Universities In Countries Research Articles

Economic impact of entrepreneurial universities’ activities: An exploratory study of the United Kingdom

Throughout economic history, institutions have established the rules that shape human interaction. In this sense, political, socio-cultural, and economic issues respond to particular forces: managed economy or entrepreneurial economy. In the entrepreneurial economy, the dominant production factor is knowledge capital that is the source of competitive advantage, which is complemented by entrepreneurship capital, representing the capacity to engage in and generate entrepreneurial activity. Thus, an entrepreneurial economy generates scenarios in which its members can explore and exploit economic opportunities and knowledge to promote new entrepreneurial phenomena that have not been previously visualised. In this context, the entrepreneurial university serves as a conduit of spillovers contributing to economic and social development through its multiple missions of teaching, research, and entrepreneurial activities. In particular, the outcomes of its missions are associated with the determinants of production functions (e.g. human capital, knowledge capital, social capital, and entrepreneurship capital). All these themes are still considerate potentially in the research agenda in academic entrepreneurship literature. This paper modestly tries to contribute to a better understanding of the economic impact of entrepreneurial universities’ teaching, research, and entrepreneurial activities. Taking an endogenous growth perspective, the proposed conceptual model is tested using data collected from 2005 to 2007 for 147 universities located in 74 Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics-3 (NUTS-3) regions of the United Kingdom. The results of this exploratory analysis show the positive and significant economic impact of teaching, research, and entrepreneurial activities. Interestingly, the higher economic impact of the United Kingdom's entrepreneurial universities (the Russell Group) is explained by entrepreneurial spin-offs. However, our control group composed by the rest of the country's universities, the highest economic impact is associated with knowledge transfer (knowledge capital).

Challenges to the implementation of bilingual/multilingual language policies at tertiary institutions in South Africa (1995–2012)

This article examines the relationship between bilingual/multilingual language policies and their effective implementation at historically white tertiary institutions in South Africa. It analyses the policies of five of the country's major universities, and their implementation, within a Language Policy & Planning (LPP) and Literacy Acquisition (LA) theoretical framework. Data were collected on the stated intentions of these policies and the extent of their implementation by means of an electronic questionnaire survey and telephonic interviews. The results are then discussed with reference to the status quo of the African language disciplines at these universities in terms of their perceived status, student numbers in both first and second language streams, and their actual capacity to support the language policy of their institution. The article then discusses the various challenges to implementation and proposes a possible way forward.

Science, Democracy, and the American University: From the Civil War to the Cold War. By Andrew Jewett. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. xii + 402 pp. $99.00 cloth; $32.99 paper.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Science, Democracy, and American University: From Civil War to Cold War . By Andrew Jewett . New York : Cambridge University Press , 2012. xii + 402 pp. $99.00 cloth; $32.99 paper.Book Reviews and NotesCambridge University Press has released a paperback edition of Andrew Jewett's ambitious investigation into how it is that many of America's intellectual and cultural leaders in first half of twentieth century came to see country's universities--as opposed to its churches--as arbiters and even generators of character traits that sustain a democratic culture. Beginning with advent of modern research university in decades after Civil War--and subsequent rise of social sciences--and ending with rebellion against social sciences and their fatuous optimism about human perfectability (338) that was launched in 1940s and 1950s by historians such as Perry Miller and Arthur Schlesinger, Jewett has written a book that will probably become a staple on exam lists of many future Ph.D. candidates in American intellectual history. I am not sure it should become a staple on lists of those students who wish to specialize in American religious history, but Jewett certainly tells a story that will be of some interest and use to anyone who wants to interrogate so-called secularization of American culture.Jewett's subject is massive effort to mobilize science, so successful in its industrial applications, as a resource for strengthening American democratic practices (1). This effort, according to Jewett, was rooted in belief that offered Americans the cultural and political benefits that flowed from mainline Protestantism, without divisive theological claims and metaphysical baggage (2). Those benefits were thought to include formation of a collective cultural character in United States that would strengthen state as a counterpoint to big and make possible modes of self-government endorsed by republicans, liberals, and democrats (1-2).This belief in potential of science, which Jewett calls scientific was held by politicians and business leaders such as Andrew Dickson White and Ezra Cornell, founders of Cornell University; it found a popular audience in last few decades of nineteenth century, thanks to publishing efforts of Edward L. Youmans, founder of Popular Science Monthly ; and it was articulated most vociferously--and perhaps most effectively, if educational reforms and regulations of industry are to be standard of judgment--in early twentieth century by psychologists such as John Dewey and William James, sociologists such and Talcott Parsons and Louis Wirth, philosophers and journalists such as Herbert Croly, Horace Kallen, and Walter Lippman, and anthropologists such as Franz Boas.Scientific democracy, we are told, was an alternative to liberal Protestantism, though it did not stand in opposition to liberal Protestantism. Indeed, Jewett places some of early architects of social gospel movement in same camp as Croly, who was known to have had a sympathetic attitude toward August Comte's calls for a secular religion of humanity. Jewett notes that George Herron referred to Sociology as a science of sacrifice; of redemption; of atonement, and that Walter Rauschenbusch aligned himself with progressive reformers who had been trained at Chicago's School of Social Service when he insisted that his task as a minister was not one of getting individuals to heaven, but of transforming life on earth into harmony of heaven (75-76). …

The global PA movement

In an article for JAAPA's October 1992 Silver Anniversary Edition, former AAPA President William Marquardt reflected on the first quarter-century of our profession and shared a vision for our future. “Physician assistants will be worldwide leaders,” he wrote, “vital to providing care and improving medical care to all people.” In the same issue, Jack Liskin, former PA program director at the University of Southern California, also offered predictions: “The world has become a global village in which we know almost instantly what everyone else is doing and realize that events in one place will have an effect everywhere else.” Liskin hoped that our burgeoning profession would take time to reflect on its past and critically examine our future. As we move closer to the profession's 50th anniversary we are struck by these authors' observations, especially when considering how our profession has evolved domestically and worldwide. The American PA movement continues to gain momentum. There are nearly 100,000 certified physician assistants, PA programs across the country are expanding, and new programs are being started. Our movement also appears to be a catalyst for a global PA movement. Countries worldwide clearly face many of the same problems and challenges in supporting health and caring for the sick. In Liskin's global village, the PA model is being embraced and cultivated to increase access to care, grow safety nets, lower costs, and address medical provider shortages. Beginning this month, JAAPA will investigate the global PA phenomenon and offer commentary and brief reports from clinical and academic leaders who will describe current challenges and opportunities, share a vision for the future, and discuss practice innovations unique to their countries. In this issue of JAAPA, Ian Jones writes about the evolution of the PA movement in Canada. Closely tied to the military at its beginnings in 1999, the PA model in Canada continues to move steadily into the civilian sector to address unmet medical needs and access to care barriers created, in part, by Canada's vast rural areas and maldistribution of healthcare resources. In the months ahead, we will hear from leaders elsewhere, including India, Australia, South Africa, and the Netherlands. Demand has driven growth of the PA movement in the Netherlands, which has passed its first decade, with the Dutch government urging the development of the PA model and integration of training programs into its country's universities. The government support has paved the way for greater autonomy among Dutch PAs, who facilitate task realignment from an overly burdened physician workforce. Parallels between the PA movements in these countries and the United States are clear, such as the military roots of the profession. The United States is supporting this global PA movement through the success of our PA model as well as with consultative, diplomatic efforts by numerous American PA leaders working beyond our borders. Perhaps the vision described by Marquardt in 1992 opened doors for this global movement and is now actively being realized. Echoing some of the sentiments shared by Liskin, we offer a few key questions. Which trends and innovations in the PA profession outside the United States are distinct and may inspire advancements in the PA profession in America? Which strategies are countries outside the United States using to optimize the PA profession in ways that are bringing about measurable improvements in healthcare access, quality, and cost? How can PAs in America support and contribute to the continued growth of the PA profession around the world? How can active involvement and increased awareness in this global movement make us better clinicians, advocates, and leaders? Liskin also wrote, “For tomorrow's PAs, such awareness will mean fully awakening to the world outside our practices.” He worried that our increased success and autonomy, and probably our increased diversity across practice settings and specialties, had the potential to make us less sympathetic to the needs of others. We propose that as our profession nears its 50th anniversary, there is no better way to reconnect with our roots or consider our future than to raise our awareness of the global PA movement. Understanding the distinctive trends and innovations occurring beyond our borders might just offer us fertile ground for envisioning the next 50 years of the PA profession at home.

Beyond collusion and resistance: Academic–management relations within the neoliberal university

As an early pioneer of market-led institutional reforms and New Public Management policies, New Zealand arguably has one of the most 'neoliberalised' tertiary education sectors in the world. This article reports on a recent academic dispute concerning the attempt by management to introduce a new category of casualised academic employee within one of the country's largest research universities. It is based on a fieldwork study, including document analysis, interviews and the participation of both authors in union and activist activities arising from the dispute. Whilst some academics may collude in the new regimes of governance that these reforms have created, we suggest that 'collusion' and 'resistance' are inadequate terms for explaining how academic behaviour and subjectivities are being reshaped in the modern neoliberal university. We argue for a more theoretically nuanced and situational account that acknowledges the wider legal and systemic constraints that these reforms have created. To do this, we problematise the concept of collusion and reframe it according to three different categories: 'conscious complicity', 'unwitting complicity' and 'coercive complicity'. We ask, what happens when one must 'collude' in order to resist, or when certain forms of opposition are rendered impossible by the terms of one's employment contract? We conclude by reflecting on ways in which academics understand and engage with the policies of university managers in contexts where changes to the framework governing employment relations have rendered conventional forms of resistance increasingly problematic, if not illegal.

The Transnational Idea of University Autonomy and the Reform of the Finnish Universities Act

In 2009, the Finnish parliament passed a new Universities Act that aimed to strengthen the institutional autonomy of the country's universities. But why and how did the idea of autonomy come to frame the reform agenda in the overt way it did? In analysing a sample of authoritative policy and strategy papers by the key stakeholders in the higher education policy fields at the European level and in Finland, the author argues that a conceptual shift took place at the turn of the millennium. This was based on managerial values and top-down organization that emphasized the potential of universities to operate on the education market as would any enterprise. But the Finnish higher education policy agenda was not simply downloaded from supranational actors; parts of the Finnish Higher Education establishment had long been active in promoting the novel idea of autonomy at both national and European forums, thereby making the process of ideological transformation truly transnational.

Student Entrepreneurship Clusters

Widespread demand has recently arisen for measures to be taken to provide students in higher education with the opportunity to acquire entrepreneurial skills. Echoes of this demand are to be found in recent work produced by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and in the desire expressed in 2010 by the French government to set up ‘Student Entrepreneurship Clusters’ in the country's universities. In this paper a description of the objectives defined for these clusters is followed by an examination of the feasibility of a new offer targeting, in a given region, students in different academic years studying for different qualifications. The manner in which entrepreneurial skills are acquired is analysed with a view to developing a systematic picture of the process. Finally, the issue of assessing students' acquisition of entrepreneurial skills is also addressed.

Students’ attitudes to animal welfare and rights in Europe and Asia

AbstractA survey of attitudes towards the welfare and rights of animals was conducted in universities in 11 European and Asian countries, to improve understanding of cultural differences that might impact on trade and international relations. Collaborators’ universities were recruited in each country to assist in the design, translation and administration of the survey via the internet in a convenient selection of the country's universities, providing 3,433 student responses from at least 103 universities. Respondents rated the acceptability of 43 major concerns about animals (focused on type of use, animal integrity, killing animals, animal welfare, experimentation on animals, changes in animal genotypes, the environment for animals and societal attitudes towards animals). Students from European countries had more concern for animal welfare than students from Asian countries, which may be partly explained by increased affluence of European students as there was a positive correlation between student expenditure and concern for animal welfare and rights. Southern and central European countries had most concern for animal rights and unnatural practices. Those in communist or former communist countries in Asia and Europe had most concern about killing animals and those in northern European countries the least. Regional similarities between neighbouring countries were evident in responses to animal issues and there were no differences between ethnic groups within a country. Thus, there were national and continental differences in European and Asian students’ attitudes to animals’ welfare and rights, which appear to arise as a result of the socio-political situation in regions rather than religious or other differences.

Twisting the Women's Image and Participation of Female Journalists in Media: A Normative Analysis of the Bangladesh Scenario

Media in Bangladesh usually cover women issues in an insensitive and conventional manner. There are, however, situations where some women issues are over sensationalised in the media. The main reason behind this scenario is the want of female journalists in the Bangladesh media industry. While the families consider journalism as an insecure, hazardous and unsuitable career option for their girls, the industry management does also show a lack of interest in hiring women for their media houses. This is what happens in a male-dominated society. Despite this adverse situation, female students are increasingly showing interest in studying journalism and taking journalism as their profession. Competing with their male counterparts, many female students are obtaining degrees with excellent grades in journalism from the country's public and private universities. Considering the questionable portrayal of women in the media and the participation hazards for girls in journalism career, this paper examines why female students take journalism as their preferred subject of study in spite of drawbacks in the profession, and how they can overcome the stumbling blocks and change women's image among the people.

Around the World

In science news around the world this week, Thailand's flooding is taking its toll on the country's research institutes and universities, the Vatican has come to the rescue of a financially troubled Italian research center, the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University has been officially recognized by Japan's cabinet, New York City has received bids from at least five university-based teams to build a science and engineering center in the city, and archaeology groups are opposing a proposed Arizona land swap.

Is concentration of university research associated with better research performance?

This paper analyses relationships between university research performance and concentration of university research. Using the number of publications and their citation impact extracted from Scopus as proxies of research activity and research performance, respectively, it examines at a national level for 40 major countries the distribution of published research articles among its universities, and at an institutional level for a global set of 1500 universities the distribution of papers among 16 main subject fields. Both at a national and an institutional level it was found that a larger publication output is associated with a higher citation impact. If one conceives the number of publications as a measure of concentration, this outcome indicates that, in university research, concentration and performance are positively related, although the underlying causal relationships are complex. But a regression analysis found no evidence that more concentration of research among a country's universities or among an institution's main fields is associated with better overall performance. The study reveals a tendency that the research in a particular subject field conducted in universities specializing in other fields outperforms the work in that field in institutions specializing in that field. This outcome may reflect that it is multi-disciplinary research that is the most promising and visible at the international research front, and that this type of research tends to develop better in universities specializing in a particular domain and expanding their capabilities in that domain towards other fields.

Global Challenges in Stem Cell Research and the Many Roads Ahead

The field of stem cell research has grown to include a vibrant international community of scientists and clinicians who come from both academia and industry and who strive to shed light on the biology of these remarkable cells and find applications in drug discovery, disease modeling, and regenerative medicine.

Post-Mubarak Era Seen as Opening for Science

As the country's universities prepare to reopen on 26 February after a youth-powered revolution toppled the government, Egyptian and foreign researchers see an opportunity to elevate science, if decades of neglect and corruption can be overcome.

Tunisian minister outlines hopes for the future

Faouzia Charfi, junior minister for higher education, explains her vision for the country's universities.

Public Influence inside the College Walls: Progressive Era Universities, Social Scientists, and Intercollegiate Football Reform

At the height of the Progressive Era a number of social scientists, educational leaders, and politicians called for the reform of intercollegiate football. Since the 1880s football had become a popular spectacle, and many were concerned that it was corrupting the country's universities and college men. This article considers the progressive movement to reform football in the context of programs to make the modern American university useful at the turn of the century—including the Wisconsin Idea of state government developed in Madison and the University of Chicago's sponsorship of settlement houses, social work, and university extension. Although many progressives wanted the university to affect society, most were less enthusiastic about the prospect that elements of that society (what Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner dubbed “public influence”) would affect the university. Social scientists theorized the relationship between the university and the public and constructed an intellectual basis for football reform. Reforms proposed and in some cases adopted demonstrated ambivalence regarding football's academic and public role. Reformers wanted to preserve the popular, profitable, and potentially educational enterprise of football, but they also hoped to curtail its influence over burgeoning universities. The Progressive Era effort to control college football and channel it into constructive directions in many ways demonstrates the paradoxical nature of Progressive Era reform and inadvertently contributed to the institutionalization of “big time” intercollegiate athletics.

Panel Explores New Funding Pact With Washington

At an intense meeting last week at the National Academies in Washington, D.C., a blue-ribbon panel asked by Congress to recommend how the country's research universities can bolster the nation's well-being spent a day and a half in public discussion with several dozen leaders in higher education, followed by a day of private deliberations aimed at producing a final report next summer.

The Move toward Convergence — Developments in the Higher Education System in Israel

The paper deals with the unique relationship evolving between the two major categories of higher learning institutions in Israel: the country's universities and the colleges that were established in their shadow. Following an introduction to the history of higher education in Israel, stressing the initial dominance of the research universities, the paper traces developments of the unique dialogue that has developed in recent decades between universities and colleges in Israel by discussing the changes in goals, curricula, orientation to vocational education, organizational structure and development, and academic independence. The changing relations between these two types of institutions highlight the system's flexibility, the power of the institutions' own interpretation of their roles, and the system-wide resistance to a binary system imposed in a top-down policymaking process. Following a review of these changes, the authors offer the case of the Academic College of Judea and Samaria as a point in case, exploring the permeability of the boundaries between university and college institutions in Israel. The paper concludes that the initial intention of the Council for Higher Education to establish a dual system of research universities and popular colleges is gradually converging into a monistic system following the research university concept and model.

Double or Nothing: Academic Theology and Post-Communist Religious Policy

Church-state relations in post-communist Romania, as in other countries in Central and Eastern Europe, have received considerable attention over the past two decades from both scholars and activists, domestic as well as foreign. Issues of public interest included the dispute between the Orthodox and the Greek-rite Catholic churches over assets, the churches’ role in the criminalization of homosexuality, their position toward NATO integration and EU accession, the building of the “National” Orthodox Cathedral,1 the contents of religious education textbooks, and the involvement of clergy in local and national politics. Recently, the question of religious education has received prime time exposure when the widespread practice of displaying religious symbols in public schools was challenged in court. One topic that has remained off the radar of both human rights activists and students of religious affairs has been academic theology. In a sense, this is hardly surprising. The arcane pursuits of theologians cloistered in the country's universities seem remote from the mundane world of church-state entanglement, not to mention the foul trenches of partisan politics. In reality, as I will try to show below, the implications of the current structure of academic theology extend far beyond the field of higher education, deep into Romanian religious life in general.

Academic Freedom and Human Rights in Zimbabwe

negative impact on academic freedom and has significantly reduced the scope for free inquiry. The high level of human rights abuses in Zimbabwe has also put scholars at risk. These endangered minds have been tortured, killed, or maimed for their courage to speak truth to power. A significant number of Zimbabwean scholars have gone into exile for their own safety. This process has affected the country's universities profoundly some of its best intellectual capital is now in exile. For the past 30 years, Zimbabwe had been a recognized center of academic excellence in Africa, but since the crisis began, some of the universities have closed or are operating below capacity. Over the past 15 years, the government of Zimbabwe has actively put in place legislation that seeks to limit the country's academic space for free inquiry. One of the most draconian of this raft of laws in the Public Order and Security Act (POSA), which, inter alia, makes it very difficult for scholars to carry out field research. This is especially true in the rural Zimbabwean countryside, which President Robert Mugabe and his party, the Zimbabwe African National UnionPatriotic Front (ZANU-PF), consider to be its core political constituency. University professors and their research assistants continue to be tortured and harassed and even killed for attempting to collect primary data, on any issue, in Zimbabwe. University researchers on

The growth and development of African media studies: perspectives from Nigeria

The paper discusses how Nigerian journalism education has been heavily influenced by the American model. Nigeria, being a former British colony, at first followed British models of vocational training in journalism. This is evident in the fact that the country's universities did not initially embrace journalism and mass communication studies. Formal university-level training in journalism only started in Nigeria in 1962, with the establishment of Jackson College of Journalism at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The college later developed into the Department of Mass Communication. Other departments/schools of journalism or mass communication have sprung up at various Nigerian universities, notably that of the University of Lagos. In the past few years, there has been an upsurge in the number of mass communication programmes across the country. The programmes, apart from journalism, offer courses in broadcasting, public relations and advertising, among other areas. The paper also discusses how contemporary postcolonial Nigerian media education has achieved a large degree of uniformity in all the programmes as a result of initiatives taken by Nigeria's National Universities Commission.