Strategic planning has become an integral part of the management of higher education institutions worldwide. The experiences of all but one of the Republic of Ireland's 21 universities and institutes of technology with strategic planning are explored from 2000 to 2010. At the starting point in 2000, only two institutions had a documented…

"Next generation" issues are attracting considerable attention in higher education (HE) policy and programming. This is particularly true in Africa, where depleted academic capacity, insufficient levels of doctorate-qualified staff, and the steady retirement of many experienced lecturers and researchers place a particular urgency on…

Owing to their common history, similarities in language and culture, long traditions in political collaboration and the shared Nordic societal model, an assumption is often made that the operational and regulatory context of universities is similar in the five Nordic countries: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. In this article, we…

The massification of higher education in Ukraine is a fact, while financing the system is still an issue. External pressures from the central government and the market require changes in university governance. Europeanization of the educational system and adherence to the principles laid down by the Bologna Declaration add to already existing…

Cost-sharing as a policy in Ethiopian higher education institutions (HEIs) has been adopted since 2003 to achieve a set of objectives such as supplementing revenue as an alternative non-governmental source, maintaining and enhancing access to higher education, addressing equity in terms of opportunity in higher education and making students…

Over the past three decades, university research activities have increasingly become organized towards external economic and social worlds. In this essay, we reflect on the observations and explanations made in papers published in Higher Education Policy on this topic, and discuss their contributions towards understanding university third stream…

A downturn in enrolments of international students following the Global Financial Crisis is causing publicised stress among Australian universities that have come to rely on associated income. How to survive the financial consequences is currently receiving urgent attention within the sector. This paper models the problem of developing responses…

In this paper, a model and tool is proposed to assist universities and other mission-based organisations to ascertain systematically the optimal portfolio of projects, in any year, meeting the organisations risk tolerances and available funds. The model and tool presented build on previous work on university operations and decision support systems…

Since 1998, the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities in Ontario, Canada, has required that data on specific key performance indicators (KPIs) be made public by its publicly funded universities. The information is intended to be used by universities to demonstrate their achievements, to improve their programmes and services, and to…

The fiscal climate of restraint in the Canadian province of Ontario has led to increased calls for a more diversified higher education system. Significant diversity in the university sector in Ontario has not been achieved that underscores the importance of understanding government policy and its related influences on institutional diversity. This…

This article addresses the diverging policies of England and Scotland since 1999 on the issue of tuition fees. While the UK Parliament has introduced (and henceforth enhanced the level of) tuition fees for students at English universities, the Scottish Parliament has refuted fees in two successive stages. In this article I trace the political…

This article seeks to establish what impact external quality assessment had on universities in Estonia between 1997 and 2009. It is based on a study of the analysis of experts' reports of curricula accreditation and interviews with university and programme managers, undertaken between 2007 and 2009. The study included an analysis of 12 curricula…

All Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries have experienced an unprecedented expansion in higher education during the second half of the twentieth century. This was only possible because higher education became part of national welfare policies. OECD countries differ, however, with respect to the significance of…

The paper has a twofold structure and focus. The first part is an examination of the funding challenges facing African universities resulting mainly from public finance difficulties, and the second part is a case study of how some Kenyan and South African public universities have attempted to mitigate resource dependence difficulties through…

This paper deals with the impact of the global financial crisis on Japan's economy, especially on its higher education. The first section provides an overview of Japan's national economy with a focus on the impact of the global financial crisis on the national economy, then the author touches on the impact on the Japanese government's finances,…