Between 1950 and 1980 surveys of academic sociologists revealed a major shift in the relative ratings of the top six Sociology departments. Wisconsin rose from a distant sixth to being rated first or second. Harvard and Columbia dropped from first and second the rankings to as low as sixth seventh. Underlying these trajectories were a variety of…

This article seeks to shed light on current dynamics of stratification in changing higher education and proposes an analytical perspective to account for these dynamics based on Martin Trow's work on "the analysis of status." In research on higher education, the term "stratification" is generally understood as a metaphor that…

The purpose of our research is to gain a better insight into what encourages young adults, in particular young women, to enter the teaching profession. The empirical part of the article is based on a pilot study including 132 students, with data collection being based on a survey approach using a questionnaire. The research attempts to address the…

Based on ethnographic data, the present study examines how being critical has been understood, valued and practiced among students enrolled in international English-as-the-medium-of-instruction (EMI) Master's porgrammes in a top-rated comprehensive university in China. Drawing on the Foucauldian ethico-political axes of self-formation, this…

Among the major trends in the higher education (HE) sector, the development of rankings as a policy and managerial tool is of particular relevance. However, despite the diffusion of these instruments, it is still not clear how they relate with traditional performance measures, like unit costs and efficiency scores. In this paper, we estimate a…

Introduction: This study looked at the effect of community peripheral cues (specifically voting score and answerer's reputation) on the user's credibility rating of answers. Method: Students in technology and philosophy were asked to assess the credibility of answers to questions posted on a social question-answering platform. Through the use of a…

In this paper, we analyze how students select particular sections of required undergraduate courses at a regional public university in Texas. Specifically, we study how perceived instructor quality and other course section attributes, such as meeting time, impact enrollment. We find strong evidence that publicly available information about…

Drawing on research conducted at National University of Ireland, Galway, this paper explores how senior managers at an Irish university are seeking to measure and facilitate academic performance in the context of national and global competitiveness and a higher education landscape that appears firmly inflected by neoliberal ideas of rankings,…

This study analyzed citations in four journals, "Annals of the Association of American Geographers," "Cartography and Geographic Information Science," "International Journal of Geographical Information Science," and "Cartographic Journal," using Bradford's Law of Scattering to identify three influence zones…

This study benchmarks marketing doctoral programs worldwide in five popular subareas by faculty and institutional scholarly impact. A multi-item approach identifies a collection of top-tier scholarly journals for each subarea, while citation data over the decade 2003 to 2012 identify high scholarly impact marketing faculty by subarea used to…

There is a comprehensive literature documenting how colleges' tuition, financial aid packages, and academic reputations influence students' application and enrollment decisions. Far less is known about how quality-of-life reputations and peer institutions' reputations affect these decisions. This article investigates these issues…

Branding is now widely used by higher education (HE) institutions, yet questions still surround the transference of private sector concepts to a university context. This article reports on findings from studies that investigated the brand promises of four UK universities--one from each of the HE "mission groups." The evidence indicated…

Access has been an ongoing issue for rural students. In this study, I examined factors that have been proven barriers and supports for rural students. Rural college students who were part of the TRiO program at a flagship university shared barriers and supports to access higher education. Students talked about their college journeys by telling…

This study applies the pre-purchase decision-making model for services to higher education context in order to understand international students' post-acquisition marketing engagement. The research categorizes three types of decision-making factors (i.e. internal, external, and risk) and two types of customer marketing engagement (CME) (i.e.…

This paper sheds new light on horizontal stratification in higher education by studying, in the Israeli context, the choice of institution and field of study of sons and daughters of nonacademic economically established parents. These youngsters wish to reproduce their parents' economic capital, but also to legitimize their social position by…