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Higher Education Sector (higher + education_sector)
Selected AbstractsEFFICIENCY AND PRODUCTIVITY CHANGE IN THE ENGLISH HIGHER EDUCATION SECTOR FROM 1996/97 TO 2004/5*THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 6 2008JILL JOHNES In this study we use a distance function approach to derive Malmquist productivity indexes for 112 English higher education institutions (HEIs) over the period 1996/97 to 2004/5. The analysis shows that HEIs have experienced an annual average increase in productivity of 1 per cent. Further investigation reveals that HEIs have enjoyed an annual average increase in technology of 6 per cent combined with a decrease in technical efficiency of 5 per cent. Rapid changes in the higher education sector appear to have had a positive effect on the technology of production but this has been achieved at the cost of lower technical efficiency. [source] Modernising pay in the UK public services: trends and implicationsHUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, Issue 3 2010Stephen J. Perkins The emerging character of the UK government's public sector pay reforms during the second and third (New) Labour terms of office is reviewed and contextualised. Three settings are examined where pay reform has been actively employed , with the accent on harmonisation, simplification and devolution of practice, with the express intention of restoring public service workforce morale, while improving services to clients , namely, local government, the National Health Service and the Higher Education sector. The evidence is interpreted as illustrating undoubted change, but also significant areas where progress has been less than intended, measured against the government's original programme goals. Equal pay considerations appear to have dominated all three projects reviewed: the failure to date of public sector managements to capitalise on opportunities the new pay architecture affords them to change local working practices may be attributed to a combination of factors discussed in the article. These have given rise to tensions as efforts have been pursued to transplant private sector pay techniques, somewhat hastily in some cases, without due consideration of the institutional context within which public services and proximal institutions function. [source] The Creation of a Vocational Sector in Swiss Higher Education: balancing trends of system differentiation and integrationEUROPEAN JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, Issue 4 2003Juan-Francisco Perellon The article discusses the establishment of a vocational sector in Swiss higher education as a complement to the existing two-tier system of cantonal Universities and federal Institutes of technology. The origins of this new player, its missions and organisational features are discussed. This overall discussion is placed into the context of changing landscape of Swiss higher education policy characterised by increasing pressures for geographical reorganisation of the higher education sector under the auspices of a more direct role of the federal government. The article makes two points. First, it argues that the creation of a vocational sector in Swiss higher education combines two contradictory trends. On the one hand, this new sector tends to provide differentiation at the system level, through the creation of a new, more marked-oriented sector of higher education. On the other hand, system differentiation at the system level is threatened by increased demands for greater inter-institutional cooperation and system integration, emanating principally from the federal level. Second, the article also argues that the distinction between ,academic/scientific' vs. ,vocational/professional' education generally referred to when studying the emergence of non-university sectors in higher education, is not pertinent for the analysis of the Swiss case. Two reasons are brought forward to sustain this argument. First, this distinction reinforces an artificial binary divide, no longer relevant to assess the evolution of higher education institutions placed in a context of academic and vocational drifts. Second, the ,academic' vs. ,professional' opposition does not take into consideration the political organisation of the country and how this impacts on policy making in higher education; a crucial element in the Swiss context. [source] Dangerous Work: The Gendered Nature of Bullying in the Context of Higher EducationGENDER, WORK & ORGANISATION, Issue 2 2004Ruth Simpson This article discusses results from a research project which set out to investigate gender differences in the nature and experience of bullying within the higher education sector. Gender differences emerged in the form and perception of bullying as well as in target responses. Results also indicate that, irrespective of gender, bullies can capture and subvert organizational structures and procedures (such as official hierarchies, mentoring systems and probationary reviews) to further their abuse of the target and to conceal their aggressive intent. These outcomes are discussed in relation to gendered assumptions behind management practices and in relation to the masculinist ethic that underpins many higher education management initiatives. Overall, results indicate that bullying cannot be divorced from gender and that such behaviour needs to be seen in a gendered context. [source] Higher Education, Further Education and the English ExperimentHIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 4 2009Gareth Parry England has a two-sector system of higher education and further education. Shaped by legislation in 1988 and 1992, the architecture of this system was intended to concentrate each type of education in separate institutions and separate sectors. In recognition of these different missions, each territory came under different funding and regulatory regimes, with little or no movement of institutions anticipated between sectors. These arrangements continue, although Government policy is now to support and expand higher education in further education colleges. This policy turnaround is part of a larger strategy or experiment to change the future pattern of demand for, and supply of, undergraduate education. However, the college contribution to this new higher education is neither co-ordinated nor protected. Rather, further education colleges compete as well as collaborate with institutions in the higher education sector, under conditions of complexity, uncertainty and dependency. [source] Employers, Quality and Standards in Higher Education: Shared Values and Vocabularies or Elitism and Inequalities?HIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2007Louise Morley This paper is based on a research project funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England which investigated employers' needs for information on higher education quality and standards. A key issue was identifying the type of knowledge that employers utilise in graduate recruitment. A finding of the study was that information on quality and standards was being used by some employers in a way that could undermine equity and widening participation initiatives. Whereas employers reported that, in initial recruitment, they placed least emphasis on information about quality and standards and most emphasis on graduates' interpersonal and communication skills, over a quarter used league tables/Top 20 lists in their decision-making processes and 80 per cent of employers cited the importance of the reputation of the higher education institution in their decision making about marketing and individual recruitment of graduates. Reputation was based on real or imagined league tables, ,grapevine' knowledge, personal, regional and professional networks, performance of past graduates and prejudice against new universities. The hierarchy of opportunity within the labour market often appeared to correspond to a highly stratified higher education sector. [source] Marketisation in Higher Education, Clark's Triangle and the Essential Ingredients of MarketsHIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2003Ben Jongbloed While government intervention in the higher education market may be justified, it may come at the cost of lower consumer sovereignty and restricted producer autonomy. Through marketisation policy, students and higher education providers have more room to make their own trade-offs and interact more closely on the basis of reliable information. This article discusses eight conditions for a market and the extent to which these are met in Dutch higher education. It is argued that there is still a key role for the government to co-design framework conditions and facilitate interaction in a more demand-driven and liberalised higher education sector. [source] What about the workers?INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS JOURNAL, Issue 1 2004The expansion of higher education, the transformation of academic work ABSTRACT This article assesses the impact of the profound changes that have taken place in the higher education sector on academic staff in the UK. The perceptions of staff about their work and employment are examined through evidence provided by a recent large-scale survey. The discussion draws on a labour process perspective. The article finds that the views of staff are far from homogeneous and not universally pessimistic. However, in general the morale and satisfaction of many teaching staff have been eroded by work intensification and that of research staff by the considerable insecurity created by casualised employment. Nonetheless resistance and resilience continues despite the commodifying pressures, and ,traditional' values remain strong. [source] Higher Education, Pedagogy and the ,Customerisation' of Teaching and LearningJOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, Issue 1 2008KEVIN LOVE It is well documented that the application of business models to the higher education sector has precipitated a managerialistic approach to organisational structures (Preston, 2001). Less well documented is the impact of this business ideal on the student-teacher encounter. It is argued that this age-old relation is now being configured (conceptually and organisationally) in terms peculiar to the business sector: as a customer-product relation. It is the applicability and suitability of such a configuration that specifically concerns this contribution. The paper maintains that the move to describe the student-teacher relation in these terms is indeed inappropriately reductive, but not straightforwardly so. The problem arises in that we remain unsure of the contemporary purpose of education. We lack any firm educational ideals that, in themselves, cannot be encompassed by the business paradigm. Indeed, the pedagogical critique of education (broadly, that education is only of use in as much as it is of use to society) extends further than has yet been intimated and prevents one securing any educational ideal that does not immediately succumb to critique. This pedagogical logic is unassailable in any linear way but, when pressed, precipitates an aporetic moment that prevents it from assuming any totalising hold over education. We draw on the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida to consider whether one might yet imagine an educational ,quasi-ideal' that will enable practitioners and institutions to counter the effects of customerisation. [source] From ,part of,' to ,partnership': the changing relationship between nurse education and the National Health ServiceNURSING INQUIRY, Issue 3 2010Karen Gillett GILLETT K,. Nursing Inquiry 2010; 17: 197,207 From ,part of,' to ,partnership': the changing relationship between nurse education and the National Health Service Worldwide, many countries have moved towards incorporating nurse education into the higher education sector and this inevitably has implications for the relationship between nurse education providers and local health service providers. This study explores the changes to the relationship in the UK between nurse education providers and the UK National Health Service over the past 20 years and demonstrates how two political ideologies have been central to those changes. The two ideologies of interest are the introduction of internal markets to the National Health Service by the Conservative government at the end of the 1980s and the New Labour response to the fragmentation of public services caused by Conservative neoliberal policy, which was to introduce the notion of ,partnership working'. This study reviews the wider debate around partnership policy and applies that debate to evaluate the way that nurse education providers and the National Health Service are working in partnership to provide clinical practice placements for nursing students. [source] EFFICIENCY AND PRODUCTIVITY CHANGE IN THE ENGLISH HIGHER EDUCATION SECTOR FROM 1996/97 TO 2004/5*THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL, Issue 6 2008JILL JOHNES In this study we use a distance function approach to derive Malmquist productivity indexes for 112 English higher education institutions (HEIs) over the period 1996/97 to 2004/5. The analysis shows that HEIs have experienced an annual average increase in productivity of 1 per cent. Further investigation reveals that HEIs have enjoyed an annual average increase in technology of 6 per cent combined with a decrease in technical efficiency of 5 per cent. Rapid changes in the higher education sector appear to have had a positive effect on the technology of production but this has been achieved at the cost of lower technical efficiency. [source] From R&D to Innovation and Economic Growth in the EUGROWTH AND CHANGE, Issue 4 2004Beņat Bilbao-Osorio ABSTRACT Over the last two decades many European governments have pursued ambitious research and development (R&D) policies with the aim of fostering innovation and economic growth in peripheral regions of Europe. The question is whether these policies are paying off. Arguments such as the need to reach a minimum threshold of research, the existence of important distance decay effects in the diffusion of technological spillovers, the presence of increasing returns to scale in R&D investments, or the unavailability of the necessary socio-economic conditions in these regions to generate innovation seem to cast doubts about the possible returns of these sort of policies. This paper addresses this question. A two-step analysis is used in order to first identify the impact of R&D investment of the private, public, and higher education sectors on innovation (measured as the number of patent applications per million population). The influence of innovation and innovation growth on economic growth is then addressed. The results indicate that R&D investment, as a whole, and higher education R&D investment in peripheral regions of the EU, in particular, are positively associated with innovation. The existence and strength of this association are, however, contingent upon region-specific socio-economic characteristics, which affect the capacity of each region to transform R&D investment into innovation and, eventually, innovation into economic growth. [source] | ||||||||||||||||