Universities are increasingly perceived as strategic organizational actors that position themselves in the competition for reputation, resources, and talent. This study asks whether such positioning within the organizational field can explain variance in university governance structures. We quantitatively explore and explain the distribution of…

Since the launch of the double world-class (DWC) project in 2015, China has entered into a new stage of building world-class universities. What makes China give up the existing projects for a new one? Towards the end of its first five-year cycle, has the version 2.0 of building world-class universities in China achieved the desired results? This…

Reputation management (RM) is initially applied within business research, whereas under the premise of commercialisation of higher education (HE), this concept has been widely studied in HE realm. China, as one of the emerging countries in global competitions, RM was initially borrowed from Anglo-Saxon HE, and it gradually developed in Chinese HE.…

It is a general understanding that higher education has characteristics of an "experience good" because the quality cannot be determined before receiving the service, which induces information asymmetry. In response to reducing the asymmetry, external assessment tools like international accreditations have emerged in higher education,…

To explore scientific mobility patterns, we leverage a rich bibliometric dataset on Taiwanese academia. We investigate the movement and productivity of 21,051 highly active researchers who published while affiliated with Taiwanese higher education institutions based on 30 years' worth of publication and affiliation records from 1991 to 2020. The…

This article investigates whether the level of academics' societal engagement (ASE) is higher or lower at universities with leading research university (LRU) status compared with institutions at lower status levels within vertically stratified systems. In a theory-based purposeful sampling, we studied the correlation of LRU-status and ASE in…

Quality assurance (QA) has become an important feature in higher education governance in Europe, with policies for increased harmonization and periodic accreditations as pillars. Still, the shift to emphasize quality development and enhancement entails that QA systems can attend to a wider range of considerations than before. This article studies…

This research is based on the uniqueness of the national tests scores in Colombia where the same students take a standardized test both at the end of high school and at the end of college. We use then the information of the labor market to identify the return to college education once the graduates find a job. The findings suggest that there is…

China has launched several national academic excellence initiatives since the 1990s, aimed at creating world-class universities. These projects contributed to the achievements of Chinese universities over the past decades and deeply influenced the field of Chinese higher education. This study focuses on the most recent Double World-Class (DWC)…

Conventional wisdom suggests that a field of striving compels US public master's institutions (PMIs) to pursue prestige in the academic hierarchy. We posit that, due to their unique histories of democratizing college opportunity, PMIs face conflicting imperatives from two fields: an origin one of equity and another of striving. Our hypotheses are…

Drawing upon the brand-building experience of a young and successful Turkish foundation university, this case study attempts to broaden our understanding of branding in Higher Education (HE). Focusing on the diverse brand conceptualizations, brand management principles and brand strategies that are deployed to circumvent barriers to successful…

This study examines the Korean Government's policy scheme of setting up the World-Class University (WCU) Project by investigating the perceptions of major actors, including WCU scholars and government officials. In-depth interviews were held with 18 WCU scholars and three government officials. Our findings suggest that the limits of the…

The primary aim of the paper is to examine how global university rankings have influenced the higher education sector in Taiwan from the perspective of academics. A qualitative case study method was used to examine how university ranking influenced the Taiwanese higher education at institutional and individual levels, respectively, thereby…

Assumptions have developed around the benefits of internationalisation; for example, that it promotes cultural integration and harmony, improves the quality of education and research, and improves country and institutional reputations internationally. A range of coercive, normative and mimetic influences have pushed most small states with mass or…

Since the mid-1990s, the pressure of globalization and the pressing demands of a knowledge economy led to a series of educational reforms. The focus of these was the promotion of quality education and massification of higher education. After the Asian financial crisis in 1997, the governments in different parts of Asia have implemented…