This article discusses the approach to the management of change taken by a Danish university when introducing a university-wide market for education and it explores the different positions taken by some of the central stakeholders in one of the faculties involved. I argue that neither the inadequacies of a popular management model nor insufficient…

Whilst approaches to the development of undergraduate academic writing skills vary between disciplines and institutions, academic tutors are consistently presented as playing an important role. One aspect of this role is supporting students to engage effectively with feedback in order to develop consciousness and competence regarding academic…

Consideration of the physical environment in which learning takes place has become a growing area of academic interest over the past decade. This study focuses on the experiences and perceptions of academic staff and students who used three refurbished, and innovative, learning spaces at the University of Leicester. The results suggest that the…

The social benefits expected from academia are generally identified as belonging to three broad categories: research, education and contribution to society in general. However, evaluating the present situation of academia according to these criteria reveals a somewhat disturbing phenomenon: an increased pressure to produce articles (in…

This paper examines the decisions and motivations of graduate students in cultural anthropology when defining the field sites and topics of their final projects. The decisions among students at the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia are contrasted with those at the University of Pittsburgh in the United States. A review of recent final projects…

In the tradition of anthropological reflexivity, this article examines how the structure of early doctoral training contributes to the construction of particular kinds of anthropologists. Based on research conducted in an anthropology department in the U.S.A. during the late 1990s, the experience of the transition from undergraduate to doctoral…

In this article I will present a range of experiences of graduate socialisation that have been discussed in past articles in the journal "Anthropology Matters". These are the experiences of social anthropology Ph.D. students in the United Kingdom. The overarching theme for the article is "regulating emotions", and the excerpts…

Multicultural discourse has reached Latin American higher education in the form of a set of policies targeting indigenous peoples. These policies are strongly influenced by the transfer of European notions of "interculturality", which, in the Mexican context, are understood as positive interactions between members of minority and…

The article draws on the reports by 12 guest professors--all women--who participated in an EU-financed pedagogical project within a Swedish university's postgraduate studies course, the purpose of which was to address equal opportunities in academia. It has been established that women with doctoral degrees are not being absorbed into the research…

Neoliberal values and ideology, which have broadly undermined social justice ideals, have been inserted into a range of public spheres both in the U.S.A. and internationally. Public higher education institutions have increasingly acquiesced to neoliberal strategies, which restrict access to public services, commodify the public sphere and…

This article explores the everyday experiences of minority ethnic students at a university in the West Midlands. Based on interviews with 23 second-level students taking Sociology modules, it seeks to highlight the key social, personal and pedagogic issues for this group of minority ethnic students and to deepen understandings of cultural identity…

In this article, we analyse findings of the largest, most comprehensive survey of the career paths of social science PhD graduates to date, "Social Science PhDs--Five+Years Out (SS5)". "SS5" surveyed more than 3,000 graduates of U.S. PhD programmes in six social science fields six to ten years after earning their PhD. The…

This discussion paper offers a critical examination of the ways in which international students are supported by the variety of systems commonly in place at universities in the U.K. and U.S.A.--two countries that attract large numbers of students from overseas. While acknowledging the difficultly of defining the term "support", the…

The communicative relationship between learners and teachers in higher education, particularly as manifested in assessment and feedback, is often problematic. I begin from an Academic Literacies approach that positions academic literacy as requiring learners to acquire a complex set of literacy skills and abilities within specific discursive and…

A wide variety of British universities are expanding efforts to attract international students. This article argues that higher education's implicit claim to all-inclusive "universality" may hereby be challenged by subsequent issues of cultural particularity. Here I set to conceptualise possible differences in the learning culture of…