This article will show how the 2015 higher education reform in Albania, instead of increasing the autonomy and the quality of teaching and research as it officially aims, is broadening the control of the government over public universities. After discussing the concepts of reform and autonomy, I will analyse the new law to track the transformation…

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the trend of research on universities and accountability (UAA) in Southeast Asian (SEA) countries. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 115 journal articles, conference papers, books and book chapters were obtained from the Scopus database spanning the years 1996-2023. These documents were subsequently…

There has been a recent burgeoning of interest in the power of elite private schools in the UK. However, little attention has been paid to the propulsive power of the mechanisms in place within such schools that enable and support the mobilisation of valued forms of cultural capital such as 'ease'. Here, we draw upon unprecedented access to two…

Purpose: This article's purpose is to examine how the balance between autonomy (stewardship) and control (principal-agent) has evolved over 2 decades through a comparative longitudinal study of university governance reforms in Denmark and Sweden. Design/methodology/approach: Employing a longitudinal comparative case study design, the study draws…

Agreements between national public authorities and higher education institutions serve as a governance instrument in many European countries. In Norway, these agreements are currently undergoing change, as the state now invites the institutions to propose their own goals and parameters in the agreements. This study seeks to understand the…

This chapter discusses the two concepts of heightened attention in Vietnamese higher education recently, namely "university autonomy" and "quality assurance". The chapter first introduces a brief definition of the two concepts and reviews the debate on whether quality assurance facilitates or conflicts with university autonomy.…

This paper offers a historical analysis of organizational identity development at a particular Dutch university, the Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam. Our analysis contributes to the discussion on what factors contribute to organizational identity maintenance and evolution. Whereas the literature suggests a rather straightforward development,…

Creativity is an essential factor determining whether small and medium-sized enterprises survive during times of crisis. The current study aims to examine determinants of creativity using a serial mediational model, developed and tested on 246 workers employed in Norwegian small and medium-sized enterprises, applying structural equation modelling.…

The trend towards seeing education as a commodity and part of a global industry has transformed the field of education. We argue that these transformations are reducing the autonomy of the field of education as it has incorporated business rhetoric, logic and practice. We examine this through an analysis of discursive formations manifested in two…

As part of the efforts to globalize higher education in Indonesia, internationalization and multiculturalism are two globalization behaviors that have been promoted across higher education institutions. This study investigated both these behaviors through a qualitative case study analysis of four state universities in the country. The authors…

This paper provides an overview of the policies of school autonomy in Australian public education from the Karmel report in 1973 to the present day. The key focus is on the social justice implications of this reform. It tracks the tensions between policy moves to both grant schools greater autonomy and rein in this autonomy with the increasing…

Policy implementation is vital for the realization of predetermined policy goals. In the last decades, several studies have analyzed higher education policy reforms. Nevertheless, studies on institutional politics and the implementation of higher education policy reforms in the Tanzanian context are scant. Drawing on new institutionalism, this…

Despite extensive research into English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in higher education, few if any studies have explored the role of higher education autonomy in driving EMI. This paper tests the novel hypothesis that university autonomy--spearheaded across European higher education through neoliberally predicated 'steering at a distance'…

This study focused on school division needs pertaining to classroom-based assessment policies in Saskatchewan. Using a critical policy analysis framework, this project narrowed in on the creation of assessment policies within school divisions in the province through the lens of superintendents (n = 16). Applying Verhoest et al.'s (2004)…

Since the beginning of the 21st century, international branch campuses have experienced significant growth worldwide, and most of them are established in the Global South by the Global North, reproducing Western hegemony through education. In this context, we conducted a comparative study to analyse the convergence and divergence of the…