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…

In 2009, the Finnish parliament passed a new Universities Act that aimed to strengthen the institutional autonomy of the country's universities. But why and how did the idea of autonomy come to frame the reform agenda in the overt way it did? In analysing a sample of authoritative policy and strategy papers by the key stakeholders in the…

In an increasing number of nations, foreign education providers are becoming part of the educational landscape. This aspect of cross-border higher education raises many questions about how such activities are regulated, particularly the role of the importing and exporting governments. Drawing on a principal-agent framework, this study uses the…

In the context of a European knowledge economy, the Dutch non-university institutions systematically develop research activities at a higher frequency than before. With this development, they have been accused of academic drift, of striving to receive a status comparable to traditional universities. This study considers the perceptions of both…

The higher education (HE) subsystem in Ethiopia has passed through a series of policy reforms in the last 10 years. Key reform areas ranged from improving quality and relevance of programmes to promoting equality in access to and success in HE. Despite the effort underway, gender inequality has remained a critical challenge in the subsystem. This…

Higher education systems around the globe are experimenting with different strategies to foster internationalization and networking, achieve critical research mass, and strengthen innovation and labour market integration. This paper discusses how Portugal, since 2006, has pursued a distinctive international collaborative strategy to induce…

This paper aims at looking at governance instruments beyond managerial technicality. It intends to do so by analysing the impact of governance reforms on the universities autonomy assumed as a regulation instrument to politically steer systems and institutions. The regulation efforts undertaken at the European and national levels reflect a trend…

In the course of the last decade, increasing political emphasis has been placed on the socio-economic contribution of German higher education institutions to their regional environment. Although a notable number of programmes have been launched to support this additional "third role", its empirical basis and determining factors remains…

Assumptions have developed around the benefits of internationalisation; for example, that it promotes cultural integration and harmony, improves the quality of education and research, and improves country and institutional reputations internationally. A range of coercive, normative and mimetic influences have pushed most small states with mass or…

The metaphor of the student as a consumer or customer is widely used within contemporary higher education, and impacts on the ways in which students, academics and institutions behave. These, and a number of alternative metaphors for the student, are critically reviewed. The alternatives considered include both contemporary (student as client or…

The past decade or so has witnessed a large-scale reform of the Chinese national college entrance exam (the gaokao) system, which nonetheless has been trapped within a dilemma of balancing diversification and equality. Specifically speaking, the reform needs to reconcile the clash between adopting diverse and holistic college admissions to fix the…

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…

Using the seminal contribution by Gornitzka and Maassen on hybrid steering approaches in higher education as a foundation, this paper offers three main contributions. First of all, an analysis is provided of how the concept of hybrid steering approaches has been used since 2000 in the higher education literature. Second, the paper delivers a…

This article reflects upon three seminal articles published in "Higher Education Policy" ("HEP") on academic freedom and university autonomy. The reflections indicate that "HEP" research contributes to a sophisticated and systematic understanding of the complexity of academic freedom, addressing both the original…

Drawing from a seminal article by Burton Clark that appeared in 2004 in "Higher Education Policy," this paper examines the influence of organization studies in higher education policy research over the last 25 years and highlights the potential contributions for future inquiry. It argues that analysis has mainly tackled policy reforms…