Drawing upon the notions of academic capitalism and the transformation of academic research from traditional academic orientation into market orientation, the paper sets out to empirically scrutinize the changing nature of academic research, focusing especially on disciplinary differences. The paper is based on a survey of heads of departments and…

Interdisciplinary approaches are often seen as necessary for attacking the most critical challenges facing the world today, and doctoral students and their training programs are recognized as central to increasing interdisciplinary research capacity. However, the traditional culture and organization of higher education are ill-equipped to…

The purposes of this study were, on one had, to determine the impact of a peer tutoring program on preventing academic failure and dropouts among first-year students (N = 100), from Civil Engineering, Economics, Pharmacy, and Chemical Engineering careers; while, on the other hand, to identify the potential benefits of such tutoring program on the…

Despite an increase in higher education uptake in the UK, participation rates for working class students remain low. When working-class students attend university, they are often attracted to lower status universities to enrol in new subject areas, such as media studies. This study uses Bourdieu's theory of stratification, and its reproduction via…

A wide variety of British universities are expanding efforts to attract international students. This article argues that higher education's implicit claim to all-inclusive "universality" may hereby be challenged by subsequent issues of cultural particularity. Here I set to conceptualise possible differences in the learning culture of Asian…

This article is based on anthropological fieldwork undertaken at two elite universities in Beijing. It addresses the paradoxical situation of the many instances of suicide among Chinese elite university students in Beijing, which constitute a public secret. The pressure of education weighs heavily on the shoulders of China's only child in each…

The authors have been investigating universities in their own countries for many years and are now turning their attention to exploring alternatives to current reforms. As part of these investigations, they spent two days of interviews and meetings at Mondragon, a town in Gipuzkoa in the Spanish Basque Country. Mondragon is at the centre of one of…

Self-acceptance and learned resourcefulness of university students are important concepts in coping with the environmental and developmental stressors and in the development of healthy personality. In this study, university students' self acceptance and learned resourcefulness levels were investigated longitudinally. 198 university students' self…

Ongoing professional development for college teachers has been much emphasized. However, previous research on learning environments has seldom addressed college students' perceptions of teachers' PCK. This study aimed to evaluate college students' perceptions of a physics teacher's PCK development using a newly developed instrument and workshop…

Research universities in the United States have larger mathematics faculties outside their mathematics departments than inside. Members of this "extensive" faculty conduct most mathematics research, their interests are the most heavily published areas of mathematics, and they teach this mathematics in upper division courses independent of…

A number of studies have concluded that when students have greater confidence about their math skills and are aware of its usefulness, they have a more positive perception of the subject. This article aims to examine whether this pseudo linear trend in the relationship between affective and instrumental dimensions is also true of the university…

Amid the many recent treatments of the global growth of both Christianity and higher education, little to no attention has been given to distinctly Christian higher education. The survey reported in this essay uses an understanding of Christian education developed from analytical work by Robert Benne to examine the number and nature of colleges…

While it is common to claim that university reforms are based on universal and standardised ideas about "modernising" the university, few studies have examined in a more coherent way how the combined external pressure for change with respect to the areas of education, research and innovation has affected the university. In this paper it is argued…

Student employment is increasingly common in many countries. Compared to earlier decades, not only more students work but they also work longer hours. Among European countries Estonia is one of the clear "leaders" in student employment. This study uses survey data from 2,496 students in Estonian public and private universities to examine the…

Contradictory values in the Swedish doctoral education system are analysed through an interview and survey study of different academic disciplines: female-dominated, mixed and male-dominated. The focus is directed towards how the selected disciplines conduct application and selection processes in doctoral education and special attention is given…