Many arguments for education's autonomy put forward a repeated yet undefined claim that there is an identifiable, dividing line between education and its outside, and that it is within the distinct contours of "the educational" where the nomos of its autonomy lies. Approaching this claim from a literary perspective, I conduct a critical…

This paper offers a historical analysis of organizational identity development at a particular Dutch university, the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. Our analysis contributes to the discussion on what factors contribute to organizational identity maintenance and evolution. Whereas the literature suggests a rather straightforward development,…

Federal and highly decentralized political systems open different spaces to interpret, adapt, and enact international policy trends and ideas within the same territory. Spain, a country with a highly decentralized educational system and contentious territorial politics, is a very suitable case to analyze these dynamics. Spain and its different…

This paper explores the evolution of autonomy in Hungarian model-changing institutions, focusing on how reforms have altered governance dynamics. By examining both the university's distance from the state and the degree of self-governance of the academic community, the study employs property rights theory to analyse how governance rights are…

This study empirically examines the predictive relationship between Institutional Autonomy (IA) and Academic Freedom (AF) whilst controlling for the mediating effect of corporate governance (CG) amongst selected higher education institutions in Ghana. It also looks at the difference between females and males and their perceptions of the predictive…

Recent studies reveal that developing countries cannot achieve good governance in higher education by merely borrowing structures from advanced systems because the globally advocated "one-best-way" approach often ignores levels of institutional capacity in developing countries. This study suggests institutional capacity as a core…

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…

Purpose: This study reviews the latest revisions to "Implementation Regulations of the Private Education Promotion Law of the People's Republic of China." In doing so, this study provides a comprehensive overview of the policy and its history, as well as the future outlook of private education in China. Design/Approach/Methods: Data were…

The term tertiary education has gained prominence in recent policy debates in the UK [Morgan (2023). "Labour 'would review whole landscape' of tertiary education." "Times Higher Education," 28 November. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/labour-would-review-whole-landscape-tertiary-education]. This paper presents…

This paper is to analyze the 2007 reform of the higher education system in Portugal (RJIES), which ambitioned fundamental changes in the governance of universities, the option given to higher education institutions (HEIs) to be transformed into public foundations being only one element of the reform. Based on desk research, the key elements of the…

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…

Educational outcomes for Black & brown students are the result of well-functioning school systems overwrought with top-down bureaucracy that stifle school-based leaders from generating school-based solutions. The dominant explanation is the growing power and influence of politically-driven school board members cut off from local, national, and…

Spreading like wildfire, school autonomy with accountability (SAWA) policies have transformed education worldwide. Rooted in new public management, SAWA is a 'policy bundle' that links greater decision-making at the school level with standardization and monitoring practices like large-scale assessments and performance indicators. As with every…

Third Mission (TM) drives universities to a purpose beyond their traditional role, especially in local socioeconomic and innovation ecosystems. To investigate the issue, we consider an exploratory and comparative study of two different governance systems of public universities (Southeast Brazil-region 1 and Texas-US-region 2). The comparison took…