Great Debates in Higher Education Book Set (2017-2019) – serie

The introduction of the Teaching Excellence Framework heralds an era of unprecedented scrutiny and focus on the quality of teaching in universities in England. This book offers inter-disciplinary, evidence-informed discussion around notions of excellence in higher education teaching. It will act as a key stimulus for institutional and sector-wide debates and a reference point for initiatives around the TEF agenda. Drawing on the authentic, grounded experiences of practising HE professionals and complemented by a range of recent case studies, this book offers insight into the pursuit of capturing excellence in the complex and wide-ranging context of HE teaching. It will consider what the repercussions of TEF might mean to those involved in learning and teaching in the sector and how this might impact institutional policy and practice.

This book traces the development of a fully marketised higher education system in England over a 30-year period, and identifies five distinct stages of market reforms culminating in the Higher Education and Research Act (HMSO, 2017). The Act shifted the risks of institutional failure (and the prospect of market exit) onto applicants, presenting them with ever more applicant choice information and encouraging them to use their consumer behaviour to oblige weaker providers’ lower tuition fees or lose market share to new competitors. The new regulatory regime represents a marked departure from previous attempts to introduce market dynamism into the sector and places the English HE system at the forefront of a global trend of system marketisation. The book employs a critical policy discourse analysis and addresses several key aspects of the current higher education policy landscape. It considers the extent to which there been a continuity of policy from the encouragement of efficiencies and accountability in the 1980s to the emphasis on competition and risk in 2017; whether the marketisation process is designedly cumulative or has developed in response to factors beyond the control of policymakers; and what the English case can tell us about the nature of neoliberalism and the future trajectories of other national systems in the process of marketising and differentiating their institutions.

The cultural diversity of university student populations can be seen to reflect the changing demographics of an increasingly international mobile workforce. The implications of the growing migrant population and differing communication patterns in the classroom is a highly under-researched area. Cultural Journeys in Higher Education provides a unique insight into the cultural experiences of university recounted through the students' narratives and voices. This book explores the increasingly culturally diverse composition of the student body and its impact on student learning. The need to negotiate differing cultural scripts and adapting to the new cultural landscape when students arrive at university are just a few of the experiences addressed within this important text. Cultural Journeys in Higher Education navigates the issue of curriculum delivery through the eyes of those who receive the education and questions whether a new approach is needed to adapt to an increasingly culturally diverse student body.  The student experience is a central focus of this book, giving researchers, practitioners and leaders in education a unique perspective that will enable them to further understand the cultural framework that underpins Higher Education.

This edited collection illuminates the benefits, drawbacks, challenges, opportunities of the push to widen access to success and social mobility through university and other post-secondary education experiences in the UK and internationally. It examines a range of particular case studies, and addresses issues including the role of part-time study, the experiences of BAME students, increasing access within rural communities, issues faced by those with mental health problems, and the role of employers.There has been some progress in some countries; increased access and enhanced success for some targeted populations, but not for others; and improvements in some regions of particular countries, but not for others. Efforts to improve access to success and social mobility, to strengthen the identification and nurturing of talent in every community and every corner of our societies, is, like the ‘curate’s egg’, only good in parts. This collection demonstrates that educational inequalities, unfairness and injustices still remain.

Higher education institutions have increasingly been identified as potentially radicalising locations. The 2015 Counter-Terrorism and Security Act consolidated this belief in the form of a legal duty of  "due regard to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism". This duty made engagement with counter-radicalisation mandatory for universities and has required the development of systems that monitor potential avenues for the propagation of the extremist and radicalising ideas that are deemed to be the cause of contemporary political violence.This book explains why radicalisation has become such an important and controversial issue in contemporary higher education. The authors chart the ascent of radicalisation as a central explanation for the causes of modern terrorism and document the development of counter-radicalisation in the UK using higher education institutions as a unique case study. Drawing on a comprehensive assessment of university policy documents and original focus group research with university lecturers and undergraduate students, this book demonstrates the risks involved in taking the 'safeguarding route' to counter-radicalisation and provides recommendations for how universities can better navigate these policy challenges in the UK and elsewhere.McGlynn and McDaid provide a critical assessment of these counter-radicalisation policies upon higher education institutions in the UK making this an invaluable text for students, researchers and policy makers in the field of terrorism studies.

Faculty members, scholars, and researchers often ask where they should publish their work; which outlets are most suitable to showcase their research? Which journals should they publish in to ensure their work is read and cited? How can the impact of their scholarly output be maximized? The answers to these and related questions affect not only individual scholars, but also academic and research institution stakeholders who are under constant pressure to create and implement organizational policies, evaluation measures and reward systems that encourage quality, high impact research from their members. The explosion of academic research in recent years, along with advances in information technology, has given rise to omnipresent and increasingly important scholarly metrics. These measures need to be assessed and used carefully, however, as their widespread availability often tempts users to jump to improper conclusions without considering several caveats. While various quantitative tools enable the ranking, evaluating, categorizing, and comparing of journals and articles, metrics such as author or article citation counts, journal impact factors, and related measures of institutional research output are somewhat inconsistent with traditional goals and objectives of higher education research and scholarly academic endeavors. This book provides guidance to individual researchers, research organizations, and academic institutions as they grapple with rapidly developing issues surrounding scholarly metrics and their potential value to both policy-makers, as evaluation and measurement tools, and individual scholars, as a way to identify colleagues for potential collaboration, promote their position as public intellectuals, and support intellectual community engagement.