This paper reflects on the contributions to the journal "Higher Education Policy," celebrating its twenty-fifth birthday. It describes and analyses the themes addressed by the authors and the institutional background of the 1,172 contributors to the 812 papers. The analysis confirms the focus of the journal on higher education policy,…

This paper explores perceptions of the UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF) and its implications for individuals, institutions and wider academia through an analysis of media coverage of the REF over a 2-year period. In recent years, the importance attached to the REF has become an increasing focus of concern for academics and other…

Student-staff ratios (SSRs) in higher education have a significant impact on teaching and learning and critical financial implications for organisations. While SSRs are often used as a currency for quality both externally for political reasons and internally within universities for resource allocations, there is a considerable amount of ambiguity…

Current published information on the Australian student mobility offshore is reviewed as part of a long-term project aiming to determine the current propensity of Australian higher education students to study overseas and the return on investment that they can expect to achieve. It was found that limited data are available on the current extent of…

In this contribution both the literature and the present-day policies regarding diversity in higher education systems will be discussed. The first part presents an overview of the theoretical and empirical studies on differentiation and diversity. Based on this, a conceptual framework is presented, which intends to explain the processes of…

This paper draws on the results of an international survey of HE leaders and senior managers, which was supported by the OECD Programme on Institutional Management for Higher Education (IMHE) and the International Association of Universities (IAU). It focuses on how HEIs are responding to league tables and rankings (LTRS), and what impact or…

Higher institutions in the United Kingdom (UK) have responded enthusiastically to two prime ministers' "Initiatives for International Education" to promote Britain as a destination for overseas students and international fees from Chinese students now play an important role in the funding of the UK university sector. Yet it is not clear how far…

The title of this document is a deliberate play on the title of the biennial reports on the progress of Bologna produced by the European Students' Union, "Bologna With Student Eyes." It is a way of paying tribute to student involvement in the Bologna reforms, and marking a parallel student working participation in the state system "Tuning" study…

The article analyses how the dominant ideals about the actual organizational patterns of university governance have changed over the past few decades away from the classical notion of the university as a republic of scholars towards the idea of the university as a stakeholder organization. In this article, we first look at some general…

Using comparative data from 23 states within the European Union (EU), this paper is a preliminary assessment of the protection for, and (by extension) the health of, academic freedom in the universities of the nations of the EU. The paper examines constitutional and legislative protection for academic freedom, along with legal regulations…

The climate of competition for students in the higher education sector makes it imperative that institutions increase their marketing efforts, both domestically and internationally, to help sustain student numbers. In Australia, the Bradley Report and the government response, which will do away with quotas, allows for a much freer market than…

This report examines the efforts of 46 European nations to harmonize (not "standardize") their higher education systems and indicates that the United States higher education system needs to adopt some of the features of the Bologna Process. Based on what can be learned from the Bologna Process, this report makes concrete suggestions for change…

As different forms of short-cycle higher education have developed along with traditional university studies, they are often perceived as "different but equal". In Finland, with the introduction of the AMKs (polytechnics) in the early 1990s, this interpretation was clearly a part of the rhetoric of government presentation. "Equal but Different" was…

This commentary advances a positive relationship between a business school's ranking in the popular press and student learning by advocating market-oriented measures of student learning. A framework for student learning is based on the Assurance of Learning mandated by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International,…

This paper analyses the contents of the first thirty years of the "Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management" and its predecessor, the "Journal of Tertiary Education Administration." The paper examines the papers published between 1979 and 2008 according to their authorship, country of origin and broad content, noting changes over time. In…