Abstract Martin Trow was among the most influential scholar in Higher Education studies in the second half of the 20th century. He is best known for his conceptualisation of the development of Higher Education into three stages--elite, mass and universal systems. This article considers, first, his intellectual method and the underpinning theory…

This article reports on the findings from an interview-based, qualitative study of adult learners in Scotland participating in the MITx u.lab massive open online course in 2015 and 2016. It focuses on interviewees' accounts of the impact of participating in u.lab on their work and lives. Using grounded theory as an analytical guide, we explore…

Because primary education is often conceptualized as a pro-poor redistributive policy, a common argument is that democratization increases its provision. But primary education can also serve the goals of autocrats, including redistribution, promoting loyalty, nation-building, and/or industrialization. To examine the relationship between…

Social movements for public education challenge neoliberal claims that there is no alternative to the market--to the inevitability of the privatisation of education. This article analyses the ways in which education activists in India deploy critical histories in their struggles for a public and common school system. It is empirically grounded in…

This ethnography, based on fieldwork in Dili, Timor-Leste between 2015 and 2017, adopts an orthodox sociological theorising of agency to investigate the ways in which people in Dili negotiate the numerous interacting structural barriers to digital education. Having identified a lack of attention to learner agency in the literature on the promotion…

This paper argues for a revaluation of the potential of open education to support more critical forms of pedagogy. Section 1 examines contemporary discourses around open education, offering a commentary on the perception of openness as both a disruptive force in education, and a potential solution to contemporary challenges. Section 2 examines the…

A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is a form of online education that makes available learning to a large number of individuals at no charge. The impact of climate change on public health has been introduced in MOOCs in various forms, for example, examining the impact of natural disasters, the increase in temperature on work productivity, and the…

Disruptive innovations are used to lower costs and augment access to high-quality, affordable higher education, but little systematic research is available on the topic. Higher education institutions use disruptive innovations to save students time and money. To understand the process of disruptive innovation, I investigated the rapid diffusion of…

Like many other countries around the world, Turkey has faced several challenges in expanding higher education (HE) opportunities to masses. Trying to meet the ever-growing demand for HE, Turkey has implemented a bold expansion plan by establishing 51 public universities (PUs) after 2006, mostly in less-developed regions of the country. This study…

Based on case studies of China and Japan, this study undertakes comparative research on major aspects of university curriculum and instruction-teaching activities of academics, their role in curriculum development, and their perceptions of these activities--between a mass and a universal higher education system. Major findings from the APA…

This article analyzes the socio-economic determinants of student mobility in India and evaluates the factors that hinder and promote higher educational mobility. It is argued that despite the mass expansion of higher education in India in recent times, student mobility is directed towards developed educational regions. India is a unique case…

With international momentum to achieve "Education for All" by 2015, global attention is being paid to those parts of the world where mass formal primary schooling is relatively new. Uganda is such a place. In the context of ethnographic fieldwork at a poor, undocumented, private primary school in rural Uganda, parents were interviewed in…

This paper examines the concept of management of diversification at tertiary education level in view of the growth of national secondary education system which vested high scramble for tertiary education was made in relation to question of access and expansion. This paper examines management of diversification at tertiary education level as a…

Many nation-states have realized the importance of tertiary education and the world has seen a corollary increase in tertiary education enrollments. Using Berry and Berry's event history model as a framework, this study tests both the internal features of each country and the influence that nation-states have on each other with regard to setting…

In the pursuit of mass higher education, fears are often expressed that the quality of higher education suffers as access is increased. This quantitative study considers three proxies of educational quality: (1) prior academic achievement of the student, (2) attrition and retention rates and (3) progression rates, to establish whether educational…