Great Expectations And Mixed Performance

This volume offers a comprehensive discussion of implementation analysis in higher education and an extensive review of relevant recent literature. Coverage analyzes the effective and specific complexities of the implementation of higher education policies in several countries, including: Australia, Austria, Finland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Clark Kerr, former President of the University of California and a leader in higher education policymaking, offers his views of the turbulent decades when colleges and universities scrambled to provide faculty and facilities for the burgeoning student population, only to be faced later with economic depression and subsequent conservatism. From his unique vantage point, Kerr offers insights into the role of higher education--its performance under pressure, its changing climate, its efforts to serve the multiplicity of demands made upon it, and its success or failure in meeting those demands.

Though the book is a contribution to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER), it is not just about the history of the organisation as such. The contributions provide an account of the emergence of higher education as a field of study and research in Europe, its institutionalisation, and its relationships to higher education policy and practice. Furthermore, higher education research in Europe is contrasted to and contextualised by the example of higher education research and scholarship in Australia. The book is useful as an account about the emergence and development of higher education research as a field of study and research in Europe. It will be an interesting and insightful read for all scholars and young researchers wanting to know about higher education research but also for scholars in fields like history of science, disciplinary differentiation, institutionalisation of fields of knowledge and research.

The topic of achieving and assuring quality in every higher education institution continues to be both relevant and urgent worldwide. This volume presents a considered discussion of a range of facets of the issue, drawing on the findings of a 3 year EU research programme involving seven countries: Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Latvia, Portugal, Poland, Slovakia and the Netherlands. Topics include access, student assessment, governance, stakeholders, academic faculty, information and the interface between the secondary and tertiary sectors. The authors, all of whom are drawn from the research teams, explore particular aspects of the research objectives. These aim to identify the drivers and overcome the barriers to establishing high quality in both European higher education, in relation to the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance and, by implication, in worldwide higher education.

The book presents the most comprehensive and most thorough study of the developments in South African higher education and research after the first democratic elections of 1994, that is of post-Apartheid South African higher education. The benefits to the reader are that he/she will get a detailed insight into the new (i.e. post-1994) South African higher education system. The large number of experienced authors and editors involved in the book guarantees that the reader will be introduced in the new SA higher education system from a large number of perspectives that are presented in a consistent and coherent way.

Improving transparency is critical to the future of higher education. This book articulates the role and necessity of transparency to creating substantial opportunities for innovation and transformation. Current global crises imperil exactly the kinds of progress higher education has helped to create. The sector must contribute now like never before. But it must put its own house in order first, and do a better job conveying its value and transformative potential. The book offers a transparency roadmap: it reveals the pressures reshaping higher education, clarifies the value and nature of transparency, examines emerging reporting platforms, reviews improvement opportunities for students, faculty, institutions and systems, and forecasts how to engineer important next steps. The text synthesises diverse theoretical and empirical perspectives, incorporating analysis of quality and productivity, academic work and leadership, indicators and metrics, commercial trends and institutional models, as well as student learning and outcomes. It creates new futures for higher education by integrating and opening up issues that have been confined largely to insiders.