In the context of higher education's growing significance and the persistence of inequalities in it, the article aims to further develop the understanding of higher education as a public good and to explore its association with social cohesion in a European comparative perspective. It shifts the focus from the content of higher education as a…

University rankings have become commonplace in higher education. Traditional quantified rankings do not merely measure educational performance: they equally grant status, enforce competition between institutions, and are emblematic for the ongoing capitalization of higher education. Drawing on the field of Science and Technology Studies, this…

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the higher education sector has been overwhelming, with emergency responses that have affected decision-making processes. Yet, our understanding of higher education instructors' perspectives regarding the process of data-driven decisions, especially in times of emergency, is still limited. We aimed at…

Although badges are among the most-used game elements in gamified education, studies about their optimal features to motivate learning are scarce. How should a badge be designed to represent an incentive for a specific goal like optimal exam preparation? This study examines usage data of a higher education learning app to determine whether the…

Fact-based decision making is changing job functions within organizations more than any other technology. Analytics, once the purview of the data scientist, is now spread throughout organizations. No longer is there a single job title, job function, or set of required skills and credentials for an analytics career. Companies have moved away from…

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…

Over the past 25 years, performance measurement has gained salience in higher education, and with the explosion of structured data and the impact of business analytics and intelligence systems, there are new angles by which big volumes of data can be analyzed. Using traditional analytical approaches, pairs of reciprocal cohorts are considered as…

Marketing analytics is receiving great attention because of evolving technology and the radical changes in the marketing environment. This study aims to assist the design and implementation of a marketing analytics course. We assembled a rich data set from four sources: business executives, 400 employers' job postings, one million tweets about…

While studio-based instrumental and vocal learning is widely regarded as both important and effective in higher education music, research to date has offered little concrete information about studio practices that students have regarded as ineffective. Two recent case studies investigated what appear to be exceptional instances in which students…

Observers have expressed concern about growing inequality in resources across universities. But are universities really becoming more unequal? We argue that the typical approach of examining endowment growth alone is not sensible. In line with the literature on household inequality, we focus instead on a comprehensive income measure. We find that…

Using a large dataset from a state education system, this study examined the experience of international college students in the United States as well as the connection to their cognitive, affective, and civic outcomes. The study utilized data from the 2010 University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES) and a sample of 35,146…

Learning analytics (LA) has emerged as a field that offers promising new ways to prevent drop-out and aid retention. However, other research suggests that large datasets of learner activity can be used to understand online learning behaviour and improve pedagogy. While the use of LA in language learning has received little attention to date,…

This report focuses on a critical concern for the European Training Foundation's (ETF's) partner countries and other countries of the around the world. Skills mismatch is recognised as a major challenge by policy makers, practitioners and social partners, as it is often associated with dynamic social and economic contexts such as restructuring…

With the increased capability of learning analytics in higher education, more institutions are developing or implementing student dashboards. Despite the emergence of dashboards as an easy way to present data to students, students have had limited involvement in the dashboard development process. As part of a larger program of research examining…

Recent literature suggests that traditional approaches in folk music education are not necessarily compatible with the pedagogical conventions of formal music education. Whilst several recent studies have tended to define these non-classical-music learning contexts as "informal", the practice of folk music that was recently introduced…