Rankings work by comparing higher education institutions (HEIs) using a range of indicators, which are usually weighted according to priority. Rankings are used to inform student choice and stakeholder opinion, and to assess the performance of scientific-scholarly research. Research has shown that students, public opinion and government are the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine parental and students' decisions regarding participating in K-12 level study abroad programs in Manitoba, Canada. Design/methodology/approach: The study reports on data collected through document analysis and semi-structured interviews with 18 international students and 14 parents. Findings: The…

Globalisation has transformed the field of higher education by increasing flows of mobile students. This has had significant repercussions not only for countries that take advantage of the expansion of exports of English-medium programmes but also for countries that have not risen to prominent positions in the global education market, such as…

Much research on higher education has discussed the positional competition induced by global rankings and the complementary concept of "world-class" universities. This paper investigates the network of social media communication between globally ranked universities. Specifically, it examines whether universities seek to preserve and…

Despite being the smallest of the BRICS in population and having a relatively small number of public institutions of higher education (HE), South Africa (SA) has several world class universities and is the HE leader on the African continent. This paper presents an overview of various demographic aspect of HE in SA including types of institutions,…

The first multi-indicator ranking of world universities, "Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU)", was published by the Institute of Higher Education of Shanghai Jiao Tong University in June 2003. Although the initial purpose of ARWU was to find the global standing of top Chinese universities, it has been attracting world-wide…

Since the recent global paradigm shift in the governance of higher education toward business and marketing, internationally competitive education is increasingly considered as an asset for governments. Consequently, governments started to invest in education branding and marketing their educational systems. In Finland, national interest in…

This article explains why there are so few world-class universities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region today. It first summarises the systemic exogenous economic, political and social problems facing all countries in the region, and the impact of these on the development of their higher education sectors in recent times. Then, with…

China is trying to develop better outcomes for students, build world-class institutions and ascend global university rankings. Beijing also wants to jettison the notion it is the workshop of the world and embrace a culture of innovation. Peter Jarvis thinks the world would be a better place if ordinary people were given convivial spaces wherein…

We used a modified circuit of culture enquiry to explore processes of production, representation and consumption of global perspective at our university, in the context of fostering this perspective as a graduate attribute. We identified four frame packages by which this perspective is understood and communicated. Global perspective is framed…

In a globalized world, universities face challenges adapting to changing environmental pressures and expectations of legitimacy. Studies on the topic have tended to focus on universities in North America and Europe, while Chinese universities have received less attention, perhaps due to their status as latecomers to global higher education. Based…

Academic publication is an international phenomenon, annually involving thousands of scholars, publishers, and institutions worldwide. Despite global authorship, influential publications operate primarily zones of geopolitical and economic power in North America and Western Europe. The primary objective of this paper is to examine the effects of…

Neo-liberal capitalism is a representation of values that are detrimental to intellectual inquiry. Market deregulation and consumer choice are relentless in their erosion of academic autonomy and traditions of independent scholarship. Education as a 'positional good' may be weakened more in the post-1992 higher education sector, where…

Branding is now widely used by higher education (HE) institutions, yet questions still surround the transference of private sector concepts to a university context. This article reports on findings from studies that investigated the brand promises of four UK universities--one from each of the HE "mission groups." The evidence indicated…

Students entering English-medium universities frequently struggle to cope with the language demands of their degree programmes, despite having met the English language entry conditions stipulated by their receiving institutions. This can have significant repercussions for the teaching-learning process, for the student experience and for…