ABSTRACT Faced with higher education (HE) expansion and limited public funding, governments worldwide use student loans to shift costs onto graduates. Income-contingent loans (ICLs) are considered a potential solution, protecting debtors from excessive loan repayments, financial hardship, and default. Governments adopting ICLs promote them as benign while encouraging indebtedness and normalising it. Yet, policymakers and researchers largely ignore the realities for graduates of repaying ICL debt. Very little is known about the actual consequences of ICL debt for graduates. This paper explores the impact of ICL debt on graduates’ lives, drawing on 47 in-depth qualitative interviews with English graduates 10–12 years after graduation. Our findings reveal a continuum of experiences: while most graduates experience little to no impact, a significant minority of graduates face adverse effects, restricting their life choices. For these graduates, contrary to policy rationalities, ICLs’ protective features fail. We argue that this failure arise in part because ICLs seek to alleviate the financial burden of debt but not its psychological burden. Student loan policies globally need to recognise the potential negative impact of student debt and seek to better protect vulnerable graduates from both the financial and psychological burden of debt.

ABSTRACT This study delves into factors contributing to the imbalanced development of higher education, which has led to the situation that despite higher education expansion, the universities’ contribution to society has only improved a little. The study aims to understand this paradox and its policy implications, particularly in a developing country context, through a case study of Iran. We adopted an interpretive research paradigm to explore participants’ experiences and perspectives, emphasising qualitative inquiry. Specifically, we applied a basic qualitative research approach, focusing on thematic data analysis to understand underlying meanings and patterns. We conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 23 professionals from Iran's higher education system, including executive experts and academic scholars. The data were analysed using qualitative theme analysis with the thematic network approach. This study's findings reveal the intricate web of external and internal factors that can influence society's imbalanced higher education development. This research has various practical implications, which are crucial in balancing higher education development, including promoting long-term university development planning, nurturing academic creativity, and fostering a culture of learning and social commitment among academics. The findings of the study hold critical policy implications. By promoting national dialogues via universities, establishing accountability measures for policies set by political entities in higher education management, improving science and technology demands in the national economy, and advancing science and technology diplomacy, policymakers can enhance the positive impact of investing in higher education for society. This study shows, perhaps for the first time to some extent, why quantitative growth in universities may not lead to a higher quality of education and a more significant contribution of higher education to society's development.

ABSTRACT The scale, nature and impact of students’ experiences of hate crime and incidents have been comprehensively documented over the last decade. There is, however, limited research on how universities are responding to such non-academic misconducts. Therefore, through an in-depth qualitative analysis of policies on addressing students’ experiences of non-academic misconducts at 18 English universities, this paper aims to examine current universities’ approaches to students’ experiences of hate crime and incidents. Through a conventional content analysis of the policy structure, definitions and example of behaviours, findings demonstrate the existence of a hierarchy of non-academic misconducts, limited recognition for hate incidents and a heavy dependence on legislative provisions in existing policies. Guided by theoretical propositions of critical victimology, a reflexive thematic analysis of interviews with 36 members of staff from the professional services and students’ union officers at 29 English universities illuminates how power dynamics between policy actors influenced the ways in which universities’ policies were developed. Based on the new findings, this paper concludes with recommendations to support the future development of universities’ policies for addressing students’ experiences of hate crime and incidents.

ABSTRACT Can the open universities in the UK and Greece be seen as representing two ideologies of openness? That is the main question this article poses. I argue that these institutions, shaped by their unique social, political and historical contexts, embody different interpretations of openness. The Open University in the UK was founded with a commitment to openness that aimed to democratise education and foster social equality, while the Hellenic Open University in Greece aligns its openness with the goals of developing a knowledge society within the framework of European integration. Despite these differences, both institutions share a complex ideological foundation that positions openness as a central, albeit divergent, guiding principle. However, what shapes the article is not this argument per se, but trying critically to reflect on the idea of openness as an epistemic and political position, and the ways in which the epistemology of higher education is embedded in the politics of both national reforms and international political relations.

ABSTRACT This study empirically examines the predictive relationship between Institutional Autonomy (IA) and Academic Freedom (AF) whilst controlling for the mediating effect of corporate governance (CG) amongst selected higher education institutions in Ghana. It also looks at the difference between females and males and their perceptions of the predictive relationship under the study. Using the explanatory research design, structured questionnaires were administered to 128 teaching and non-teaching staff of selected higher education institutions in Ghana. Structured equation modeling (SEM) via Smart PLS 4.0 was used for analyzing the research questions. The study finds that institutional autonomy is statistically significant in predicting academic freedom and corporate governance effectively mediates the predictive relationship between institutional autonomy and academic freedom. In order to create a viable environment for academic work and ingenuity to thrive, the management of higher education institutions should allow autonomy in areas such as organization, academics, finance and staffing in order to improve academic freedom. This study is founded on the theories of the academic oligarchy model, the stakeholder theory and the gender schema theory the study elucidates how corporate governance significantly mediates the predictive relationship between institutional autonomy and academic freedom within the context of higher education in Ghana.

ABSTRACT How much postsecondary education costs families, and how much is publicly financed, varies immensely across countries and the proper balance is hotly debated. The United States, despite having a highly privately financed system, is home to hundreds of local and provincial (i.e. state) ‘free college' programmes. I review the growing literature on these programmes, discussing postulated causal mechanisms through which they may work and summarizing effects on students, communities and colleges, with an emphasis on causal evidence. Most proposed mechanisms lack empirical support or are implausible for most existing programmes. Programmes are consistently found to change postsecondary destinations and increase enrolment at eligible colleges. Less consistently, they boost postsecondary participation and gross educational attainment, while evidence for positive effects on postsecondary performance and attainment net of participation is mixed. There is insufficient or inconsistent evidence for effects on secondary school performance, post-college income, or inequality reduction according to gender, race, or socioeconomic status.

ABSTRACT The inherent features of universities and junior colleges in Korea may be non-normative based on institution type, suggesting the blurring of organisational identities. This raises concern amid Korea’s increasing popularity as an international education destination. There might be confusion in the global marketplace from the perspective of students who interact with and learn about the identities of Korean institutions. We are already alarmed by a peculiar development in some international students unintentionally enrolling at junior colleges in pursuit of traditional university degrees and experiences. We employ a mixed-methods analysis combining a national statistical overview and the content analysis of institutional websites to interrogate the organisational identities of Korea’s universities and colleges. Institutional differences, which exist, are masked by the orchestration of culturally mediated messages signalling institutional activities and social roles that are increasingly blurred. We offer thoughts on what institutional isomorphism and homogenised identity representations indicate about society and national policy, in Korea and beyond. We conclude with a discussion of the market utilities and challenges linked to institutional sameness. Institutional isomorphism is not necessarily undesirable, but may be used a policy lever to correct market failures.

ABSTRACT Despite recent Chinese government policies aiming to balance international and national publishing patterns, the enduring impact on China's global engagements, publications, and collaborations remains uncertain. Analyzing 8,962 publications from Scopus between 2016 and 2020, the paper assesses publication, collaboration, and citation patterns among the top 500 productive China-affiliated scholars within Economics, Education, and Political Science. Results indicate that publications are primarily in Western journals, with Political Science often focusing on China-specific issues, suggesting potential ‘silos’. Co-authorship patterns show Western dominance, with diverse international collaborations in Education and Economics, but more national-focused in Political Science. The paper concludes with discussions on practical implications and study limitations.

ABSTRACT Debates about the employability of graduates in policy and research have increasingly focused on graduates’ employment outcomes and the development of generic employability skills. This suggests that the knowledge that students engage with in their degrees is far less important than the generic attributes they develop, which promotes a knowledge-blind conception of ‘graduateness’. This article draws on data from a seven-year longitudinal study of students who studied chemistry and chemical engineering in England, South Africa and the USA, following them up to four years after graduation. Graduates’ reflections on the most important things they gained from their degree centred on the knowledge they engaged in as part of their undergraduate degree and how this shaped their way of engaging with the world. This has two important implications. First, it highlights the ways in which the focus on generic employability and employment outcomes obscures the way in which ‘graduateness’ depends on the relations to knowledge that graduates have developed through their studies. Second, this means that focusing on graduate outcomes without taking account of these relations to knowledge provides policymakers, institutional leaders and prospective students with a profoundly misleading account of the educational outcomes of undergraduate degrees.