Declining enrollment quickly raises financial challenges within colleges and universities, such as decreased tuition and fee revenues, costs that can be difficult to nimbly control, and reputational risk. For public institutions within the same state, declining enrollment can also have a secondary impact: increasing competition. While a state's…

Initiatives to build research universities to have world-class universities, the creator and the disseminator of scientific knowledge in knowledge-based economies, are among the most important policy reactions in higher education systems. With an increase in demands on greater accountability, transparency, and efficiency, studies investigating the…

The political, social, and institutional environments in which contemporary universities operate have changed rather dramatically over the past two decades in ways that threaten the resilience of the academic core, both in its ability to map knowledge comprehensively and also to maintain a balance between the branches of the humanities, social…

Once the unifying center of American higher education, religion has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past 220 years. From its origins as the core of a unified understanding of truth as it was taught at the nation's first colleges to its current presence on the periphery of campus life, religion has both shaped and been shaped by the…

This mixed methods dissertation investigates the impact that cost-disaggregating tools like the Delaware Cost Study (DCS) have on the expenditure patterns at large, public research universities. It draws on public budgeting and higher education finance literature to form a theory of action that hypothesizes that expense management at such…

Globalisation, changes in technology and transportation, and isomorphic trends in the sector emphasise the need to identify the diversity of higher education institutions. As a response, classification mechanisms emerged in higher education in recent decades. While many studies on classification focus on the types and methodology, the examination…

In this critical case study, we had the opportunity to observe how institutional forces and human agency represented by organisational actors' shared perception of identity negotiate their differences over their definitions of quality in higher education. In other words, we examined how the organisational identity of a research university…

Academic structure shapes and reflects institutional behaviors as well as the work done in, and outputs of, higher education organizations (HEOs). Despite this critical role, research on boundaries within academic structure is limited, even in work focusing on the relative presence of core and peripheral disciplines. We thus lack an understanding…

Supporting scholars is crucial for promoting academic development in higher education institutions (HEIs). While organisational support for academic careers has been widely researched in various contexts, little attention has been paid to factors influencing Chinese scholars' perspectives on such support, which could significantly impact their…

Despite its many benefits, curriculum review has yet to become a widespread practice in many areas of higher education. Previous research suggests that this is because of a lack of faculty time and expertise to conduct curriculum reviews independently. As such, this action research study builds on the existing literature to explore the utility of…

This article examines Higher Education students' experiences of academic reading as a grudging act: something that is performed reluctantly or half-heartedly, because it has to be done. Drawing on group interviews with 30 social science undergraduates, registered at a research-intensive UK university, we offer a reflexive thematic analysis of…

The higher education sector in the UAE has expanded exponentially with due attention to quality assurance supported by CAA. Internationalisation dynamics has added to quality enhancement efforts in the country. This study explores the impacts of internationalisation for quality assurance in higher education and it particularly accounts…

Institution-wide curriculum change is a costly, time-intensive and politically fraught undertaking. It is a challenge identifying who has responsibility for the curriculum and who is empowered to change it. The unbundling of the traditional tri-partite academic role of teaching, research and service leaves a gap of who in those communities decides…

Classifications are a basic tool for research, which allow summarizing the diversity of objects in a number of categories that fits the cognitive abilities of the human mind. Their relevance for higher education is emphasized by the differentiation of institutional profiles. Yet, unlike in the US, there is currently no classification of European…

Little is known about the use of multipurpose teaching portfolios. In this study we examined teachers' general perceptions of a mandatory and publicly available multipurpose teaching portfolio at a research-intensive university with a survey design and a mixed-method approach. Responses from a representative sample of 384 teachers from the…