Higher Education Landscape Research Articles

Mentoring and coaching in academia: Reflections on a mentoring/coaching relationship

The changing landscape in Higher Education has made it more difficult for less experienced academics to find persons willing and able to invest in, and support their professional development. Mentoring and coaching provide psychosocial assistance in the work space, which assists mentees to deal more effectively with role ambiguity, role conflict and a perceived uncertain environment. This paper presents a single case study of two academics at a university in Jamaica. Using minutes collected from 19 meetings over nine months, the paper discusses the processes and outcomes of an academic mentoring/coaching relationship on the professional development of a faculty member. The main findings indicated that the mentee was positively impacted by opportunities related to career advancement, expanded thinking, scholarly confidence, facilitation of a collaborative culture, and the importance of goal setting in academia. Based on these positive impacts, the mentor and mentee theorize that mentoring is an important activity that should be facilitated in higher education through structures peculiar to each unique context.

Love Is (Color)blind

The literature on racism at the university level is extensive, but few studies have examined the unique position of Asian American undergraduates. Studies of racial discrimination toward Asian Americans remain largely quantitative in nature and few in number. Through rich qualitative data, this article describes how Asian American undergraduates use language to negotiate their social experiences, romantic relationships, and identity at the elite university. It documents various discursive strategies Asian Americans use to cope with and negotiate racialized encounters. Frequent among the participants is the use of a color-blind discourse to describe such experiences. To understand the particular way Asian Americans practice color-blind talk, this article interrogates the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality and the specific racialization of this minority group. Further, such analysis reveals a racialized social landscape in higher education that is made more intractable through Asian Americans’ use of color-blind discourse. Finally, the article examines how Asian American undergraduates say they would respond to racism and illustrates discourse as a social practice with the potential to reproduce or resist racism.

A Policy Shift in Botswana's Higher Education Landscape

Government and funders, too, will need to make a major commitment of additional funding—one-time upgrades to laboratories; ICT (information, communications, and technology); building repair; long-term commitments to quality improvement, faculty recruitment, training, and retention; and enhanced teaching and research facilities. The universities and the ministry will need to make the case to the public for increased higher education funding. Nonetheless, the opportunity to transform higher education exists in Madagascar today in ways it did not even a year ago. The prospects are good for real transformation and quantum improvements in the higher education system as a whole.

Violence While in Pursuit of Knowledge: African Victims of Xenophobia

Critics of the envisaged policy fear that funding, academic standards, state sponsorship of students, and the international character of academic staff may be adversely affected when the University of Botswana loses its status as the “only son” in the higher education landscape. Greater reduction of government support may have a negative impact on its ability to retain senior-level expatriate staff and maintain academic standards. Over the years, the University of Botswana has played a critical role in the training of the required manpower for the country’s rapid development. The university has attracted expatriate scholars, who constitute 35 percent of its academic staff. It is feared that further reductions in government funding may affect the ability of the university to maintain its competitive edge in Africa. Such a loss of status might challenge the University of Botswana’s vision of serving as “a leading academic center of excellence in Africa and the world.” A concomitant issue concerns alternative and sustainable sources of funding. In line with globalization trends elsewhere, the adoption of a cost-sharing policy by the university is a likely option. However, this approach may be more controversial than in other developing countries, for citizens are long used to what a recent report by a government-appointed council (the Business Economic Advisory Council) called “a culture of entitlements” and of living in a “comfort zone.” The council’s characterization of Botswana as “a relatively low-income country with a high-income lifestyle” does not raise any hope that a cost-sharing policy would be easy to implement.

The Lithuanian Case of Higher Education Reforms in Europe

The Bologna process has spurred higher education reforms in various European countries. Higher education reforms in Lithuania took place rather incrementally and represented an interaction between two strong powers—the state and the academic oligarchy. In the 1990s, the structural changes at the forefront of the Bologna-related reforms in Lithuania, but higher education reforms have remained stagnant in Lithuania. It is too early to draw conclusions about the success of the reforms, but the involvement of various stakeholders and the vision of broad reforms increase hopes for prospects of a more radical change of the Lithuanian higher education landscape.

Empowering students to promote independent learning : A project utilising coaching approaches to support learning and personal development.

With the publication of the UK White Paper (BIS, 2011) focusing onstudent experience, together with the increase in tuition fees and the changing landscape of higher education, there is an interest within the sector to explore initiatives that enhance the learning process. Coaching, as already used in management and some NHS settings, offers an approach which seeks to enable and empower learners and has the potential to contribute to their personal development, facilitating solution-focused approaches which are transferable to the workplace. Teaching staff in a Higher Education Institution were offered training in coaching techniques and formed a peer support coaching network. They were subsequently encouraged to use coaching skills in a range of student settings. This paper focuses on an evaluation of a teaching and learning initiative that used coaching approaches with two groups of healthcare students (totalling 19) over 2 semesters in the 2012-2013 academic year. The aim was to enhance the student experience in relation to self-motivation, personal development planning and the development ofsolution-focused approaches. The evaluation drew upon student feedback and conversations with staff in the coaching network.The evaluation highlighted the benefits of coaching; student preferences and expectations; new learning experiences of staff and the relevance of coaching approaches in other specific educational settings. The evaluation demonstrated how coaching adds value; providing students with the opportunity to develop workplace skills; and offering staff a solution-focused tool which may be particularly useful when facing change in workplace settings. Importantly it gives participants a creative space to engage with contemporary challenges and educators a 'œnew' tool to facilitate participation and nurture engagement in a non-directive way.

Sustainability and Affordability: Is There a Magic Bullet?

The transformation in the higher education landscape worldwide has been nothing less than dramatic. Underpinning these developments has been the remarkable growth in demand for higher education. When the first issue of International Higher Education was published, there were approximately 68 million tertiary students enrolled worldwide. Today, there are 196 million students with estimates of almost 430 million by 2030. Over the same time frame, the enrollment rate for 20–29 year-olds in Organization for Economic Coooperation and Development (OECD) countries has grown by 10 percentage points on average, with some countries (notably Denmark, Finland, Greece, and Iceland) enrolling more than 40 percent. As restructuring of the global-labor market continues apace, people will spend more time in education. All this illustrates that we are moving rapidly to becoming high participation societies, where the vast majority of the population is educated to advanced levels, because of the significance for social and personal achievement. Yet, ironically, at the moment our societies are increasingly dependent upon an educated citizenry, the costs associated with being an active player in the global economy are also rising. While some countries can expand or at least maintain their expenditure, others are under severe pressure from public and private debt and a public critical of high(er) taxation and expansive public services. This is leading to situations in which expenditure per student is not keeping pace with expanding demand. Overall, the OECD (in 2013) says the share of the total cost covered by public funds for higher education has declined from 77 percent in 1995 to 68 percent in 2013. Nothing that I have said here will be new to this audience. However, providing high-quality universal higher education at a time of decreasing public funding and escalating global competitiveness is the most important challenge facing us in the coming two decades. Using global rankings to guide us will inevitably lead to increased inequality. The top 100 universities represent less than 0.5 percent of the current total of almost 18,000 higher education institutions. This in turn represents approximately 0.4 percent of total-tertiary students worldwide. As demand grows, selectivity is accelerating. This is because while overall student numbers are increasing, student numbers among the top 100 are relatively stable. Thus, each year, top rankings represent a decreasing overall percentage of the total number of students. Some countries have sought to balance these demands by seeking to raise quality by concentrating resources, in a few “world-class universities,” in the expectation that the benefits will trickle down to others. A minority of countries, such as Finland, have pursued a “world-class system” strategy, spreading the benefits of excellence equitably across its vast landmass, while ranking among one of the top-performing countries in the world. What is the appropriate balance between educating the majority of our citizens, to be smart, creative, and entrepreneurial individuals, while ensuring the ability of the nation to compete in world science? Have we reached the end of the current model of mass public higher education?

Exploring youth socio-spatial perceptions of higher education landscapes through sketch maps

Previous research on broadening participation in higher education and Science Technology Engineering and Math has inadequately examined the role of place. This article explores the socio-spatial perceptions of youth of a college campus and changes in perceptions youth experience during their transition from being a university neighbor to becoming part of a university community. This study uses sketch maps and qualitative Geographic Information Systems to document the changing perceptions of 43 youth aged 14–18 during their participation in a university program. The results suggest that some students started to identify with campus spaces as a university student or employee rather than as a neighbor of the university.

El Circuito de Educación Precaria en México: una imagen del 2010

Through the systematization of various indicators, we reveal the conditions under which higher education institutions in Mexico operate, while creating an overall picture of the quality of these institutions on a national scale. In framing the country's higher education landscape, we employ the concept of Circuit of Precarious Education.We seek to reveal the double logic behind the current model of higher education growth without quality: on the one hand, the public sector provides education as part of a logic of demagogic political exchange; on the other, the private sector has increased its educational offerings in search of new sources of business revenue.

Towards a 21st century university: Teachings from consumer behaviour applicable to higher education

The South African Higher Education landscape has changed dramatically over the last 25 years. The purpose of this conceptual article is to challenge higher education institutions to learn/draw from a wider spectrum of knowledge domains in their quest toward a 21st century university. The author argues that the rich body of theoretical knowledge which is contained in the domain of consumer psychology can contribute generously to the understanding of the behaviour of a principle stakeholder, namely the student. Four teachings include, firstly, develop and manage your corporate and brand image, secondly, determine the valence of decision-making criteria and market accordingly; thirdly, research your consumer target market and finally attend to consumer needs. Five challenges are presented to higher education institutions (specifically universities) in South Africa and recommendations for future research are made.

Nationalism, Internationalization and the Dawn of the New University of The Bahamas: Looking Ahead

An increasingly complex and diverse global context provides small nation states with multiple challenges. Tertiary institutions in such contexts grapple with fulfilling missions and mandates, not always of their own making, especially if they are publicly funded. This commentary poses several considerations with which the to-be-launched University of The Bahamas must contend – managing the intersection between education, societies and politics; quality assurance in higher education; knowledge production; brain drain and brain circulation; and the institution’s evolving place in the higher education landscape – as it affirms its role in the rapidly internationalizing higher education landscape. I posit that the challenge will be to (re-)align the institution’s internationalization strategies, and limited resources, with its academic mission and values, ensuring that mechanisms are established, avoiding pitfalls in what is an increasingly competitive global environment.

Involving the users remotely: an exploratory study using asynchronous usability testing

Open Educational Resources (OER) are increasingly used in the higher education landscape as a solution for a variety of copyright, publishing and cost-prohibiting issues. While OERs are becoming more common, reports of usability tests that evaluate how well learners can use them to accomplish their learning tasks have lagged behind. Because both the reserachers and the learners in this study use resources and tools remotely, asynchronous usability testing of a prototype OER and MOOC online guide was conducted with an exploratory group of users to determine the guide’s ease of use for two distinct groups of users: Educators and Learners. In this article, we share the background and context of this usability project, suggest best methods for asynchronous remote usability testing, and share challenges and insights of the process and results of the testing.

University Change in Ireland

Over the past decade, universities in Ireland have been implementing large-scale institutional change designed to better prepare them for the multitude of pressures they face. Changes have been taking place, for example, in approaches to institutional management and leadership practices and in decision-making structures. However, despite the rapid pace of change taking place in Irish universities, there has been a considerable dearth of research resulting in a lack of any real insight into how the higher education landscape may be changing from a grassroots faculty perspective. This article presents the findings of a case study conducted in the School of Business at University College Dublin. The article reports on the kinds of institutional changes that have taken place (the ‘what’); the impetus for these changes (the ‘why’); and the top-down manner in which many of these changes were implemented and the ways in which faculty have responded to them (the ‘how’). The article concludes by suggesting the importance of understanding the possible implications of faculty responses to change for their institutional loyalty and commitment and suggests some areas for further research.

Employee Involvement in Decision-Making: A Case at One Univesity of Technology in South Africa

The higher education landscape in South Africa is dynamic and one of the most rapidly changing environments, which is undergoing fundamental metamorphosis. The higher education institutions (HEIs) are facing, among other challenges, the alterations in government funding and globalisation of higher education which bring with them new competitors. It is in this sense that this study focuses on the involvement of operational employees in decision-making processes. This study sets out to explore the employee perceptions of them being involved in decision-making with an emphasis on the cascading of responsibility and accountability for power, information, knowledge and rewards to lower levels within their institution. A quantitative study was conducted with 410 randomly selected employees within one University of Technology in South Africa. The overall perception of employees with regard to their involvement in decision making indicated that there is a lack of them being involved in decision making processes. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n27p423

The Role of Graduate Student Unions in the Higher Education Landscape

Graduate student unionization efforts have made an indelible mark on the higher education milieu, as illustrated by the experiences of students who participated in this movement in recent years.

Think global, think local: The changing landscape of higher education and the role of quality assurance in Singapore

This article examines how the Singaporean state has reformed the higher education sector in order to co-opt different political and economic agendas at both the global and local levels, utilising quality assurance as a regulatory process of control. The core argument is that quality assurance has been used as an instrument to reshape the higher education landscape in Singapore. The article begins with a review of the literature on the role of the Singaporean state in higher education. Next, it reviews how the Global Schoolhouse initiative was developed and implemented and how public and private higher education sectors were audited. The article then analyses the establishment of a new quality assurance mechanism for private higher education in 2009. Finally, the article suggests that this new regulatory regime exemplifies the importance of political factors in the implementation of neoliberal managerialism in higher education.

The Spatial Concomitance of Former Bantu Universities with Uneven Regional Development in a Democratic South Africa

The salience of universities in regional development has increased with the ascendancy of corporatization of public utilities, especially given the pre-eminence of the notion that these institutions create and enforce “learning regions” wherein knowledge generated is used for the enhancement of economic productivity and innovativeness. Under South Africa’s state capitalism, most state-backed corporations have literally gobbled public funds, insisted on increased autonomy and behaved like private multinational companies, whilst their regional development impacts remained inconclusive. A reasonable geographic perspective should hold that, notwithstanding the effects of globalization, universities’ regional development impacts are strongly “attenuated over space and distance”. In this context, a democratic South Africa’s restructuring of the higher education system should raise vexed questions of the regional development impacts of the former Bantu Universities. Given the significance of knowledge and research to regional development, this article concludes that Limpopo and Eastern Cape Province as well as Northern Cape and Mpumalanga Province, which are in the process of establishing their first universities, will continue to lag behind Western Cape, Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and North West Province. It argues that the heightened public financial support to former Bantu Universities will remain a public opportunity-cost because these institutions’ orientation, as per their apartheid spatial-fix, is not amenable to the establishment of “learning regions”. The article concludes that under state capitalism former Bantu Universities are denied their traditional contributions to the viability of informal businesses, simultaneously as their potential capacity to create and enforce “learning regions” remains virtually non-existent. Given the spatial-fix of the racially-inspired higher education landscape, the article concedes that corporatization of public utilities under democracy needs to be supplemented by deliberate state effort to build knowledge transfer networks with local and extra-local universities in a structure that deliberately embeds the less favoured regions and foster the spirit of innovation therein. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p863

Workshop Interventions to Facilitate Students’ Access to Knowledge: A Dental Technology Case Study

The higher education landscape in South Africa has changed dramatically over the last two decades. The types, size and shape of tertiary institutions were reconfigured. Concomitantly the intake of students also changed, resulting in a large number of students coming from the previously disadvantaged communities who are deemed as being underprepared. Challenges were posed to educators and learners. First-year students in the Dental Technology programme at the Durban University of Technology struggle to cope with the transition from secondary school life into higher education. With this in mind, two workshops involving activities and tasks were designed to enable students to gain awareness of the academic and social practices of Dental Technology. An interpretive research design and an action research case study strategy were adopted. Data gathered by means of questionnaires, a focus group interview, and direct observations via video recordings were used. Further expansion and incorporation of using workshops to access knowledge in the curriculum is recommended by the authors.

Lessons Learned

This case describes a strategic planning process initiated by the division of student affairs at a small, private college. It presents several issues related to institutional identity, strategic planning initiative development, faculty and staff buy-in and stay-in, and the changing landscape of higher education. The case is designed for usage in educational leadership programs and is particularly pertinent to provoke discussions regarding leading from the middle, leadership for institutional change, and moral and ethical leadership. Students in educational leadership enrolled in student affairs leadership and administration courses, budgeting or strategic planning, or organizational theory courses can engage in discussion using multiple aspects of the case.

Argumentative and trustworthy scholars: the construction of academic staff at research-intensive universities

Research-intensive universities, such as the Russell Group in the UK, the Ivy League Colleges in the USA and the Sandstone Universities in Australia, enjoy particular status in the higher education landscape. They are, however, also often associated with social elitism and selectivity, and this has led to critique as higher education systems seek to widen access. This article looks at how academic staff are discursively constructed in five such institutions in South Africa through an analysis of documentation submitted as part of a national review. Three interrelated discourses are identified: a discourse of ‘staff as scholars’ whereby research is privileged over teaching, a discourse of ‘academic argumentation’ whereby a critical disposition is valued and is called upon by academics to resist development initiatives and a discourse of ‘trust’ whereby it is assumed that academics share a value system and should thus be trusted to undertake quality teaching without interference.