The COVID-19 outbreak has had a significant influence on all aspects of society, and it is necessary to comprehend the responses of various stakeholders as well as the challenges that higher education has encountered in the aftermath of the outbreak. This study systematically analyses the measures taken by higher education stakeholders in response…

In 2020, 1.5 billion students in 188 countries/economies were locked out of their schools. Students everywhere have been faced with schools that are open one day and closed the next, causing massive disruption to their learning. With the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic still raging, many education systems are still struggling, and the situation is…

Neoliberal education policies have altered the operational environments of schools and affected school principals' job descriptions and requirements. As a result of managerialism, decentralisation and marketisation of education, principals are increasingly responsible for profitability, marketing and striving in competition, in addition to their…

Purpose: Increased school autonomy and accountability have been a common denominator of national reforms in otherwise heterogeneous governance systems in Europe and the USA. The paper argues that because schools serving disadvantaged communities (SSDCs) often have lower average performance, they are more often sanctioned or under closer scrutiny,…

In education policy, as in many other policy fields, well-designed policy reforms may fail to get enacted because policymakers may suddenly become confronted with a public backlash against their reform agenda. Thus, understanding the dynamics of public opinion is important in order to be able to assess the chances of successful reform. There is a…

For more than 20 years, new public management (NPM) has been the guiding governance model of university reforms in Europe. One central aspect of this governance model is to strengthen the hierarchy within the universities. Recent research shows that the formal decision-making authority of university leaders and deans has increased in almost every…

Over the past two decades, public higher education has become widely recognized for its contribution to socio-economic adjustment. This paper probes its evolution in two large and affluent democracies, the United States and Germany, whose higher education systems represent distinct ideal types. The analysis argues that public authorities in both…

One common way of conceptualising recent changes in university governance is by stating that the universities are being pushed towards a market-like setting where the uniqueness of each university's strategy and capacity for introducing organizational change is seen as necessary to improve the functioning of the university. We argue that the…

Despite all intentions in the course of the Bologna Process and decades of investment into improving the social dimension, results in many national and international studies show that inequity remains stubbornly persistent, and that inequity based on socio-economic status, parental education, gender, country-of-origin, rural background and more…

Germany ranks in the bottom fourth in spending on higher education in a comparison among Western industrial countries. Germany's status as a place for higher education is imperiled. There is a danger that in the near future, the very best and most promising of the upcoming generations will increasingly choose only professionally relevant training…

Traces developments in British technology education, focusing on the German Polytechnic School's influence as a model. States this model was emulated to meet British industrialization needs. Examines different cities' approaches to technology education and rivalries with universities, highlighting differences between state and local control. (CH)