This conceptual study explores the dominant ideologies influencing the economic governance of higher education (HE) and shaping competition within the sector and among universities. It delineates and contrasts four key ideological positions -- neoliberalism, managerialism, shareholderism, and stakeholderism -- and outlines four corresponding types…

This paper delineates the rise, fall and re-emergence of "tongshi" education in Chinese higher education history, and in doing so hopes to reveal the underlying forces behind the two waves of "tongshi" education and capture their important 'Chinese' characteristics. Based on a comparative-historical examination of the Chinese…

This study investigates the systematic, structural, procedural and reputational differences associated with the use of budgeting for strategic planning across public sector institutions in Canada. Data obtained from a survey of 38 universities across Canada along with publicly available hand-collected data supports a heterogenous mix of budgeting…

In recent decades, universities have put considerable emphasis on their 'Third Mission' and have thus expanded their portfolio of core activities to include activities related to university-industry collaboration and science commercialisation. An important mechanism to implement the university's third mission is the creation of academic spinoffs…

This paper focuses on the effect of merger on university efficiency. In a first stage analysis, efficiency scores of English universities are derived for a 17-year period using the frontier estimation method data envelopment analysis. A second stage analysis explores the effect of merger and other factors on efficiency. We find that mean…

In this paper, we focus on the institutionalization of transdisciplinarity (TD) in higher education institutions and how they institutionalize Transdisciplinarity (TD). As such, universities have engaged in different activities to enact TD policies that aim at incorporating TD in their research and teaching. We take the Methodology Center at the…

The internationalisation of higher education, which has developed from a number of separate initiatives to become a strategic objective in its own right, has not been investigated from a strategic organisational perspective. Case studies of four English universities were developed via a Grounded Theory methodology. Mintzberg and Waters' [1985.…

Faculty (N = 205) at regional public universities (RPUs) in the United States were surveyed for self-reports of their primary academic identity (teacher, researcher) and qualitative descriptions of struggles related to their academic identity. Well-being and job satisfaction were examined as outcome measures of identity struggles. Participants…

There is an increasing requirement in higher education (HE) worldwide to deliver excellence. Benchmarking is widely used for this purpose, but methodological approaches to the creation of benchmark metrics vary greatly. Approaches require selection of factors for inclusion and subsequent calculation of benchmarks for comparison. We describe an…

Start-ups founded by university students and graduates play a substantial role in bringing new knowledge to the market and in employment creation, a role that appears to be even more important than that played by the typical technology transfer activities carried out by universities. We use a population-based approach to explore entrepreneurship…

The literature suggests that academic researchers with dual-appointment contracts, i.e. those employed concurrently by a university and an organization outside academia, have the potential to be more engaged in research collaborations with non-academic partners than colleagues contractually linked to a university only. Our results suggest that…

While the establishment of quality assurance has been seen for decades as the most significant instrument to secure and enhance the quality of teaching and learning in higher education, the concept of developing more specific learning outcomes has in recent years attracted much interest, not least due to the creation of national qualification…

Undertaking a PhD is commonly viewed as an apprenticeship, where the student learns the trade of becoming an academic. However, the doctoral degree did not start off with that intention, and it may not continue this way into the future. The initial design of the PhD was a professional degree which gave students the licence to teach. Research was…

This paper explores disciplinary patterns of assessment and feedback, using data from the Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment project. Its central research question concerns the effect of disciplinary assessment patterns on student learning. Audit data from 18 degree programmes at 8 UK universities showed variations in…

This article aims to analyse academics' perceptions on changes in the governance and management of higher education institutions (HEIs) under a generational perspective. It is empirically based on the analysis of national data resulting from the "Changing Academic Profession" international survey. Findings reveal a general tendency for…