University rankings have gained prominence in tandem with the global race towards excellence and as part of the growing expectation of rational, scientific evaluation of performance across a range of institutional sectors and human activity. While their omnipresence is acknowledged, empirically we know less about whether and how rankings matter in…

This study discusses the relationships between resource dependence, and reputation management (RM) through interviews with university managers regarding the use of social media by Chinese and UK Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This research enriches existing literature by providing a new and comprehensive understanding of the factors…

Inclusion is seen as an ethical obligation, grounded in notions of equity and social justice for all groups and at all stages of education, with higher education (HE) representing a distinctive space where the inclusion agenda is becoming more influential. However, inclusion is also increasingly recognised as an ambiguous concept that might have…

While higher education research has paid considerable attention to the impact of both ratings and rankings on universities, less attention has been devoted to how university subunits, such as Schools of Education, are affected by such performance measurements. Anchored in a neo-institutional approach, we analyze the formation of a competitive…

This article examines national branding of UK higher education, a strategic intent and action to collectively brand UK higher education with the aim to attract prospective international students, using a Bourdieusian approach to understanding promises of capitals. We trace its development between 1999 and 2014 through a sociological study, one of…

This research investigates the influential factors impacting CDM among prospective online MBA students, using qualitative interviews. This research focus is contextualised with analysis on the CDM process and the disparity between UK and international students, to gain a deeper understanding of the dynamics of the influential factors. The findings…

Over a number of years, universities have needed to become more adept at managing change as internal and external factors affect their longer term financial sustainability. That sustainability is, for many institutions, closely linked to how straightforward (or otherwise) it is to recruit student numbers of the right quality from often diverse…

Following a damning report into racism in United Kingdom Higher Education (EHRC, 2019), this paper discusses students' experiences of racism in HE. Focusing on the connections between lived experience and wider goals and trends in the Internationalisation of the university sector, we discuss accounts of racist practices on campus through the…

This study extends our knowledge of internal branding in the context of employees in the higher education sector. Employing a quantitative methodology in UK universities, a conceptual model is presented and tested on 235 employees. Internal market orientation (IMO) is examined as a management tool to drive employees' university brand commitment…

This article examines how a sample of 62 higher education institutions in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom discuss international students in their official institutionalization strategies, focusing on how ideas of race and diversity are addressed. We find that institutional strategies connect international students to an abstract…

This paper offers the first comprehensive analysis of the effect of changes in university rankings on applicant and institution behaviour in the UK. When their rank worsens, universities are found to experience small but statistically significant reductions in the number of applications received as well as in the average tariff score of applicants…

This paper examines the main rationales for and possible implications of the policy of increasing international student numbers in higher education (HE). Drawing on critical discourse analysis, we map key themes emerging from two sets of data--university strategy documents and interviews with staff--collected at eight universities in four national…

There is much debate in the literature concerning the changes necessary for university accounting education to meet the needs of the business environment and broader society. In the USA the Pathways Commission has responded by implementing a programme of evaluation and improvement. In the UK there is no formal agenda for change. This paper…

The past two decades have seen the idea of internationalization move into the mainstream of higher education policy and practice, on a global scale. In countries like the US and UK however, higher education is widely perceived as a hierarchical field, where high- and low-status universities are differentiated from one another: serving different…

The university prospectus is supposed to be a forceful and pioneering text in promoting and marketing higher education. The present research will deal with the disparities in the frequencies of first and second person pronouns in online prospectuses in cross-cultural linguistics from marketing point of view. The research question is to which…