University student academic competitions can test students' learning outcomes, improve their academic performance and stimulate their interest in learning. Exploring the behavioural mechanisms influencing students' academic competition is quite important, but there is currently little research on this topic. This study aims to fill this gap in the…

Under the pressure of globalisation, both China and Europe have active strategies to internationalise their higher education systems. This paper explores the cultural and institutional constraints of these strategies in both territories, analysing their impact on the cooperation and competition among higher education institutions. The article…

This auto-netnographic study explores the impact of neoliberal ideologies on teacher identity within the context of public education in Spain, with a particular focus on how social networks and media, such as Twitter and Facebook, shape and reflect these dynamics. Combining narrative introspection with thematic analysis of online content, the…

As more regions seek to attract international organisations (IOs) to improve their lack of voice in the global community, researchers have increasingly examined the factors that influence the IO location decisions. While these studies inform policy development, most focus on external factors such as international relations, with limited attention…

This article reports on a study using data from nation-wide standardised examinations in Poland. We analysed the extent to which grade 9 student achievements have depended on the stability of their peer group over the course of middle school. We controlled for the fixed effects of schools attended by the students, as well as for individual…

This study examines how the rise in the share of higher education graduates leads to over-qualification, by focusing on the demand-side drivers. We propose that the benefits of investments in higher education depend on the levels of innovation and economic growth in each national economy. We use a configurational method (Fuzzy Set Qualitative…

In recent decades, higher education has experienced a massive expansion worldwide, which has often been linked to increasing higher education diversification. New sectors and new types of institutions emerged with this massification process to offer more diversified types of advanced training. At the same time, this expansion was often embedded in…

This article investigates why school choice is exercised to a limited degree by parents despite major government initiatives to enhance diversity, competition and choice in the Danish education system. Denmark has had 20 years of centre-right governments, promoting choice reforms perhaps even more vigorously than the other Nordic countries, yet…

Educational transitions experienced within a context of wide and growing inequalities such as England result in very different transition experiences to those experienced by young people growing up in relatively equitable societies with strong communal links. Transitions of working class young people in England are beset with competition,…

This article empirically examines the implications of competition among Dutch secondary schools: (1) regarding the sorting of students by performance levels in schools at the beginning of secondary education; and (2) regarding performance gains in the secondary school career, controlling for the aforementioned sorting patterns. We used data from…

With the policy of developing a transparent and competitive European higher education sector, learning outcomes (LOs) are attributed a foundation stone role in policy and curriculum development. A premise for their implementation is that they bear fundamental similarities across national, institutional or professional/disciplinary contexts. In…

In the current context of globalisation it seems inevitable that the international openness of universities would also lead to efforts to attract foreign students. In the case of Spain, this is more necessary, insofar as the drop in population, the existence of other quality educational offerings, and the greater number of public and private…

Traditionally, European doctoral education has principally taken place within the binary relationship of professors and their doctoral students according to the "apprenticeship model." However, in the last one to two decades, this model has been questioned. Governments and higher education institutions (HEIs) reform doctoral education by…

In this article, global and other university rankings are critically assessed with regard to their unintended side effects and their impacts on the European and national landscape of universities, as well as on individual institutions. An emphasis is put on the effects of ranking logics rather than on criticising their methodology. Nevertheless,…

Ten years after the first global rankings appeared, it is clear that they have had an extraordinary impact on higher education. While there are fundamental questions about whether rankings measure either quality or what's meaningful, they have succeeded in exposing higher education to international comparison. More so, because of the…