Conference attendance and presentation are ubiquitous practices across international academic, scientific and professional communities. However, their financial costs and implications have been little studied. Through an empirical analysis of a UK educational conference over three years (N=1,261), this paper examines the financial cost elements of…

In the policy period following the Lisbon Strategy of 2000, European governments increasingly regard universities, and the research they produce, as key to enhancing economic performance. With this heightened respect for the value of university-based research, comes an impatience to see returns on the public investments made. We analyze how policy…

Universities, across the globe, are increasingly judged on social and economic impact. An important initiative in the UK is the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014, which assessed the wider impact of university research. The Impact Case Studies, produced for REF 2014, provide a rich new source of information to explore the wider impact of…

The focus of this paper is the coalition United Kingdom government policy on university funding in England as a political economy. It depicts higher education as a public and private good in the context of international trends in "cost sharing" and it addresses the centrality of economic drivers for the profile and orientation of higher…

One of the dominant contributory factors to a country's long-run productivity and economic growth is the education, training and skills possessed by its working-age population. Higher education qualifications are one of the key mechanisms in generating wealth for the students who attain them. The provision of education and skills also produces…