The pursuit of inclusion in elite universities has been widely explored from a structural lens concerned with issues of access faced by traditionally underrepresented students and staff. Building from a sociological institutionalist approach, this paper proposes the concept of 'agentic inclusion' to capture the growing valorisation of…

Aligning a transnational educational framework in an institution's strategic development policy is crucial for UK higher education institutions to remain competitive. Though academia has previously integrated internationalization into their strategic plans, the current saturated educational landscape has demanded a broader spectrum of activities…

In this paper, I argue a new politics of ordinal differentiation and its instruments for governing education aims to make invisible a 'low intensity civil war' against the labouring classes. It does this through the elevation and ubiquity of actuarial and quantitative measures aimed at producing a new form of differentiated belonging: that of…

The purpose of this article is to explore the possibilities of constructing performance indicators for the Faculty of Law (FL) at the University of São Paulo (USP), aiming to use them as instruments capable of institutional evaluation and as metrics capable of national and international comparisons, looking to strengthen their reputation. The…

Inclusion is seen as an ethical obligation, grounded in notions of equity and social justice for all groups and at all stages of education, with higher education (HE) representing a distinctive space where the inclusion agenda is becoming more influential. However, inclusion is also increasingly recognised as an ambiguous concept that might have…

Numerous UK universities are experiencing financial instability; with an increasingly competitive and maturing market, reliance has grown on international students to offset institutional shortfalls. Dependency on international student tuition revenue has over-exposed the market to dramatic shifts in political policies, both domestic and…

Globally, performance-based research funding aims to support the most deserving academic institutions and researchers. However, overcoming entrenched assumptions about quality is a persistent challenge for higher education research policies worldwide; traditionally powerful institutions tend to maintain dominance. Research impact as a performance…

UK media coverage of global university league tables shows systematic bias towards the Russell Group, although also highlighting tensions within its membership. Coverage positions UK "elite" institutions between US superiority and Asian ascent. Coverage claims that league table results warrant UK university funding reform. However,…

Deans and academic colleagues are collectively involved in the delivery of business education. Yet their perspectives on teaching and learning can vary significantly reflecting the distinctive position from which they view the process. The dean's perspective is shaped by external drivers and reference groups that are very different from those…

Since their emergence a decade ago, global university rankings have become a powerful force in higher education internationally. The majority of research studies on global rankings have examined the effects at institutional and national levels. This study offers a valuable perspective on the ways rankings (and other international benchmarks) are…

This paper examines the main rationales for and possible implications of the policy of increasing international student numbers in higher education (HE). Drawing on critical discourse analysis, we map key themes emerging from two sets of data--university strategy documents and interviews with staff--collected at eight universities in four national…

There is much debate in the literature concerning the changes necessary for university accounting education to meet the needs of the business environment and broader society. In the USA the Pathways Commission has responded by implementing a programme of evaluation and improvement. In the UK there is no formal agenda for change. This paper…

The past two decades have seen the idea of internationalization move into the mainstream of higher education policy and practice, on a global scale. In countries like the US and UK however, higher education is widely perceived as a hierarchical field, where high- and low-status universities are differentiated from one another: serving different…

This paper argues that the "Times Higher" provides a powerful tool for understanding the changing character of UK higher education (HE) and can usefully be seen as representative, and in some ways constitutive, of that changing character. Drawing on an analysis of a sample of stories from the "Times Higher," it documents the…

This study explores responses to rankings from a group of staff working as education partnership facilitators for a professional intermediary organisation, the British Council. The study adopts an activity systems perspective from which to view the contexts in which rankings are encountered and the range of practices used to reduce tensions…