The past three decades have witnessed the growing influence of market forces on higher education, resulting in what is defined by Fairclough (1993) as the marketization of academic discourse. The present study attempts to examine the effect of such trend on university website homepages in China, which is an under-researched genre of higher…

Purpose: The paper examines the effects of individual differences on the key motivational factors affecting Chinese study abroad students. Design/methodology/approach: The current study adopts a quantitative survey approach. Students are recruited through the largest online survey provider in China. Using 335 completed questionnaires and factor…

Current literature suggests two kinds of congruence that come into play when students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds enter elite universities: academic fit and social fit. Yet, in most of the studies on habitus transformation, the differences between the two are seldom mentioned. This may imply that the transformation of one aspect…

As previous research has not addressed the relationship between university autonomy and university rankings within countries where the state control model is used, this study explores universities' strategies to achieve top university rankings in accordance with their autonomous rights and financial as well as political support. Specifically, this…

This paper explores the impacts of research excellence evaluation entailed in global ranking exercises, a control strategy characteristic of new managerialism, on Chinese Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) academics. The enquiry combines the Critical Incidents Technique (CIT) and internet-based discourse analysis, drawing on mass media texts and…

Under the third wave of international student mobility, Australia has become the third largest country receiving international students. Compared with the United States and the United Kingdom, Australia can still maintain a stable increase in terms of hosting Chinese students. For Australia, attracting international students becomes an important…

The purpose of this research is to understand how nation branding initiatives complement education diplomacy for a country such as China and to investigate how country distance shapes perceptions of China across a large international student contingency in China. We use Ghemawat's [(2001). Distance still matters. "Harvard Business…

China now tops the list of countries with the largest annual number of scientific publications. At the same time, China also leads the list of countries with the highest proportion of scientific publication retractions. The rise in this academic misconduct in China has given Chinese researchers a bad reputation and likely led to lower manuscript…

The brief report describes an exploratory investigation into changes to three university EFL teachers' teaching practices in a research-intensive university framed by managerialist technologies to improve its visibility and global ranking. The findings revealed that substantial changes have been brought about to their teaching practices in terms…

Source-based writing research has received much attention in recent years, which generally shows that both novice and expert EFL (English as a foreign language) writers have difficulties in writing from sources. As many Chinese institutes of higher education attach increasingly more importance to publications in international journals, citation…

Employing a glonacal (global, national and local) heuristic as a theoretical lens, and a qualitative analysis with interview data, this study highlights how Chinese faculty members interpret the definitions and implications of pursuing world class universities (WCUs) and struggle with the multiple dimensions of their academic lives across global,…

This article presents an argument for re-reading Jean Baudrillard's ideas considering their potential contribution to the sociology of higher education, particularly in relation to contemporary debates about "world-class" universities. In order to apply Baudrillard's ideas, China's commitment to the development of "world-class"…

Despite China's recent remarkable performance in high-quality research, the number of students going abroad to pursue doctoral degrees in STEM fields has been rising rapidly. This study investigates the motivations of Chinese international doctoral students (CIDS) in STEM fields for undertaking a PhD abroad, and the external factors influencing…

This paper aims to map the landscape of higher education transformation in the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations while exploring the status of BRICS nations in some of the global university rankings and analysing their potential to give new meaning to notions such as excellent and world-class universities. The study…

Chinese domestic brands have developed rapidly in recent years, and yet few of them have entered global competition as product or service brands brands with exceptions such as Huawei. In addition, the evolution of Chinese brands has hardly been understood or introduced properly by international business educators. In this article, we identify the…