Emerging studies on university stratification have often attributed the developmental gaps between universities to the popularization of new public management in contexts where market mechanisms prevail in higher education governance. However, less attention has been paid to how state powers continue to mediate university stratification alongside…

Since the launch of the double world-class (DWC) project in 2015, China has entered into a new stage of building world-class universities. What makes China give up the existing projects for a new one? Towards the end of its first five-year cycle, has the version 2.0 of building world-class universities in China achieved the desired results? This…

Higher education can be considered an industry comprised of mobile students attending institutions worldwide (Findlay et al. in Int Migr 55(3):139-155, 2017). The global pandemic, COVID-19, has significantly impacted the mobility of these students. Higher education institutions (HEIs) have attracted students using international student recruiters,…

This study aims to determine whether the introduction of input-oriented resource allocation in the Italian higher education system has resulted in behaviours influencing the attractiveness of universities. The results of an analysis of panel data spanning 57 public universities reveal that the geographical characteristics in which they operate…

The impact of stakeholders in the development of academic disciplines in higher education is a somewhat infrequently addressed topic in research. This article describes an institutional change and legitimacy formation process from a dialectical perspective by analysing organisational interpretations of and strategic responses to external pressures…

Research on branding is an established sub-discipline in the higher education literature. However, studies in this field have somehow produced contradictory results: some studies point at isomorphism, others find differentiation. Our study wants to offer a possible explanation for this paradox, by proposing a more nuanced view on brand…

Sweden has actively pursued internationalisation policies at national level, in parallel to the pursuit of internationalisation strategies of individual universities. This article focuses on university responses towards internationalisation, and the interplay between external higher education environments and institutional positioning. We draw on…

Though government funding has shrunk, Nepal's higher education (HE) sector has expanded in the last three decades in terms of the establishment of new institutions and the implementation of a series of projects funded by the World Bank. Using neoliberal instrumentalism as a theoretical framework and critical policy sociology as a methodological…

The "Excellence Initiative" was the largest competitive funding procedure to create German world-class universities and overcome the traditional Humboldtian homogenization of German higher education. This paper examines whether the Excellence Initiative has spurred financial inequality in the national higher education sector. For a…

Higher education professional associations (HEPAs) are well-established agents of knowledge production and have been influential in shaping higher education policies and practices. In the context of US international higher education, HEPAs have contributed to the rise of 'internationalization' as a discursive practice. Proposing an analytical…

China has launched several national academic excellence initiatives since the 1990s, aimed at creating world-class universities. These projects contributed to the achievements of Chinese universities over the past decades and deeply influenced the field of Chinese higher education. This study focuses on the most recent Double World-Class (DWC)…

Private supplementary tutoring in the form of preparatory courses to university entrance examinations is present in Finland alongside public higher education (HE). We explore the participation in preparatory courses. Our data derive from the university undergraduate subsample (n = 2969) of a larger cross-sectional national survey targeting…

This paper investigates an institutional transformation at a European research university, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) by adopting a qualitative case study method. Open-ended interviews were held with 45 faculty members and administrators to investigate the driving forces and overall transformation of EPFL as well as their…

This study examines policy goals pertaining to joint Master's in Europe as presented in Bologna-related and Erasmus Mundus (EM) policy texts. The profile of joint programmes has risen in the aftermath of the Bologna Process (BP), together with the launch of the EU EM. Despite a European policy tradition of cooperation in higher education (HE),…

The primary aim of the paper is to examine how global university rankings have influenced the higher education sector in Taiwan from the perspective of academics. A qualitative case study method was used to examine how university ranking influenced the Taiwanese higher education at institutional and individual levels, respectively, thereby…