Faculty members are often evaluated primarily on the results of student end-of-course surveys (SEOCSs) for promotion, teaching contract renewals, and offers of teaching assignments. Consequently, SEOCSs have become a primary focus in faculty evaluations. Rigor in a course and the assignment of grades associated with assessments can be a source of…

Arguments about what should be valued in the selection of teacher candidates prioritise everything from access and diversity to high academic achievement. In Australia these debates have reached a climax in media, policy, and academic contexts. Treating 'selectivity' as an 'object of knowledge' enables us to explore its associated practices and…

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to explain critical factors affecting student satisfaction levels in selected state universities in Sri Lanka. Design/methodology/approach: The study has applied an quantitative survey design guided by six hypotheses. A conceptual framework has been developed to address the research questions on the basis of a…

In a globalized world, universities face challenges adapting to changing environmental pressures and expectations of legitimacy. Studies on the topic have tended to focus on universities in North America and Europe, while Chinese universities have received less attention, perhaps due to their status as latecomers to global higher education. Based…

Local superintendents must do an important job while equipped with, at best, modest authority. Superintendents are ultimately responsible for all the schools in their district, and they at least nominally supervise everything that happens in those schools. Yet superintendents cannot count on obedience or even support from the people who work for…

Internationalization of higher education is a major characteristic of China's higher education policy. Accordingly, the Chinese government is fervently encouraging the spread of Chinese language and culture through Confucius Institutes, student exchange programs, recruitment of international students, and international collaborations. South Asia…

Based on ethnographic data, the present study examines how being critical has been understood, valued and practiced among students enrolled in international English-as-the-medium-of-instruction (EMI) Master's porgrammes in a top-rated comprehensive university in China. Drawing on the Foucauldian ethico-political axes of self-formation, this…

This article seeks to shed light on current dynamics of stratification in changing higher education and proposes an analytical perspective to account for these dynamics based on Martin Trow's work on "the analysis of status." In research on higher education, the term "stratification" is generally understood as a metaphor that…

The purpose of our research is to gain a better insight into what encourages young adults, in particular young women, to enter the teaching profession. The empirical part of the article is based on a pilot study including 132 students, with data collection being based on a survey approach using a questionnaire. The research attempts to address the…

On many campuses, offices of International Student Affairs address the perceived needs of international students. However, a number of underlying assumptions and persistent metaphors shape these efforts and influence their outcomes. All students are uniquely different and face equally different challenges in adjusting to higher education. Labeling…

This study explores industry-education collaboration on vocational education and training (VET) in upper secondary schools in Sweden and Norway, with particular attention to the initiatives, organisation and operational management, and aspects of robustness and lock-in effects. The case studies include two upper secondary schools situated in…

Undergraduate students entering university arrive with certain expectations as to how their degree program will equip them to enter the world of work. Students are aware of the competitive nature of the modern day labor market and, as seen in this study, there is a majority belief that their program of choice and the good reputation of the…

Between 1950 and 1980 surveys of academic sociologists revealed a major shift in the relative ratings of the top six Sociology departments. Wisconsin rose from a distant sixth to being rated first or second. Harvard and Columbia dropped from first and second the rankings to as low as sixth seventh. Underlying these trajectories were a variety of…

When ISA-The Association of Learning Providers honored its "First Generation Legends" at its Annual Business Retreat this past spring, it was a gathering of some of the Who's Who of the learning industry. In this article, ten of the training industry's most successful professionals reveal their success drivers and talk about how to effectively…

Among the major trends in the higher education (HE) sector, the development of rankings as a policy and managerial tool is of particular relevance. However, despite the diffusion of these instruments, it is still not clear how they relate with traditional performance measures, like unit costs and efficiency scores. In this paper, we estimate a…