National Higher Education Systems Research Articles

The Student Experience in China's Revolutionary Move to Mass Higher Education: Institutional Challenges and Policy Implications

In recent decades, the revolutionary expansion of Chinese universities has emerged as one of the most significant phenomena in the worldwide transformation of higher education. Since 2003, China has become a country with the largest national higher education system in the world, with nearly 31 million students in 2010. What have students’ experiences been in the expansion? And how do they reflect students’ background characteristics? These are questions of increasing concern in recent years. With an analytical framework adapted from Martin Trow's theory of higher education expansion, this study aims at examining students’ perspectives on China's move from elite to mass higher education, based on a nationwide survey conducted in 2007. The findings of this study show that China's expansion policy has brought significant changes to its higher education system, as experienced by students. With some critical reflection on how to adapt and modify internationally used analytical frameworks and how to create new indicators for comparative study in a particular context, this paper suggests several policy choices that would help the worldwide massification of higher education move towards a more balanced and open direction in the future.

Impact of the Bologna Process on Turkish higher education: the case of Izmir University of Economics

This article focuses on Turkey's experience of the Bologna Process. Its main objective is to contribute to the literature on the impact of Bologna Process on national higher education systems regarding the issue of curricula development. It argues that the Bologna Process has fostered development of transparent and systematic curricula, which result in comparability of higher education across European Higher Education Area.

The U21 rankings of National Higher Education Systems: re-analyze to optimize

The U21 Ranking of National Higher Education Systems released in May 2012 is a new player on the scene of university rankings, after ARWU, QSWUR and THEWUR, but with a different perspective – that of whole nations. It has some new features that enhance its validity, but it also shares some of the conceptual and methodological problems found in earlier systems; these are illustrated by re-analyzing the data. Possible directions for refinement are suggested and discussed.

Polarización y tensiones en la educación superior venezolana

This paper present an analysis of the circumstances of the higher education in Venezuela, to bear in mind the polarization and tensions that the country's present. It reviews the differences between the public policies of the first and second period of Hugo Chaves's administration, noteworthy the detrimental polarization and the strong tensions that represent the public autonomous university and the non autonomous new institutions created by the current government. This text consider, for analytic purpose, that the educational system is composed by different dimensions that represents the interconnected axis, between them the author considered, for the sample that it's studied: autonomy, accountability, income, funding, and institutional differentiation. Starting from those axis, presents one series of considerations that could be useful in the possible different settings, from the starting point of the october 2012 Venezuelan elections's, for the creation of a national system of higher education that answer to the needs of all sectors of the country, by the reason that education cannot be a policy by the regime, on the contrary, constitute a State Policy with the participation and responsibility of all the society.

Traveling Policies: Mobility, Transformation and Continuities in Higher Education Public Policy

This article presents an assessment of the impact and implications of the international mobilities operating in the national public policy environment. In fact, patterns of transformations that take place in national higher education systems are generating diverse and complex outcomes in different countries, in ways that may preclude a simple relation between international policy prescriptions and communication and policy change in higher education. In this way, the different processes that constitute globalisation within local spaces demand recognition of the importance of specificities in their constitution. In short, the starting point to understanding these processes seems to require detecting the specificity of complex dimensions in which the dynamic interaction between global and local takes place. In order to illustrate this point, the author presents the case of policy developments related to the dramatic private expansion of Paraguay's higher education sector since the 1990s.

The stratification of universities: Structural inequality in Canada and the United States

This paper conceives national systems of higher education as stratified populations of organizations. This stratification is a structural component of ‘horizontal inequality’ in higher education, and may be exacerbated by current pressures for colleges and universities to compete for resources and status. To explore this structural inequality, we compare the level of stratification in financial resources across four-year institutions in Canada and the United States over a 35-year period (1971–2006). Our analyses provide a first-look at this form of stratification, employing Gini coefficients, Lorenz curves, and boxplots. Our results provide new and compelling evidence of increasing structural stratification, even in Canada's predominantly publicly funded postsecondary system. Findings indicate that the distribution of resources is far more stratified in the American system, and that both systems have become more stratified over time. We conclude by situating structural inequality within more general processes of stratification in education.

Corruption in Higher Education: US, Russia, UK

Corruption in higher education is a newly emerging topic in the field of education research. Some aspects of corruption in education have been addressed in the resent works by Eckstein (2003), Hallak and Poisson (2002, 2007), Heyneman (2004, 2007, 2008), Noah & Eckstein (2001), Osipian (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010), Segal (2004), and Washburn (2005). However, the rigorous systematic research is lacking. This paper considers corruption in higher education in the media, following publications in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Russian Federation. It addresses the differences in forms of corruption across the nations pointing to how exactly they differ and why. Major findings point to the following: some forms of corruption are region-specific while others are universal; types of corruption are connected to the characteristics of the national systems; the general trend in the media attention reflects growing concern about corruption in academia; in the US more attention is now paid to fraud, plagiarism and cheating, while in Russia to bribery in admissions. The findings help to determine which aspects of corruption in higher education should be given more consideration in the future research and which ones might be prioritized, as well as how the national systems of higher education can be improved.

Malaysian undergraduates’ perceptions and attitudes on bilingual education

The increased demand towards literacy and proficiency in the English language as a result of globalisation in the world today has prompted the Malaysian government to take various steps in enhancing the use of English (as a second language) in the national higher education system. Various value-added programmes have been created to increase undergraduates’ proficiency in English including conducting ‘soft-skills’ workshops in both the Malay and English languages. This paper reports the perceptions and attitudes of undergraduates in a local Malaysian university regarding the use of English in their education process. In addition, it reports their views on bilingual education in general. The survey research method which incorporated the use of the questionnaire was applied to obtain the required data from the respondents. A total of 60 (sixty) students from an undergraduate programme responded to a questionnaire distributed. The data collected was later analysed and the results obtained were discussed descriptively. From the study, it was found that the majority of respondents agreed that further steps should be taken to enhance the use of English in their education process. These respondents were also in favour of having a Bilingual Education Policy to promote the use of English along with the Malay language in their institution. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Differentiation in higher education and its consequences for social inequality: introduction to a special issue

In recent decades institutions of higher education have changed considerably in most European countries. In order to meet the growing demand for higher education, national higher education systems have ‘‘diversified’’ through the creation of second-tier institutions, such as the Polytechnics in Britain or the Fachhochschulen in Germany. There is a large body of research concerned with the sources, development and internal dynamics of institutional differentiation in higher education (e.g. Teichler 1988, Huismann 1995, Meek et al. 1996, Huismann et al. 2007). In many countries higher education institutions also vary in reputation and prestige (e.g. Teichler 2008, Moodie 2009) and in some countries these differences have even been reinforced by educational policy during the last decades. Besides this vertical differentiation of institutions, horizontal differentiation within institutions of higher education can be observed also, i.e. a growing diversification of programmes, courses and fields of study. Different types of programmes such as academic versus professional programmes were introduced or different levels such as Bachelor and Master have been implemented. Not least due to the harmonisation efforts by the so-called ‘Bologna process‘, these forms of differentiation have been accelerated and have become increasingly relevant in European higher education systems. Although quite a number of recent publications deal with these institutional aspects of diversification in higher education, only a few studies examine the influence of a changing structure on the individual level, e.g. individual behaviour regarding choices and access to higher education, educational careers and labour market outcomes of different institutions. The simultaneous increase in overall participation in post-secondary education in most countries and institutional differentiation are presumably reflected in social selective access to the different institutions of higher education. There are two possible scenarios: Differentiation provides more opportunities in terms of programmes and levels, and less priviledged students are diverted to lower tiers whereas elite institutions remain highly

Patterns of strategies in Swiss higher education institutions

This paper contributes to the debate on strategic capability of academic organizations by presenting three case studies of Swiss Higher Education Institutions. Strategies are conceived as instruments by which universities manage their organizational processes and deal with their environments in order to select a portfolio of activities and find an appropriate position in the higher education system. Our findings show that strategies are at the same time a matter of intentions and actions: first, they relate to current HEI’s position within the national Higher education system—and to relevant normative models—as well as to the degree of institutional autonomy. Second, even within participatory governance structures, organizational strategies appear to be initiated by the academic administrators, then substantially shaped and subscribed by academics at different stages. In this perspective, the dynamic relation of formal and informal processes holds diverse functions from making academics accept a strategy, to controlling and coordinating decentralized organizational structures.

Young Adults and Higher Education: Barriers and Breakthroughs to Success

Although access to higher education has increased substantially over the past forty years, student success in college--as measured by persistence and degree attainment--has not improved at all. Thomas Brock reviews systematic research findings on the effectiveness of various interventions designed to help at-risk students remain in college. Brock shows how changes in federal policy and public attitudes since the mid-1960s have opened up higher education to women, minorities, and nontraditional students and also shifted the "center of gravity" in higher education away from traditional four-year colleges toward nonselective community colleges. Students at two-year colleges, however, are far less likely than those at four-year institutions to complete a degree. Brock argues that the nation's higher education system must do much more to promote student success. Three areas, he says, are particularly ripe for reform: remedial education, student support services, and financial aid. In each of these three areas, Brock reviews programs and interventions that community colleges have undertaken in order to raise completion rates. Some colleges have, for example, experimented with remedial programs that build social cohesion between students and faculty and integrate content across courses. Other colleges have tested student support service programs that offer counseling and advising that are regular, intensive, and personalized. Still others have experimented with ways to simplify the financial aid application process and incentivize students to earn good grades and persist in school. Research shows that such programs and interventions can improve student outcomes, but Brock argues that more must be done to bring proven practices to scale and to test new ideas that might lead to better results. Institutions that most need help'are those that provide the greatest access to nontraditional and underprepared students in community colleges and less selective universities.

Martin Trow on British higher education

For almost half a century from the early 1960s Martin Trow was the most persistent American commentator on British higher education. He analysed the main reports from Robbins to Dearing, developed and applied a language for discussing common problems amongst different systems, and focused on the uncertain progress of the UK to mass higher education. He was committed to understanding and comparing national systems of higher education in their wider contexts, applying his blend of sociology, history and policy research and analysis. The result was a sustained picture of British politics and policies, systemic and institutional change and resistance. This article follows his path through some of the most important and difficult events in British higher education, tracing his interpretations in his published and unpublished work, and conference papers. The article, therefore, becomes a recent history of British higher education through perceptive American eyes.

Globalisation and education in the postcolonial world: the conundrum of the higher education system of the United Arab Emirates

Occupying a crucial economic role in supporting capitalism through the supply of oil, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a very‐high income, early‐development stage nation with high annual economic growth levels but low levels of labour market participation by its citizens. The national higher education system was established in 1977 and offers a different context through which to examine the relevance of existing accounts of globalisation and education in a postcolonial nation. The paper concludes by suggesting ways in which the UAE context challenges and extends Tikly’s proposed conceptual framework, described in his article, ‘Globalisation and education in the postcolonial world: towards a conceptual framework’, when considering the impact of globalisation on the higher education system of a very high‐income developing country.

Higher Education and Citizenship: ‘the Full Range of Purposes’

This article discusses citizenship education in the context of the purposes and roles of higher education. The social and political changes in Europe of the last two decades have had an immense impact on the understanding of these roles and purposes, defining the university's mission and steering the national systems of higher education. The dichotomy of economic competitiveness and social cohesion has been transferred into higher education discussions and provoked new dichotomies like the ‘Europe of the euro’ versus the ‘Europe of knowledge’. A call from the 2007 London Communiqué to focus on the ‘full range of purposes' of higher education is taken as an indicative statement in recent policy debates and analysed. For this reason, four ‘archetypal models' of understanding the purposes of higher education are developed against the historical background of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Napoleonic, Humboldtian, Newmanian and Deweyan. Dewey's criticism of the ‘educational state’ in the early twentieth century is confronted with the later decline of the nation state, and with the processes of the internationalisation and globalisation of education and education policy. We are witness to the progressive instrumentalisation of higher education, but higher education's potential contribution to citizenship lies beyond this: in recognising the ‘full range of its purposes’.

Higher Education Corruption in the World Media: Prevalence, Patterns, and Forms

Corruption in higher education is a newly emerging topic in the field of education research. There is a phenomenal growth in the number of media reports on corruption in higher education over the last decade. However, the rigorous systematic research on education corruption is virtually nonexistent. This paper considers corruption in higher education as reflected in the world media, including such aspects of corruption as its prevalence, patterns, and dominating forms. It follows publications in the specialized and the non-specialized media outlets in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Russian Federation. The publications are grouped depending on the particular problem they address. This criterion has been chosen as best addressing the issue of corruption internationally. Socio-economic context of educational reforms and changes in each country leaves its print on major forms of corruption in higher education. The findings help to determine which aspects of corruption in higher education should be given more consideration in the future research and which ones might be prioritized, as well as how the national systems of higher education can be improved.

A critical analysis of the INQAAHE Guidelines of Good Practice for higher education quality assurance agencies

The International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education’s Guidelines of Good Practice by higher education quality assurance agencies need substantial revision before they can be considered adequate by stakeholders in any national higher education system. Various revisions are proposed in this article. But the International Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education also argues that adoption of its Guidelines of Good Practice has international significance in that the decisions about higher education quality made by agencies which comply with them can be accepted at face value universally. This conclusion, however, cannot be accepted until the Guidelines of Good Practice are amended to address the processes whereby each agency can become comfortable with the criteria and standards which the others impose in their respective jurisdictions. This article also maintains that, even if the Guidelines of Good Practice were technically perfect, agencies and/or governments ought to subject any proposals for their implementation to the discipline of rigorous risk management processes.

Corruption in Higher Education: Does it Differ across the Nations and Why?

Corruption in higher education is a newly emerging topic in the field of education research. Some aspects of corruption in education have been addressed in recent works by Eckstein, Hallak & Poisson, Heyneman, Noah & Eckstein, Segal, and Washburn. However, rigorous systematic research is lacking. This article considers corruption in higher education as reported in the media, following publications in the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Russian Federation. It addresses the differences in forms of corruption across the nations, identifying how exactly they differ and why. Major findings point to the following: some forms of corruption are region-specific while others are universal; types of corruption are connected to the characteristics of the national systems; the general trend in the media attention reflects growing concern about corruption in academia; in the United States more attention is now paid to fraud, plagiarism, and cheating, but in Russia to bribery in admissions. The findings help to determine which aspects of corruption in higher education should be given more consideration in future research and which might be prioritised, as well as how the national systems of higher education can be improved.

Systemic Integration and Macro Steering

The article deals with the development of national higher education systems and the emergence of macro steering in Europe and to some extent in the USA. It is based on the assumption that this process of integration of higher education systems through macro steering will increasingly be felt as a forceful influence on higher education. Integration confronts policy makers with at least three important questions. Firstly, how should the relationship between the institutions be organized? Secondly, along what dimensions should integration take place? Thirdly, what are the proper procedures by which integration ought to take place? This article seeks to analyze how policy makers and influential actors within higher education systems have responded to these questions. The underlying tension that policy makers are trying to come to grips with is to combine a system that is able to provide education on a massive scale for a large section of the population in a coherent, but at the same time flexible, manner that allows the system to adapt to changing and diverse needs in society (Guri-Rosenblit et al., 2007). The article first outlines some major dimensions along which higher education systems may be organized and steered. Then it discusses how different, well-established ideas about the purpose of formal education may interact with current efforts to shape higher education systems. Furthermore, the tensions and instability implied by competing ideas about the mission of higher education is analyzed. In addition, the article discusses how individual institutions may respond to systemic integration. Finally, it presents an analysis of how the growth and massification of higher education systems may be related to new ideas about the role of knowledge (‘the extended concept of knowledge’) and knowledge institutions in society.

The Russian System of Higher Education in View of the Bologna Process

The paper illustrates the system of higher education of the Russian Federation in view of implementation of the key aspects of the Bologna process. The problems existing in Russian higher education and the process of developing and modernising the system of higher education over the past fifteen years are highlighted. Some recent legislative initiatives aimed at reforming the national system of higher education in accordance with the main principles of the Bologna process are presented. The issues of quality assurance, in particular, differences between state and professional accreditation are discussed. The role of the Russian Association for Engineering Education in development of the national system for professional accreditation in engineering education as well as its contribution to setting up a pan-European system for quality assurance in engineering education being created within EHEA are described.

The Black College Mystique (review)

Reviewed by: The Black College Mystique M. Christopher Brown II The Black College Mystique, by Charles V. Willie, Richard J. Reddick, and Ronald Brown. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. 160 pp. Cloth $60.00, ISBN 0-7425-4616-0; Paper $19.95, ISBN 0-7425-4617. The cohort of institutions federally designated as historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) represents a unique collegiate context in the corporate system called American higher education. Institutions founded prior to 1964 for the purpose of providing collegiate education to African Americans, HBCUs have a unique educational history compared to other postsecondary institutions in the United States. There are 103 public, private, four-year, and two-year [End Page 604] HBCUs. In addition to those 103 HBCUs, there are approximately 50 predominantly Black institutions—institutions that have greater than 50% Black student enrollment, that were not founded primarily for the education of African American students, and that may or may not have been founded prior to 1964. HBCUs remain an indispensable part of the national higher education landscape. Despite all of the positive evidence relating to their successes and achievements, negative misconceptions and erroneous information continue to affect the image of HBCUs (Brown, Ricard, & Donahoo, 2004). In the introduction to a special issue of The Review of Higher Education focusing on empirical research on HBCUs, Brown and Freeman (2002) issued a clarion call for higher education researchers to document, describe, and detail these unique institutions. They stated, "Historically black colleges evince objectives, populations, philosophies, and environments which are worthy of scholarly investigation" (p. 240). This call resulted in a number of book-length projects on the topic, each referring to Brown and Freeman's introduction: Brown and Freeman (2004), Ashley and Williams (2004), Samuels (2004), and now Willie, Reddick, and Brown (2006). The latter of these is the focus of this review. The Black College Mystique is somewhat authored by the father of Black college research, Charles Willie, and two of his students—Richard J. Reddick and Ronald Brown. Actually, three of the seven chapters are reprinted from seminal articles published by Willie in the 1970s. The volume hews back to many of the classic ideas offered about HBCUs during the last century. However, the book offers few new citations to publications on what we know about HBCUs as a result of the last decade of empirical research by scholars like Walter Allen, M. Christopher Brown, James Earl Davis, Len Foster, Kassie Freeman, Sharon Fries-Britt, Marybeth Gasman, Barbara Johnson, Charles Outcalt, and Albert Samuels. The Black College Mystique does not join the recent cavalcade of scholarship responding to the call to expand the extant research base on HBCUs. In fact, the book never defines the "black college mystique," leaving the reader to wonder what it is, how it is relevant, or why the project was given this name. According to the preface, the volume has two overall findings: (1) HBCUs are essential to the national system of higher education, and (2) the mentoring of students by HBCU faculty is significantly greater than in all other institutions. It is extremely difficult to link either of the two findings to the research and/or logic offered in the volume. It is as if the findings were drafted before the volume was ever written. Despite its absence in The Black College Mystique, there is evidence of the essential role that Black colleges play on the postsecondary landscape, albeit not for the reasons Willie, Reddick, and Brown suggest related to racial homogeneity and heterogeneity. Recent literature speaks to the role of HBCUs in providing access and opportunity that could not otherwise be afforded to many African American, low-income, or undereducated students, as well as to other racial minorities (Brown, 1999; Brown & Davis, 2001; Wenglinsky, 1996, 1997). Despite common parlance that HBCUs are culturally more congenial living and learning communities, there is no empirical data on the role of HBCU faculty as superior mentors when controlling for institutional size (Brown, 1998). The issue of the intangible and dynamic cultural context of the Black college has been referenced anecdotally by numerous writers. However, prior to this [End Page 605] "treatise," no effort had been made to name or explain...