After responding to decades of external pressures, many higher education institutions (HEIs) in the United States have become stuck in a vicious cycle of declining enrollments, increased discount rates, decreased revenues, and increased debt. This vicious cycle has put these HEIs on an unsustainable path that may drive long-vulnerable HEIs to…

This article reports on a study in which the legitimisation of shared governance in the Chinese higher education sector was investigated. Norman Fairclough's three-level discourse analysis was used for analysing documents and interviews. The research materials consist of thirteen Chinese university statutes and qualitative semi-structured…

Purpose: Higher education and its leadership are not yet using their potential impact for a sustainable future. This paper aims to focus on UN developments and the long history of university involvement in sustainability might create more interest and understanding that sustainably oriented universities are actually possible and a much stronger…

COVID-19 has caused a revelation of change across the world. Higher education leaders faced significant challenges during the unprecedented crisis, particularly in the early stage of the pandemic. We examined the University of Sydney's response to the pandemic using key informant interviews with leaders at different levels of the university…

This paper examines the agency of international students in the context of university transformations in post-Soviet Ukraine. Conflict-driven political, social and economic changes in the country have laid the groundwork for the redesign of institutional policies related to the internationalization of Ukraine's higher education. However, it is not…

Purpose: This paper aims to provide insight for higher education leaders about how to navigate the immediate needs and long-term needs of an institution. COVID-19 disrupted higher education in unprecedented ways, but the post-pandemic world is proving to be just as challenging--if not more so. Presidents and higher education leaders must be…

Purpose: This review aims to identify the intellectual structure or key theoretical themes that comprise the emerging field of sustainability leadership in higher education. Design/methodology/approach: The Scopus index was used to identify 180 documents published sustainable leadership in higher education published between 1998 and 2021. Author…

Effective use of technology in areas that include admissions, record keeping, billing, compliance, athletic administration, and more hold untold potential to transform higher education by introducing significant efficiencies and dramatic cost reductions in serving students. How the institution organizes itself will to a large extent depend on how…

This study investigates the inspiring leadership values in building an excellent inclusive higher education, including proactiveness, high-spiritedness, visionary, and humanist mindset. This was a case study where data were collected through in-depth interviews, direct observation, document analysis, and audiovisual material observation. The…

This conceptual and descriptive study examines the critical issues, challenges and priorities for European higher education (HE) leaders, drawing upon the theory, practice and experience of leaders inside and outside the open and distance learning (ODL) field. Focussing on the emerging vantage points of the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), global…

Modern chief administrators in higher education are facing a moment of significant crisis. Confidence in higher education decreases yearly, a growing anti-intellectual movement erodes trust, and educators feel ill-prepared for contemporary challenges. The pressures of the role lead to shorter tenures in the chief academic position. So, academic…

Academic middle leaders play a critical role in facilitating the leadership of learning and teaching in universities. Previous research has reported the undervaluing and under-resourcing of these academic middle leadership roles. To promote a greater understanding of academic middle leaders, middle leading and middle leadership of learning and…

In the contemporary science and higher education system, national and supranational governments fund and foster universities to collaborate through specific funding lines and competition in World University Rankings, making it indispensable for universities to demonstrate collaboration at the organizational level. Thus, universities strive to…

As in many industrialized countries, Japan carried out a deregulation of higher education around the turn of the 21st century. This reform was based on New Public Management (NPM) principles, which should have been reflected in its most salient step: the incorporation of national universities in 2004. Although the way that the NPM principles were…

Purpose: Smart campuses can be seen as the future of higher education efforts, especially for their contributions to sustainability and to encourage innovation. This paper aims to present the benefits of smart practices in a Higher Education Institutions and highlights its connections to the sustainable development goals (SDGs).…