The article adopts a comparative approach to review three periods of theory development in research into higher education policy implementation. Given the conceptual affinity between Cerych and Sabatier's 1986 seminal study into higher education policy implementation and public policy implementation theory, the field of public policy is chosen for…

Employing the interdisciplinary field of health inequalities as a case study, this paper draws on interviews to explore subjective accounts of academic identities. It finds widespread acceptance that academia is a market place in which research-active careers require academics to function as entrepreneurs marketing ideas to funders. Beyond this,…

The growing importance of community and public engagement activities in universities has led to an increasing emphasis on auditing and evaluating university-community partnerships. However, the development of effective audit and evaluation tools is still at a formative stage. This article presents a case study of the University of Brighton's…

This paper sets out findings from research that considered the interplay between English national policy developments in human resources management in higher education and the personal stories of academic staff as career participants. Academic careers are pursued in an institutional and national policy context but it was not clear that the formal…

Since the well-known failures of many experimental colleges and programs in the 1960s and 1970s, policymakers and scholars are often cynical about the possibilities for organisational innovation, particularly within public universities. Public university innovation is possible, however, when organisational actors seek to institutionalise reform…

The topic of declining private higher education (PHE) has become a timely one, especially for many countries that had previously experienced a rapid and massive expansion of their systems of higher education, and of PHE in particular. In the case of Portugal this was very likely due to the stabilisation and then the slight decline in the number of…

This paper contributes to the debate on institutional diversity in higher education systems by looking at the phenomenon from a comparative (cross-national) and longitudinal perspective. Despite the attention to diversity in policy debates, surprisingly, only a limited amount of studies address methodological issues. In addition, the number of…

In many countries today, public higher education operates within some form of market framework, typically a government-regulated quasi-market. However, having created a market environment, how should the government agencies involved act when they wish to use higher education to achieve a particular policy goal? This paper considers the impact on…

Universities are famous for their resilience and longevity. Yet, when serious disputes arise, as in the University College of Swansea in 1989, their structures can be tested to the limit. Taking those events as a case study, this paper examines critically the option of choosing private sector approaches. It then develops its central argument: the…