For activists, scholars, and thinkers, the current state of our hyperpolitical global landscape can be daunting, especially as we consider engaging and responding to the growing political vitriol and hyperbole of our times. Over the past few years, I have wondered a great deal about how to sustain idealism during troubled times in a field such as…

The article tackles the question, how to provide students with a comparative orientation to public administration. We eschew the older tradition of comparing major systems such British parliamentary system or French bureaucratic approaches to organizations' structure. Rather, we seek to understand public administration in countries with different…

Within the framework of comparative education studies, this article discusses the process of borrowing and implementing Complex Instruction (CI) in Europe, focusing on three different multicultural and heterogeneous educational contexts in Italy: five primary schools, a Master academic teaching course, and a first literacy course for migrant…

Strategy is planning about survival in a tough and competitive environment, and strategic enrollment management (SEM) is about higher education institutions exerting influence on student enrollment to generate tuition revenue. Although the global environment of the 21st century provides opportunities for improving enrollment from various parts of…

Articulating one's positionality as a researcher is crucial to social research. This is particularly important in comparative and international education research where context, culture and notions of power underpin much of the work. However, researcher positionality has multiple meanings, making it challenging for emerging researchers to navigate…

This note is an invited "post-scriptum" where the 'script' is the articles in this volume. No effort will be made to summarise the articles. The intent is contemplative: to mull over how comparative education changes and, within that broad motif, to think about the role of 'our' foreigners. The mulling is self-indulgent, somewhat…

This paper was invited as a commentary on the keynote paper for this special issue by Simon Marginson and Lili Yang. The paper begins by noting the importance of a fully balanced approach to comparison in higher education, that gives equal value and weight to Sinic and Anglo-American views by adopting a transpositional approach and also…

Accreditation can serve as an accountability mechanism for higher education, ensuring institutions meet specific standards, which can be impacted by various factors including the regulatory environment of each country or local jurisdiction as well as an institution's mission, enrollment, and student success trends. In addition, higher education…

While the Bologna Process in Europe is the leading example, regional efforts towards harmonization of higher education are taking place in every corner of the world. In Africa, such a process has its roots from decades ago, although more coordinated activities are only recent phenomena. This paper looks back at the harmonization processes in…

This article discusses whether social success is the ultimate goal of higher education from a cross cultural approach. To review this study logically, three research questions are addressed. First, what are the concepts of success and social success? Second, for whom and what is social success? Last, is social success indeed the ultimate goal in…

This paper discusses empirical comparisons of higher education institutions across world regions. It argues that institutional data systems have the potential for complementing global comparisons promoted by rankings by providing sensible information on institutional size, budgets, staffing, enrolments and activity profiles. With this perspective…

Over the past 65 years, Sub-Saharan Africa has been the terrain of the biggest education expansion drive in human history (Wolhuter & Van Niekerk, 2009). On top of this expansion, Africa has been the site of imaginative experiments and innovations in education (Samoff & Carrol, 2013, p. 403). These all seem to offer attractive and fertile…

Comparative education relies on experiences, expertise, data, and criticism derived from multiple contexts and diverse levels to generate insights, facilitate understanding, and explain change. Marked by connectivity, our contemporary era vastly increases the (potential) diffusion of ideas essential for scientific advance. Three interlocking…

Having reviewed several pieces of strategy documents, policy papers, and literature, we concluded that there is no uniform definition of either institutional autonomy or academic freedom (AF). Many different points of view determine the interpretation of these terms. Furthermore, the policymakers (e.g., governments, legislators) can ignore the…

Higher education helps learners acquire the knowledge and skills they need to lead productive working lives, and it sparks the innovation that fosters economic growth and social progress. However, creating higher education systems that operate at a high level of research and teaching quality, with responsiveness to social and labour market…