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The Europeanization of higher education has gained considerable scope and momentum over the past quarter century. Whereas the coordinative Bologna process, with soft governance mechanisms, has facilitated standardization across countries, European Commission funding programs target universities more directly. The Erasmus Mundus Joint Degree Programme, as an incentive-based program, epitomizes the dynamics of such European funding management. Notably, it has established expanding university networks across Europe and unique new tertiary degrees that facilitate international student mobility. Applying social network analysis to 561 participating universities through several program cycles, we longitudinally examine three key patterns in the program’s development: the expansion of the program, the consolidation of pan-European networks, and the participation of and coordination by central universities in these Europeanization processes. Program participation increased considerably across cycles, even as established networks were consolidated, largely through re-accreditation of established programs. Moreover, we identify those universities that assume a central position in the inter-organizational structure of this international program. These universities actively facilitate the evolving Europeanization of higher education by strengthening inter-university networks via a signature EU program.
This book examines contemporary educational research and its governance, addressing key questions via a multidisciplinary theoretical framework of comparative institutional analysis with original data and applying multiple methods. The authors explore and explain important changes in the governance of educational research and the contents of scholarship in education and related disciplines across Europe since the 1990s. This volume synthesizes findings from a multi-year comparative research project, including in-depth empirical case studies of three distinct educational research cultures evolving in Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom. The authors reconstruct and compare changing conceptualizations of educational research, embedded in increasingly internationalized contexts of research, and examine shifts in its governance, including patterns of funding, publication, and evaluation. They examine the producers of European educational research and the distinct role of the European Union in constructing a European Educational Research Area, in establishing cross-border networks, and in (re)shaping educational research agendas. Through innovative empirical analysis of programs of research on various levels and education researchers' collaborations in scientific networks, they provide insights into (supra)national dynamics in education-related scholarship. Theory-guided content analysis of research projects funded by leading national funding agencies and by the most highly developed supranational research funding instrument - the EU Framework Programme - enables the authors to embed findings on Germany, the United Kingdom, and Norway in a broader European perspective.
Blurring the boundaries. University actorhood and institutional change in global higher education
(2021)
Higher education (HE) scholarship often focuses on the so-called ‘entrepreneurial’ university as a consequence of new public management reforms. Simultaneously, the remarkable expansion of private HE is said to fragment, specialize, and diversify HE systems. Such diagnoses are misleading as they ignore wider environmental pressures and simultaneous changes in both public, non-profit and for-profit HE. We argue that putative diversity in HE operates as a ceremonial façade behind which large-scale isomorphic change across national HE systems, sectors, and organizational forms occurs. Multiple causes trigger such change originating in the increasingly global HE environment, including a burgeoning international HE regime, accounting and accountability practices, increased permeability of HE systems facilitated by open borders, education markets, and global science as well as (neo)liberal ideologies stressing human capital and human rights. As other organizations, those in HE become subject to these pressures turning universities into more rationalized, standardized, and strategic actors.
Research evaluation systems in many countries aim to improve the quality of higher education. Among the first of such systems, the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) dating from 1986 is now the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Highly institutionalised, it transforms research to be more accountable. While numerous studies describe the system’s effects at different levels, this longitudinal analysis examines the gradual institutionalisation and (un)intended consequences of the system from 1986 to 2014. First, we analyse historically RAE/REF’s rationale, formalisation, standardisation, and transparency, framing it as a strong research evaluation system. Second, we locate the multidisciplinary field of education, analysing the submission behaviour (staff, outputs, funding) of departments of education over time to find decreases in the number of academic staff whose research was submitted for peer review assessment; the research article as the preferred publication format; the rise of quantitative analysis; and a high and stable concentration of funding among a small number of departments. Policy instruments invoke varied responses, with such reactivity demonstrated by (1) the increasing submission selectivity in the number of staff whose publications were submitted for peer review as a form of reverse engineering, and (2) the rise of the research article as the preferred output as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The funding concentration demonstrates a largely intended consequence that exacerbates disparities between departments of education. These findings emphasise how research assessment impacts the structural organisation and cognitive development of educational research in the UK.
Embedded in social worlds, education systems and research reflect distinct national trajectories. We compare two contrasting traditions of educational research (ER). Whereas British ER exhibits a multidisciplinary and pragmatic character, German ER reflects pedagogy and mainly humanities-based traditions. Yet, in both countries, policymakers’ growing demand for evidence in ER resulted in increased funding, specific research programs, and mandatory large-scale assessments. These have reshaped the field, suggesting more similar ER agendas. Based on a comprehensive original dataset of basic ER projects funded by the main grant-making agencies in both countries (2005–2015), we analyze five dimensions: levels, objects, disciplines, methodologies, and themes. We find epistemic drift, with partial convergence characterized by a multi-level focus, multidisciplinary approach, strongly empirical and quantitative methodology, and a premium on teaching and learning themes. The cases remain distinct in exploring systemic questions in a wider contextual frame (UK) or concentrating more narrowly on the individual learner (Germany).
Informed by multiple disciplines, theories, and methods, higher education scholars have developed a robust and diverse literature in many countries. Yet, some important (organizational) sociological perspectives, both more established and more recent, are insufficiently linked. In particular, we identify two theoretical strands – institutional and relational – that, when joined, help to explain contemporary developments in global higher education and yield new organizational insights. We review relevant literature from each perspective, both in their general formulations and with specific reference to contemporary higher education research. Within the broad institutional strand, we highlight strategic action fields, organizational actorhood, and associational memberships. Within the relational strand, we focus on ties and relationships that are especially crucial as science has entered an age of (inter)national research collaboration. Across these theories, we discuss linkages between concepts, objects, and levels of analysis. We explore the methodological approach of social network analysis as it offers great potential to connect these strands and, thus, to advance contemporary higher education research in a collaborative era.