The dominant global discourse in higher education now focuses on world-class universities inevitably located predominantly in North America, Europe and, increasingly, East Asia. The rest of the world, including Africa, is left to play catch-up. But that discourse should focus rather on the tensions, even contradictions, between excellence and engagement with which all universities must grapple. Here the African experience has much to offer the high-participation and generously resourced systems of the so-called developed world. This book offers a critical review of that experience, and so makes a major contribution to our understanding of higher education.
This book examines the quality assessment movement in academic scholarship, as globalization prompts a search for global measures of university services and output. It gauges productivity in terms of universal publication metrics, and considers ranking and research productivity from a comparative perspective. The book considers the use of the “impact factor” as a gauge of publication value, noting that this less important in countries lacking central government appropriations to universities and to research. It argues that pressure to publish in certain journals, and to research topics of interest to English language readers, has been felt differentially in English-language systems, compared to others, but also that performance pressures fall more on younger, more juniour, contract staff, than on senior and tenured professors. It problematizes international comparisons of quality, and analyses the benefits of a zone of ideas and metrics in a common language – promoting international mobility, efficiency, collaboration - but also the costs which are rarely borne equally across countries, languages and cultures. The book provides a strong, evidence-based contribution to major debates in contemporary higher education reforms and the measurement of academic output.
Reviews "This volume brings together excellent scholarship and innovative policy discussion to demonstrate the essential role of higher education in the development of Africa and of the world at large. Based on deep knowledge of the university system in several African countries, this book will reshape the debate on development in the global information economy for years to come. It should be mandatory reading for academics, policy-makers and concerned citizens, in Africa and elsewhere.” Manuel Castells, Professor Emeritus, University of California at Berkeley, Laureate of the Holberg Prize 2012 and of the Balzan Prize 2013 "The dominant global discourse in higher education now focuses on ‘world-class’ universities – inevitably located predominantly in North America, Europe and, increasingly, East Asia. The rest of the world, including Africa, is left to play ‘catch-up’. But that discourse should focus rather on the tensions, even contradictions, between ‘excellence’ and ‘engagement’ with which all universities must grapple. Here the African experience has much to offer the high-participation and generously resourced systems of the so-called ‘developed’ world. This book offers a critical review of that experience, and so makes a major contribution to our understanding of higher education.” Sir Peter Scott, former editor of Times Higher Education and Professor of Higher Education Studies, University College London, Institute of Education
The book studies transformations of European universities in the context of globalization and Europeanization, the questioning of the foundations of the «Golden Age» of the Keynesian welfare state, public sector reforms, demographic changes, the massification and diversification of higher education, and the emergence of knowledge economies. Such phenomena as academic entrepreneurialism and diversified channels of knowledge exchange in European universities are linked to transformations of the state and changes in public sector services. The first, contextual part of the book studies the changing state/university relationships, and the second, empirically-informed part draws from several recent large-scale comparative European research projects.
Universities are fundamental to the contemporary knowledge economy. They directly and indirectly support economic growth in both developing and advanced economies. In addition to their traditional teaching and research functions, they often also have important roles in supporting regional development and urban regeneration, as well as involvement in fostering international relations, in , cultural developments and in enhancing social cohesion. While higher education institutions in many countries are often assigned key roles in economic and social policy prescriptions, exactly what those roles are and how they should be carried out are often unclear. Universities and the Knowledge Economy provides a much-needed theoretical and empirical analysis of these functions, taking a critical look at the complex connections between knowledge creation, the knowledge economy, and higher education today. This volume: Brings together work on these topics by international experts, reporting and analysing recent policy developments and research Shows the significance of the university’s role in the knowledge economy, and the precise roles that it can play. Presents a range of studies showing how universities interact with other knowledge producers and users, and how these interactions can be managed to achieve the most effective applications of knowledge Universities are multi-faceted institutions that everywhere are accorded special status. Universities and the Knowledge Economy examines how these institutions carry our knowledge production and application, and how their distinctive characters affect what they do. . This title is of both intellectual and operational relevance, and would be suitable for those interested in higher education and policy and practice, and in the theory of higher education. Paul Temple is Reader in Higher Education Management and Co-Director of the Centre for Higher Education Studies at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK.
In this provocative and broad-ranging work, the authors argue that the ways in which knowledge - scientific, social and cultural - is produced are undergoing fundamental changes at the end of the twentieth century. They claim that these changes mark a distinct shift into a new mode of knowledge production which is replacing or reforming established institutions, disciplines, practices and policies. Identifying features of the new mode of knowledge production - reflexivity, transdisciplinarity, heterogeneity - the authors show how these features connect with the changing role of knowledge in social relations. While the knowledge produced by research and development in science and technology is accorded central concern, the
This book examines the influence of an important body of international literature on the development of post-apartheid policies in higher education and training and in science and technology. The book also examines a related phenomenon, the so-called 'massification' and democratisation of higher education world-wde over the past two decades.
This book primarily addresses the variety and gaps in higher education across the globe, concentrating on the challenges to transitional and developing countries. It addresses the related issues of research capacity, research productivity, and research relevance and utility.
Mindful of divisive labels in constructions of the ‘Middle East and North Africa’ (MENA) and of ‘Europe’, the editors and contributors of Knowledge production in higher education reflexively immerse themselves in an investigation of how knowledge about these regions is produced at higher educational establishments. Zooming in on mutual scholarship about ‘Europe’ and/or ‘the MENA’ opens up a wide range of possibilities for supplanting visions of so-called traditional Orientalists, to abandon the sets of magnifying glasses through which the Other is studied. For those interested in the decolonisation of academia and issues of positionality this is a must read. This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4, Quality education
This book investigates and critically interprets the underrepresentation of the global South in global knowledge production. The author analyses the serious bias towards scholars and institutions from this region: he argues that this phenomenon causes serious disadvantages not only for authors and institutions, but global science as well by impeding the flow of fresh, innovative scholarship. This book uses a combination of field theory and world-systems analysis to explain the motives and dynamics behind the geopolitical and societal inequalities in the system of global knowledge production. Subsequently, the author offers several solutions by which these inequalities could be reduced, or even eliminated. This book will be of interest and value to scholars of knowledge inequalities, and knowledge production in the global South. “Márton Demeter’s monograph invokes rich anecdotal, empirical and scientometric evidence to delineate the contours of a world system that preserves the dominance of Western knowledge and scholars and the westernisation or peripheralisation of the rest – a system defined by geopolitical and material inequalities, socio-economic class differences, institutional elitism and publishing biases. Demeter’s work counters narratives that present academia as meritocratic and that justify disparities in world publications on the basis of pure rigour, exposing rather norms and values that perpetuate a western elitist system and peripheralise those who happen to lack this cultural capital. Demeter’s work adds to an expanding field of research documenting how Anglophone standards and biases in journal indexing, peer review and editorial board recruitment marginalise consistently the Global South. His practical and concrete suggestions to subvert this system of horizontal and vertical inequalities could not be timelier and provides momentum to decolonisation movements in higher education across the world.” —Dr Romina Istratii, SOAS University of London, UK “Márton Demeter is a scholar dedicated to revealing the inequality in academic publishing and a strong advocate for scholars from the Global South. This book is an epitome of his effort on this cause. Demeter utilizes his wealth of data including authorships, citations, journal publishers, editorial review board compositions, the reviewers and the editors of journals as strong evidence of inequality with his three-dimensional model of academic stratification. This book is a must-read for scholars both in the Global North and the Global South to reflect on the current state of academic knowledge gatekeeping and production. It will spark a dialogue between scholars to address the dominance of the Global North especially in the field of communication.” —Professor Louisa Ha, Bowling Green State University, USA “Márton Demeter’s analysis and critique of the unequal structure of global knowledge production is a powerful contribution to the global justice movement with dramatic implications for what academics in both the Global North and the Global South can do to help science and the humanities live up to their claims of meritocracy and universality. Demeter employs a useful critical combination of the world-systems perspective and Bourdieusian field theory to organize the results of his careful and sophisticated empirical studies of global knowledge production. He is an intrepid protagonist of a more egalitarian human future.” —Professor Christopher Chase-Dunn, University of California, Riverside, USA
