Leadership in administration does not operate in a vacuum. Every decision comes with consequences for those tasked to make them, and foreseen career consequences, which often materialize during performance evaluations, may support or constrain administrators' leadership. This article explores how and why administrators factor in foreseen…

Purpose: The study aims to investigate the state of higher education (HE) leadership research after the intensified focus on teaching and learning (TL) in academia. Design/methodology/approach: The authors clarify the use of key concepts in English-medium empirical journal articles published between 2017 and 2021 by analysing 64 publications…

There is a growing body of literature on the roles that deans play in challenging times; however, what is often missing are deans' own voices as they reflect on their experiences trying to manage the dilemmas and crises inherent in their work. This is particularly true of the past few years when deans have managed unprecedented levels of…

This narrative inquiry explores three Chinese university leaders' intercultural competence as a key dimension of their leadership that overseas leadership development programmes enabled them to develop. The leaders visited three different countries -- namely, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada -- storied their experiences in the…

Higher education's focus is shifting to include societal impact alongside academic excellence. While community-engaged scholarship has a long history, many initiatives focus on individual researchers or institutional practices, without accounting for disciplinary and geopolitical contexts. The Community Engagement for Impact (CEFI) Framework and…

This paper examines how mounting pressures are reshaping academic freedom (AF) and the professoriate in contemporary higher education, with particular focus on the Canadian university context. Through qualitative interviews conducted between 2009-2011 with tenured faculty from two Southern Ontario universities, the study investigates how fiscal…

Teaching quality assurance has become a common concern and a common pursuit for institutions of higher learning around the world. This paper takes teaching quality as a governance issue in higher education, as different governance systems entail different approaches to quality assurance. Through a detailed examination of the Chinese system in…

The emergence of agreements between private pathway colleges and public English-medium institutions represents a new development in internationalization that further challenges the public higher education landscape. While these institutional arrangements are controversial and often criticized, university senior administrators have been…

Universities recognize they have a civic responsibility to engage and enrich the community in which they reside. This study looks at a community engagement project undertaken at one university that was intended to address significant recreational needs within the community while also furthering academic initiatives. As part of the appeal to…

The Saint Mary's University first-year student success program was developed by its strategic enrollment management (SEM) group to enhance support for first-year students. As an integrated program that implements student success modules into the first-year core curriculum, this initiative has proven to be effective in enhancing student engagement…

Decades of established research have focused on the attrition, workplace trauma, and career burnout of student affairs (SA) professionals working at colleges and universities (see N. J. Evans, 1988; Herr & Strange, 1985; Perez & Bettencourt, 2024; Walterbusch, 2019). The purpose of this generic qualitative research study (Khalke, 2016) was…