The European Commission recently incentivized universities to establish alliances in order to institutionalise regional collaboration through the European Universities Initiative (EUI). Alliances are envisioned to maintain Europe's global position and enhance regional integration. Their mission statements are ways of signalling identity and…

Internationalization in higher education is of growing importance as institutions respond to globalization trends. Cross-border partnerships between institutions have existed for many years, but the number of networks with multiple institutions to further information exchange and build on resources have been increasing more recently. This case…

Relying upon the heuristic presuppositions of behavioral economics, this study seeks to offer an expanded analysis of the public mission mandate of the Greek higher education sector. The examination outlines and parses qualitative evidence issued from the Greek Ministry of Education, and in particular from the hitherto untranslated document…

Higher education systems are changing due to trends of funding pressures, increasing social demands and growing numbers of students. Even though teaching and research are still considered as the pivotal functions of universities, other activities such as technology transfer, lifelong learning or social engagement have broadened the scope of their…

Unlike in the US and other western countries, the higher education market in Germany has been sheltered from competition. This changed recently, when a governmental "excellence initiative" began to allocate substantial supplementary funds dependent on higher education institutions' performance, in 2005. This study is aimed at assessing…

This article focuses on coordination between governance actors in higher education. The object of the study is a department at a public university, seen as a multi-project environment. The purpose of this article is to illustrate and analyze project governance as a tool that allows departmental management to coordinate with the authorities, the…

Higher education institutions on their way to quasi-markets have to identify their distinct characteristics and nowadays, most of the German universities have published a mission statement. But since the tasks and mission of German universities are set for them by state regulation, the paper analyses for what mission statements have been…

In Norway, the higher education landscape is undergoing profound transformation. This process is being driven by a number of factors, including demography, competition and academic aspirations, with many so-called "university-colleges" aspiring to become fully-fledged universities. We shed light on the dynamics of one such institution,…

With the passage of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act the British system of higher education formally moved from a binary to a unitary structure. However, ever since successive governments have argued for a diversified model of higher education within which institutions should pursue contrasting goals. This article offers an interpretation…

The purpose of the study is to identify the patterns of change in higher education institutions. It examines the contexts of the changing quality assurance mechanisms used by the different types of higher education institutions in England, Japan, and New York State between 2001 and 2007. The paper argues that there were no clear patterns of…