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Start-up packages are a tool for a successful transition to an academic career. This institutional case study examined the faculty experience with start-up packages at one public university in the Southeastern United States, including gender differences, content, negotiation, and perceived outcomes. A mixed-method research design was utilized to answer the study research questions. Data were gathered through an online survey with quantitative and qualitative questions. Data from 121 participants were analyzed using descriptive statistics, chi-square tests of independence, and thematic analysis. Most start-up package agreements included moving expenses, personal computers and software, and start-up funds. Conversely, child daycare, guaranteed junior sabbatical, and salary advancement were the most missing benefits in the agreements. Male faculty obtained, significantly more often than female faculty, a specific number of years for secure funding, laboratory space, and student or postdoc funding in their agreements. Faculty, in general, were not well prepared for the negotiation process and were not aware of what they needed to establish a successful research program. Universities should focus more on the influence of start-up packages on faculty careers because perceived unfair treatment during the negotiation process or administration can influence faculty performance and turnover intentions.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of short virtual reality (VR) exercises on knowledge retention for adult learners at a contractor safety training organisation supporting the energy industry who took computer-based training (CBT) courses. The intent was to simulate a delay period similar to that experienced by contractors who support work in the energy industry to determine if traditional CBT can be made more effective for stimulating greater transfer of learning with the addition of VR exercises. The experimental group was exposed to CBTs augmented by VR exercises that reinforced the CBT course learning objectives. The control group for this research took the same CBT course without short VR exercises. A quantitative analysis was performed on data collected from a course exam provided immediately after the course delivery and from a separate follow-up quiz delivered 3 days after the course(s) completion. Data from these testing instruments were analysed to determine the participant's likelihood of remembering content from the CBT courses and if there was greater knowledge retention of the course learning objectives and procedures within the experimental group than within the control group. The results found a non-statistically significant relationship between the two groups; however, trends between the groups show that there are benefits for transfer of learning when using short VR exercises compared to those groups without short VR exercises.

Anchor movements rest on the premise that people- and place-based initiatives can be mutually reinforcing. The community development movement, however, has been haunted for years by the people-place dilemma -- the idea that efforts to help people harm efforts to uplift places and vice versa. Most of the literature on the anchor strategy has focused on one horn of the dilemma, namely, the problem that revitalizing a place may lead to rising housing costs that burden and ultimately displace longtime lower-income residents of the neighborhood. In this article, we examine the other horn of the people-place dilemma -- that helping people in disinvested communities may enable them to move elsewhere, leaving behind poorer communities. We examine this issue through a case study of the St. Louis Anchor Action Network (STLAAN), a collaboration of 16 anchor institutions. St. Louis is a classic legacy city that once enjoyed rapid growth but is now characterized by a falling population and high poverty. We document longstanding trends that have drained STLAAN's focus geography of people and resources, as well as more recent growth of an "eds and meds" economy that presents an opportunity to address decades of disinvestment and decline. We document STLAAN's efforts to invest in its focus geography and the people who live there and conclude with research proposals that could help guide anchor initiatives facing similar challenges.

Part C Early Intervention (EI) systems are an entry point to services for autistic toddlers and can be leveraged to facilitate access to autism evidence-based practices (EBPs). However, EI systems are complex and limited research has examined how an EI system's infrastructure (i.e. system-level factors) impacts the adoption and implementation of EBPs. To address this gap, 36 EI providers and 9 EI administrators completed a semi-structured interview or focus group about factors impacting the implementation of autism EBPs. Qualitative analysis included a combination of grounded theory and causative coding. Analyses were refined by input from providers, administrators, and family stakeholders in the form of round tables and presentations at the state's interagency coordinating council. Primary themes centered on: (1) the costs associated with independent contracting structures; (2) operational demands; (3) workforce stability; (4) communication consistency; and (5) implementation supports for EBP implementation. Causative coding helped to demonstrate the perceived relationships between these factors and underscored the important role of incentivization structures, collaboration opportunities, and championing in supporting the use of EBPs within a system that primarily uses independent contracting structures. The current study extends previous research by demonstrating how several system-level factors are perceived to play a role in the adoption and implementation of EBPs by independently contracted EI providers. These findings underscore the need for implementation strategies, such as incentivization strategies and social network building, to increase providers' implementation of autism EBPs within EI systems.

Although charter schools are frequently afforded flexibility from many state laws that govern traditional public schools, a growing number of charter school teachers have now unionized and introduced collective bargaining to the charter sector. Using data from a detailed content analysis of teacher CBAs from California, we compare the restrictiveness of CBAs in 75 unionized charter bargaining units to the restrictiveness of CBAs in 31 nearest neighbor traditional public school district bargaining units. We find that independent charter CBAs are much more flexible than the CBAs of traditional public school districts, but charter school CBAs of bargaining units combined with traditional public school districts are comparably restrictive.

In the discipline of technical/professional writing and communication, one of the strongest recruiting tools we use is the potential earning power students will have once they obtain a degree and secure a job in the industry. This article is the result of two professors learning that one of their most advanced and dedicated students accepted, in her first job out of graduate school, a salary we thought was thousands below her earning potential. Our conversations around this student's situation led us to survey other alumni from our programs. What we have learned is that students often do not know what salaries they should expect, nor do they feel comfortable negotiating a salary offer. In addition, graduates' location (urban vs. rural) and level of education (BA or BS degree vs. MA) impact their earning potential.

This case study looks both backwards and forwards at real and potential incidents and risks created by the use of various levels of self-driving vehicles. The case provides background on autonomous vehicle technology, the legal and risk management frameworks involved, and a variety of scenarios for students to consider. The scenarios provide the foundation for discussion of autonomous vehicle introductions and operations, as well as considerations for how other new technologies may be launched.

This article highlights inherent conflicts between technology industry incentives and a new social contract for education, while arguing for safeguards to mitigate the risk of technology industry engagement in education governance. Business strategies often utilize economies of scale, standardization, and internationalization to maximize profits. These strategies are diametrically opposed to education as a public endeavor and as a reflection of humanity's diverse ways of knowing and being in various local contexts. Technology industry strategies tend to emphasize the disruption of sectors and encourage entrepreneurialism and innovation with an emphasis on outputs, measurement, and impact. These strategies often recast the "good" of education from public to private returns. While appropriate engagement of non-state technology actors in education governance can offer solutions in support of global education goals and a new social contract for education, I argue that such mobilization is multi-sided, simultaneously pushing through innovative, yet untested, education agendas. The article identifies potential risks to systems of public education and reflects upon safeguards, which fall into two main categories: issues of transparency, accountability and legitimacy; and issues of technology management and governance. Proactively addressing inherent conflicts and potential safeguards, I argue, is a key step to identifying ways to strengthen motivations for corporations to forge meaningful long-term investment in a new social contract for education and for the development of education governance structures that are equitable and democratic.

In its report published in 2021, the UNESCO International Commission on the Futures of Education invited the international community to forge a "new social contract for education" in order to repair past injustices and build a more equitable and sustainable planet. This new social contract should involve all education stakeholders and be governed by the principle of education as a common good. However, neither the concept of the new social contract nor the principle of education as a common good appear to be clearly defined in the 2021 UNESCO report, and this results in a lack of political discussion regarding the relationship among the institutions that should govern the new social contract for education. This article discusses the extent to which the notion of education as a common good provides the political framing for such a new social contract. It recalls the theoretical background of this concept and identifies some key areas that may be relevant to the discussion on the governance arrangements required to forge a new social contract for education with a view to revisiting existing hierarchies of power and strengthening democratic processes.

There is a growing acceptance of open access funding models among academic publishers and a growing adoption of open access publishing agreements among academic libraries. In this context, libraries are taking on new roles and new processes to ensure the successful implementation of open access funding initiatives. This article will examine some of the key issues and considerations in the area of open access workflows, and discuss how one research-intensive library in the United States has approached these new functions.

Seeking to better understand the longitudinal association between online usage of library-licensed content and short- and long-term student performance, we linked EZproxy logs to institutional university data to study how library usage impacts semester and cumulative GPAs. Panel linear mixed effects regression models indicate online library usage is significantly associated with both semester and cumulative GPAs. The library usage effect is larger for semester GPA, and varies by on- and off-campus residency. The effect on semester GPA is larger for off-campus students, while for cumulative GPA the effect is larger for on-campus students. Longitudinally linked library-institutional data offers key insights on the library's value.

The number of international schools hit the 6,000-mark in 2012, and the 13,000-mark in 2022. In spite of continuous growth and diversity of provision, paradoxically some literature continues to paint a largely negative sociological imagination, associating the arena with micro-politics, high turnover, and increasing precarity. At the same time, the social reality of working in the arena remains under-reported and under-theorised. The largest number of international schools are now in China, where two-thirds are of the 'non-traditional' type. Our paper focuses on the experiences of two expatriate teachers in that relatively new field. In order to address the questions of 'how do teachers cope?', and 'what strategies do they adopt?', our paper delves into the under-reported social reality of 'cliques'. By adopting a 'positive sociology' lens of inquiry, we begin to address the role that cliques-formation might have in dealing with precarity and insecurity, especially that of 'friendship precarity' caused by constant transitions and short-term contracts. It can be seen that cliques offer a natural, quick, and practical solution to addressing precarity, helping over time to create resilience, and should not be viewed solely within a negative sociological imagination.

As students' achievement is correlated with self-regulation, finding interventions promoting self-regulated learning (SRL) in online courses is a current focus of research. However, few studies have explored the potential of contract learning in scaffolding and developing SRL in non-traditional learners who have work and family and are at risk of dropout. Here, we investigate the utility of contract learning as an individualized learning approach in developing self-regulation in non-traditional learners during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a qualitative approach, we collected data from the experience of one teacher and seven non-traditional learners in an online English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course. The data were collected from teacher logs over eight months and semi-structured interviews with the students. The results of deductive thematic analysis of the data indicate that contract learning positively affected the forethought, performance, and self-reflection phases. Further, despite the cognitive, emotional, external, motivational, and behavioral challenges aggravated by the pandemic, the teacher's efforts to implement contract learning affected the persistence and effort, goal setting, strategic planning, and time management of most learners (N = 4). Possible reasons for the learners' success and failure and the implications for developing SRL skills in students at risk of dropout in online English courses are discussed.

Business schools seek to prepare students for the workplace with employer-valued skills such as communication, teamwork, and application of knowledge. As such, a common practice for business and management educators is to involve students in collaborative team-based assignments and community projects. For example, to facilitate the development of teamwork skills, faculty members may have students create a team charter, which involves student teams identifying goals, roles, and norms. However, empirical evidence of the value of team charters is limited. This study examined student perceptions of team charters to determine if they played a role in effective teamwork or if other variables accounted for team success. The study entailed an analysis of a mid-semester team evaluation survey and an end-of-semester team charter survey. Findings indicated that overall, including the development and application of student charters in student group projects leads to several significant benefits and learning outcomes. However, the perceived usefulness of charters varies among students by level of experience and year in school.

Rural school leaders encounter an array of complex issues that require legal counsel. Student discipline, contract disputes, employee conduct, special education, and a host of other topics require school boards and superintendents to utilize school attorneys. This descriptive phenomenological study explored the daily experiences of ten school attorneys representing multiple school districts in rural areas. Three salient themes emerged (a) the work of a school attorney, (b) relationships and interactions with school personnel, and (c) insights for others. Themes provide a comprehensive picture regarding school attorneys' roles, responsibilities, and engagements with school personnel within rural schools. Implications, including the importance of building relationships between school attorneys and school leaders and of gaining experience in schools are offered. Finally, future research with more school attorneys specializing in special education and disability law, who represent diverse and rich backgrounds in rural settings would augment the findings from this study.

This study estimates the association of participation in a nine-week online educational program to prepare students for post-graduate (juris doctorate) education and law school grades. We collected registrar data from 17 U.S. law schools for participants and non-participants from the same year and a prior year. We compared first-semester law school grades between participating and non-participating students weighted by propensity scores. Course participation was associated with improved first-semester grades in a keyed course (Contracts Law) and overall grade point average. According to pre- and post-survey responses, a substantial portion of those who completed the program reported feeling more prepared for law school.

Schools of business aim to help students develop employer-valued skills, which include communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and application of learning. This can be achieved through team assignments and community-based learning. Such approaches help students apply the concepts they are learning, collaborate with others, develop managerial skills, and solve real-life workplace issues. Teamwork is commonly thought to be enhanced when students establish a team charter outlining their goals, norms, and processes. Research on the value of team charters in business education, however, is limited. This study examined the role of team charters on student perceptions of working well together. Data was collected and analyzed from a mid-term team evaluation and a final team charter assessment. Findings indicated that perceived value of team charters differs across the year in school and tends to be higher for less experienced students. The provision of a structured project roadmap clarified team member roles, responsibilities, personal accountability, and team vision.

This paper deals with the role of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) among staff on teaching-only contracts in UK higher education, particularly in contrast with the activities of research-active staff. Drawing on the results of a quantitative study carried out during the summer of 2021 among modern foreign language teachers in 64 UK universities, the questions of the status and purpose of SoTL are addressed. The results of the survey show that, beyond the traditional two-tier division of academic labour based on the research vs. scholarship dichotomy, a third group of academic staff with no research or SoTL responsibilities has emerged in recent years. The paper concludes with recommendations to review the existing divisions between staff on research, SoTL and teaching-only contracts in order to create a more inclusive academic environment where individuals in different types of academic posts can fulfil their scholarly potential.

This research explores ethics in the context of education collaboration and partnership work. It is part of a wider collaborative provision study of leaders and managers in 4 universities and 15 colleges, and it draws upon interviews, meetings and conversations, focusing upon the character of the partnership relationship as depicted by the participants in the study. In the analysis, the terms 'contract' and 'covenant' are used respectively to describe business and educational aspects and features of CBHE partnerships. Rather than viewing these as a duality or in tension with each other, the evidence of the data points to an assimilation between the two. The ethical dimension of partnership and collaboration in the higher education context is found to be widely present and to co-exist with more business-focused, means-ends formulations. Judging from this data, financial and instrumental motivations were rarely unaccompanied by a more altruistic sense of the educational partnership as worthwhile in its own right, a good thing, and as a powerful lever for higher education access and widening participation. The article concludes by noting the complexity of CBHE partnerships, suggesting that this should be borne in mind in future research.

Objective: To assess whether and how beverage companies incentivize universities to maximize sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) sales through pouring rights contracts. Methods: Cross-sectional study of contracts between beverage companies and public U.S. universities with 20,000 or more students active in 2018 or 2019. We requested contracts from 143 universities. The primary measures were presence of financial incentives and penalties tied to sales volume. Results: 124 universities (87%) provided 131 unique contracts (64 Coca-Cola, 67 Pepsi). 125 contracts (95%) included at least one provision tying payments to sales volume. The most common incentive type was commissions, found in 104 contracts (79%). Nineteen contracts (15%) provided higher commissions or rebates for carbonated soft drinks compared to bottled water. Conclusions: Most contracts between universities and beverage companies incentivized universities to market and sell bottled beverages, particularly SSBs. Given the health risks associated with consumption of SSBs, universities should consider their role in promoting them.

Students are increasingly relying on contract cheating (CC), a phenomenon in which a third party completes the assignment, quiz, or homework for students in exchange for a fee. Using an exploratory qualitative method and underpinned by critical theory and social responsibility theory, this study explored the perceptions of faculty members regarding CC in the United Arab Emirates' (UAE's) higher education institutions. In particular, this study addressed how faculty members perceive and deal with CC in contexts where policies towards the practice are absent from higher institution honour codes. Using thematic analysis, the results showed that CC arouses the indignation of faculty and staff to the violation of individual and religious rights. Also, they believe they have a sense of responsibility towards students and the community. The results also showed that faculty members' hesitation in reporting CC incidents was due to their perceived lack of support from higher administration institutions and the lack of clear procedures in ethical manuals. This paper concludes with practical recommendations for faculty and staff, managers, department heads and decision makers to mitigate this phenomenon proactively.

Although international school teachers have always been hired on short-term contracts (usually from two to three years in duration), there has been relatively little research examining this aspect of international schooling. Whilst short-term contracts may appear to be a positive feature of international schooling, particularly for younger teachers who are keen to be mobile, recent studies have begun to examine the short-term as a feature of precarity and the precaritisation of international schooling. This paper adds to this small but growing body of scholarship by focusing on contract non-renewal as a form of international school precarity. In order to explore this issue, this paper utilises autoethnography, drawing on the author's experiences of contract renewal in an internationalised school in Shanghai, as well as interviews with two participants. Whilst the author's experiences of precarity as a foreign teacher in China were characterised by vulnerability and discrimination, his positionality as a white, British male teacher enabled him to negotiate contract non-renewal relatively easily, something that women teachers or minority groups might be unable to do due to the differential nature of precarity. Despite being privileged, white male international school teachers must still negotiate contractual employment and diminished white-skin privilege. This paper goes some way to bringing into focus white male teachers' "precarious privilege".

Purpose: To assess the potential of a paper diary for strengthening accountability in public agricultural extension services. Therefore a paper diary called 'Diary for Agricultural Extension Officers' was developed and tested in Uganda. Design/methodology/approach: A qualitative case study research approach was applied for the development and assessment of the diary. Data were collected using focus group discussions and individual face-to-face interviews. Data analysis was conducted using the content analysis method. Findings: Paper diaries can strengthen accountability in public agricultural extension services by enabling alignment of the extension activities of the field agents to the goals of the extension service and to the needs of the beneficiaries, in addition to mitigating information asymmetry about the extension activities. However, the implementation of paper diaries requires sensitization of the beneficiaries on the need for verification and feedback. Practical Implications: This study is centred around addressing a practical problem of field agents' accountability and results have the potential to improve management of public services such as agricultural extension. Moreover, the findings could also be relevant for all types of organizations and service delivery methods. Theoretical implications: This study expanded the boundaries of the principal-agent theory by applying it to the accountability of agricultural extension services using paper diaries, which have hitherto not been widely applied. Originality/value: This study advances the debates of accountability and coordination of agricultural extension services by assessing the potential of a paper diary as the literature has to date assessed the potential of electronic diaries.

Contract cheating is a challenging problem facing higher and further education providers (HE and FE) worldwide. In the UK, contract cheating has been identified as a growing problem by the HEA and, more recently, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and the Department for Education. The high rate of contact cheating among students suggests that 8-9% of degrees awarded in the UK are unsafe. To address this issue, the current study with a new approach seeks to investigate student's motivations, experiences, and rationale for using contract cheating from their point of view. Collected data has been subjected to content analysis and the findings show different phases and drivers in this process. This study will help increase awareness among UK academics and education providers about the processes involved in contract cheating and propose a set of recommendations for the future.

This paper presents the first systematic investigation into the search engine optimization practices of major contract cheating websites in the United States. From a business perspective, visibility in organic search engine results is considered one of the top client recruitment tools. The current understanding of student recruitment strategies by these companies remains largely unexplored in both academic literature and popular press. Replicating the business research practices used in the search engine optimization industry, comprehensive search engine ranking and traffic data was obtained for the 38 largest contract cheating websites in the US. The overall objective was to illuminate the strategies that these companies take to get their services at the top of the search results of as many students as possible -- not just the relatively small proportion of students actively cheating. The results show that these companies dominate the search results for not just students searching to cheat, but also for naïve search efforts, when students are simply doing genuine research or classwork. These nefarious companies use highly sophisticated search engine manipulation strategies to bait naïve student searchers onto their sites, thus enabling the potential to switch them to cheaters. Higher education institutions, armed with the specific details provided in this study, can use the strategies outlined in the discussion to directly and negatively impact on the success of these contract cheating services.

In this article, we explore whether the evaluation instruments used in the teacher selection process in Peru are good predictors of teacher effectiveness. To this end, we estimate teacher value-added (TVA) measures for public primary school teachers and test their relationship with Peru's results of two rounds of the teacher evaluation (i.e., a centralized national stage and a decentralized stage performed at the school level). Our findings indicate that among the instruments that comprise the national stage of the process, the logical reasoning and curricular and pedagogical knowledge subtests have the strongest relationship with the TVA measure, while the weakest relationship is found with the reading comprehension component. Also, we find that the weighted aggregate score has a higher relationship with estimated TVA than the specific subtests. At the school-level stage, we find no significant relationships with our measures of TVA for math, as well as a nonrobust relationship for the classroom observation and interview evaluation instruments for reading. Moreover, we find relationships between our TVA measure and several teacher characteristics: TVA is higher for female teachers and for those at higher salary levels while it is lower for teachers with temporary contracts. These results provide lessons for the design and implementation of evaluation instruments in teacher hiring processes around the world.

Britney Spears's 2020 testimony about her 13-year conservatorship highlighted ethical concerns surrounding surrogate decision making. Social workers engage with families and clients in conservatorship/guardianship arrangements. However, social work educational programs spend little time preparing students for surrogate decision making and advocacy. Guided by the pedagogical technique of scaffolding and the Spears family case, this teaching note presents a foundational understanding of surrogate decision-making arrangements: conservatorship of the estate, conservatorship of a person, temporary conservatorship, permanent conservatorship, medical justification for conservatorship, controlling fertility, legal counsel, labor in conservatorship cases, and alternatives for guardianship. Content in this area will benefit social work students who intend to work with older adults, adults with mental health conditions, and adults with disabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the legal regulation of cross-border commercial agency agreements in two main legal systems: civil law and common law. It should be noted that the legal regulation of international commercial agency agreements is fragmented; therefore, the general principles of agency law could be applied in order to propose sustainable solutions in international commercial agency relationships. In this paper, the authors consider the effectiveness of these general rules in commercial agency agreements and conclude that the lack of common international regulation for leads to the application of conflicting national rules that are not sufficient in aligning the sustainable interests of all parties of such complex legal relations.

Understanding the psychological contract (PC) perceptions of college students is crucial for attracting and retaining them as early-career employees. We explore how gender and social comparison orientation (SCO) serve as antecedents and moderators of PC breach. Potential PC obligations were examined across 34 teams of full-time business students. Moderated relationships between SCO and gender were examined relative to PC development, breach, and commitment via a survey following a semester-long team project. Results showed that gender significantly influenced obligation perceptions, with females possessing stronger obligations of their team. Positive relationships existed between SCO and the strength of reported obligations and with breach perceptions. Breach was negatively related to affective commitment to the team. Gender moderated several relationships, with females generally showing stronger, significant associations, consistent with relational PC expectations (Adams et al., 2014). Given the rise of the boundaryless career (Kost et al., 2020), results enhance our understanding of implicit obligations college students hold in applied learning projects that further career-readiness. Results suggest that professors and career services staff can reduce the gap between students' perceptions of their soft skills and employer expectations (Stewart et al., 2016). This study also facilitates our understanding of factors influencing team commitment, composition and perceived obligations.

The growth and competitiveness of any business, especially micro and SMEs, will increasingly depend on the ability to apply new knowledge, organisation and working methods, as well as the capacity to engage in the commercialisation of research and development to develop new products, services, or processes. In the information society, the development of new products, services, and processes requires the use of innovations resulting from the intellectual activity of creative people. For creators and successors in title of intellectual property rights (various projects, trademarks, inventions, computer programs, etc.) to be able to successfully develop and market their products, they need a functioning IPR protection system. The research found that it is essential for the company to acquire the rights to the works created during the employment contract, and it would be necessary to reasonably limit the author's right to withdraw the work created during the employment relationship.

We propose and evaluate contractual- and Intellectual Property (IP) instruments in support of research collaboration partnerships between universities and the Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMME)-industry, and more specifically in the South African context. Interviews were conducted with executives from 11 South African originated SMME's in the high-technology industry. The findings of this study and potential solutions were then verified and validated with SMME's, large multinational industry and universities (in South Africa and international) and can be considered as good practice principles to assist in industry-university collaboration (IUC). One aspect that was reported with high occurrence, is the matter of IP valuation, as it can often create further barriers in IUC. The question regarding how to value the IP and any rights relating thereto (IPR's), is attended to in this study and shared experiences from industry and universities provide insights in the considerations and principles to be used when entering discussions regarding IP valuation.

In recent years, machine translation post-editing (MTPE or PE for short) has been steadily gaining ground in the language industry. However, studies that examine translators' perceptions of, and attitudes towards, MTPE paint a somewhat negative picture, with PE pricing methods and rates being a major source of dissatisfaction. While the European Master's in Translation Competence Framework stresses the importance of preparing translation graduates for market challenges, to date there have been no concrete suggestions for practical activities designed to introduce MTPE-pricing-related topics into the translation classroom. The present article aims to address this gap by describing a teaching unit developed for master's students. The activity includes comparing three MTPE pricing methods commonly used in the industry: word-based, time-based and effort-based rates. Using authentic performance data from individual PE tasks carried out in MateCat, students were able to discover the different levels of remuneration they would receive for the same task, depending on the pricing method applied. The results, which show wide variation across both methods and students, proved useful in raising students' awareness of the thorny issue of setting PE rates and sparking reflection on the financial implications of accepting PE assignments.

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.

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.