Since 2006, universities in England that want to charge higher fees to their domestic undergraduates have been required to agree a plan with an access regulator appointed by the government. This article identifies the objective for the regulation as equalising opportunity, then considers its effect, drawing on policy literature, ministerial…

Comparative higher education is arguably lagging behind its sister field of comparative education. It has been developed more recently, lacks in institutional structure, its intellectual debate is marginal, and its political construction is incomplete. Yet, despite the pitfalls of comparative higher education research, this article argues that…

The expansion of university systems across the planet over the last fifty years has led to the emergence of a new policy assemblage -- 'global higher education' that depends on the collection, curation and representation of quantitative data. In this paper I explore the use of data by higher education policy actors to sustain 'epistemic…

Everyday learner-teacher interactions are a key factor in student engagement and learning. There is thus growing scholarly attention on the relational practices of engaging students as partners (SaP) in higher education. In Chinese universities, there is an emerging literature exploring learner--teacher relationships as a partnership. To advance…

Measures that economise education are typically accompanied by discourses that prime society for change by framing the policy in individualistic and consumeristic terms. This article explores the emergence of 'value for money' (VfM) discourses in the English higher education sector. Using Bourdieu's thinking tools, we explore how VfM is…

The Coalition Government of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in office from 2010 until 2015 sharply increased the maximum tuition fees for UK and EU undergraduates at English universities to £9,000. Although this is often portrayed as a radical change, it is argued that the reform was an evolution rather than a revolution. Common pessimistic…

In 2016, approximately 5 million students, about 2% of global tertiary enrolments, studied abroad. As globalisation of education advances, tertiary student mobility is an important channel through which highly skilled immigrants arrive and work in different nation states. Informed by the multidisciplinary internationalisation frameworks, this…

This piece offers two stories and attempts a contrast between them. These are about how UK higher education responded to the economic crisis of the 1970s, and about how it is shaping up in response to the banking crisis of 2008 and its global ramifications. The first is constructed around the rise and fall of "public sector higher…

This paper discusses one of Furlong's major areas of work, the theory and practice of teacher education. Taking up where our joint publication "Teacher Education in Transition: Re-Forming Professionalism?" (Open University Press 2000) left off, it examines how accelerated moves towards school-based teacher education, as well as increased…

Focusing on data and policies from England, trends in educational disadvantage by area are traced from the late 1960s when the first pilot projects were established in the UK, to the present. The origins of these developments and the subsequent rises and falls of such area-based policies in England are reviewed. Specially collected data for the…

Several authors posit the notion that universities have experienced "moral loss" over the last 15 years under the sustained influence of neoliberal education policies. However, whilst some consensus exists around the causes and effects of moral loss, there appears to be little agreement about how "moral reconstruction" can be…

Any moves towards substantive equality in education must negotiate the contradictions between equality and efficiency. Equality of education comes about through both the widening of opportunity and the maintenance of educational quality, but in the context of limited resources, educational policy rarely serves both ends simultaneously. Regardless…

This article explores the changing attitudes towards student accommodation in higher education in the United Kingdom since the end of the Second World War. In the first part of this period there was a firm assumption, in universities and teacher training colleges, that the accommodation of students in or close to their university or college,…

The 2004 Higher Education Act introduced variable tuition fees of up to 3,000 British Pounds for full-time undergraduates in England. Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) charging the maximum tuition must give low-income students bursaries of 300 British Pounds. On top of this mandatory minimum, HEIs now provide additional discretionary financial…

In Germany, a remarkable number of young people leave school with the qualification required for entrance to higher education ("Abitur") but do not actually go on to university. Instead, these young people--known in German as "Abiturienten"--start an apprenticeship within what is known in Germany as the "Dual-System".…