So-called 'world-class universities' emerged on the global higher education scene following the Second World War. Their development in countries around the world, particularly since the early 2000s, has evolved into an international norm, although not without debate and contestation. This paper applies Constructivist theory to reflect on how local…

The article argues for intersectionality as analytical concept for transnational education policy analyses of teachers' work. We first lay out the conceptual and methodological groundwork, and then revisit two case studies of teachers' work to deepen understanding of the conceptual framework for intersectional transnational education policy…

This article is an introduction to a European Educational Research Journal special issue on accountability policies and instruments in Europe. Two hypotheses grounded in the new institutionalist theory are presented to conceptualise and analyse the variety of national trajectories and forms of accountability in four European education systems…

In the context of rapidly advancing technologies, the significance of noncognitive skills is increasingly recognized by academia and industry as essential qualities in the era of knowledge economy. However, the study of Chinese students' noncognitive skills development during their college period in China was scarce. This research adopts a case…

The concept 'network governance' has become widespread and is often believed to occur in a Western environment. Is network governance applicable to other contexts and what can we learn from it in Bangladeshi context? This paper outlines how the idea of 'network governance' emerged and how it operates in a neoliberal higher education…

In this paper, an analysis of the spatial production of Chile as an international academic destination for doctoral students is put forward. This arises from the notion of internationalisation as a process of the rescaling of university marketplaces and international students as consumers of global scales of excellence. As such, it proposes the…

The interconnected nature of today's world continues to permeate most aspects of modern life. Known as globalization, countries, economies, and people are all closer than ever before given increases in technology, innovation, and capital. These external pressures of globalization meet higher education in a process known as…

Higher education (HE) reforms are usually inspired by New Public Management (NPM) global reform scripts. This article focuses on a pivotal object of NPM-driven reforms--central university governance structures. On the one hand, we present the founding ideas of NPM and sketch how they translate for these structures; on the other hand, two further…

In this paper, I explore the enactment of institutional autonomy policy as a reform strategy to support the internationalization of higher education in Vietnam. The autonomy policy signifies the transfer of decision-making authority from the ministries to public universities so that university leaders can decide on matters of teaching, research,…

Taiwan's higher education system has intentionally been designed to follow a Western model, and in its higher education development there are observable aspects of policies and practices that echo models from the West. However, traditional values still play a significant role in its social and cultural development. Beneath the surface are various…

The neoliberalisation of higher education in post-communist central and eastern Europe, the new EU member states, is not seen as being distinct. Implementation of the Bologna Process and Lisbon Strategy means it has become part of the competitive global sphere of higher education. The transformation of post-communist higher education has attracted…

Drawing on the concept of hypermobility, the paper examines a case of study-abroad mobility from a governmentality perspective. Based on a critical analysis of policy texts and interviews with Irish students who have taken part in the Erasmus exchange programme, it argues that under the conditions of neoliberal globalisation, the normalisation of…

All over the world, educators and policy-makers are concerned about how best to prepare students to engage actively in an increasingly interconnected world. In this paper, I begin by arguing that twenty-first century education policies have largely been articulated in response to the exigencies of economic globalization. Further, a survey of the…

Conceptualizing EMI-cum-acceleration policy in a transnational HE market as the regulation and institutionalization of language practices through a chronometrical approach to time for the sake of global economic competition and social mobility, this qualitative case study explores the experiences and enactments of such a policy by six engineering…

This comparative case study adopts a process implementation perspective on neoliberal regulation to explore developments in national curricula and standard-based reforms in the USA and Australia. Date sources include research reports, books, OECD data, and local survey data. The comparison of the dynamic of two countries reveals that whereas…