The new demands of mass systems of higher education and the emerging environment of global academic competition are altering the traditional institutions for assuring academic standards in universities. As a consequence many nations are experimenting with new instruments for academic quality assurance. Contemporary government control of academic…

Suggests an economic perspective for defining and measuring academic diversity in terms of program innovation, not only in teaching, research, and public service activities, but also in the processes of production and markets served. Such a perspective would also provide valuable theoretical frameworks for exploring important questions of how…

Innovation and change in higher education are examined, focusing on the organizational level. Frameworks for analysis employed in the literature are presented and applications are illustrated. Four distinct frameworks for studying change in higher education as conceived by Gamson are: complex organization, conflict, diffusion, and planned change.…

To facilitate research on the processes of innovation and change in higher education, a conceptual distinction is drawn between broad processes of organizational change and specific process of change and innovation. A typology of four research frameworks for innovation is presented and illustrated through exemplary studies. (Author/MH)

Examines the "evaluative state" that is, public management-based evaluation systems--in the context of experiences in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, and suggests that further research is needed to examine problems in the evaluative state itself, in how market competition impacts upon it, and how academic oligarchies influence the…