With this paper, we explore early placement experiences and their pedagogical potential, including ways of keeping students enrolled and persisting with their studies. Few university courses offer early placements because traditionally placement experiences have a focus on employability and work readiness of graduates, hence occur towards the end…

A feature of HE reform discourse is the tendency to construct the rationale for reform in terms of averting calamity and risk. We refer to this risk talk as "crisis discourse." This study examines the formulation of PhD crisis discourse internationally and in Australia. We find that a key feature of PhD crisis discourse is that…

Academic cheating is a serious problem among higher education organizations around the world. While most studies on academic cheating have focused on high school or college students, few have examined and compared students with and without jobs. Therefore, this study has empirically assessed the critical cheating issues by comparing undergraduate…

This paper investigates the geographic and professional mobility of scientists employed in Singapore's publicly funded research institutes in various techno-and lifescience specialisations. Using Bourdieu's conceptual framework, we analyse the capital portfolios of individual scientists against the structures of power which have informed…

The story of how the sciences began to understand themselves as independent fields of research starts by detaching them from philosophy. The identity of the science in question will then further develop as it writes its own history. Higher education studies are, in such reflections, understood as a relatively new field that has its beginnings in…

Although prior research establishes the forces that "push" and "pull" students to participate in foreign study, the transferability of findings from earlier studies is limited by the absence of theoretical grounding. In addition, relatively little is known about how a government-sponsored student mobility program promotes…

The authors examine higher education developments in two peripheral post-communist countries--Georgia and Armenia, whose education systems have previously received little attention in the literature. They focus on how both countries' models of higher education governance have evolved through the phase of political transformation and recent…

For the last 20 years Polish education faced turbulent changes, first experiencing a rapid increase in the number of students and the dynamic growth of educational institutions, and then facing the reverse trend of decreasing number of students and universities being closed down or facing serious financial problems. Furthermore, forecasts for the…

The formation of social ties is a major factor in the international student experience (Ramsay et al. in High Educ 54(2):247-265, 2007), influencing student wellbeing and adjustment to the new academic and sociocultural environment (Ward et al. in The psychology of culture shock. Routledge, Hove, 2001). Although a significant body of research in…

Universities in the English-speaking world share a common ancestry that extends back to medieval times. From these beginnings universities quickly developed distinctive qualities as they became integrated within different social and cultural systems of their home societies. A number of comparisons of higher education research have shown major…

Sense of community (SoC) in communities of practice (CoP) seems to play a similar role to that of group cohesion in small groups: Both sustain participants' knowledge sharing, which in turn substantiates the socio-cognitive structures that make up the CoP such as scholar identities, practical repertoires in research and teaching or…

To address the problematic situation of higher education affordability, and literacy, President Obama has recently outlined a new strategy to make colleges more affordable for the middle class. While this strategy includes many components, "Paying for Performance" is a core components of this new strategy. In recent years, states have…

Both lecture delivery and Facebook use are ubiquitous aspects of higher education from staff and student points-of-view, respectively. An attempt was made to integrate the two by setting up a Facebook group and delivering contemporary news stories in preparation for in-lecture discussion in a large-scale (1,200 students across 5 sections)…

This study features the concept of "context" and how various macro, meso and micro features of the social system play themselves out in any setting. Using South Africa as an example, it explores the features that may constrain or enable professional development, quality teaching and the work of teaching and learning centres at eight…

As in many universities, class sizes have increased more quickly than teaching and learning resources. A related challenge is the increasing diversity of the student body in terms of socio-economic background, learning styles, English language ability and preparedness. This paper explores ways in which traditional face-to-face teaching methods…