The term 'Global Britain' was widely used by the UK government between 2016 and 2021 to signal its ambition to reorient the nation's foreign policy on departure from the European Union. There was, however, considerable uncertainty about what the term meant beyond this, with some commentators suggesting that it denoted a de-prioritising of…

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 article evaluates the design of the official language policy of the Norwegian government in the field of higher education, which was set out in two white papers in 2008 and 2020. The language policy aims to avoid domain loss of the Norwegian language and thus keep it 'complete' and able to function as a unifying factor in society. In the two…

Policy and research engagement is a timely topic for researchers, decision-makers, and higher education institutions that aim to promote engagement and impact. Examination of the complex research-policy relationship in the higher education sector has been largely overlooked. This paper addresses this issue by presenting findings from in-depth…

While reference societies as an "externalization" process are often used to justify borrowing policies from abroad, a concerted attempt to understand how "power" influences this process, particularly regarding "semiperipheral" references to the periphery, remains absent. This article explores the externalization…

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…

Policy analysis studies conducted in various countries have highlighted strengths and weaknesses in university academic integrity policy documents that outline expectations for student conduct while undertaking scholarly work. Missing from the literature is a review of such policies currently in place at the eight public universities in Aotearoa…

This article develops a country case study on the Polish higher education (HE) system governance regime by using the governance equalizer model to analyse how each reform over the last three decades has altered its formal power structure. In particular, we focus on the most recent HE governance reform (Law 2.0), which has not yet been addressed…

The last 25 years have seen a dramatic shift in tuition fee policy in England. This paper uses Critical Discourse Analysis to understand the motivations behind policy setting, comparing the pivotal reviews undertaken by Dearing, Browne and Augar. It concludes that four themes may have influenced tuition fee policy making: national politics and…

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…

Whilst research works have identified many actors involved in higher education public policymaking in the Ghanaian context, there is a paucity of empirical studies on how the application of a quadruple helix network of policy actors considered essential constituents of higher education provision could create added value to strengthen the…

Policies designed to cultivate talent within universities are central to China's strategy for reforming and improving the quality of its higher education. This study develops a goal-instrument analysis framework for a content analysis of 113 such policies. Within the context of China's Double First-Class construction, the analysis examines the…

As the Bologna process emerged in the framework of European integration, its objectives are closely linked to the process of voluntary convergence of public policies of members of the European Union. In this context, it can be challenging to understand possible convergence or divergence trends in Bologna member countries that are outside the…

The literature shows that the question of how to integrate quality assurance into higher education institutions is associated with several obstacles including non-support from university actors. This study explored the university actors' response to the recently implemented external quality assurance and accreditation regime for higher education…