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This volume explores the various issues that have an impact on the academic career of professionals in European higher education. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are currently subject to profound uncertainties and are more challenged than ever on quality issues, both with regard to their conceptual nature and in the extension and amendment of their mission. Divided into three parts, the first part of the book deals with the challenges and issues in higher education academic careers. It addresses such topics as the influence of European policies and changes, the cultural differences in the preferences of academics for teaching or research, the increasing inequality in working conditions ...
Recent years have seen the strengthening of a discourse that emphasises the virtues of markets, competition and private initiative, vis-à-vis the vices of public intervention in higher education. This volume presents a timely reflection about the effects this increasing marketization has been producing in many higher education systems worldwide. The various chapters of this volume analyse the impact of markets at the system level, with significant attention being devoted to the changes in modes of regulation, the strengthening of aspects such as privatization and inter-institutional competition in higher education systems, and the closer interaction between higher education and its economic...
This volume brings together cutting-edge scholarship on an under-researched and topical issue. Quasi-marketization and managerialization of welfare organizations are found to constitute common reform trends in many European countries and across social policy domains, following similar timings albeit with different intensities. The analysis, carried out at the meso and micro levels, reveals that ex-post control by states has been strengthened, managers are becoming relevant or even central actors, while professionals in public welfare institutions are seeing their role and autonomy challenged.' - Ana M. Guillén, University of Oviedo, Spain 'In the contemporary welfare state public management...
"I congratulate the authors on what I believe will be a very interesting and useful book. The language is accessible and the structure of the argument is coherent and consistent ... This is a very interesting and significant contribution to the field of higher education in general and scholarship in evaluative practices in particular." Judyth Sachs, Deputy Vice Chancellor and Provost at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. "With an increasing and, arguably, troubling confidence in the use of international league tables, student surveys and research ratings to 'evidence' the value of higher education, such scrutiny of higher education evaluation practices has never been more timely ... I ...
This book sets out to examine the changing role of women in higher education with an emphasis on academic and leadership issues. The scope of the book is international, with a wide range of contributors, whose expertise spans sociology, social science, economics, politics, public policy and linguistic studies, all of whom have a major interest in global education. The volume examines the ways in which the leadership role and academic roles of women in higher education are changing in the twenty first century, offering an up-to-date policy discussion of this area. It is in some sense a sequel to the earlier volume by the same Editor, Women as Leaders and Managers in Higher Education, but with...
How free-market fundamentalists have shifted the focus of higher education to competition, metrics, consumer demand, and return on investment, and why we should change this. A new philosophy of higher education has taken hold in institutions around the world. Its supporters disavow the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake and argue that the only knowledge worth pursuing is that with more or less immediate market value. Every other kind of learning is downgraded, its budget cut. In Knowledge for Sale, Lawrence Busch challenges this market-driven approach. The rationale for the current thinking, Busch explains, comes from neoliberal economics, which calls for reorganizing society around the n...
This volume examines the criteria of excellence producing inequalities of gender in the daily working environment and evaluation of academics. Policymakers have increasingly placed emphasis on gender equality as part of a strategy for achieving research excellence, and efforts to reduce gender bias have become mainstream. This book suggests that this goal has remained elusive in practice due to continuing under-representation of women across many academic and scientific fields. Questioning the old structures of male dominance still prevalent in national research policy, the book explores the effects of institutional values and practices on the careers of academics, particularly the academic ...
The nine chapters in this book explore how the Italian education system responded to distance learning during the first wave of the pandemic. The impact of the hard lockdown on both teaching and learning revealed the inherent weaknesses of a system in which digital technology had only recently been introduced and highlighted the relevant inequalities in their access and use. While students, teachers and families adapted (albeit with difficulty) to the new learning and teaching routines, the institutions faced the challenge of ensuring quality and equality. By including various case studies and unedited sets of data collected in different areas of the country, the book offers up-to-date insig...
University rankings are a relatively new phenomenon in higher education. Although quite an established practice in the U. S., it is only within the last decade that attempts to analyse university performance have spread to the rest of the world, and that we also have seen new global rankings appear—rankings attempting to measure university performance beyond national borders. No wonder that this trend is accompanied by a growing interest in studying rankings throughout the world. This book is written as part of the effort to better understand rankings and their effects on higher education. A serious approach towards university rankings implies that rankings should be analysed properly, inc...
Universities can be viewed and studied as political institutions, especially considering that they sit at the crossroads of social, cultural, and economic pressures. The internal and external environment of higher education brings with it multiple and complex relationships as well as power struggles. Within these contested political spaces, there are phenomena to be studied. While the field of higher education draws from a multitude of disciplines, some scholars argue that only recently has scholarship focused on the political perspectives of higher education. To better understand the politics and policies of higher education, Universities as Political Institutions illuminates a variety of w...