores the possible alternative decisions of: (1) continuing the initial degree course chosen; (2) persisting but transferring to other degrees or institutions; (3) dropping out of university. To this effect, we seek whether the decision structure follows a compensatory advantage pattern, according to which poor performance during the first year at university unequally affects students from low and high social backgrounds. The latter compensates for poor results by using alternative strategies to minimise the negative consequences. We analyse longitudinal data from a cohort of students entering any on-site university in the Catalan system in 2012-13 (n = 36909). The results show the importance of performance in predicting university progression decisions. No differences by social origin are perceived in the decisions to continue the same course of study, while differences are observed in dropout and transfer decisions which, for their part, follow a compensatory advantage structure. The results show the need to consider the interaction between performance and social background, and to broaden our view of students' trajectories.

This study applies resource dependence theory to address the question of how the critical resource dependence relationship emerges in the context of a university's performance agreement. This study focuses on two Nordic universities that have adopted performance agreements while simultaneously using strong performance-based state funding. Resource dependence involves an asymmetry and power imbalance that leads an organisation to believe that it is dependent on a more powerful organisation that has resources under its control. The theory reveals the central role of performance agreements and their associated instruments in the universities' relationship with the ministry and within universities. We found minor differences in Nordic university examples indicating the influence of the performance regimes within the management arena and within the material dimensions of university autonomy. Performance agreements and their related instruments are isolated from the other key realities of universities. Understanding the loose coupling between the agreements and the characteristics of universities are needed to enhance universities' ability to pursue their unique mission in society. Resource dependence theory provides a valuable framework for analysing the dynamics and dependencies that exist between organisations and within loosely coupled organisations, shedding light on the interactions and influences that shape these relationships.

The approaches to governance employed by various societies have become increasingly similar, following a pattern of reforms that move away from the control mode to the supervisory mode. To this end, direct central involvement is being replaced by a model that relies on more sophisticated forms of funding, monitoring, and performance review. This case study research adopts in-depth semi-structured interviews with 31 top- and mid-level administrators and academics at two premier universities and senior members of the ministry and its affiliated organizations. Through the lens of agency theory, it explores stakeholders' perceptions of university-government relations and how the government maintains its support, control and influence through a system of checks and balances. The findings reveal a salient role of the government as a policy driver. In addition, the coalitions of universities, the state, and society have exerted a significant impact on policy development and implementation in Taiwan. Empirically, this study has illustrated how a cultural force hidden in agency theory influences higher education governance in Taiwan. Thus, it sets an implication and further theorizes an application of this widely-used and western-based framework to understand the state-university relationship in East Asia.

When the Carnegie Foundation was established in 1905, universities in Canada and Newfoundland were eligible for grants, on strict conditions that were seen by some as "colonial," "continentalist," or "imperial" intrusions on autonomy; for example, a Carnegie plan to create a federation of Maritime universities. This is a study of how Canadian universities found ways to comply with the requirement, of the compromises they had to make, or chose not to make, in governance, and of an ultimate shift in balance from sectarian to secular, and independent to publicly supported.

The paper studies the establishment of work experience programs in the context of the Greek Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and connects it with the attempts to include Work-Based Learning (WBL) in the education system on a large scale. Emerging challenges caused by two significant recent changes in the Greek Higher Education landscape set the aim of this study. The integration of Technological Education Institutions in Higher Education Institutions and a significant financial change initiated by the new law which transfers the cost of compensation for traineeships to host institutions and not to Operational Programs. The paper presents the current state of the art in the Greek Higher Education and provides a detailed analysis of the existing barriers. The particular study acquires special interest in light of the intensification of the efforts made all over the world aiming to improve the organization and implementation of such interventions. Work experience programs offered by HEIs are required to be better adjusted to the special educational and labor market characteristics of each country and to become more effective. In Greece, the educational and the labor market policy framework recognizes the significant contribution of WBL in general and of traineeships in particular to the development of the appropriate professional knowledge and competences by higher education students. At the same time, traineeships can operate as a communication channel between educational institutions, businesses and social partners, which facilitates their multifaceted information exchanges. Considering, however, the operational autonomy that has been granted to HEIs in Greece, each University develops its own strategy as regards the connection between higher education studies and the labor market. The research presented in the paper constitutes a quantitative analysis of all the types of traineeships implemented by the Greek HEIs with special reference to certain axes, the optional or mandatory character of WBL, the awarded ECTS, similarities of WBL within the same scientific field in different HEIs, the possibility to undergo a WBL placement abroad.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the shutdown of schools created disruptions in Vietnamese education, which has not been evaluated to date. This paper reviews the effect of COVID-19 policies on teaching and learning in higher education in Vietnam. We first contextualize higher education in Vietnam before the COVID-19 pandemic. We then analyze the Vietnamese government's policies to curb the virus spread. In doing so, we highlight on Vietnam's inequalities of access to higher education, quality of curriculum and instruction, and institutional autonomy. Our analysis focuses on how Vietnam's COVID-19 policies simultaneously responded to the pandemic and moderate prior educational issues. This review contrasts the advantages and disadvantages of the policies and highlights the challenges Vietnamese universities face in policy implementation. We conclude this paper by discussing the implications of changes made during the pandemic to comment on higher education in Vietnam post-COVID-19.

In this research, we compare interrelations between institutional settings and regional provision structures of continuing higher education (CHE) in England and Spain. The aim of the qualitative analysis is to identify and to compare country-specific linkages between national and regional policies, legal and financial regulations and their impact on providers, types of provision and target groups of CHE at the regional level. Theoretical assumptions of educational governance, environmental neo-institutionalism, and the sociology of conventions guide the analysis, based on expert interviews in England and Spain. Our research questions are: What modes of coordination of action to provide CHE are caused by national and regional regulations in England and Spain? How are these actions justified, and how do they influence regional CHE provision types and target groups in both countries? Interview-based findings show that national and regional regulations embrace hybrid modes of coordination of action regarding CHE provision in both countries. Specifically, centralised national policies in England and a mixture of centralised and decentralised legal frameworks in Spain impact regional CHE provision by universities, as does the scope of university autonomy in both countries. However, national frameworks only explain regional disparities in CHE provision to a limited extent. Less formal normative dimensions and social orders of university orientations and labour market demands also influence regional types of provision, concepts, provider cooperation, and adult CHE learners.

This qualitative research aims to examine the establishment and challenges of research universities in Turkey. To this end, specifying their missions, funding, leadership, autonomy, physical and academic infrastructures of research universities were researched. The data were collected through interviews and analyzed with content analysis technique. Research results revealed that as all research universities in Turkey were chosen among existing universities without making their missions clear, preparing their academic and physical infrastructures ready in advance, they face severe challenges regarding specifying their missions, leadership, funding, and autonomy, physical and academic infrastructure. Only a benefit of having considerably 25% more academic staff employment chance was noted in the study. It can be concluded that the idea of the establishment of research universities has no clear understanding, and due to insufficient planning, unclear policies, and legal base, they are bound to fail in the long term.

Analysis of educational system seems to be the most reasonable when the key points are reformation and modernization of education, since the mentioned processes are the response to transformations in adjacent social spheres caused in their turn by objective changes, which may include civilizational, transnational changes in education at national level. This article is devoted to the estimation of educational reforms in the context of contemporary civilizational changes. The research aimed to systematize the features of development of reforms in the field of education, to develop measures on coordination of activities among main participants in educational process, to determine its main features in the context of civilizational changes. It has been established that the key point is to detect balance between autonomous right of a university to render education and scientific studies for economy and society, and responsibility of state for assurance of quality, accountability, integrity, and availability of education. It has been proved that the education sector needs investment to improve learning and research conditions. Another issue is implementation of new forms of financing, including on competitive basis, to support interest and interaction between universities and business environment. It has been determined that new trends in cooperation should not only concern the development of innovations and commercialization but also attract employers to cooperation aiming at development of new or updating the existing learning programs.

China's quest for autonomy took a step backward as leaders of the Communist Party amended the bylaws at several postsecondary institutions. China's restrictions on freedom do not stop at its border and scholars within and visiting the country encounter increased surveillance and scrutiny. This paper explores China's continued interference in postsecondary autonomy.

This article engages with the teacher education (TE) reform approach adopted in India's National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. It locates the policy recommendations in the context and challenges of TE in India and makes sense of the NEP's vision for the domain. It examines the knowledge traditions and global education policy (GEP) discourses that underlie the proposed reforms, and the translation of the core reform ideas in the national regulatory framework for implementation. The first part of the findings identifies the knowledge traditions and influences of GEP inherent in the policy and argues that NEP's reform approach is an assemblage of fundamentally inconsistent discourses. The second part examines the regulatory norms and standards of the NEP-recommended TE programme to understand what makes it distinct as compared to similar ongoing programmes. Based on the analysis, the article argues that the proposed new programme is a tweaked version of India's conventional TE approaches.

In the Indian higher education (HE) setting, what 'academic freedom' of students and faculty members constitutes has not been discussed in detail. As a result, many faculty members and students have discerned 'academic freedom' as freedom from external control and influence. It is noticed that faculty members and students are often misinterpreting and misconstruing the concept of 'academic freedom' as 'legal freedom' and confused it with 'civil and political rights'. This creates a hurdle to achieve the aims and objectives of Indian HE institutions. Against this backdrop, the paper discusses the concept of 'academic freedom' and its importance in the higher education setting. It examines the relationship between 'academic freedom' and 'university autonomy' in the Indian context. It discusses the HE institution's social responsibilities concerning the notion of 'academic freedom'. It delineates faculty member's and student's academic freedom in the Indian higher education setting. It submits that 'academic freedom' is not to be treated as 'legal freedom'. But it is an essential requisite for quality teaching-learning activities, productive and rewarding research works in higher education. The paper adopts a qualitative methodology that subsumes descriptive, evaluative, and interpretative approaches to derive its conclusion.

This study explores whether State political ideology in Ethiopia influenced the academic autonomy of that country's universities. It asks what the historical trends in the development of higher education show about political ideology and its relationship with university autonomy in the Ethiopian context. After reviewing different university autonomy models (Berdahl, 1990; Choi, 2018; Ordorika, 2003; Reilly, Turcan & Bugaian, 2016), the study delineates the primary stakeholders of academic autonomy, namely, academic staff, students, and the government. It discusses academic autonomy in a comparative light across three regimes in Ethiopia, namely, the Imperial (1916-1974), the Socialist (1974-1991), and the Revolutionary Democratic regimes (1991-2018). Data from various sources show that in all these three regimes, the State negatively influenced academic autonomy, including by imposing a particular political ideology that was favored by the government in power at the time. However, the form and level of State influence have varied across these regimes.