The Visegrad Group is an alliance of four Central European countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, founded by the Visegrad Declaration in 1991. The historical, political, and cultural similarities, highlighted by their shared experiences with economic transformation, make the Visegrad Group countries well suited for comparison.…

This article explains why there are so few world-class universities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region today. It first summarises the systemic exogenous economic, political and social problems facing all countries in the region, and the impact of these on the development of their higher education sectors in recent times. Then, with…

In this paper we argue that both internal and external pressures and conditions urge contemporary higher education institutions to carefully think through their institutional profiles positions in domestic and global higher education contexts. We subsequently analyse strategic positioning from the strategic management literature and offer four…

This paper evaluates the performance of national higher education systems in 48 countries as measured with 20 variables grouped under the four headings of Resources, Environment, Connectivity and Output. Rankings within each module are then combined into an overall ranking that is topped by the United States followed by Sweden, Canada, Finland and…

American research universities are arguably the world's most powerful engines of innovation and discovery. Yet they are widely misunderstood and in danger of losing their capacity to drive economic progress and improve our lives. Jonathan Cole, John Mitchell Mason University Professor at Columbia University, notes that the preeminence of American…

A prestigious reputation is the primary success factor in higher education because it attracts resources necessary to sustain growth. Among research-intensive universities (RIUs), research performance is a key driver of institutional reputation. Achieving an accelerating rate of growth of research performance is the desired objective of all RIUs…

It is argued that professional doctorates such as the Doctor of Education degree have value as a means of reconstructing the relationship between theory and practice, by demanding a reconstruction of university research relationships with practitioners. In turn, this requires that universities change their conceptualization and teaching of…

Surveys 32 officials of federal agencies and educational researchers to express historically grounded judgments on issues in educational research, including the poor reputation of the field. Criticisms that recur are that it does not pay off, that the community is in disarray, and that the field is politicized. (SLD)