In 2014 the Icelandic government implemented a reform that reduced the time of all academic programs of upper secondary education from an average of four years in duration to three, aiming to increase efficiency in the education system. Drawing on critical policy analysis, this study explores wider consequences of the reform's enactment for higher…

The development of private higher education (PHE) in Vietnam has been marked by significant policy shifts (even policy reversals), and this justifies a thorough examination of the policy instruments employed by the government. In this study, we examine the design of these policy instruments and analyze whether they align with the current…

Every province and territory in Canada has the authority to oversee higher education policies. In recent provincial and federal policy reforms, neoliberalism and academic capitalism have been gaining influence in Canadian higher education. This particularly applies to the policy reform plan "Alberta 2030: Building Skills for Jobs," which…

This paper presents an analysis of quality culture (QC) development in Taiwan which has recently undergone major reforms of quality assurance (QA) policies. The implementation of internal quality assurance (IQA) initiatives has been an indispensable condition to form a QC in higher education which contributes to a fundamental and comprehensive…

Although higher education has engaged in blended learning since the early 1990s and its benefits are well catalogued, research often focuses on individual programmes and less on how institutions envision and engage with it to enhance learning and teaching. This article provides a pre-COVID 19 pandemic snapshot of cross-institutional UK policy and…

Academic research has extensively inspected the changing modes of governance in higher education systems through systemic and comparative research. This article aims to investigate these processes from a different perspective and vantage point. In particular, the translation of (trans)national instances into local micro-policy and practice is…

The European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) is based on a quantitative and accumulative understanding of time, which increasingly frames academic practices and notions of learning in higher education (HE). By example of a recent Danish policy reform, the article explores the connections between the ECTS, new institutional…

In 2024, Instructure convened a Commission of higher education and lifelong learning experts to assess emerging policies related to skills development, including the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) and the Growth and Skills Levy (GSL). These policies aim to reform how education and training are funded and delivered to provide flexibility to…

This paper critically examines narratives of internationalisation in higher education, highlighting three core narratives: a normative narrative that emphasises economic growth and quality education, a critical narrative that challenges internationalisation as a hegemonic market-based force, and a narrative that addresses colonial legacies, the…

Although considerable research has focused on equity within policy approaches or policy outcomes, how equity is situated during the development phase of policymaking has received less attention. The purpose of this research was to explore the possible connections between equity and institutional policymaking in higher education through a case…

This critical discourse analysis explores cosmopolitan nationalism as neoliberal reform within East Asian higher education (HE). Placing cosmopolitan nationalism within the Foucauldian genealogical oeuvre, we draw comparisons between Chinese, Japanese, and Korean HE policy to expand the theoretical basis of this emerging framework. Against this…

The study investigates the reforms of university governing boards in Hungary and Poland. It seeks to fill that void and advance existing knowledge about the implementation of boards (councils) in CEE countries despite the great interest in HE dynamics in the region. The juxtaposition of the two countries is intentional because both share key…

Under the knowledge-based economy, higher education plays an important role in cultivating talents and enhancing national competitiveness. Compared with other countries, China is a latecomer in the expansion of higher education but has undergone considerable transformation from elite to massification in a short time since 1998. Most important,…

New Public Management (NPM)-inspired higher education (HE) governance has become increasingly topical in recent years. However, while existing research provides an overall understanding of relevant changes, it does not offer a complete analysis of complex governance and falls prey to deterministic and relatively narrow ideological impositions.…

Quality in higher education (HE) can be considered a floating signifier that lacks a stable meaning due to the many possible interpretations different actors may ascribe to it in different contexts. We investigate how policy makers employ the term quality in HE policymaking attempting to legitimize policy reforms and find that it is employed in…