Economists have long recognized the importance of human capital in economic growth. In this series of papers, I study how various institutions of human capital formation affected economic development in a variety of contexts prior to 1900. These include both formal institutions of human capital formation such as universities and informal…

Canadian universities today assert their social relevance through highlighting processes such as community engagement, knowledge mobilization, and the promotion of equity, diversity, and inclusion. Much can be learned about such processes through examining an era in which Canadian universities asserted their social relevance through another…

This project is a study of the role interpretation has played during a few key moments in a culture war over the role of the university in society. It argues that in these key moments in which a political reflection has been undertaken regarding the way knowledge is produced and distributed, the nature and function of interpretation as such has…

This dissertation explores the transregional impacts of the 1949 Chinese communist revolution on diasporic Chinese students and scholars in Cold War Asia and Asian America. It argues that higher education was a key site of contestation in the U.S.-China Cold War tensions of the 1950s, where American efforts to contain and isolate communist China…

This article explores underlying mechanisms triggering a change in conceptualization of innovation in the European Union (EU), the impact of this change on institutional demands upon European universities and implications for evaluation procedures. We mobilize the theoretical concept of critical junctures to explore significant periods that have…

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,…

Research of the main university stakeholders has only been of a cross-sectional or short-term nature thereby limiting our understanding of how universities have evolved as a result of stakeholder influence. Indeed, neglect of stakeholders in strategic planning may result in both companies and universities becoming less successful and less…

As the story is often told, P4C was established after Matthew Lipman, then a professor of education at Columbia University, observed a deficiency in reasoning skills among his students and colleagues during the student protest of April 1968. Lipman pondered whether there might be a way to enhance the critical thinking skills of individuals through…

As we re-imagine the role and value of the university, we need to pose new questions about knowledge and institutionality at a moment of intersecting crises. This essay presents a case study of a university in Western Canada, one shaped by the impacts of intensive extraction from human and more-than-human beings and now facing the challenge of…

The University of British Columbia (UBC) opened Canada's first International House (I-House) in 1959 after a decade of activism from students and faculty. Students had demanded an I-House to help them find housing, and to ensure that "brotherhood may prevail," as the I-House motto promised. The I-House campaign received support from…

This article argues that the process of secularization of knowledge is essentially related and derived in complex and unintended ways from the doctrinal disagreements of the reformation era. The doctrinal disagreements were dual, between the Christian belief systems and between the monastic, scholastic and humanist movements. These disagreements…

This article contributes to a preliminary historical and decolonial analysis of teaching and research in the field of education and international development at the UCL Institute of Education. The preliminary analysis, published as 'Education, decolonisation and international development at the Institute of Education (London): a historical…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are online-based teaching programs designed to accommodate thousands of students without charging any fees. They began appearing in 2009 and 2010, became popular for a while, but are in decline now. This paper contains bibliometric and systematic reviews of research on MOOCs to see what can be learned from the…

Purpose: This study provides a new look at the late 19th-century university issue in Spain. Loss of self-government among universities and the state's centralization brought a conflict between science and religion to the fore in the process of the secularization of knowledge. Design/methodology/approach: We first delve into the anti-Darwinian…

Higher education serves many purposes. One purpose dominates, however: to students, their parents, future employers, government officials, and many academic administrators, higher education is all about preparing students for the professional workforce. Other requirements, such as general education programs, are considered to be of lesser…