Postgraduate research candidature support, support of supervisory teams, and assistance with examination and assessment requirements are some of the crucial elements in a successful postgraduate student's study experience. While there is a large body of research on Doctoral supervision, less is available on Master's level supervision and support.…

This paper derives efficiency scores for around 8,500 schools in 30 countries, using Programme for International Student Assessment 2012 data and a nonparametric approach called data envelopment analysis as method. On average, achievement scores of schools can be increased by 27%, holding inputs constant. Efficiency scores vary considerably both…

The Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) launched the volunteer-led Asia-Pacific Alumni Relations Survey in 2014 to provide a resource for alumni relations professionals to benchmark performance internally and against fellow institutions of higher education. That was the first survey CASE has done on alumni relations programmes…

The Charitable Giving to Universities in Australia and New Zealand Survey collects detailed information about fundraising and donors to measure the philanthropic performance of higher education institutions. It also provides an estimate of the overall impact of philanthropy on the higher education sector. This survey of philanthropic giving uses…

In 1989, New Zealand started to follow an international trend of reforming education policy according to the neoliberal principles of competition, choice and self-managing schools. Since then, the increasing availability of digital data in schools has corresponded with the development of student achievement measurement tools and benchmarking of…

The agencies responsible for tertiary education quality assurance in Australia and New Zealand have established regulatory regimes that increasingly intersect with tertiary institution policy management. An examination of university meta-policies identified good practices guiding university policy and policy management. Most Australian and half of…

PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) is the fourth assessment in the current trend series, following PIRLS 2001, 2006, and 2011. There were 61 participants in PIRLS 2016, including 50 countries and 11 benchmarking entities (e.g., regions of countries as well as additional grades or language groups from the participating…

A working group was established at AUT University in 2005 with a brief to identify initiatives that might be taken to promote and support staff engagement in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The working group recognized that a "stock-taking" exercise would need to be undertaken before appropriate initiatives could be…

"Methods and Procedures in PIRLS 2016" documents the development of the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) assessments and questionnaires and describes the methods used in sampling, translation verification, data collection, database construction, and the construction of the achievement and context questionnaire…

This publication is the outcome of the international conference organized by UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL), in collaboration with the Centre for Validation of Prior Learning at Inholland University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands, and in partnership with the French National Commission for UNESCO that was held in Hamburg in…

Technology and change are so closely related that the use of the word innovation seems synonymous with technology in many contexts, including that of higher education. This paper contends that university culture and existing capability constrain such innovation and to a large extent determine the nature and extent of organisational change. In the…

Both the public and private higher education sectors in Oman are undergoing rapid change in the number and type of local and foreign degrees offered. The Sultanate is developing a comprehensive quality assurance system to ensure the educational appropriateness of all degrees awarded in Oman. This paper examines the collaboration between the…

How much do teachers in tertiary education know about the sustainability characteristics of their incoming students and, if this knowledge were to be available, how could their educational approaches be influenced by this knowledge? In New Zealand, Otago Polytechnic has committed itself to the goal that every graduate may think and act as a…

This book explores the issues involved in developing standards in higher education, examining the practical issues involved in benchmarking and offering a critical analysis of the problems associated with this developmental tool. The book focuses primarily on experience in the United Kingdom (UK), but looks also at international activity in this…

Although education and training should be a source of relative advantage for Australia, the competitive benefits expected from the nation's "clever country" strategy have been slow to emerge. When 22 countries including Australia, Germany, Singapore, the United Kingdom, United States, and New Zealand were compared from the standpoint of…