Many forms of bias have been identified in higher education research, and in educational and social research in general. This article identifies a further form of bias, positivity bias, and places it in this broader context. Positivity bias is the tendency, in some forms of published higher education research, to only or chiefly report examples of…

The study tests 3 research hypotheses on the teaching-research nexus using the administrative data of the HSE University in Russia for 7 years. We confirmed the hypothesis that a lower classroom teaching load is associated with higher research output. Undergraduate courses have a relatively higher negative effect, especially on the probability of…

Researchers in higher education (HE) are a community of academics with backgrounds and experiences in a variety of scientific disciplines. For this reason, HE research is influenced by other disciplines from which HE researchers take theories, constructs and research methods. This article describes a large-scale analysis of the impact of different…

The global knowledge economy has turned higher education into a key player in societal development. Internationalization benefits higher education institutions in several aspects, such as improvement and visibility in international rankings, revenue generation via tuition fees and external funding, improvement of research and teaching quality,…

Academic inbreeding is a phenomenon that has been studied mostly from the standpoint of its association with research productivity. The focus has been on knowledge creation outputs and outcomes, while little to no attention has been given to the association of academic inbreeding with knowledge creation strategies and processes in academia. This…

Little is known about how researchers in higher education institutions (HEIs) experience and respond to support received from their departments. The present study investigated how support for researchers' autonomy (choice and self-expression), relatedness (through connections with colleagues) and competence (feeling effective in one's work)…

Faced with intensified global education competition, universities and other Higher Education institutions are implementing Total Quality Management (TQM) to keep rivals at bay. Meanwhile, research interest in TQM in Higher Education is growing. This paper reviews the achievements and limitations of extant research on TQM in Higher Education, and…

We study the potential impact of introducing performance-based funding systems (PBFS) on national research systems, using information on the number of publications and their scientific impact (citations or publications in top-ranked journals) for 31 countries over the period 1996-2016. The analysis is performed both at the aggregate level and…

This paper takes a policy-analytical perspective on the evolution of standards of research information (RI) and provides a framework for analysing processes of RI standardisation in different research systems. It focuses on the choice of policy instruments on the macro level (government) and their effects with regard to policy reactions, decisions…

This paper aims to extend understanding of the business and societal impact of academic research. From a business school perspective, it has taken stock of the role of academic research and relevance in business and society. The proposed conceptual framework highlights the forces influencing the pursuit of academic rigour and relevance in…

In the last 30 years, different economic, political and social changes have taken place in the university sector and this has led to an extensive reform to meet the new societal challenges that these institutions are facing today. This emphasises the social dimension of universities and their important role in society as educators of future…

The paper enquires into the implementation of the European Standards and Guidelines for Internal Quality Assurance of Higher Education Institutions (ESG 1). The enquiry uses data from universities in the Czech Republic and compares them against those obtained in the relevant pan-European survey. The aims are to empirically deconstruct ESG 1…

Dualisms pervade the language of higher education research providing an over-simplified roadmap to the field. However, the lazy logic of their popular appeal supports the perpetuation of erroneous and often outdated assumptions about the nature of modern higher education. This paper explores nine commonly occurring dualisms:…

Postgraduate taught education in universities is under-researched compared to research on undergraduate learning and teaching. This results in two missed opportunities: making evidence-informed improvements to postgraduate taught education and integrating such improvements into thinking and practice. A commitment to evidence-informed improvement…

In little over a decade since their introduction, global rankings are perceived as having significant and problematic effects. The dominant "normative" research orientation applied to the research domain of rankings is identified as a contributory factor to the sustained interest in rankings. The paper argues for a "close-up"…