This volume addresses the conceptions of actors and actorhood in higher education research. It explores the range of actors that are (or should be) recognized and theorized in higher education research, the processes that shape actorhood in the higher education reforms and explores the relations between the actors and higher education reforms. Drawing on a range of theoretical frameworks and research projects, the volume provides in-depth analyses of higher education actors and reform issues through institutional, system or international comparative perspective. The volume celebrates and is in conversation with the intellectual contributions of Professor Pavel Zgaga whose work advances our understanding of actors and actorhood in higher education and higher education reforms.
This volume offers a comprehensive discussion of implementation analysis in higher education and an extensive review of relevant recent literature. Coverage analyzes the effective and specific complexities of the implementation of higher education policies in several countries, including: Australia, Austria, Finland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Romania hosts the 2012 Bologna / European Higher Education Area Ministerial Conference and the Third Bologna Policy Forum. In preparation for these meetings, The Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) organised the Future of Higher Education - Bologna Process Researchers’ Conference (FOHE-BPRC) in Bucharest on 17-19 October 2011, with the support of the European University Association (EUA) and the Romanian National Committee for UNESCO. The conference brought the voices of researchers into international-level policy making in higher education. The results of the conference are presented in this book. Until now, empirical evidence supporting policies and reforms in higher education has often been a matter of local or regional focus. The development of a pan-European process in higher education policy drives a need to explore wider research topics on which to base policies. This book offers an unprecedented opportunity for higher education researchers to interact and contribute to the political process shaping the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), and to national policy agendas in more than 100 participant countries for the 2012 ministerial events. The book collects more than 50 articles focusing on vital issues in European higher education. These are arranged in sections addressing the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) Principles; Teaching and Learning; Quality Assurance; Mobility; Higher Education Governance in the EHEA; Funding of Higher Education; Diversification of Higher Education Missions; Higher Education Futures and Foresight.
Higher education is in transition. On the one hand, over the last decades it has become politically and economically more important and thus also an object of reforms. On the other hand, higher education has become less special and is no longer able to justify its unique governance arrangements. This volume presents a collection of contributions that go beyond reform agendas as such and focus on the effects of reforms at all relevant levels in higher education systems. It is organised in four themes – education, research, governance, and academic profession – with a variety of levels of analysis, theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches and geographical foci. The topics in focus include the possible impact of latest national and European initiatives, changes in the primary processes (education and research) on the levels of institutions, professions and for individuals as well as higher education dynamics in contexts often overlooked in the literature (e.g. Africa). The aim is to ‘take stock’ of the growing knowledge basis with respect to higher education with a special focus on the influence of reforms on the key aspects of higher education.
This open access book investigates the effects of changes in leadership and managerial structures of Nordic universities resulting from reforms in the last decade. It builds on a rich, comparative dataset across a multiplicity of system-wide (macro) and organisational (meso and micro) dimensions, namely: reform or policy initiatives; drivers, aims, instruments and actors; structural changes within universities; strategic and performance management; the rise of accountability regimes; incentive and evaluative systems; and perceived changes/effects by the key actors involved, at various levels. The volume provides critical insights to the larger phenomenon of change and adaptation within the public sector. Its findings and implications are of relevance to social science researchers, policy makers, managers/administrators, and external stakeholders.
The volume ‘Reform of Higher Education in Europe’ is published in celebration of CHEPS’ 25th anniversary. All contributors to this book are working at CHEPS, and bring their extensive knowledge of the deep-seated reforms and changes to the field of higher education and research over the last 25 years. The chapters are each devoted to a detailed policy analysis deeply rooted in CHEPS’ quarter-century programme of theoretical and empirical research. Some contributions cover key themes of concern since CHEPS’ early years, including state-university relationships, quality assurance and funding. Other contributions cover more contemporary higher education policy issues, including European reform initiatives (innovation, the Bologna Process, doctoral training and the Erasmus programme) and debates around higher education institutions’ evolving functions, including the university’s third mission and the research function of universities of applied sciences. What unifies all chapters is their recognition that policy success is dependent on smart implementation grounded in a comprehensive understanding of highly complex policy processes. The book as a whole offers clear descriptions and analyses of how policy processes are implemented through co-ordinated institutional and stakeholder interventions. This volume seeks to enhance academic and policy-maker understanding of Europe’s evolving higher education system as it emerges as a cornerstone of the contemporary knowledge society.
This volume presents the state of the art with respect to the most important elements of the Bologna process. The reflections on the past are also used to fuel the debate on the next decade.
Romania is an active player in various international higher education areas, while undergoing a series of higher education reforms within its national framework. The Higher Education Evidence Based Policy Making: a necessary premise for progress in Romania project was implemented by the Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) in the timeframe February 2012 – February 2014, being co-financed by the European Social Fund through the Operational Programme “Administrative Capacity Development”. The project aimed to increase the capacity of public administration for evidence-based policy making in the field of higher education, while focusing on good practices at international level and impact assessment. With the contribution of the national and international experts, the project has generated a number of analysis and studies on the existing higher education public policies (quality assurance, internationalisation, equity, data collection, the Bologna Process, financing of higher education). Based on the results of the project, the book will reunite a number of policy research articles which would tap into the innovative aspects of the project's activities and provide a concise overview of what good practices can be drawn from the empirical research conducted in this project. The book will therefore aim to improve the information on Romanian higher education reforms, as well as on the concrete evidence-based policy proposals which could be transformed into future policy solutions in the Romanian higher education system.
Higher education reforms have been on the agenda of Western European countries for 25 years, trying to deal with self governed professional bureaucracies politically weakened by massification when an emerging common understanding enhanced their role as major actors in knowledge based economies. While university systems are deeply embedded in national settings, the ex post rationale of still on-going reforms is surprisingly uniform and “de-nationalized”. They promote (1) the “organizational turn” of universities, to varying extent substituting collegial loosely coupled entities by “integrated, goal-oriented entities deliberately choosing their own actions (and therefore open to differentiation), that can thus be held responsible for what they do” (2) the diversification of stakeholders, supposedly offering solutions to problems as various as the democratisation of universities, the shrinking of State budget resources and the diversification of university missions offering answers to changes in the making and in the use of science. When it comes to accounting for these reforms, two grand narratives of public management share the floor. NPM implies a strengthening of the capacity of the core State to direct public services organizations through management by objectives and results or contractualization, assessment, evaluation and. “Governance” focuses on “network-based” governance systems, where coordinating power and control are collectively shared between the major ‘social actors or partners’ at all levels of the decision-making system. Our results suggest that all higher education systems under study were more or less transformed according to both these narratives. It is therefore needed to understand how they combine or create contradictions. This leads us to test a third neo-weberian model. This model reaffirms the role of the State, of representative democracy, (central, regional and local), of public law (suitably modernized), preserves the idea of a public service with a distinctive status, culture and terms and conditions. It shifts from an internal orientation to bureaucratic rules towards an external orientation in meeting citizens’ needs and wishes by means of standardization of work processes and their products, based on a distinctive public service and a particular legal order survived as the foundations beneath the various packages of modernizing reforms. This book traces the national dynamics of public policies, organizational design and steering tools in seven European higher education and research systems, using these narratives to interpret and test the actual changes and the degree of national specificities and European convergence. This book is not a sum of national chapters like other presumably comparative. It does not intend to tell once again the story of the transformation of the relationships between the state and universities. It tries to use Higher education system to discuss issues on state intervention and steering and more generally the NPM, governance and neo-weberian models in a specific field. Furthermore, this book intends breaking the walls between specialists in higher education and specialist in public management and research policy. This well rooted division of labour is less that ever justified as the university mission in research (fundamental, applied, strategic) is underscored by commentors and reformers themselves. For that reason, we have chosen to observe the consequences of the dynamics of public policies, organizational design and steering tools on two specific issues related to the development of research training and organizing within universities: the transformation of research funding on the one hand and the expansion of graduate studies and doctoral schools on the other.
Bridging the gap between higher education research and policy making was always a challenge, but the recent calls for more evidence-based policies have opened a window of unprecedented opportunity for researchers to bring more contributions to shaping the future of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Encouraged by the success of the 2011 first edition, Romania and Armenia have organised a 2nd edition of the Future of Higher Education – Bologna Process Researchers’ Conference (FOHE-BPRC) in November 2014, with the support of the Italian Presidency of the European Union and as part of the official EHEA agenda. Reuniting over 170 researchers from more than 30 countries, the event was a forum to debate the trends and challenges faced by higher education today and look at the future of European cooperation in higher education. The research volumes offer unique insights regarding the state of affairs of European higher education and research, as well as forward-looking policy proposals. More than 50 articles focus on essential themes in higher education: Internationalization of higher education; Financing and governance; Excellence and the diversification of missions; Teaching, learning and student engagement; Equity and the social dimension of higher education; Education, research and innovation; Quality assurance, The impacts of the Bologna Process on the EHEA and beyond and Evidence-based policies in higher education. "The Bologna process was launched at a time of great optimism about the future of the European project – to which, of course, the reform of higher education across the continent has made a major contribution. Today, for the present, that optimism has faded as economic troubles have accumulated in the Euro-zone, political tensions have been increased on issues such as immigration and armed conflict has broken out in Ukraine. There is clearly a risk that, against this troubled background, the Bologna process itself may falter. There are already signs that it has been downgraded in some countries with evidence of political withdrawal. All the more reason for the voice of higher education researchers to be heard. Since the first conference they have established themselves as powerful stakeholders in the development of the EHEA, who are helping to maintain the momentum of the Bologna process. Their pivotal role has been strengthened by the second Bucharest conference." Peter Scott, Institute of Education, London (General Rapporteur of the FOHE-BPRC first edition)
