This study explores the production, dissemination, and reception of the discourse of educational excellence and internationalisation in Japan's Designated National University Corporation System. The study frames the policy initiative within the longstanding goals of the Japanese government and demonstrates how the work of Michel Foucault helps…

While reference societies as an "externalization" process are often used to justify borrowing policies from abroad, a concerted attempt to understand how "power" influences this process, particularly regarding "semiperipheral" references to the periphery, remains absent. This article explores the externalization…

This project aimed to understand the relationship between theoretical interpretations of multiple values and ideas of the universities from within and across different disciplines and their influence on higher education and its internationalisation within the real international organisation (IO) policy context. With this foundation, I derived a…

The war in Ukraine has opened a Pandora's Box of internationalization concerns that, heretofore, took a backseat to concerns with the effectiveness and sustainability of the field. In analyzing the impact of the war on international higher education, scholars offered various assessments of the conflict's effects, especially in the combatant…

The article discusses recent Higher Education (HE) initiatives to introduce the Sunflower Scheme, which enables students with hidden disabilities to 'discreetly' indicate the existence of a disability to access support. A significant problem related to persons with hidden disabilities lies in their frequent reluctance to disclose their…

A concerted attempt to offer an affect (emotions, desires, moods, and/or attitudes) lens underlying the global university rankings (GURs) phenomenon remains absent. Using two commercial ranker case studies ("Times Higher Education" (THE) and "Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd" (QS)), this article provides a critical policy analysis…

This paper explores the intersection of neoliberal ideologies and language policy in the context of Chinese language education in Oman's higher education system. Drawing on critical discourse analysis and theoretical frameworks of neoliberalism, the study investigates the introduction of Chinese language programmes within Omani universities, with…

We analyze the policies of China and Israel towards students from Hong Kong and East Jerusalem respectively. We demonstrate that they are treated as International students and subject to a form of 'internationalization' designed to consolidate national forms of identity and extend state control over 'troublesome' minorities within the nation…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study is to examine the power differentials that manifest within Kansas public higher education due to policies surrounding territory assignments and degree offerings for Kansas two-year community and technical colleges. The study provides insight into the differential effects of these policies among different…

Taking the "Learning to 'tell Chinese's story well'" narrative prevalent in policies as a starting point, this article draws on data collected from a provincial university and delves into the institutional involvement and support in response to the state's international higher education policies. By foregrounding the underlying…

The concept of policy 'success' has been subject to much contestation. In the Indigenous higher education setting, Indigenous (and non-Indigenous) scholars have brought attention to the relevance of experiential knowledge to understanding the effects of power and race on policy, including how success is theorised. This paper aims to interrogate…

Colleges and universities and members of their communities--administrators, faculty, and students--are caught in the crosshairs of sharply divided sociopolitical debates. Issues at home and abroad have polarized campuses, reflective of national division. With activism alive and well on campuses across the nation, and very much the focus of public…

This article analyses performance-based research evaluation for the higher education sector in a postcolonial context through a Foucauldian lens. Using Hong Kong as an example, this paper examines the formulation of and receptions towards the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). It is argued that Hong Kong academics, especially those working in the…

Although diversity has been a guiding preoccupation in higher education for several decades, organizational diversity "practice," i.e., what happens when colleges and universities implement diversity plans, is rarely a subject of inquiry. As a result, there is relatively little empirical understanding of why diversity has failed to…

This conceptual study examines the neoliberal knowledge economy as a dimension of globalisation policy within East Asian higher education. In exploring the practice of linguistic instrumentalisation, this inquiry aims to demonstrate the influence of English on the hereditary reproduction of social class. Calling on the theories of Pierre Bourdieu…