The central focus of this book is the concept of higher education reform in the light of an international and global comparative perspective. After decades of far-reaching reform, higher education around the world has profoundly changed and now has to face the challenges of the present. This volume takes a close look at these changes, the drivers of change, their effects and possible future scenarios. In their contributions the authors discuss a variety of basic (...) concepts: learning and teaching in higher education; financing and quality assurance; governance change; massification vs. equity and equality; internationalization and mobility, the implementation of lifelong structures in higher education. (shrink)

UK higher education reform (BIS, ) has been presented as a common-sense movement towards efficiency. This article will argue that, in reality, the marketisation of higher education is a movement towards negative freedom, defined after Berlin () as unrestricted choice. Using Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra as a means to explore the relationship between rationality and sensibility, it considers how negative freedom may undermine human connectivity and debase our relationships. In so doing, this article challenges the (...) idea that importing the market system into education will enhance the ‘student experience’. (shrink)

UK higher education reform (BIS, 2011) has been presented as a common‐sense movement towards efficiency. This article will argue that, in reality, the marketisation of higher education is a movement towards negative freedom, defined after Berlin (2007) as unrestricted choice. Using Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra as a means to explore the relationship between rationality and sensibility, it considers how negative freedom may undermine human connectivity and debase our relationships. In so doing, this article challenges the (...) idea that importing the market system into education will enhance the ‘student experience’. (shrink)

The article presents the results of an analysis of the academic dispute about the scholarly ethos, conducted at the time of intense higher education reforms in Poland. Previous analyses of the academic debate on the change of the traditional university towards its entrepreneurial organization emphasize the polarization, that is, the criticism or affirmation of neoliberal reforms. The presented research proves that this discourse loses its dichotomous power when it focuses on ethical issues. The analysis shows the ‘polyvalence’ and (...) ‘strategic integration’ of discourse in the Foucauldian sense of the terms. Firstly, the issue of the traditional scholarly ethos is clearly present both among the opponents and supporters of the current changes in higher education. Secondly, both critical and affirmative discourses refer to the traditional ethos, i.e. they do not attempt to develop any new ethopoiesis, which may be surprising especially in the case of the latter. Instead, they use a ‘peculiar reversal’, pointing to factors located outside the university and yet affecting academic standards. Thirdly, individual attributes of the traditional ethos are taken over by neoliberal discourse, which modifies them and adjusts them to its own purposes. The term ‘ethicalization’ of higher education reform describes ethical problematizations of the contemporary university transformation. (shrink)

The article presents the results of an analysis of the academic dispute about the scholarly ethos, conducted at the time of intense higher education reforms in Poland. Previous analyses of the academic debate on the change of the traditional university towards its entrepreneurial organization emphasize the polarization, that is, the criticism or affirmation of neoliberal reforms. The presented research proves that this discourse loses its dichotomous power when it focuses on ethical issues. The analysis shows the ‘polyvalence’ and (...) ‘strategic integration’ of discourse in the Foucauldian sense of the terms. Firstly, the issue of the traditional scholarly ethos is clearly present both among the opponents and supporters of the current changes in higher education. Secondly, both critical and affirmative discourses refer to the traditional ethos, i.e. they do not attempt to develop any new ethopoiesis, which may be surprising especially in the case of the latter. Instead, they use a ‘peculiar reversal’, pointing to factors located outside the university and yet affecting academic standards. Thirdly, individual attributes of the traditional ethos are taken over by neoliberal discourse, which modifies them and adjusts them to its own purposes. The term ‘ethicalization’ of higher education reform describes ethical problematizations of the contemporary university transformation. (shrink)

The article explores major milestones in reforming higher education in Ukraine, applying the methodology of case studies. It analyzes political and social conditions that influenced the process of reform. The author pays particular attention to the concept of university autonomy, its development and implementation in Ukraine, considering legal and institutional efforts. The impact and experience of some leading institutions like Kyiv-Mohyla Academy is discussed. The author concludes that the task of ensuring comprehensive university autonomy is of a (...) political nature. This is the only reliable instrument for raising of quality of Ukrainian higher education. (shrink)

The paper links higher education reforms and welfare states reforms in postcommunist Central European countries. It links current higher education debates (and reform pressures) and public sector debates (and reform pressures), stressing the importance of communist-era legacies in both areas. It refers to existing typologies of both higher education governance and welfare state regimes and concludes that the lack of the inclusion of Central Europe in any of them is a serious theoretical (...) drawback in comparative social research. The region should still, after more than two decades of transition and heavy international policy advising, be viewed as a “laboratory of social experimentation”. It is still too risky to suggest generalizations about how Central European higher education and welfare systems fit existing typologies. Consequently, the “transition” period is by no means over: it is over in terms of politics and economics but not in terms of social arrangements. Both higher education and welfare states should be viewed as “work in progress”: permanently under reform pressures, and with unclear future. (shrink)

According to a standard picture in the educational policy and educational ethics literature, justice requires significant alterations to higher-education arrangements, in order to equalize opportunity and benefit badly-off social groups. I argue that, if political liberalism is correct, then a range of higher-education reforms favored by the standard picture lack support. After canvassing the standard picture (section 2), I explain why political liberalism entails that some institutions have a special status that prohibits certain kinds of interventions (...) on them (section 3), and I explain why this means that political liberalism cannot vindicate the standard picture (sections 4 and 5). (shrink)

Tekst analizira nacin na koji nastavnici i studenti u cetiri univerzitetska centara u Srbiji percipiraju problem efikasnosti studiranja u novom bolonjskom univerzitetskom okruzenju. Empirijska baza podataka na kojoj pociva prezentovana analiza sastoji se iz dve vrste podataka, kvantitativnim i kvalitativnim, koji su prikupljeni uz pomoc dve vrste metodoloskih instrumenata - anketnim upitnikom i produbljenim intervjuom, pri cemu je kvantitativni deo istrazivanja sproveden na sva cetiri univerziteta, a kvalitativni deo samo na Beogradskom univerzitetu. Dobijeni rezultati analize mapiraju kljucne faktore koji uticu (...) na efikasnost studiranja kao i neke od prvih strukturnih izmena u odnosima moci izmedju razlicitih socijalnih aktera koji interaguju unutar novo reformisanog univerzitetskog polja. (shrink)

This paper examines the marketization of higher education. It takes the curriculum development for a degree sponsored by industry as a focus for exploring the involvement of industry and, more specifically, prospective employers, in shaping higher education provision. Empirical material gathered from a three and a half-year ethnographic study is used to illustrate how mundane promotional work associated with sponsored curricula operates to reconstitute higher education. It is shown how, in the process of introducing (...) sponsored curricula into the university, a market relevance discourse is merged with traditional discourse to promote a new discursive order and thereby contribute to the reformation of university education. This hybrid discourse (of tradition and relevance) makes traditional resistance to the encroachment of "relevance" into university education more difficult to justify, and perhaps impossible to sustain. Nonetheless, it produces new antagonisms that provide future sites of resistance. (shrink)

The funding of higher education is under stress. On the one hand, the benefits of universities for economic prosperity and growth are increasing as universities graduate more students; undertake a greater share of scientific research; and, through cooperation with business, stimulate the technological advance of the private sector. At the same time, government funding of higher education is stagnating or even falling in many countries. The book brings together the views of an international group of experts (...) on the financing of higher education. They examine funding trends in Asia, Europe and the United States and present practical proposals for the reform of university funding and operations and examples of successful ways of building links between industry and universities that can be mutually beneficial and supplement government funding of higher education. (shrink)

A number of national educational organizations and individual authors have called for the use of information technology to radically reform higher education. Several projections of how this reformation will unfold are presented here. Three different approaches to critically assessing these projections are considered in this article, two briefly and one in more detail. Brief consideration is given to an approach based on educational values and to an approach based on cost/benefit analysis. After some discussion of the strengths (...) and weaknesses of these approaches, a third approach deriving from a theory of technology control (Incrementalism) is elaborated in more detail and is found to offer helpful criticisms of the called for revolution in higher education. Some recommendations for how these new technologies can be developed in responsible ways are also offered. (shrink)

The article reviews two essays in connection with the changing higher education. The two essays were entitled "Financing Higher Education: Answers from the UK," edited by Nicholas Barr and Iain Crawford, and "Reform and Change in Higher Education: Analysing Policy Implementation," edited by Ase Gornitzka, Mauruce Kogan, and Alberto Ameral.

British higher education has undergone an unprecedented transformation over the past twenty years from an elite and individualised personal option embodied in historic universities (and their qualified institutional imitation in post-war expansion) to an industrialised, mass higher education system designed to produce a standard, reliable, predictable human ‘product’ suited to the putative needs of British industry and commerce. This ‘reform’ or ‘modernisation’ incorporates key features of ‘managerial modernity’ and it has been imposed without effective critique (...) or resistance. In this paper we outline and analyse aspects of the quasi-totalitarian ‘normalisation’ of the education system as a whole, and pose some basic questions about the adequacy of the result as means of intellectual maturation and fundamental socialisation. It is concluded that the limits of ‘accountability’ have been narrowly and prescriptively drawn, and that both the tacit assumptions and targeted outcomes of this facility for social reproduction may be held in part responsible for a reduced and diminished ‘post-humanity’. Some marginal figures offer material for creative resistance, but what resources, if any, do conventional Christian theology, ethics or pedagogic practice offer in the face of this forced homogenisation of the human? (shrink)

In this paper we discuss the interaction between science policies (and particularly in the area of scientific research) and higher education policies in Gulf and Mediterranean Arab countries. Our analysis reveals a discrepancy between the two sub-regions with respect to integration in the global market, cooperation in scientific research and international mobility of students. The paper discusses the implications of the analysis of reform policies and higher education restructuring.

This paper first extracted 11 indicators from four aspects of infrastructure, educational equity, teaching quality, and scientific research level and established a multidimensional higher education evaluation system. After that, according to TOPSIS and the entropy method, a comprehensive score of the development of higher education was obtained, and a comprehensive index of higher education was proposed. According to the level of the score, we divide the development status into 5 categories, and use discrete Hopfield (...) neural network for verification. In addition, we applied the model to many countries and chose Vietnam to conduct an in-depth analysis of the model, including reforming policies and evaluating policy effects based on cobweb model. Finally, we found that the application of the model is very universal, but in reality the reform is very difficult. (shrink)

In 1988 a piece of higher education reform legislation titled The Higher Education Funding Act was devised by the Labor Government and enacted by the Commonwealth of Australia to become law. The te...

This article aims to answer the question that whether higher education would lead to happier life in China and tries to provide some explanations from the perspective of housing asset. Using data from four waves of China Household Finance Survey, we find that higher education on average is significantly negatively correlated with people's happiness in urban China. Higher education tends to prevent people from achieving “extremely happy” lives; instead, it is more likely to lead (...) to “acceptable” lives. Based on the realities of housing market in urban China, we find that housing asset plays the mediating role in the relationship between higher education and happiness. Specifically, years of schooling could evidently compress the years of being homeowners; as a result, highly educated people generally have more unpaid housing debts and bear more housing purchase costs due to the soaring housing prices. Meanwhile, higher education has negative effect on people's happiness in cities with relatively high housing prices, while this effect is insignificant in cities with relatively low housing prices. Moreover, the market-oriented housing reform that launched in 1998 has negative impact on highly educated people's happiness, since it has dramatically boosted housing prices and essentially changed housing distribution system for urban employees. Besides, we also find that Ph.D graduates are the relatively unhappiest people compared to bachelors or masters. Obviously, our findings have important policy implications for Chinese government to understand and resolve the “education-happiness paradox.”. (shrink)

Liberal education has been under siege in recent years. Far-right ideologues in journalism and government have pressed for a uniform curriculum that focuses on the achievements of Western culture. Partisans of the academic left, who hold our culture responsible for the evils of society, have attempted to redress imbalances by fostering multiculturalism in education. In this eloquent and passionate book a distinguished scholar criticizes these positions and calls for a return to the tradition of independent thinking that he (...) contends has been betrayed by both right and left. Under the guise of educational reform, says David Bromwich, these groups are in fact engaging in politics by other means. Bromwich argues that rivals in the debate over education have one thing in common: they believe in the all-importance of culture. Each assumes that culture confers identity, decides the terms of every moral choice, and gives a meaning to life. Both sides therefore see education as a means to indoctrinate students in specific cultural and political dogmas. By contrast, Bromwich contends that genuine education is concerned less with culture than with critical thinking and independence of mind. This view of education is not a middle way among the political demands of the moment, says Bromwich. Its earlier advocates include Mill and Wollstonecraft, and its roots can be traced to such secular moralists as Burke and Hume. Bromwich attacks the anti-democratic and intolerant premises of both right and left - premises that often appear in the conservative guise of "preserving the tradition" on the one hand, or the radical guise of "opening up the tradition" on the other. He discusses the new academic"fundamentalists" and the politically correct speech codes they have devised to enforce a doctrine of intellectual conformity; educational policy as articulated by conservative apologists George Will and William Bennett; the narrow logic of institutional radicalism; the association between personal reflection and social morality; and the discipline of literary study, where the symptoms of cultural conflict have appeared most visibly. Written with the wisdom and conviction of a dedicated teacher, this book is a persuasive plea to recover a true liberal addition in academia and government - through independent thinking, self-knowledge, and tolerance of other points of view. (shrink)

This study aims to explore the new directions towards internationalization of higher education in China during post-COVID 19. The systematic literature review is applied as an evidence-based policy analysis approach. The findings indicate that the challenges and difficulties of internationalization of higher education in the post-COVID 19 were considered as a high-frequency discussion topic. In order to address the crises of internationalization of higher education during the post-COVID 19, the idea of internationalization at home (...) is regarded as a beneficial approach to deal with the process of internationalization of higher education, systematically. This study also highlighted that the internationalization at home within Chinese higher education institutions not only brings opportunities for the development of China’s higher education system, but also poses challenges to the reform of the current higher education system. In addition, the conclusion and implication were provided to analyze the rationales of promoting internationalization of higher education system in contemporary China. (shrink)

For several decades, higher education systems have undergone continuous waves of reform, driven by a combination of concerns about the changing labour needs of the economy, competition within the global-knowledge economy, and nationally competitive positioning strategies to enhance the performance of higher education systems. Yet, despite far-ranging international pressures, including the emergence of an international higher education market, enormous growth in cross-border student mobility, and pressures to achieve universities of world class standing, boost (...) research productivity and impact, and compete in global league tables, the suites of policy, policy designs and sector outcomes continue to be marked as much by hybridity as they are of similarity or convergence. This volume explores these complex governance outcomes from a theoretical and empirical comparative perspective, addressing those vectors precipitating change in the modalities and instruments of governance, and how they interface at the systemic and institutional levels, and across geographic regions. (shrink)

The literature on autonomous language learning reveals both, scholars’ great enthusiasm for the revolutionary potential of learner autonomy as well as pessimism for its continual depoliticization within higher education. Similar to how ‘learner autonomy’ is still today an unfinished construct that raises considerable confusion among scholars, the critical theory of learner autonomy in the field of language learning remains largely unexplored; and thus, yet to be fully articulated. Building on the relevant literature, this article attempts to provide a (...) coherent and nuanced theoretical framework for the critical practice of learner autonomy in higher education. Results show how the field of language learning is dominated by uncritical and apolitical approaches that render learner autonomy a politically impotent practice. Critical autonomous language learning must be both critically aware—so it can raise students’ awareness of the structural and discursive constraints on their autonomy—and politically active—so it may lead to education reform and social change—, while also aiming at reaching the highest levels of institutional material support and student control possible. (shrink)

This study aims to explore the promoting effect of the combination of mental health education and ideological and political education for college students on improving their comprehensive psychological quality and ideological and political theoretical level. The research adopts a combination of system analysis methods, experimental methods and clustering algorithms, and conducts course experiments through experimental methods, providing basic data. In the process of the experiment, from the perspective of educational psychology theory, the systematic analysis method is used to (...) distinguish subject and object, and functional analysis is carried out. At the same time, clustering algorithms are used to classify the mental health problems of different students. The research results indicate that in terms of subjectivity, teachers’ psychological communication ability, psychological understanding ability and psychological guidance ability have a significant positive impact on students’ psychological state. The level of ideological and political theory and psychological strain ability also have a significant positive impact on students’ psychological state. Intervention on students’ values and personality psychological issues is also effective. These findings provide an important basis and guidance for further carrying out higher education reform. Contribution: With the development of society, students need to face more and more external concepts during their growth. Students whose mental growth is not mature are likely to have certain psychological problems in this process. This research can be utilised by scholars in the field of youth ministry and religious educational studies. (shrink)

This book covers a crucial period for the development of state education in Britain; the advent of the comprehensive debate before and during the Second World War; the War years themselves and the 1944 Education Act; the post-War Labour Government; and Churchill's last government in a time of education expansion. From the 1960s, the focus shifted to questions of social deprivation and educational opportunities, secondary school selection, the debate on standards, Robbins and higher education, and (...) the continuing theme of the dominance of public schools. The book is divided into four sections, which are then divided into chapters. Each chapter takes as its main reference point a key issue within the chronological framework of the book, e.g. resistance to secondary education for all, politics and textbooks, multilateral and technical schools, pressure groups and the 1944 Education Act, Churchill and the Conservatives. Much new light is thrown on the topics by the author's use of new material and he has made a valuable contribution to the politics of education. (shrink)

Why the paradigm of the world-class university is an implausible dream for most institutions of higher education Universities have become major actors on the global stage. Yet, as they strive to be "world-class," institutions of higher education are shifting away from their core missions of cultivating democratic citizenship, fostering critical thinking, and safeguarding academic freedom. In the contest to raise their national and global profiles, universities are embracing a new form of utilitarianism, one that favors market (...) power over academic values. In this book, James Mittelman explains why the world-class university is an implausible dream for most institutions and proposes viable alternatives that can help universities thrive in today's competitive global environment. Mittelman traces how the scale, reach, and impact of higher-education institutions expanded exponentially in the post-World War II era, and how the market-led educational model became widespread. Drawing on his own groundbreaking fieldwork, he offers three case studies--the United States, which exemplifies market-oriented educational globalization; Finland, representative of the strong public sphere; and Uganda, a postcolonial country with a historically public but now increasingly private university system. Mittelman shows that the "world-class" paradigm is untenable for all but a small group of wealthy, research-intensive universities, primarily in the global North. Nevertheless, institutions without substantial material resources and in far different contexts continue to aspire to world-class stature. An urgent wake-up call, Implausible Dream argues that universities are repurposing at the peril of their high principles and recommends structural reforms that are more practical than the unrealistic worldwide measures of excellence prevalent today. (shrink)

Today's college students have more knowledge available to them than can be absorbed; mastery of a subject area creates siloes where nearly every course is tailored to comprehending subject matter that may be outdated before they graduate. But learning is more than subject-matter expertise. Our fast-paced environment requires instantaneous reactions to complex questions. Our instant-messaging age champions quick response over reflection or thought--even the president governs by Twitter. Yet the ethical dilemmas are no less complex than the subject matter; cyber (...) security, prison reform, labor rights, abortion, artificial intelligence, or gun laws are common table topics over lunch. Struggling through that complexity is central to understanding its implications for our culture. This book brings together some of the leading ethicists in the country to consider the rightful place of ethics in the university today. The authors make the case that higher education has a special duty to empower students to cultivate their character, ethically assess situations, and prepare them for an increasingly complex world. -- back cover. (shrink)

In a time of globally changing environments and economic challenges, many institutions of higher education are attempting to reform by promoting standardization approaches. Meaning-Centered Education explores the counter-tide for an alternative vision of education, where students and instructors engage in open meaning-making processes and self-organizing educational practices. In one contributed volume, Meaning-Centered Education provides a comprehensive introduction to current scholarship and pedagogical practice on meaning-centered education. International contributors explore how modern educational scholars and (...) practitioners all around the world are implementing a comprehensive framework that supports meaning making in a classroom. This edited collection is a valuable resource for higher education faculty and scholars interested in renewing the deep purposes of higher education. (shrink)

This concluding essay offers reflections on core components of the faculty fellowship program, its outcomes and results, and program design and administration. Amid the current calls for reform in legal and other professional education, the lessons we learned and perspectives we gained during this fellowship program may be relevant to any faculty members and university administrations that are seeking to create more effective and engaged professional and graduate school programs, whatever may be their subject-matter discipline.

A number of national educational organizations and individual authors have called for the use of information technology to radically reform higher education. Several projections of how this reformation will unfold are presented here. Three different approaches to critically assessing these projections are considered in this article, two briefly and one in more detail. Brief consideration is given to an approach based on educational values and to an approach based on cost/benefit analysis. After some discussion of the strengths (...) and weaknesses of these approaches, a third approach deriving from a theory of technology control (Incrementalism) is elaborated in more detail and is found to offer helpful criticisms of the called for revolution in higher education. Some recommendations for how these new technologies can be developed in responsible ways are also offered. (shrink)

Many college teachers believe that teaching can promote justice. Meanwhile, many in the broader American public disparage college classrooms as spaces of left-wing partisanship. This paper engages with that charge of partisanship. Section 1 introduces the charge. Then, in Sect. 2, I consider what teaching for justice should aim to do. I argue that selective institutions of higher education impose positional costs on members of a generation who do not attend them, and that those positional costs accrue not (...) only in terms of distributive equality but also in terms of civic equality. Teaching for justice, I argue, should be understood as an attempt to lessen those costs. But the civic equality costs that selective higher education imposes can be meaningfully lessened only by a radical version of teaching for justice: educational consciousness raising for institutional reform. This sets up a high hurdle for any defense against the partisanship charge, because the kind of teaching for justice we have most justice-related reason to engage in seems especially susceptible to that charge. Section 3 gives a public reasons case in favor of teaching for justice so understood. Because civic equality is a commitment we all ought to share as free and equal citizens, teaching for justice aimed at restoring civic equality enjoys a public reasons justification. Still, an all-things-considered assessment of our permissions or obligations to engage in this teaching project awaits a careful thinking through of the case against it. (shrink)