This interdisciplinary research explores the complex interplay between democratic erosion and migration crises, recognising their profound implications for social cohesion. With universities serving as bastions of knowledge and inclusion, their role in addressing these challenges is paramount. By implementing targeted programs and initiatives,…

In the context of globalisation, public organisations are undergoing rapid transformation, and how to govern them scientifically has become an important research topic. University governance is an important research area in the field of higher education; it has been addressed by many scholars across the world. In order to fully understand the…

The implementation of a new higher education policy started in Poland in 2020. The new policy seeks to internationalise and transform universities to increase their competitiveness. This article describes the historical context, issues and reasoning behind the reform as well as some of the challenges for the future development of higher education…

This article reports on a study in which the legitimisation of shared governance in the Chinese higher education sector was investigated. Norman Fairclough's three-level discourse analysis was used for analysing documents and interviews. The research materials consist of thirteen Chinese university statutes and qualitative semi-structured…

This article analyses the process of reforming the governance of Danish universities, from an anthropological perspective. Observers saw that the assemblage of steering concepts, tools and mechanisms in the 2003 Danish university law could be articulated in two contrary ways: one would make the university into a "power force" with ideas…

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…

The increased diversity and autonomy of schools calls for a more professional approach to school governance. In response, attention has been directed to the structure of school boards in the Netherlands. However, previous research indicates that the effectiveness of governance is not so much about structure as it is about behaviour. Conflict, in…

Within the scholarship on internationalisation in higher education, transnational networks are seldom mentioned and even less studied. However, recent EU policy initiatives have attempted to enhance this form of internationalisation in order to tackle issues of employability, skills and competences and innovative curriculum development. Within…

This paper analyses the purposes of cooperation as they challenge the European governance of higher education. Using Brexit to analyse meanings of "cooperation" and conveying secondary data analysis of ten case studies undertaken in the framework of the exploratory research project titled "Brexit and higher education in the UK and…

The emerging interdependent world order poses new challenges for States and citizens alike. For States, interdependence has meant a new concern with integration, whilst for citizens and authorities alike, greater mobility has raised new concerns about recognition of competences, qualifications, quality and transparency. The introduction of…

This article is based on the outcomes of the study entitled "The application of learning outcomes approaches across Europe", which was funded by Cedefop and completed in 2015 (Wisniewski et al, 2015). The study, aiming at exploring the implementation of the learning outcomes approach in European countries, addressed two major questions:…

Decision-making in educations systems has become more complex: while decentralisation has moved the locus of power to lower governance levels, the central level still is held responsible for the quality of outcomes. As a consequence, new steering strategies have emerged that tend to apply softer modes of governance as opposed to harder ones in the…

The theories and approaches of steering/monitoring a process of change within education systems have evolved over the last 20 years or so as a result of many factors such as globalisation and decentralisation, a faster pace of change, increasing expectations and demands from various stakeholders (parents, employers, teacher unions, etc.) and the…

As the field of education has become a highly internationalised policy field in the last decade, international organisations such as the OECD play an ever more decisive role in the dissemination of knowledge, monitoring of outcomes, and research in education policy. Although the OECD lacks any binding governance instruments to put coercion on…

This article provides a literature review on the effects of the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) on education governance and policy process across participating countries. This review seemed necessary because there has been a growing body of literature on this topic since 2003, especially since 2010, because this…