University continuing education in a neoliberal landscape: developments in England and Aotearoa New Zealand

This paper explores how changing higher education policies and funding, influenced by neoliberalism, are impacting on university adult and continuing education in England and Aotearoa New Zealand. The downhill trajectory of English university continuing education in the first decade of the twenty-first century is compared with the apparent buoyancy of the situation in New Zealand during the same period. The paper discusses some of the contextual factors which may have contributed to sustaining continuing education in New Zealand, against the tide of developments elsewhere, and in spite its subjection to the influence of neoliberal policies since the 1980s. These factors include: an ethos of public dissemination of knowledge, an acknowledgement of the universities’ role as ‘critic and conscience’ of society, a broad commitment to educational equality and an approach which has been strategic as well as pragmatic. The paper describes developments in one New Zealand continuing education department between 2006 and 2010 as it experiences further institutional and political change. The author concludes that, in spite of having demonstrated considerable resilience, the current structures and activities of continuing education departments in New Zealand are as fragile as they have been shown to be in England. Possible responses to the current situation are discussed and ‘radical hope’ (Brookfield 2005) is advocated as the university-based adult educators’ response in difficult times. Radical hope, founded on critical theory, involves recognising and challenging the assumptions of neoliberalism, as well as critical praxis (Carr and Kemmis 1986), and a reaffirmation on the part of academics and adult educators of the political nature of adult education (Freire 1972; Crowther et al 2005; Martin 2008; Wallace 2008)

Numerical simulation of two-fluid flow and meniscus interface movement in the electromagnetic continuous steel casting process

This paper presents a mathematical model and numerical technique for simulating the two-fluid flow and the meniscus interface movement in the electromagnetic continuous steel casting process. The governing equationsinclude the continuity equation, the momentum equations, the energy equation, the level set equation and two transport equations for the electromagnetic field derived from the Maxwell’s equations. The level set finite element method is applied to trace the movement of the interface between different fluids. In an attempt to optimize the casting process, the technique is then applied to study the influences of the imposed electromagnetic field and the mould oscillation pattern on the fluid flow, the meniscus shape and temperature distribution

Implementing internationalization policy in higher education explained by regulatory control in neoliberal times

[[abstract]]This research investigated the internationalization policy and involved evaluating the effects of policy-driven reform on universities in the context of neoliberal theory. In this study, 293 professors from various universities were invited to express their opinions on the selected indicators reflected the implementation of internationalization in institutional level. Fuzzy mean and defuzzification were applied to transform the fuzzy interval data. The concept of fuzzy distance was used to interpret the gap between importance and feasibility of implementation of internationalization in specific indicators. According to the data analysis, the policy-driven reform led to changes in academic culture. The result reveals most respondents in this research assessed internationalization-related indicators positively and assigned them a high value. However, there is a gap between the importance and feasibility of the internationalization in terms of specific indicators which reviewed at the university level. In particular, this study found that implementing the internationalization policy has substantially increased the gap related to the input dimension. The finding will provide suggestions for policy makers and university authorities to improve the current situation.[[notice]]補正完