This article discusses the impact of accountabiity on higher education policies in Europe and the United States. We describe how the accountability movement relates to other policy trends in higher education, providing empirical data on how accountability was implemented and how academics and managers in four universities perceived these policies.…

This paper argues that some of the current trends affecting academe impede on key institutional structures, or sets of interrelated norms for academic conduct, which are necessary for sustaining collective action among academics. In this sense academics and academic units may find themselves "between a rock and a hard place'', that is with new…

The aim of this article is to outline a theoretical framework to address Higher Education organizational change in a globalized and globalizing age. The paper will start with a brief description of trends characterizing the global landscape and their relationships with Higher Education policies and institutions. Although these trends are well…

At intervals of 3-4 years, research quality in English universities has been externally reviewed 5 times over the past 16 years. Assessment is based on peer-review of material submitted by universities to 70 separate subject panels. The principal component is information on research output, usually publications, from all academic staff identified…

This study builds upon the concept of alignment within the curriculum (due to Biggs) and suggests, in the context of two current examples, an integrated methodology for effectively aligned development activities within universities. Higher Education institutions face important challenges. Firstly, quality enhancement of the curriculum is now an…

This study examines the out-of-class learning activities undertaken, at the students' volition, by groups of students. Data were gathered through 57 individual and 15 focus group interviews with university students in Hong Kong. Group activities reported included: copying, sharing material, consulting peers, consulting teachers, studying and…

The purpose of this paper is to (1) describe the characteristics and governance structure of higher education at the Federal Universities in Nigeria, and (2) examine (a) how academic decisions are made, (b) the level of academic staff participation in university governance, and (c) the extent to which academic staff is consulted on key personnel…

This paper outlines a technique for identifying and representing pathways of student progression through a degree course. Considerable attention over the last decade in developing performance indicators of student progress, retention and completion in higher education, has neglected indicators of individual student progression. Common student…

African higher education, at the beginning of the new millennium, faces unprecedented challenges. Not only is the demand for access unstoppable, especially in the context of Africa's traditionally low postsecondary attendance levels, but higher education is recognized as a key force for modernization and development. Africa's academic institutions…

The influence of recent social and economic changes in the Israeli kibbutz on the prolonged stage of youth was examined with respect to higher education. The young people on the kibbutz of the late 1990s appear less moratorial and more instrumental about their future and commence higher education earlier than in previous age cohorts. When starting…

Based on a sample of ten of the country's 21 public universities, this article examines the relative efficiency of South African universities between 1994 and 1997 using Data Envelopment Analysis. After outlining the nature and limitations of the technique, a series of seven models were tested. Each used a consolidation of the annual output of…

Conceptions of learning and strategies used by 15 indigenous students in three Australian universities were studied longitudinally over three years. Their academic achievements were good, but at a high cost in terms of time and effort. In spite of the fact that almost half of the students expressed higher-order (qualitative) conceptions of…

The paper explores international comparisons of the extent of commonality or diversity in the main national external quality assurance frameworks for higher education. It has been suggested, from an European survey, that there are common features in national quality assurance frameworks (van Vught and Westerheijden (Quality Management and Quality…

Integration of technology in all forms of education has narrowed down the gap between the on- and off-campus students and has resulted in the use of the more broad-based term "distributed learning". Consequently, distance learning is seen as a subset of distributed learning, focusing on students who may be separated in time and space from their…

Previous research has generally failed to find a relation between the way students approach the task of studying and their exam grades. The present study investigated why it is that a deep approach to studying, which has been shown to result in a higher quality of learning, does not consistently result in higher exam grades. The participants in…