Changing boundaries in Israeli higher education

This paper analyses the main changes that took place in the Israeli higher education system in the last decades, and accounts for the reconstruction of its external and internal boundaries. It also provides a conceptual framework for comparing national higher education systems from a comparative perspective. The paper examines the developments that characterise the restructuring of the Israeli higher education from an international comparative outlook, and relates to the following parameters: (a) expansion in size; (b) diversification of the higher education institutions; (c) the emergence of new academic fields of study; (d) the upgrade of many professions and occupations to an academic status; (e) the redefinition of graduate degrees; (f) the impact of the new information technologies on shaping academic environments; and (g) the influence of the globalisation and internationalisation trends on the development of national higher education systems.peer-reviewe

The impact of cultural and economic globalisation on the planning and function of higher education in North Africa and the Middle East

Discusses the impact of globalization on higher education in the Arab World, particularly North Africa and the Middle East. The influence has been positive regarding the university's openness to the world and involvement in global intellectual and scientific activity and culture. However, globalization is also seen in the academia as tantamount to westernization and a source of domination and imperialism.peer-reviewe

Des diplomes algeriens parlent de la formation universitaire

This evaluation of higher education in Algeria was performed by means of open-ended interviews with eight graduates of the University of Constantine. From the beginning of the 1980s, it was found that all disciplines, including Economics, Law, Library Science, and Psychology, showed failures in academic training. A change of direction towards making teaching more rigorous and career-oriented is recommended.peer-reviewe

Management in the Greek system of higher education

This article aims to outline the relationship between the Ministry of Education and the institutions of higher education in Greece. The co~ordination of this relationship is an issue vital for both the academic institutions - which require a degree of administrative independence to do their work on behalf of society; and for the State - which wishes to assure itself that the institutions of higher education are serving adequately the needs of society. The article concludes by arguing that the Ministry of Education exercises its control in the higher education sector through laws and regulations and intervenes in the day-ta-day administrative work of the academic institutions. The institutions in higher education are entirely subordinate to the State and have a limited voice in the decisions affecting their future development. Therefore. ministerial supervision may be considered as a case of 'bureaucratic overcentralisation' rather than as 'guidance' of the State.peer-reviewe

Higher education and state legitimation in Cyprus

This paper will investigate the state's utilisation of higher education policy as 'compensatory legitimation' within the Cypriot context in the late 1980s. It argues that not only the establishment of the University of Cyprus in 1989 - after thirty years of strong nationalist opposition during the British colonial administration and another thirty years of state hesitation and postponement during political independence - but also the character of the established University (state-based and linked to the international community of scholarship) can be explained mainly as the result of the state's decision to utilise higher education in order to make up for its serious deficit in legitimacy. It also maintains that the state used the policy strategy of expertise and to a lesser extent the policy strategy of participation in order to legitimate the process that determined the character of both the University and the knowledge that it was expected to produce.peer-reviewe

La enseñanza electrónica (e-teaching) en la educación superior: Un prerrequisito esencial para el aprendizaje electrónico (e-learning)

The discourse on the implementation of the digital technologies in higher education settings focuses mainly on students’ learning rather than on professors’ teaching. The little attention paid to the crucial role of teachers in online settings results in a restricted and moderate adaptation of the technologies in higher education worldwide. In most higher education institutions, the new technologies are used mainly for add-on functions and not for substituting face-to-face encounters or for an intensive web-enhanced teaching. This article starts with briefly explaining why most students, particularly at the undergraduate level, are unable and/or unwilling to study by themselves without expert teachers to guide their knowledge construction, discusses the problematics of digital literacy of teachers, examines the main reasons for the reluctance of many academics to utilize the technologies more fully in their teaching, and concludes by recommending some strategies for incorporating more fully the huge array of the technologies’ capabilities in higher education institutions. El discurso acerca de la implementación de las tecnologías digitales en entornos de educación superior se centra principalmente en el aprendizaje de los estudiantes más que en la docencia de los profesores. La poca atención que se presta al papel esencial que desempeñan los docentes en los entornos online se traduce en una adaptación restringida y moderada de las tecnologías en la educación superior a lo largo y a lo ancho del mundo. En la mayoría de las instituciones de educación superior, las nuevas tecnologías se usan fundamentalmente para funciones adicionales y no para reemplazar los encuentros presenciales o para una enseñanza intensiva mejorada a través de la utilización de la web. Este artículo se inicia con un breve explicación sobre por qué la mayor parte de los estudiantes, en particular los de grado, no son capaces o no están dispuestos a estudiar por sí solos sin profesores expertos que guíen su construcción de conocimientos, analiza la problemática relacionada con la alfabetización digital de los docentes, examina las principales razones por las que muchos académicos se muestran reacios a utilizar las tecnologías con más frecuencia en su docencia, y concluye recomendando algunas estrategias para incorporar en mayor medida el enorme abanico de capacidades de las tecnologías a las instituciones de educación superior

Paradoxes and Dilemmas in Managing E-Learning in Higher Education

The new information and communication technologies (ICT) affect currently most spheres of life, including all educational levels. Their effects are most likely to grow in the future. However, many predictions in the last few years as to the sweeping impact of the ICT on restructuring the teaching/learning practices at universities and their high profit prospects have not been materialized; and several large ventures of e-learning undertaken by the corporate world, new for-profit organizations and some leading universities failed to yield the expected results. This paper examines eight inherent paradoxes and dilemmas in the implementation process of the ICT in various higher education settings worldwide. The paradoxes and dilemmas relate to: the differential infrastructure and readiness of different-type higher education institutions to utilize the ICTs' potential; the extent to which the "old" distance education technologies and the new ICT replace teaching/learning practices in classrooms; the role of real problems, barriers and obstacles in applying new technologies; the impact of the ICT on different student clienteles; information acquisition versus knowledge construction in higher education; cost considerations; the human capacity to adapt to new learning styles and the ability to conduct research in face of the rapid development of the ICT; and the organizational cultures of the academic and corporate worlds. Understanding these inherent paradoxes and dilemmas is essential for policy makers at institutional and national levels of higher education systems in the process of planning a macro-level comprehensive strategy for the efficient and effective applications of the new ICT

Open Universities: Innovative Past, Challenging Present, and Prospective Future

This article examines the innovative past of the large-scale, single-mode open universities that follow the model of the UK Open University (UKOU), analyzes the main challenges which they are currently facing in the digital era, and concludes with highlighting leading prospects for their future operation. The establishment of the UKOU in 1969 marked a new era in distance higher education. It gave distance education a new legitimacy and opened up new prospects for populations that for a variety of reasons were unable to attend a campus-based university. Many of the new open universities were heralded as a conspicuous development in higher education, with innovative features such as: open access, reaching out to part-time adult students, providing academic faculty the opportunity to work in teams to prepare study materials, modular credit accumulation, teaching huge numbers of students, and harnessing innovative technologies into their teaching/learning processes. In the last three decades, many of these innovative characteristics pioneered by open universities have been adopted by campus universities. This has eroded the unique status of open universities in many national jurisdictions. Furthermore, the emergence of digital technologies has challenged the underlying premises of the industrial model of many open universities, as well as their logistic operation. Present challenges facing open universities emerge from: blurred boundaries between distance and campus universities; the changing of initial target populations; the need to restructure the technological and logistic infrastructure of open universities; the changing roles of the academic faculty; and the growing competition for both students and funds. In order to find success and keep being relevant in the future, open universities should take into consideration: future target populations; the use of MOOCs and OER; support systems for both students and professors; collaboration with other higher education institutions; collaboration with the corporate and work worlds; and enhancing the academic status of open universities

E-Teaching in Higher Education: An essential prerequisite for E-Learning

The discourse on the implementation of the digital technologies in higher education settings focuses mainly on students’ learning rather than on professors’ teaching. The little attention paid to the crucial role of teachers in online settings results in a restricted and moderate adaptation of the technologies in higher education worldwide. In most higher education institutions, the new technologies are used mainly for add-on functions and not for substituting face-to-face encounters or for an intensive web-enhanced teaching. This article starts with briefly explaining why most students, particularly at the undergraduate level, are unable and/or unwilling to study by themselves without expert teachers to guide their knowledge construction, discusses the problematics of digital literacy of teachers, examines the main reasons for the reluctance of many academics to utilize the technologies more fully in their teaching, and concludes by recommending some strategies for incorporating more fully the huge array of the technologies’ capabilities in higher education institutions.El discurso acerca de la implementación de las tecnologías digitales en entornos de educación superior se centra principalmente en el aprendizaje de los estudiantes más que en la docencia de los profesores. La poca atención que se presta al papel esencial que desempeñan los docentes en los entornos online se traduce en una adaptación restringida y moderada de las tecnologías en la educación superior a lo largo y a lo ancho del mundo. En la mayoría de las instituciones de educación superior, las nuevas tecnologías se usan fundamentalmente para funciones adicionales y no para reemplazar los encuentros presenciales o para una enseñanza intensiva mejorada a través de la utilización de la web. Este artículo se inicia con un breve explicación sobre por qué la mayor parte de los estudiantes, en particular los de grado, no son capaces o no están dispuestos a estudiar por sí solos sin profesores expertos que guíen su construcción de conocimientos, analiza la problemática relacionada con la alfabetización digital de los docentes, examina las principales razones por las que muchos académicos se muestran reacios a utilizar las tecnologías con más frecuencia en su docencia, y concluye recomendando algunas estrategias para incorporar en mayor medida el enorme abanico de capacidades de las tecnologías a las instituciones de educación superior

Proceedings of the 1st Seminar on Higher Education Rankings and E-learning

First International Seminar on Higher Education Rankings and e-Learning. ProceedingsPrimer Seminari Internacional d'Educació Superior. Les classificacions i aprenentatge virtual. ProceedingsPrimer Seminario Internacional de Educación Superior. Las clasificaciones y e-learning. Proceeding