The Finnish financial autonomy reform pushed university leaders and academics to a juncture where they must navigate through increasing competition dynamics. Enabling the two types of organisational players -- foundation-run universities and universities under public law -- to become more autonomous and competitive was the major element of…

Establishing a national university has been widely viewed by smaller developing countries as a means of asserting sovereignty and driving the country's economic, social, and cultural development. This has been particularly true in the South Pacific, despite the existence of the regional University of the South Pacific. Building a national…

Student evaluation of teaching (SET) has not yet been studied historically and comparatively. Based on our interviews with professors and administrators at 18 universities in three countries, we discuss how SET diffused in all the studied universities and how SET was translated and edited differently according to different sets of statements. SET…

Tuition-dependent colleges and universities face increasing competition for students. This study examined whether accreditation sanctions might serve as signals of quality and relate to enrollment. Results of a panel analysis showed enrollment declined for institutions after being placed on sanction with their regional accreditor. Specifically,…

Public Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are facing many challenges including state funding, competition, and maintaining the best possible graduation rate. This study: (1) examined the strategic plans and strategic planning processes to explore how, and to what extent, these tool are being used to address these challenges; and (2) explored the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of studies on antecedents of the corporate reputation of higher education institutions (HEIs) from the perspectives of employees. Design/methodology/approach: The approach is an examination of previous literature on antecedents of corporate reputation in HEIs, published between…

The need to compete is not limited to business organizations but is also one of the normal practices of publicly funded academic institutions. Reforming higher education and the adoption of neoliberal policies have transformed publicly funded colleges and universities and have forced them towards the market. The paper reviews and critiques: (1)…

The paper critically discusses how the notion of autonomy is textually constructed in the neo-liberal discourses of a corporatised public South African higher education system. By employing the methods of critical discourse analysis (CDA), I analyse two selected texts written by various leaders connected to the University of Johannesburg between…

Performance-based funding (PBF) for public colleges and universities is increasingly prevalent worldwide, as a part of a broader pattern of marketisation in public education. This study focused on developing an empirical view of how, and in what contexts, policy makers use the concepts of neoliberal economics to design and support PerformanceBased…

The article presents the results of a study of the international educational activities of Russian universities. The goals of the study were to identify groups of universities that have similar international educational activity indicators in a number of areas (based on a cluster analysis of the data) and to analyze the characteristics of…

Purpose: This study aims to review the zeal exhibited by universities in South Africa towards aligning institutional mandates of teaching, learning, research and community engagement to the sustainable development (SD) agenda. The implementation of the SD agenda across higher education institutions (HEIs) continues to draw attention from the wider…

In this study, we analyse the relationship between competition and programmatic diversification in 75 Italian universities from the academic years of 2003/2004 to 2011/2012. Results show that local competition, rather than national competition, influences programmatic diversification. The relationship between local competition and programmatic…

Since the 1950s, Taiwan has made great strides in higher education. However, its developmental growth has not been stable. Different studies show different ways to distinguish the stages of higher education development: Chen (2008) stated the stages of development in Taiwan from 1949 to the present can be seen as the following eras: early…

Public universities undertake business activities sometimes considered by private enterprise as unfairly competitive based on nonprofit advantages. This study was an inquiry into the attitudes and actions of chief business officers at public universities regarding these activities. The research population consisted of the 1862 Morrill Act Land…

Australian public universities are struggling to maintain parity with international counterparts in an environment that is becoming increasingly competitive globally. While most universities are now heeding calls from sector leaders to become more competitive, any strategies that they implement to effect change in this regard might be too late to…