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This collection shifts the focus of higher education research away from the traditional urban centre and onto small island contexts across the world. Introducing the small island as a context for higher education delivery this book extends beyond the existing literature on higher education in small states, arguing for the value specifically of the small island as a conceptual frame for exploring multiscalar dynamics between global, national and local contexts in higher education provision. Drawing on examples from around the world, the book identifies how the small island opens critical questions relevant to higher education scholarship much more widely about the purposes and functions of higher education especially in relation to national, regional and local development, as well as questions about specific issues in higher education such as quality and management. The insights offered by the contributions in this book will be relevant to higher education scholars as well as scholars in the field of island studies, and especially those concerned with the relationship of higher education provision to regional and island development.
The liberal arts approach to higher education is a growing trend globally. We are told that the mental dexterity and independent, questioning spirit cultivated by such interdisciplinary degrees are the best preparation for the as-yet unknown executive jobs of tomorrow.
This book explores the significant recent growth of these degrees in England, in order to address an enduring problem for higher education: the relationship between meritocracy and elitism.
Against the view that the former is a myth providing rhetorical cover for the latter, it argues that these are two entangled, but discrete, value systems. Sociology must now pay attention to how students and academics attempt to disentangle them.
Drawing on affect theory and research on academic capitalism, this book examines the contemporary crisis of universities. Moving through 11 international and comparative case studies, it explores diverse features of contemporary academic life, from the coloniality of academic capitalism to performance management and the experience of being performance-managed.
Affect has emerged as a major analytical lens of social research. However, it is rarely applied to universities and their marketisation. Offering a unique exploration of the contemporary role of affect in academic labour and the organisation of scholarship, this book considers modes of subjectivation, professional and personal relationships and organisational structures and their affective charges.
Chapter 9 is available Open Access via OAPEN under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Robust university–industry partnerships are vital to achieve the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and create a better world for everyone.
Developing the theory and practice of the ‘5th Generation University’, this book shows how cross-sector collaboration and innovation are crucial to maximising the societal benefits of research, education and knowledge exchange, while also driving economic growth and productivity.
The authors bring extensive experience in working at the interface between academia, industry and government to demonstrate how universities can effectively combine transdisciplinary programmatic activities and strategic corporate philanthropy. They explain how long-term alliances can be forged to have a transformational impact on the greatest challenges facing our world such as climate change.
Are British research universities losing their way or are they finding a new way?
Nigel Thrift, a well-known academic and a former Vice-Chancellor, explores recent changes in the British research university that threaten to erode the quality of these higher education institutions. He considers what a research university has now become by examining the quandaries that have arisen from a succession of misplaced strategies and false expectations.
Challenging both higher education policy and leadership, he argues that the focus on student number growth and a series of research policy missteps has upset research universities’ priorities just at a point in the history of planetary breakdown when their research is most needed.
This book invites the reader to think about collaborative research differently. Using the concepts of ‘letting go’ (the recognition that research is always in a state of becoming) and ‘poetics’ (using an approach that might interrupt and remake the conventions of research), it envisions collaborative research as a space where relationships are forged with the use of arts-based and multimodal ways of seeing, inquiring, and representing ideas.
The book’s chapters are interwoven with ‘Interludes’ which provide alternative forms to think with and another vantage point from which to regard phenomena, pose a question, and seek insights or openings for further inquiry, rather than answers. Altogether, the book celebrates collaboration in complex, exploratory, literary and artistic ways within university and community research.
Based on the Transforming Lives research project, this book explores the transformative power of further education.
Outlining a timely and critical approach to educational research and practice, the book draws extensively on the testimonies of students and teachers to construct a model of transformative teaching and learning. The book critiques reductive ‘skills’ policies in further education and illuminates the impact colleges and Lifelong Learning have on social justice both for individuals, their families and communities.
For trainee teachers, teachers, leaders, researchers and policymakers alike, this is a persuasive argument for transformative approaches to teaching and learning which highlights the often unmeasured and under-appreciated strong holistic social benefits of further education.
How is your institution enabling Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff and students to thrive? Is your institution effectively tackling racism?
Following the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement, the higher education sector has started making bold commitments to dismantling structural racism. However, big questions remain about how higher education can combat institutional racism and achieve real change.
This book disrupts the higher education sector through ambitious actions and collective, participatory and evidence-informed responses to racism. It offers a roadmap for senior leaders, staff and students to build strategies, programmes and interventions that effectively tackle racism.
Arising from current staff and recent student experiences, this book supports institutions driving equality, diversity, inclusion and intersectional programmes in higher education.
ePDF and ePUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence.
Amid debates about the future of both higher education and Europeanisation, this book is the first full-length exploration of how Europe’s 35 million students are understood by key social actors across different nations.
The various chapters compare and contrast conceptualisations in six nations, held by policymakers, higher education staff, media and students themselves. With an emphasis on students’ lived experiences, the authors provide new perspectives about how students are understood, and the extent to which European higher education is homogenising. They explore various prominent constructions of students – including as citizens, enthusiastic learners, future workers and objects of criticism.
Although higher education in the UK has expanded opportunities for much of the population, in many ways it remains stubbornly elitist.
In order to address this crisis in education, Peter Scott, a leading expert and unique voice, examines the development of mass higher education and proposes a ‘radical escape-forward’. He calls for more robust action to secure fair access at all levels and changes in the governance and management at both system and institutional levels to ensure more democratic accountability.
Setting out a clear and radical programme for reform, this book makes an important contribution to current debates in education in the context of the evolution of the UK economy and wider society.
