This paper examines the shifting landscape of higher education in Turkey, highlighting a disconcerting trend of politically motivated appointments, coined as "parasailing." Departing from traditional merit-based norms, this practice of appointing professors without necessary approvals disrupts the academic environment, prompting concerns…

Although the new Supreme Court decision outlawing affirmative action in college admissions is constitutional, equitable, and approved by a large majority of Americans, by itself it will probably increase leftist dominance of American universities. After all, an increase in leftist dominance was the effect of the constitutional amendment outlawing…

This Point of Departure ponders the question of decolonizing assessment of learning in higher education. In addressing this question, we, as scholars of color who work in the academy in the US and the UK, have leaned on the work of Shahjahan, Estera, Surla, and Edwards' (2022) '"Decolonizing" Curriculum and Pedagogy: A comparative review…

In this inquiry, I explore, expose, and extrapolate upon sociopolitical and environmental absurdism as an environmental academic and educator based in Alberta, Canada--a well-known, and somewhat infamous, centre of oil and gas production and energy development in general. Moving beyond Alberta as a catalytic example, I introduce and discuss…

This paper theorizes time, affect, and politics as entangled by foregrounding the notion of "chronopolitics" as "affective milieus" in higher education. In doing so, the analysis emphasizes how time discourses and practices are embodied and affective, sometimes becoming sedimented, while other times functioning as a means of…

This paper uses the writings of European teachers and Chinese students at St. Stephen's Girls' College in Hong Kong--published in English periodicals of its school magazine and local English newspapers--to examine how the school tactically positioned itself as an educational site for the "useful women of China" during a period in…

In this paper, we engage with Chinese diasporas research through recourse to Bourdieu's relational, reflexive sociology. We start with the historical and recent developments of Chinese diasporas research and point out the potential of using Bourdieu to strengthen the theoretical underpinnings of this research. While we see a steady stream of…

Despite the growing complexity and multidimensionality of the system of international research collaborations, the colonial discourse casting the collaborative relationships in terms of polarized North--South antitheses persists and continues to exert influence on the nature of power distribution in the relationships, as well as on the…

This paper investigates the accountability mechanisms introduced in the universities in the Nordic countries by building on a typology of accountability types. By utilising survey data, it analyses how academics experience the changes in accountability mechanisms and how they perceive the impact of these changes on their performance. The analysis…

This paper considers the differential placements of social actors in the contemporary English university, as practices consistent with neoliberal ideologies become increasingly influential. It uses Layder's theory of 'social domains' and the first-hand experiences of the author to explore how the options available -- to students, those on…

Drawing on 45 semi-structured interviews conducted in four public universities as part of an international comparative project, we examine the cultural, political, social and economic forces at play in the way the 'public good' is perceived, translated and debated within the French higher education context. Our findings indicate that a variety of…

This paper retraces the evolution of the relationships between higher education institutions, the state and the academic profession in France since the French Revolution on the one hand and the parallel evolution of the societal expectations for their roles and missions, on the other. It in particular highlights the divide between the universities…

This article discusses the challenges faced teaching the promotion of 'British values', especially for trainee teachers. The advancement of these 'British values' as set out by the Department for Education is confusing, contradictory, and appear to exclude a sizeable minority of pupils of minority backgrounds from the current historical narrative…

In this essay, I consider the impacts of the pandemic and the recent political challenges to the global position of Hong Kong's higher education. To reveal the impacts, I examine what makes Hong Kong's academic model special, and assess the sustainability of this model in a post-pandemic era.

This paper seeks to analyse the policy trajectory of the inter-regional plans to establish a common space in higher education (HE) involving the European Union (EU) and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) regions. Although both regions developed different formats of higher education cooperation programmes, it was in 1999 that an…