So-called 'world-class universities' emerged on the global higher education scene following the Second World War. Their development in countries around the world, particularly since the early 2000s, has evolved into an international norm, although not without debate and contestation. This paper applies Constructivist theory to reflect on how local…

There is growing awareness that established structures of higher education are often predicated on problematic assumptions about merit, excellence, and rigor. Doctoral qualifying exams, for example, are required to advance to candidacy in many Ph.D. programs despite decades of documented concerns about the implications of standard modes for…

Most scholarly work on internationalisation in Chinese higher education institutions has been conducted on top-level universities but prior research does not necessarily apply to regional universities that are pursuing a strategy of internationalisation and recruiting international students. This research has selected a Chinese regional university…

The paper assesses the evolution of efficiency of Italian public universities for the period 2000-2010. It aims at investigating whether their levels of efficiency showed signs of convergence, and if the well-known disparity between northern and southern regions decreased. For this purpose, we use a refinement of data envelopment analysis, namely…

The brief report describes an exploratory investigation into changes to three university EFL teachers' teaching practices in a research-intensive university framed by managerialist technologies to improve its visibility and global ranking. The findings revealed that substantial changes have been brought about to their teaching practices in terms…

The purpose of this research is to explore international student recruitment at higher education institutions (HEIs) by examining the development and implementation of international recruitment activities. There is little research regarding the internal operations of HEIs, how HEIs conduct international recruitment efforts, and the challenges that…

This paper aims to deal with lingering governance issues of a prestigious university in a developing country of Southeast Asia. It provides a description of environments, changes, and university stakeholders' perceptions in terms of governance arrangements of Chiang Mai University (CMU), which was selected as a National Research University in…

Purpose: This paper tries to propose a pedagogical training program starting from the Romanian mandatory curriculum for higher education (HE) teachers, integrating education for sustainable development (ESD) competencies (UNECE, 2012) through infusion as a technique of curricular design dealing with cross-curricular subject integration. The…

The past two decades have seen the idea of internationalization move into the mainstream of higher education policy and practice, on a global scale. In countries like the US and UK however, higher education is widely perceived as a hierarchical field, where high- and low-status universities are differentiated from one another: serving different…

This paper reports on recent research aimed at assessing how the management of the undergraduate student experience in English higher education is changing in the light of the new tuition fee regime introduced in 2012, as well as other government policies aimed at creating market-type pressures within the higher education sector. A distinction was…

European universities have, since the late 1990s, undergone dramatic changes centred on internationalisation, harmonisation and competition. This paper is concerned with two specific consequences of these changes and their interrelationship: rankings and Englishisation, the latter defined as an increase in the use of English at universities of…

The purpose of this study is to analyze how China has strived to develop its world-class research universities and what are distinguishing characteristics of China's efforts to form these universities for the last decades. This study begins with a review of literature and research questions. It then touches on the background and rationale of…

In Leonard Koos's book, "The Junior-College Movement", he described the establishment of a junior college in an American public school district as the "culmination of the local school system", alluding to the prestige associated with having a junior college in a community. The best-known example of this arrangement was in…

The Bologna Process and German higher education reforms over the past decade have created significant waves of change at German universities. This case study focuses on the enduring impact of both the Bologna Process and German higher education reforms on how professors experience their work and define their roles during the winter term 2011-12 at…

Similar to other national contexts, in Israel since the 1980s we have witnessed the emergence of neo-liberal policies in education. However, very little attention has been given to the ways in which they affect the school level and even less attention has been given to the impact of these policy changes on Arab schools in Israel. This article…