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The design and launching of Master's degree programmes in management is a major task facing the polytechnics in Britain. Having existed for some six or seven years, they have achieved their initial objective of creating an appropriate range of first degree programmes, exhibiting the characteristics of career orientation, multi‐disciplinary structures, innovative learning methods and relevant assessment systems. The replacement of External London University Degree courses by Council for National Academic Award programmes has accompanied the conversion of the large colleges of technologies of the nineteen sixties into the polytechnics of the nineteen seventies. Many problems still exist in the first degree range: the provision of part‐time study versions to offset overgearing to full time students, the development of course network approaches, and the integration of sub‐degree work within total programmes of which first degrees are currently the main focus—in that connection the evolution of the Diploma in Higher Education could be a key item.

Limited attention has been given to the study of social marketing at the graduate level. Such a study not only reveals research interests and trends, but also provides insights into the level of academic evolution or maturity of the social marketing field. This paper aims to examine social marketing as the subject of master’s theses.

A search strategy found 266 social marketing-focused master’s theses completed from 1971 to 2015. These theses were analysed by host countries, institutions, disciplinary contexts and degree programmes for which they were submitted.

Only four theses were submitted from 1971-1980 and eight completed in 1981-1990. The number of theses increased to 35 in 1991-2000, 118 between 2001 and 2010 and 101 in the past five years (2011-2015). The USA was the leading producer of social marketing master’s theses, followed by Canada, Sweden, China, South Africa, the UK and Kenya. A majority of theses were housed in the disciplines of business, health and communication, and none of them was submitted for a Master of Social Marketing degree.

This is the first study that investigates master’s theses with an exclusive focus on social marketing. Implications for the evolution, learning and teaching of social marketing are provided.

Many master’s students enrol in coursework-based programmes to improve their professional knowledge and skills for the job market. Most studies of employability in higher education focus on undergraduates rather than master’s students, although the number of master’s students worldwide has increased significantly in recent years. This study explores the factors involved in the perceived employability (PE) of master’s students in Hong Kong.

The authors first proposed a conceptual model of PE based on the social cognitive career theory. Using survey data from 786 master’s students in Hong Kong, the authors applied descriptive statistics and an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to address the following research questions: How do master’s students gauge their PE? How do person, learning and environment variables influence the PE of master’s students?

The authors found that PE is influenced by students' approaches to learning and their institutional career support.

Few studies examined whether students' learning experiences during the master’s programmes influence their employability. This study highlights the importance of learning experiences and career support in coursework-based master’s programmes for enhancing graduate employability.

Transitions to and within university studies can be associated with heightened distress in students. This study focusses on the less studied transition from a bachelor’s to a master’s degree. During a master’s degree, study requirements and autonomy increase compared to bachelor’s studies. The present study examines how students’ experiences of study-related burnout, their approaches to learning and their experiences of the teaching and learning environment (TLE) change during this transition. Moreover, the study examines how approaches to learning and the TLE can affect study-related burnout.

Questionnaire data were collected from 335 university students across two timepoints (bachelor’s degree graduation and the second term of their master’s degree).

The results show that students’ overall experience of study-related burnout increases, as does their unreflective learning, characterised by struggling with a fragmented knowledge base. Interestingly, students’ experiences of the TLE seem to have an effect on study-related burnout in both master’s and bachelor’s degree programmes, irrespective of learning approaches. These effects are also dependent on the degree of context.

The study implies that students’ experiences of study-related burnout could be mitigated by developing TLE factors during both bachelor’s and master’s degree programmes. Practical implications are considered for degree programme development, higher education learning environments and student support.

An old saying –“Jack of all trades, master of none”– deliberately asserts that the purpose of a master’s degree program is to generate high level job skills in order to improve a nation's economy, while a bachelor degree produces economically productive graduates. Employment of such graduates is fundamentally important for personal and economic development. There is a link between a bachelor’s and master's degree and how these qualifications are linked to the job market. Both horizontal and vertical mismatches are developed which is the central focus of this research.

Given the differentiated nature of research questions, multiple techniques are used to collect the data. However, this research bears the norms of the qualitative method. Both secondary and primary data are used, and meanwhile secondary data are collected by the banks, Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics (BANBEIS), University Grants Commission (UGC) and by the institutions sampled. Primary data are gathered from interviews with key people. Data were collected from three institutions of higher education and from six commercial banks and from the Central Bank. The academic results of 21,325 MBA graduates and education backgrounds of 750 executives working in banks served as the basis for establishing our arguments.

This study discovers that MBA graduates who have studied science subjects achieved much better grades in the MBA compared to their counterparts who studied business from secondary provision to first degree. The market-driven MBA programme has become a “business product”. The major revenue of higher education institutions comes from enrolment in MBA courses. For this reason, a science-friendly MBA program is developed to generate more business. If this continues, the philosophy of the master's program would either be lost or will have to be redefined in the 21st century.

While a few studies have investigated the area of HE in Bangladesh, none covers the impact of MBA degrees on the job market and its contribution to enhancing job skills.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a continuous improvement project (CIP) at a Mexican university designed to increase engineering graduate student loyalty.

A plan-do-check-act problem-solving methodology was implemented, and a SERVQUAL survey was conducted on 67 master’s engineering students.

Five factors were found to affect student loyalty: facility cleanliness; faculty teaching skills; evening student services; master’s degree student management roles at work; and master’s degree students’ ages. After the implementation of the improvement and control actions, there was a 7.7% increase in the engineering master’s degree students’ loyalty scores.

However, there were several research limitations: data availability (such as student loyalty, student satisfaction and a small master’s degree student population size) and factors outside the CIP’s scope (such as the country’s economic situation, university rankings, master’s programme accreditations and COVID-19).

The findings from this research study could be used by other higher education institutions (HEIs)to improve student loyalty and as a reference when conducting similar studies in other service organisations such as hospitals and hotels.

This research work took a different approach in assessing student satisfaction and student loyalty in a HEI by using the SERVQUAL survey as the data collection instrument for conducting CIP.

The award of a Commonwealth Visiting Fellowship enabled the writer to investigate preparation programmes for educational administrators in twelve prominent Canadian universities. Interviews with professors, students and practising administrators, participation in lectures, seminars and assessment procedures provided the basis for the writer's impressions. An analysis of pre‐Master's, Master's and doctoral programmes revealed that, in general, students must select courses from (i) organization and administration theory, (ii) educational personnel supervision, (iii) education in Canada and (iv) a series of options. Evidence of a combination of discipline, theory, problems and career‐based approaches was found in most programmes. The writer argues that Canadian professors of educational administration are (i) anxious to improve the quality of the courses offered and grappling with the problem of programme relevance, (ii) not generally concerned with teaching as a skill and restricted in methods used, particularly simulations, (iii) somewhat insular in outlook and (prior to the establishment of CASEA) lacking an adequate means of inter‐departmental communication. Future developments in the preparation of educational administrators are foreshadowed by the writer.

The framework of the Bologna Process, the bachelor's–master's degree structure, was introduced into the Netherlands in 2002. At the moment many other countries in Europe have adopted this structure, or are in the process of restructuring their higher education system in that direction. The so-called Dublin descriptors have been developed to provide a general statement of qualifications that students should have acquired at the end of each cycle. These descriptors can be seen as criteria in terms of competence levels regarding the following aspects: acquiring knowledge and understanding, applying knowledge and understanding, making informed judgements and choices, communicating knowledge and understanding, and capacities to continue learning. It can be argued that these competences are interdisciplinary in nature. For instance, a university graduate has to be able to collaborate and communicate in multi- or interdisciplinary teams. However, many of these competences will be acquired in disciplinary settings, and faculty will not easily recognise the general terms in which the descriptors are formulated. This raises questions about the interchangeability of the competences between disciplines. In this chapter we will argue that some of the Dublin descriptors can be seen as an attempt to make it clear that there is a common interdisciplinary language in certain fields of attributes, whereas there will be a strong component of disciplinarity in the programmes. An example in the field of research and enquiry competences will be elaborated for two distinctive programmes: in natural sciences and in social sciences.

The paper aims to present a pedagogical model tailored to the development of key competences in the urban planning profession in post-socialist transitional countries that is based on the creation of an integrated platform for dialogue and the development of professional competences as part of the process, whereby students produce their final projects.

The pedagogical model is based on the principles of education for sustainable development and focuses on the establishment of a repeatable platform for dialogue between students and mentors, members of the mentoring team, the local community, external members of the consulting team of experts and foreign master’s degree programmes, in the process of producing students’ projects. The proposed method addresses several dimensions, including: the education of students, teachers, professionals and local experts, the establishment of a network for cooperation and collaboration and the delivery of practical and usable results.

The paper provides a comparative overview of the pedagogical model’s application in producing the final master’s degree projects of three generations of students, as well as its alignment with the needs of re-defining the role and reach of the profession of urban planner in an environment of post-socialist transition. The model was improved, enhanced and optimised through this process and then corroborated with its practical implementation.

The innovative pedagogical model comprises an instrument to enhance the professional capacities of all participants in the production of final master’s projects: academics, practitioners and future professionals/students, through discussions of topical issues, innovative modes of work and new professional responses grounded in the local context and tested by a broad range of stakeholders. It is of particular importance for countries in transition experiencing a shift in the paradigm of professional action, especially as the proposed pedagogical model establishes a problem-solving platform that surpasses academia.

Based for more than fifteen years at the School of Librarianship and Information Sciences (hereinafter referred to as the EBSI) records management training has firm roots at the University of Montreal. Even when relations between librarianship and records management were at their lowest — I am thinking here of the “battle of the manuscripts” in 1973 — the EBSI continued to offer records management training. A tradition has been established and this is not to be sneezed at because, like Rome, university courses cannot be built in a day. Maurice Lebel, the famous Quebec academic, once said, “It takes 25 years of hard work to build up a quality department.” The EBSI celebrated its twenty fifth anniversary in 1987, and records management courses have now been running in the department for some fifteen years. We can therefore rightly claim that at the University of Montreal records management is able to develop within the framework of a well‐established school.