Cultural distance, mindfulness and passive xenophobia: Using Integrated Threat Theory to explore home higher education students' perspectives on 'internationalisation at home'

This paper addresses the question of interaction between home and international students using qualitative data from 100 home students at two 'teaching intensive' universities in the southwest of England. Stephan and Stephan's Integrated Threat Theory is used to analyse the data, finding evidence for all four types of threat that they predict when outgroups interact. It is found that home students perceive threats to their academic success and group identity from the presence of international students on the campus and in the classroom. These are linked to anxieties around 'mindful' forms of interaction and a taboo around the discussion of difference, leading to a 'passive xenophobia' for the majority. The paper concludes that Integrated Threat Theory is a useful tool in critiquing the 'internationalisation at home' agenda, making suggestions for policies and practices that may alleviate perceived threats, thereby improving the quality and outcomes of intercultural interaction. © 2010 British Educational Research Association

The World-Class Multiversity: Global commonalities and national characteristics

World-Class Universities (WCUs) are nationally embedded comprehensive higher education institutions (HEIs) that are closely engaged in the global knowledge system. The article reviews the conditions of possibility and evolution of WCUs. Three interpretations are used to explain worldwide higher education: neoliberal theory, institutional theory, and critical political economy, which give greater recognition than the other theories to the role of the state and variations between states. World higher education is evolving under conditions of globalization, organizational modernization (the New Public Management), and in some countries, marketization. These larger conditions have become manifest in higher education in three widespread tendencies: massification, the WCU movement, and organizational expansion. The last includes the strengthening of the role of the large multi-disciplinary multi-purpose HEIs ("multiversities"), in the form of both research-intensive WCUs with significant global presence, and other HEIs. The role of binary sector and specialist HEIs has declined. Elite WCUs gain status and strategic advantage in both quantity and quality: through growth and the expansion of scope, and through selectivity and research concentration. The balance between quantity and quality is now resolved at larger average size and broader scope than before. The final section of the article reviews WCUs in China and considers whether they might constitute a distinctive university model

Beyond NEET: precariousness, ideology and social justice - the 99%

This article addresses NEET (not in employment, education or training) as an ideological and discursive formation, lodging the discussion within its socio-economic context – one of increasing insecurity and precariousness. It argues that frequently quasi-political and ideological constructions of NEET can readily fold over into and articulate with discourses of the underclass and the broken society, as well as, paradoxically, social recession. Consequently, such arguments divert attention from processes of ‘othering’ and the secular changes facing society, as well as the spectre of a return to a form of nineteenth-century liberalism. Although the argument is located within the English context, it has a relevance to other Western societies in which similar tendencies can be discerned

The impact of universities and colleges on the UK economy

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:99/32580 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Conceptualising Austerity in Scotland as a Risk Shift: Ideas and Implications

There is growing recognition that UK austerity measures impact adversely and more acutely on the most disadvantaged individuals, communities and groups. These changes may be understood as representing a shift of responsibility away from collectives to individuals. This paper explores these issues through the lens of risk analysis. Drawing on case study research from one neighbourhood in one Scottish local authority, it considers how the distinctive polity in Scotland, in the context of austerity, is redistributing social risk to vulnerable communities, groups and individuals. The local community is adapting, with varying degrees of success, to the risk transfers they are experiencing. Formal and informal risk mitigation measures are ameliorating, but not countering, these risks. The penultimate section of the paper is a collaborative endeavour. Drawing from a seminar discussion with key informants from academia, the Third Sector and government in Scotland, some of the implications of this ‘risk shift’ are discussed; particularly in relation to extending personalisation, stresses on social capital, changing understanding of securities, demographic developments, widening social divisions and alternatives to austerity economics