Ethnographic research in a further education College (Borough College) between 2000 and 2005 assessed the impact of performance indicators (PIs) within a department teaching GCSEs and A-levels. Research focused on PIs integral to the Learning and Skills Council funding formula, the Common Inspection Framework and newspaper league tables, and the…

This paper draws upon two research projects to evaluate a decade of reform concerning the professionalisation of further education teachers, and discusses future prospects under the new coalition government. It suggests that policy initiatives to regulate further education (FE) teachers have taken place within an industrial or occupational…

Marketisation and standards-based reforms are the two policy levers that have been promoted in education systems across much of the world in the past quarter of a century. The claim that is made on their behalf is that these mechanisms are the means whereby longstanding inequalities in the access to educational goods can be ameliorated. This paper…

Politics, economics, and technology have conspired to make this an exceptionally challenging time for American higher education. Some critics claim that costs are out of control in traditional public and private nonprofit higher education. They believe these institutions will soon go the way of the railroads as for-profit institutions displace…

"Privatising the Public University: The Case of Law" is the first full-length critical study examining the impact of the dramatic reforms that have swept through universities over the last two decades. Drawing on extensive research and interviews in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Canada, Margaret Thornton considers the impact of the…

Thirty years ago federal policy underwent a major change through the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980, which fostered greater uniformity in the way research agencies treat inventions arising from the work they sponsor. Before the Act, if government agencies funded university research, the funding agency retained ownership of the knowledge and technologies…

Much emphasis is currently placed on the impact of marketisation on higher education and the damage it has caused to forms of academic and student identity. Evident is a concern that much of value in these identities has been lost amidst the pressure of audit, performance indicators and consumerism. This paper explores the changes to these…

This article, by Brahm Norwich of the Graduate School of Education, University of Exeter, sets the recent legislative changes in the special education system in England, the Children and Families Act (2014), in the context of wider changes in the school system, such as changes in curriculum-assessment, the governance of schools and inspection…

Urbanization is an issue of universal concern today distinctly affecting the supply, content, and orientation of education. Based on a field study in a city in East China, the article argues that rural-urban migration in the process of urbanization created private sectors in education enterprises that were in sync with the urban community…

In this article, the authors argue that at the center of every English language learning moment lies desire: desire for the language; for the identities that English represents; for capital, power, and images that are associated with English; for what is believed to lie beyond the doors that English unlocks. However, despite its centrality within…

This paper examines the internationalization of postsecondary education in Australia and Canada. The author discusses the contextual similarities and differences between the two countries, the shifting rationale "from aid to trade" behind Australia's internationalization attempts and some of the reasons for Australia's success.…

Factors generating change in European higher education have been multilayered, interrelated and often common throughout the continent. The article, drawing from current research and policy debates, discusses the three issues: marketization, privatization, and the competition for public funding; conflicting demands and the teaching/research divide…

This article analyzes the organizational development of freier zusammenschluss von studentInnenschaften (fzs), the national union of students in Germany from its foundation until 2010. It situates it within the variety of student organizations acting on behalf of students within the multi-level system of higher education governance in Germany.…

American research universities frequently obtain and license patents to their faculty members' inventions. While university licensing is carefully tracked and thoroughly studied, little is known about university decisions to assertively litigate their patents through filing patent infringement lawsuits in federal court. Which universities…

This dissertation aims to provide a better understanding of the technology licensing practices of academic research institutions. The study identifies time durations in licensing and incorporates these into a model to evaluate licensing performance. Performance is measured by the efficiency of an institution's technology licensing process and…