The Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD) created the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) as a political actor in global education through a logic of governance by numbers (Grek, 2009). This article discusses how PISA has became a major showcase for the OECD as an assessment tool par excellence while also…

Amid debates about the role and impact of global university rankings (GURs), very few have closely examined how GURs media outlets construct meanings of higher education (HE) in their visual representations. We critically examine publicly available visual media of students in the "Times Higher Education World University Rankings" and…

The delivery of online university courses has continued to grow for more than a decade. New advances in technology have made the efficient delivery of courses possible, as well as increasing the collections of tools for students to cheat. Cheating results in the atrophy of the student's academic integrity, it has the potential to damage a…

Based on a representative sample of students from four public universities in a Midwestern state, this study finds that universities' campus diversity has positive influences on their students' diversity awareness and social trust and no negative effects on those universities' internal brand identification. Diversity awareness and ethnic identity…

One advantage of online learning settings relative to conventional classrooms is their anytime, anywhere accessibility. While online education programs provide students with flexible learning opportunities free from the restrictions of geographic location, a consistently growing number of students who prefer to learn exclusively online still…

China now tops the list of countries with the largest annual number of scientific publications. At the same time, China also leads the list of countries with the highest proportion of scientific publication retractions. The rise in this academic misconduct in China has given Chinese researchers a bad reputation and likely led to lower manuscript…

The brief report describes an exploratory investigation into changes to three university EFL teachers' teaching practices in a research-intensive university framed by managerialist technologies to improve its visibility and global ranking. The findings revealed that substantial changes have been brought about to their teaching practices in terms…

This article discusses the role of university academics as researchers. In present-day society which touts instant gratification, the primary role of a university is being undermined. In Malaysia, academics no longer teach and research as they please but are 'guided' by government agencies and influenced by the priorities of funding agencies. One…

This brief commentary investigates whether article topic, author profile, or journal rank significantly influence an article's citation levels. Anne-Wil Harzing's regression analysis shows that, when all factors are taken into account at the same time, it is "what" is published (topic) and "who" has published it (author) that…

Media reportage often act as interpretations of accountability policies thereby making the news media a part of the policy enactment process. Within such a process, their role is that of policy reinforcement rather than policy construction or contestation. This paper draws on the experiences of school leaders in regional Queensland, Australia, and…

School choice is expected to place pressure on schools to improve to attract and retain students. However, little research has examined how competition for students actually operates in socially embedded education markets. Economic approaches tend to emphasize individual actors' choices and agency, an undersocialized perspective, whereas…

Although many studies have found that children with learning disabilities (LD) are less liked by peers than children without LD, the results are not unequivocal. In the present study, we investigated the social status (in terms of likeability and popularity) of children with LD by considering peer academic reputation and peer reputation of teacher…

The purpose of this research is to explore international student recruitment at higher education institutions (HEIs) by examining the development and implementation of international recruitment activities. There is little research regarding the internal operations of HEIs, how HEIs conduct international recruitment efforts, and the challenges that…

Special educational needs (SEN) can be seen as a 'construction' that countries define within their legislation and go on to identify, assess, and make provision for in different ways. Definitions vary widely from country to country and even within a country. Many governments have policies to ensure students with SEN are included in mainstream…

Consequences of competition for global university rankings, such as changes in funding modes, have been extensively discussed in the field of higher education. However, few studies have reviewed its implications on knowledge production. This study provides a contextualised method for theorising the implications of this competition on the…