This paper explores perceptions of the UK's Research Excellence Framework (REF) and its implications for individuals, institutions and wider academia through an analysis of media coverage of the REF over a 2-year period. In recent years, the importance attached to the REF has become an increasing focus of concern for academics and other…

Student-staff ratios (SSRs) in higher education have a significant impact on teaching and learning and critical financial implications for organisations. While SSRs are often used as a currency for quality both externally for political reasons and internally within universities for resource allocations, there is a considerable amount of ambiguity…

Current published information on the Australian student mobility offshore is reviewed as part of a long-term project aiming to determine the current propensity of Australian higher education students to study overseas and the return on investment that they can expect to achieve. It was found that limited data are available on the current extent of…

Higher institutions in the United Kingdom (UK) have responded enthusiastically to two prime ministers' "Initiatives for International Education" to promote Britain as a destination for overseas students and international fees from Chinese students now play an important role in the funding of the UK university sector. Yet it is not clear how far…

The climate of competition for students in the higher education sector makes it imperative that institutions increase their marketing efforts, both domestically and internationally, to help sustain student numbers. In Australia, the Bradley Report and the government response, which will do away with quotas, allows for a much freer market than…

This commentary advances a positive relationship between a business school's ranking in the popular press and student learning by advocating market-oriented measures of student learning. A framework for student learning is based on the Assurance of Learning mandated by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International,…

This paper analyses the contents of the first thirty years of the "Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management" and its predecessor, the "Journal of Tertiary Education Administration." The paper examines the papers published between 1979 and 2008 according to their authorship, country of origin and broad content, noting changes over time. In…

The disclosure in 2006 by Oxford's Conference of Colleges that it would require newly matriculated students to sign a student-college contract is the latest evidence of the tendency to reduce the university-student relationship to one of contract. It also points to the reinvention of the university in the context of a disaggregated and…

The reasons associated with lecture absenteeism among student groups could shed significant light on student motivation levels and orientations in university settings. Paying attention to the rationales for lecture absence provided by students themselves could also help institutions to diagnose levels of student engagement and respond in…

Interim, discontinuous or "acting" management is an increasingly ubiquitous feature of universities. This paper asks: What are the implications of this for good academic governance? Should we understand this managerial dance as a symptom of the collapse of good managerial order or, by contrast, as a symptom of the robustness and flexibility of the…

There has been a substantial increase in the number of candidates enrolled in PhD programmes in the past decade. Whereas the literature is relatively informative with its advice to candidates and supervisors, there is little evidence of research related to supervisory styles and changes of style over the supervisory period. This paper attempts to…

The ageing of the Australian population and its implications are now well-established on the Australian public policy agenda. Part of this interest is in its impacts on the Australian workforce. It is less well known that different segments of that workforce have quite different age structures. The academic sector has one of the oldest workforces…

In France, secondary teachers are public sector employees. Becoming a science teacher in secondary education is subject to passing public competitive entry examinations. Preparation for these examinations is provided by University Institutes Departments, which are essentially assessed on the basis of the successful performance of their students in…

Disputes in Australian universities cost millions of dollars each year that could be spent more fruitfully on core activities such as research and teaching. This paper uses three case studies to examine what we know about disputes and dispute resolution in Australian universities. The impact of changing higher education funding and policy on…

This paper reports issues arising from a longitudinal study of 1991 to 2002 Australian higher education equity data. The national equity framework uses an empirical performance indicator system to monitor access, participation, success and retention of six designated equity groups. The paper examines three possible approaches for defining new…