Public-Private Dynamics in Higher Education

Worldwide, scholarship and policy-making develop new ideas and models for the role of higher education and research in society and economy. This development points to changing relationships and boundaries between the public and private spheres in higher education including their public and private steering and funding, public-private partnerships between universities and firms, the rise of private higher education and of business models in the management of universities. The contributions to this edited volume investigate into the dynamics of blurring boundaries between the public and the private in higher education and their consequences for the university

Public-Private Dynamics in Higher Education: Expectations, Developments and Outcomes

Worldwide, scholarship and policy-making develop new ideas and models for the role of higher education and research in society and economy. This development points to changing relationships and boundaries between the public and private spheres in higher education including their public and private steering and funding, public-private partnerships between universities and firms, the rise of private higher education and of business models in the management of universities. The contributions to this edited volume investigate into the dynamics of blurring boundaries between the public and the private in higher education and their consequences for the university

A cultural kaleidoscope: managing the European company

This thesis provides a comparative study of managerial practices in Europe. Patterns of behaviour and preferred modes of organisation are identified in four countries, based on an in-depth case study of a chosen/specific European company. While the corporate culture and industry remain constant, national context manifests itself as the essential variable between the different operations. The thesis proposes/argues that this factor — national context — is a powerful variable which frames the activity of management. Europe is a continent of diversity; each nation has unique traditions, particular historical and cultural roots as well as its own institutional framework. This diversity means that managers learn to operate in a manner that suits their particular context. The thesis documents such national divergence in terms of managerial practices and behaviour. The processes of integration of European Union member States and of globalisation also contribute towards the shaping of management. The case study company, as a leading provider of Information Technology services, is among the avant-garde pioneers of a technological, borderless world. Common pressures affecting managers across the board — and thus regardless of national context — are also identified: these include the pressure to achieve profit and efficiency. In addition, a degree of convergence between human resource management policies and practices also makes itself visible. The thesis demonstrates, above all, the influence of national culture and national environment vis-à-vis management; an argument which may be reaffirmed given the context of globalisation. In brief, a European company is a cultural kaleidoscop

Teaching to Clients: Quality Assurance in Higher Education and the Construction of the Invisible Student at Philipps-Universität Marburg and Universidad Centroamericana in Managua

The widespread applicability of quality assurance processes has induced a re-labeling of clients as students (see, for example: OECD, 1998), as well as an imposition of compatible evaluation and training processes for teachers. Quality assurance, a now globalised practice in higher education institutions, is an instance of the “audit culture” (Power, 1997, 2010; Strathern, 2000a), and has come to signify good government in universities. Its “rituals of verification” (Power, 1997) are now hegemonic and widespread practices. Quality assurance is also an intrinsic element of academic capitalism (Slaughter & Leslie, 1997; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004), and deployed through the same mechanisms. The phenomenon of quality assurance has created a technology (Foucault, 1988) in the practices of evaluation and accreditation, which largely ignores evident differences of context and culture that emerge in situ, and focuses on creating “virtual” (Miller, 1998) similarities through a “tyranny of transparency” (Strathern, 2000c) that instead of revealing, conceals important issues from the teaching/learning experience, fetishizing the classroom session. Through quality assurance, universities present themselves to the public – and to each other – through a common language and common goals. The language of quality assurance, which I define as the ‘talk of quality’, describes quality as a summation of continuously changing and externally defined criteria that an institution must fulfil in order to be positively perceived by the public. This ‘talk of quality’ seeps into everyday decisions and transactions, generates alliances or competition, and continuously reinforces an imagined hierarchy of universities. Given the pervasiveness of this discourse, its visibility and repetitiveness, but above all, its use in day to day “rituals of verification” in which teachers and students are directly involved, to analyse higher education transformations it is not enough to look at policies, funding schemes, numbers of staff and students, facilities, research production or ranking achievements. For this reason, I analyse quality assurance practices and its discourse, as they are applied in specific contexts. The results and discussion The analysis revealed that the ‘talk of quality’ present in two universities displays almost identical concepts and notions and supports the development of specialised managerial capacity. Evaluation and accreditation processes are conducted in both universities and promote the enforcement of other “rituals of verification”, specifically teacher evaluation, which constitutes a technology (Foucault, 1988) for the subjectification of teachers, the effects of which have been described by several researchers. A fixed notion of good teaching has been defined in both universities through specific indicators. The results from each application of the process generate ‘truths’ about teachers supported by neutral sounding pedagogical concepts. Alongside the constant evaluation of teaching, both universities have also launched teacher training programmes and incentive – and punishment – systems tied to evaluation results. The transformation of students into clients emerges as a necessity for this technology to function. In order to present teacher evaluation as a simple and effective guiding tool to better teaching, an honest feedback from students, the questionnaire relies on assumptions about students’ responses as clients genuinely concerned with filling it in the intended way. The empirical analysis revealed that instead, students at both universities have their own criteria for judging teaching, which instead of relying on standardised and specific indicators, like those of the questionnaire, relies on shared ideas about how teachers make them feel, how they relate to them, how they perceive the course in question, and how they define knowledge in general or university life. Students also approach the answering of the questionnaire – which they largely perceive as a power tool applied by the management – from their own strategies of “college management” and “professor management” (Nathan, 2005), which allows them to shape the university’s choices to their own schemes. As evidenced by the empirical analysis, the ‘student-centred’ approach of quality assurance, which relies on the idea of the student as a demanding client and the teacher as a service provider, produces a management-centred higher education in which important elements are concealed by the same process that means to reveal them

European Union: identity, diversity and integration

This publication also contains the papers of the PhD Candidates, National School of Political and Administrative Studies, Bucharest, Romania, beneficiaries of the “Doctoral Scholarships for a Sustainable Society”, project co-financed by the European Union through the European Social Fund, Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources Development 2007-2013. Contents: Mircea BRIE, István POLGÁR, Florentina CHIRODEA: Cultural Identity, Diversity and European Integration. Introductory Study. I. Identity and elements of anthropology in the European space - Roxana Maria DASCĂLU: Insights Into the Concept of European Identity; Horia MOAŞA: Voice and Silence in Relation to Identity; Andreea MOLOCEA: To See Things in Another Perspective: Feminist Influence in Epistemology, a New Way of Regarding Social and Political Science; Ileana SĂDEAN: Anthropological Representations of the Foreign Rural Development Model "Leader" in Romania. II. Education and communication - Ioana CIUCANU: Making Diversity Work in European Higher Education the Interplay Between Performance and Diversification; Mirela VLASCEANU: Impact of Quality-Based Funding in Romanian Higher Education: 1999-2010; Andra-Maria ROESCU: Studying Causal Inference in Political Science. The Case of Experiments; Paul PARASCHIVEI: Political Communication in Romania from a New Perspective: the Online Voter; Andreea Elena CÂRSTEA: Mass Media and the Reconfiguration of the Public Sphere. III. European Union zone: the institutional dimension - Bogdan BERCEANU: The Dimension of Emerging Institutions in the European Union Member States; Adina MARINCEA: Who are the Olympians? A Cross-Country Analysis of People’s Trust in the EU; Monica OPROIU: Case-Study in Third-Party Intervention: the EU Mediation in the Russia-Georgia War of August 2008; Vasile ROTARU: The Neo-Finlandization – a Theoretical Review. IV. European policies and management models - Vicenţia Georgiana DUŢESCU: Policy Cohesion of the European Union a Perspective on the Management Authority for the Sectoral Operational Programme on Transport 2007-2013; Maria-Magdalena RICHEA: Models of Human Resources Management in Nonprofit Sector Organizations; Anca-Adriana CUCU: Performance Management of Health Care System in Romania: Realities and Perspectives; Cristinela-Ionela VELICU: Cross-Border Mobility of Health Professionals: an Exploratory Study of Migration Flows and Retention Policies in the CEE Region. V. European zone: social demographic perspective - Dragos Lucian IVAN: As the Population Clock Winds Down or Speeds Up? Demographic Stories: Apocalyptic, Opportunistic and Realistic; Andra Maria POPA: The Constitutionalization of the European Economic and Social Model; Cristina SANDU: New Paths of Social Services Through Social Entrepreneurship; Mihaela TUCĂ: Corporate Social Responsibility as a Supporting Framework for Country Competitiviness

Convergence and divergence in conceptualising the professions of social work and social pedagogy and their professional education, and the question of Europeanisation : Germany, Denmark and Belgium (1989–2004)

Across the European Union, an aggregate professional field can be identified: the “social professions”. This field is characterised by being composed, in most countries, of two traditional professions with specific higher education programmes: “social work” and “social pedagogy”. The thesis explores their mutual relationship by revisiting theories from Germany, the home of social pedagogy, where the two paradigms have, in higher education policy-making, largely merged in the second half of the twentieth century. This development at the level of curriculum prescription indicates the so-called “convergence paradigm” advocated, for many years, by some academic authors. Alternatives to convergence were known, however, and an analysis of material from other EU countries may serve to reassess the thinking which has become orthodoxy in Germany. The thesis established the concepts of “social work/social pedagogy dichotomy” (the fact that the two paradigms are separate and discernible) and “social work/social pedagogy convergence”, the latter drawing upon the German concept. Using these analytical tools, first to revisit and characterise the developments observed in Germany, then to assess material from Denmark and Belgium (French Community), the thesis shows that dichotomy has continued to be a determining factor of professional education in Denmark and Belgium, while there are no signs of convergence. The discussion is based on the 15-year period starting with the enactment of the relevant EU directive on mutual recognition of qualifications (1989–2004). By ending in 2004, the investigation enables recent English developments in relation to the exploration and possible future introduction of “social pedagogy”, alongside “social work”, to be taken into consideration, thereby helping to inform current English and British debates

Higher education looking forward: relations between higher education and society

This report includes the five thematic overview reports which were prepared for the European Science Foundation ‘Forward Look’ on ‘Higher education in Europe beyond 2010: resolving conflicting social and economic expectations. The five reports are: • Higher education and the knowledge society discourse (Jussi Välimaa and David Hoffman); • Higher education and the achievement (or prevention) of equity and society justice (John Brennan and Rajani Naidoo); • Higher education and its communities: interconnections and interdependencies (Ben Jongbloed, Jürgen Enders and Carlo Salerno); • The ‘steering’ of higher education systems: a public management perspective (Ewan Ferlie, Christine Musselin and Gianluca Andresani); • The changing patterns of the higher education systems in Europe and the future tasks of higher education research (Ulrich Teichler)

World Class Universities

This open access book focuses on the dimensions of the discourse of 'The World Class University', its alleged characteristics, and its policy expressions. It offers a broad overview of the historical background and current trajectory of the world-class-university construct. It also deepens the theoretical discussion, and points a way forward out of present impasses resulting from the pervasive use and abuse of the notion of "world-class" and related terms in the discourse of quality assessment. The book includes approaches and results from fields of inquiry not otherwise prominent in Higher Education studies, including philosophy and media studies, as well as sociology, anthropology, educational theory. The growing impact of global rankings and their strategic use in the restructuring of higher education systems to increase global competitiveness has led to a ‘reputation race’ and the emergence of the global discourse of world class universities. The discourse of world class universities has rapid uptake in East Asian countries, with China recently refining its strategy. This book provides insights into this process and its future development