The trend towards seeing education as a commodity and part of a global industry has transformed the field of education. We argue that these transformations are reducing the autonomy of the field of education as it has incorporated business rhetoric, logic and practice. We examine this through an analysis of discursive formations manifested in two…

This study applies resource dependence theory to address the question of how the critical resource dependence relationship emerges in the context of a university's performance agreement. This study focuses on two Nordic universities that have adopted performance agreements while simultaneously using strong performance-based state funding. Resource…

We study whether autonomous schools, which are publicly funded but can operate more independently than government-run schools, affect student achievement and school segregation across 15 countries over 16 years. Our triple-differences regressions exploit between-grade variation in the share of students attending autonomous schools within a given…

Referring to failures in policy-driven public governance research this paper looks at strategising in higher education. It expands horizons for understanding university strategies in a more nuanced way than hitherto has been done. Deploying systems theory, it shows how different temporalities co-exist in strategies and how their change reflects…

This book discusses principals' prerequisites and work within the five Nordic countries and focuses on schools as formal institutions that carry out functions delegated to them by the social collective. It includes a discussion about what kind of state policy demonstrates autonomy in Nordic schools, as well as the ways in which school leaders as…

School autonomy has been and continues to be one of the most important education reform strategies around the world despite ambiguity about its theoretical and empirical effects on students learning. We use international data from PISA to test three country-level factors that might account for inconsistent results in prior literature: (1) the…

The Finnish financial autonomy reform pushed university leaders and academics to a juncture where they must navigate through increasing competition dynamics. Enabling the two types of organisational players -- foundation-run universities and universities under public law -- to become more autonomous and competitive was the major element of…

The 2023 edition of the European University Association's Autonomy Scorecard, the most comprehensive yet, provides a full comparative analysis of the state of play of university autonomy in 35 higher education systems in Europe. The Scorecard country profiles delve into in-depth system analyses, offering insights into recent developments and…

Teacher education (TE) in Finland is based on strong university autonomy, including the right to decide the curriculum content and the teaching methods. Democracy and its values are generally seen as central principles for TE, and the normative basis for education promoting democratic culture is strong. However, in practice, education for…

In countries with several official languages, language separation often remains a structural principle in institutional education. Co-located schools, in which two autonomously administered schools with different languages of instruction share a physical space, may challenge this separation. Such schools have existed for a long time, but…

This paper contributes to the analysis of impacts a university might experience with an increased degree of autonomy. Most autonomy studies have empirically considered the legal, political and financial relationships between state authorities and universities in different national contexts. Nevertheless, most of these studies focus on the changes…

The academic calendar contains national data on how the academic year is structured (beginning of the academic year, term times, holidays and examination periods). Differences between university and nonuniversity study programmes are also highlighted. The information is available for 37 countries. [For the 2021/22 report, see ED617647.]

This study explores how the centres of vocational excellence (CoVEs) implement their autonomous role in public-private partnerships (PPPs), and the specific features and benefits of CoVEs' collaborations in PPPs for vocational education and skills development. Drawing on selected case studies in six ETF partner countries (Azerbaijan, Georgia,…

The administrative systems of universities attest to a shift towards more managerial forms of leadership. This article outlines how strategic management was introduced in Finland in the 2000s and how this led to a significant de-democratisation of the university organisations, despite academic communities' resistance and explicit preference for…

This article analyzes the origins of generalized trust in Finnish society and how this relates to trust in education. The study was based on a historical analysis of the role of education in building a Finnish society and nation state. The author discusses the development of a Nordic welfare state and analyzes the relationships between generalized…