Twentieth century governance models used in public universities are subject to increasing doubt across the English-speaking world. Governments question if public universities are being efficiently governed; if their boards of trustees are adequately fulfilling their trust obligations towards multiple stakeholders; and if collegial models of…

This article examines the Bologna Process from two main perspectives: as a dynamic strategy as well as the unfolding of the methodology employed. It argues that the latter was largely determined by the former. Three phases of development are identified; the first two of which shows that the methodology was largely determined by the need to bestow…

The 2008 United Kingdom Research Assessment Exercise will involve the evaluation of thousands of individual research outputs. The Funding Councils set three criteria for those evaluations--Originality, rigour and significance--and required each output to be placed into a fivefold categorisation of excellence, using absolute rather than relative…

This paper analyses the unfolding of the quality agenda in England from 1992 to the present. By using two disciplinary approaches, "political science" and "social philosophy", the article traces the recent transition from quality assurance to quality enhancement. How is this development to be explained and how significant is it? Are the concepts…

Higher education in Germany and Australia is being subject to pressures of market forces, internationalisation and financial constraints. This had led to both systems experiencing significant crisis and change over the past 20 years. In this paper, frame analysis is used to compare the changing policies in each nation and examine the extent to…

Using data on the patent portfolios of UK universities, the paper compares the levels of patenting activity (filings), success (grants) and quality (patents with commercial co-assignees and patent citations) at Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish institutions. Patent activity, per researcher, in Wales is on a par with that in Scotland and about…

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…

A comparative analysis of how access and equity are defined and how policies have evolved reveals a number of commonalities and differences between countries. The overall trend is a movement from the priority given to "inherited merit" in the admission process through a commitment to formal equality, towards the application of some modes of…

Higher education in India has grown large since the country's independence in 1947. Starting from a small base, the pace of growth was initially rapid. Initially, the pace of growth was rapid. Enrollments grew by 13 to 14 percent per annum during the 1950s and 1960s. Over the past few decades, the growth rate has declined noticeably. Since then it…

Higher education participation in Ethiopia is very low (about 1.5 per cent) and is the major source of the critical shortage of educated and skilled human resource. The higher education system in Ethiopia is moving away from exclusive and dismally low enrolments towards increasing participation. To expand access, to redress inequitable subsidies…

On the empirical basis of six national studies (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Denmark, Russia and South Africa), this paper examines the phenomenon of segmentation, defined as the solidification of deep hierarchies with little crossover between categories of institutions or individuals. The massification of higher education has brought about a great…

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 focuses on the effects of extra-curricular activity on graduates' transition from higher education to the labour market. The study is based on a survey of 119 graduates conducted in 2004 in the UK. The data gathered cover a large range of social and leisure activities that the graduates carried on while students at their universities.…

A central tenet of contemporary education policy relates to the desire to extend higher education (HE) provision to less advantaged groups ("widening participation"). Our paper contends that a key behavioural obstacle to widening participation lies in the erroneous belief that persists among potential entrants from disadvantaged backgrounds as to…

The expansion of the higher education system and widening access to undergraduate study has led to growing diversity within the graduate labour supply, including increasing numbers who studied for their degrees as mature students. Analysis of graduates entering the labour market prior to the major expansion in the early 1990s indicated that those…