Soviet higher education had a distinctive institutional landscape. It combined two institutional types in a uniform model that embedded higher education in the national economy. This paper focuses on the post-Soviet system-level changes in the institutional landscape in all 15 countries of the former USSR. It shows that over last three decades the…

In response to global competition in higher education, university rankings have been developed. These have been interpreted as indicating the regions and countries with the most prestigious and competitive higher education institutions. The rankings are viewed as important in many countries, but their role is ambiguous and contested in the Nordic…

While it is generally agreed that higher education is a public good and produces public goods, it remains unclear what this means. An important reason for the unclarity is the conceptual ambiguity and cultural nuances of the concept of the public good in higher education. Coupled with the Western dominance of discourse in higher education and…

This article explores the concept of Student Affairs and Services (SAS) as a global profession, how it is positioned and positions itself in the context of what it means to be a profession and reflects on the ways in which SAS has and can professionalize. The literature related to professionalization is presented along with a discussion of the…

Colleges are important providers of vocational education and training and in some countries they are the major provider. Although the international literature on colleges has grown considerably in the past two decades, it still consists primarily of qualitative descriptions of college sectors in different countries. Quantitative studies of…

Studies of global university rankings often assume that rankings as Anglo-American policy scripts have an increasing influence resulting in a convergence of policies and practices, or that the ideas of rankings continue to diverge into national types. In this article, we take a middle ground by arguing that when an idea of ranking is grounded in a…

In Japanese higher education, there is a notable shift in learning assistance. It is transitioning from merely providing remedial help to fostering comprehensive student success. This study examines learning assistance in Japanese higher education, which was restructured in the 1950s following the American university system, through comparison…

In this article, we contribute to the scant literature covering quantitative studies on the determinants of the non-academic staff incidence in higher education institutions by analysing how the proportion of non-academic staff is related to key features such as size, prestige, year of foundation and financial structure of universities. We apply…

Background: Internationally, research comparing education systems across countries and jurisdictions is valuable and can elicit nuanced insights into how particular systems operate. This paper's interest lies in considering the scope and content of research comparing education systems across the four UK nations (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland…

Internationalization of higher education (IHE) has become one of the most prominent strategies in national policies and universities' agendas during the past three decades. IHE provides numerous benefits to nations, institutions, and higher education stakeholders and plays a vital role in improving the quality of education and research. However,…

Comparative and international higher education scholarship frequently notes that technology plays a role in higher education internationalisation, but there is low consensus about how. In this paper, we offer interdisciplinary considerations to theorise technology in higher education internationalisation using three theoretical and methodological…

This qualitative phenomenological study focused on the lived experiences of adult immigrants repeating courses to meet academic requirements in higher education in the United States. The problem addressed in this qualitative phenomenological study was that United States educational institutions may not recognize and validate credentials adult…

Now that the goal of universal primary education has been achieved in Ghana, the nation's aim is to expand higher education as a key to development. We argue that this expansion will necessitate the gradual addition of Ghanaian languages as a medium of instruction. We innovatively explain why this is so by comparing the achievements of the…

In this article we examine the European Semester as an innovative form of policy coordination, with distinct effects on education and skills policies for Member States. We analyse the Semester's framing of education policy, and examine its manifestations in Spain and Sweden, two countries considered to be different in their approach to education.…

In many developed countries, disagreement on important policy issues between groups with different social identities ('ideological polarisation') is increasing. In professional settings, these disagreements undermine cooperation and trust between employees, which negatively affects work relationships and managerial decision-making. We investigate…