A Crowded and Growing Shelf

Books once defined scholarly communication. However, declining institutional support and library purchasing are reshaping scholarly communications, academic publishing, and the nature of academic work itself. What emerges is a different publishing landscape and experimental forms like open access and open peer review. At the same time, many scholars are shifting their communications to faster moving and more democratic digital forms

Equity in Higher Education: An Unfinished Agenda

Equity is a global concern and a national commitment. Many equity policies have succeeded in improving higher education access among underprivileged groups, but their effectiveness in enhancing learning and graduate outcomes needs empirical validation. The challenge lies in ensuring that institutional strategies extend academic support and offer initiatives to develop inclusive campuses. Recent policy reversals indicate that the fight for equity in higher education should be more resolute and steadfast

Impact of Informal Human Resource Practices on Employee Outcomes in Private Tertiary Education Institutions

This article examines the impact of informal human resource practices on academic turnover, performance deterioration, absenteeism, and a decline in employee development in private tertiary education institutions. It proposes a formal human resource management model for private tertiary education institutions based on a mixed-methods approach, through which the researcher concurrently collected quantitative data using a questionnaire and qualitative data using structured interviews. Combined purposive sampling and stratified sampling produced 171 academic questionnaire responses and eight human resources business partners' online interviews. The study found that career development and growth, working conditions and work-life balance, performance management and recognition, recruitment and selection, employee training and development, and remuneration contributed to the key challenges faced by private tertiary education institutions. Adopting a formal human resource management model may enhance academic performance, employee development, reduce absenteeism, and retain academic staff while improving their institutional reputation as both an employer and a preferred choice for students

Private Higher Education: Advancing Discovery

The vast global expansion of private higher education to over 80 million students, a third of total enrollment, and near ubiquity by country, has brought formidable additional differentiation and complexity within the world’s higher education undertakings and stakeholder configurations. Leading research has captured vital dimensions of this differentiation, including through private-public and private-private comparisons. In addition to the dissemination of this discovered knowledge, the further expansion of knowledge rests largely upon building directly upon the considerable advances

India: Politics and Threats to Academic Freedom

Higher education in India has always been influenced by politics, but the current Bharatiya Janata Party government has greatly increased politicization. Political interference in the hiring of vice-chancellors and professors, restrictions on academic freedom, and other problems have become commonplace. This interference threatens a free and open intellectual environment, as seen in recent censorship cases and punitive actions against faculty and students in many institutions

Volume V Spring 2025

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Echoes of Empire: Impacts of French Colonial Legacy on Identity, Immigration, and Integration Policies

This paper investigates how France’s history of colonialism has shaped France’s immigration and integration policies to understand how colonial ideologies can guide policies that shape national identity and social groups. By understanding the historical context and development of France’s colonialism, from the French Revolution to postcolonial migration data, it can be found that France’s self-image as a place for liberty contradicts its poor treatment of immigrants from colonies. Therefore, this research underscores that marginalized immigrants are affected by assimilationist and multiculturalist policies, institutional memory, and racism. The paper also briefly interrogates how the European Union’s commitment to national sovereignty and unexamined colonial legacy prevents it from influencing France’s approach. Ultimately, the paper offers a solution: only by confronting the myths of universalism and actively addressing the colonial roots embedded within its immigration policies can France achieve true reconciliation and equity

2024 Nobels: The Anglosphere Dominates, as Do Male Winners

The 2024 Nobel prizes reflect several trends. This year, more than usual, top universities in the English-speaking world dominated the prizes, and all of the awardees were male. Artificial intelligence was recognized in two of the awards, as was economic inequality (for the second time in two years). A private sector company was home to joint winners, perhaps reflecting a new trend