The notion that investment in human capital is associated with better economic outcomes was coined in the U.S. and is assumed to translate equally across nations regardless of countries' socio-economic and political situation. The purpose of this study is to examine whether human capital tenets hold in European countries that transitioned from…

In the past few decades, the internationalisation of higher education has become an increasingly popular trend across different parts of the globe. The fierce global competition and the aggravating unemployment rate, coupled with low teaching and research quality revealed by universities in mainland China, have inevitably compelled a growing…

Hitherto, research on transnational higher education student mobility tended to narrowly present hard statistics on student mobility, analysing these in terms of "trends" and the implication this has on policy and internationalizing strategies. What is missing from this "big picture" is a close-up analysis of the micropolitics…

One of the ways in which globalization is manifesting itself in higher education and research is through the increasing importance and emphasis on scientific mobility. This article seeks to provide an overview and analysis of current trends and policy tools for promoting mobility. The article argues that the mobility of scientific labour is an…

The global competition and related international academic mobility in science and research is rising. Within this context, Europe faces quantitative skills shortages, including an estimate of between 800,000 and one million researchers. Within Europe skills imbalances and mismatches increase, with a growing divergence between countries and…

The flight of human capital is a phenomenon that has been of concern to academics and development practitioners for decades. Unfortunately, there is no systematic record of the number of skilled professionals that many African countries have continued to lose to the developed world. Termed the "brain drain", it represents the loss of…

The master discourses of economic globalisation and the knowledge economy each cite knowledge diasporas as vital "trans-national human capital". Based on a case study of a major Australian university, this article examines the potential to deploy China's large and highly-skilled diaspora in the service of Chinese and Australian…

Purpose: Higher education, including research, depends crucially on the people involved, their talents and human capital. Therefore, a university can improve or at least maintain its standing by hiring only the best available academics. Hiring the absolute best may be too expensive for most and is impossible for all. However, it is not too…