A free speech recession has taken hold in American higher education, with students and faculty self-censoring at historic rates and professors facing sanctions for controversial views more often than during the height of McCarthyism in the 1950s. Using 2025 free speech rankings of 251 campuses from the Foundation for Individual Rights and…

We offer a Cultural Studies approach--a transdisciplinary field of study critically examining contemporary culture--to illuminate the roles of cultural producers and consumers in mediating the meaning of university rankings amidst a global media landscape. Using the case study of Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and drawing on the concepts of: (1)…

Located at the place where excessive entitlement and the "best-loved self" intersect, this research illustrates what happens when the excessive entitlement of one educator trumps that of another. Then, in a perverse sort of way, those who are excessively entitled may even imply that the other is acting excessively entitled. This is how…

This study assesses the technical efficiency of higher education institutions in terms of labor market outcomes for recent graduates, employing a comparative analysis of three distinct methodological approaches. Using a sample of recent graduates of Colombian universities who earned their degrees between 2007 and 2011, we estimated the…

A pervasive issue in the school choice literature is whether schools of choice cream skim students by enrolling high-achieving, less-challenging, or less-costly students. Similarly, schools of choice may "push out" low-achieving, more-challenging, or more-costly students. Using longitudinal student-level data from Indiana, we created…

This study explores the mechanisms that underlie the effect of school marketing strategies on parents' perceived school attractiveness, particularly emphasizing the mediating role of parents' perceptions of being welcomed in urban schools. Additionally, we investigated how schools' marketing strategies work differently among parents with different…

Whereas a growing number of studies evidence that research quality notions and evaluative practices are field- and context-specific, many focus on single evaluative practices or moments. This paper introduces the concept of "quality landscape" to capture dynamics of interrelated quality notions, evaluative moments and practices in a…

Prospective students and their families use college rankings to navigate their higher education options. Rising tuition and fees have made the college decision more fraught. Recently, the major college ranking providers have revised their methodologies to reflect costs and other considerations. These revisions raise important questions about the…

Is the ideal of a one-size-fits-all university model--where universities are capable of successfully performing all competencies simultaneously--ever achievable? Has the balance between teaching and research activities grown even more fragile or is such a balance unfeasible? In this paper, we review studies of institutional diversity in higher…

Many institutions of higher education are better known for their athletics programs than their academic offerings. Should a crisis arise, athletics scandal and notoriety can threaten the future trajectory and financial health of the campus. As such, lapses in intercollegiate athletics oversight can create fractures and tensions within institutions…

In the twenty-first century, free speech and its twin, free inquiry have increasingly come under fire, and to a far greater degree than in the 1950s, censors come from within academia. Various forms of critical theory have gained substantial influence in U.S. higher education, where adherents use their power to brand free speech and free inquiry…

This paper explores the way in which elite students from Germany and Romania understand the role of talent, effort, and structural factors in shaping educational success and failure. The image of a successful student aligns with the requirements of the selection processes, with Romanian students emphasising effort, and German students projecting…

With the development of information and communication technology, project-based learning (PBL) has become an important pedagogical approach. Group leaders are critical in PBL, and prestige influences learner leadership. Regulation affects learners' prestige, but research on their relationship is lacking. Through content analysis and epistemic…

The rapid growth of private higher education institutions (PHEIs) in Namibia has highlighted significant challenges in managing academic staff performance. This study explores these challenges through a qualitative, phenomenological approach, using semi-structured interviews with 19 participants, including academic staff, human resource (HR)…

Private higher education institutions in Ghana offering continuing and professional education have multiple affiliations with diverse public and foreign universities as a result of varied programs on offer. The article sought to explore the benefits as well as the challenges that mentee private higher education institutions face in the affiliation…