Search results

The new universities … what is new about them ? Of course, they are among the most recent universities to be founded. But why then are they distinguished from a whole series of other institutions that became universities at about the same time, starting with Southampton in 1952 and ending with Newcastle in 1963? Of course, they claim to have initiated radical academic innovations. Yet far more radical innovation has taken place elsewhere. The difference is more fundamental than this, and centres on the role of the state in their creation. The new universities are new because they were founded as universities to start with, with powers to create and award their own degrees.

Universities globally have faced the introduction of research performance assessment systems that provide monetary and ranking rewards based on publication outputs. This study aims to seek an understanding of the implementation of performance-based research funding (PBRF) and its impact on the heads of departments (HoDs) and accounting academics in New Zealand (NZ) tertiary institutions. The study explores NZ accounting academics’ experiences and their workload; the relationship between teaching and research in the accounting discipline and any issues and concerns affecting new and emerging accounting researchers because of PBRF.

Applying an institutional theoretical lens, this paper explores accounting HoDs’ perceptions concerning the PBRF system’s impact on their academic staff. The research used semi-structured interviews to collect data from NZ’s eight universities.

The key findings posit that many institutional processes, some more coercive in nature, whereas others were normative and mimetic, have been put in place to ensure that academics are able to meet the PBRF requirements. HoDs suggest that their staff understand the importance of research, but that PBRF is a challenge to new and emerging researchers and pose threats to their recruitment. New academics must “hit the ground running” as they must demonstrate not only teaching abilities but also already have a track record of research publications; all in all, a daunting experience for new academics to overcome. There is also a teaching and research disconnect. Furthermore, many areas where improvements can be made in the design of this measurement tool remain.

The PBRF system has significantly impacted on accounting academics. Central university research systems were established that subsequently applied coercive institutional pressures onto line managers to ensure that their staff performed. This finding offers scope for future research to explore a better PBRF that measures and rewards research productivity but without the current system’s unintended negative consequences.

This paper aims to examine the new teaching universities created in British Columbia and Alberta over the past 10 years in the context of the multiple challenges faced by higher education today, including issues of purpose, culture, governance, accountability and finances.

The essay provides a historic overview of the challenges universities face today. In this context, it presents the new Western Canadian universities as a possible model, even while identifying the challenges these institutions face in the future.

This case study concludes that universities must change if they are to meet the expectations of students and the needs of society. It outlines the challenges faced by the new universities, how they have responded, the successes they have experienced and the challenges they confront.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study of the new Canadian universities.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between New Zealand universities and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of New Zealand (ICANZ), the main organization of the accounting profession in New Zealand.

The relationship is approached as an archival search, producing a descriptive analysis of the universities' involvement in the Institute's professional exams, from the creation of the Institute in 1908 until the turn of this century.

At first this connection was through the qualifying examination system of the Institute, with the universities providing the means for the Institute to educate prospective members. Differences in approach towards accounting education, identified in the ongoing issue of a degree prerequisite, and the development of accountancy departments in the universities, led to the Institute later in the twentieth century turning to other tertiary institutions to provide its accounting professional examinations. This paper shows that although the accountancy departments in the universities have benefited from contact with the Institute, the nature of the relationship has been determined to a large extent by the requirements of the New Zealand accounting profession.

The paper provides historical insights on the interaction between the universities and the Institute, explaining the reasons for the Institute's influence on accounting education in the universities.

The historical study aims to trace moves towards professionalising university teaching in the era of post‐war expansion in higher education using the University of Auckland, New Zealand, as the specific case study.

The historical analysis draws from published papers and original documents chronicling the state of teaching abilities in New Zealand in the late 1950s and 1960s and also draws from the University of Auckland's own archives.

University teaching by the early 1970s was no longer a private matter. Facing greater accountability from the New Zealand government and university students over the quality of teaching, New Zealand universities responded by creating professional development units to enhance the teaching capabilities of their academic staff.

This case study adds to the emerging histories of higher education academic and staff development units in Australasia and the United Kingdom. It demonstrates the growing realisation amongst academics, students and policy makers in the 1960s that lecturers could not be entirely left to their own devices given the potential harm poor teaching could have on student performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the diverse rendering of the idea of nation and the role of universities in nation-building in the 1950s Murray and Hughes Parry Reports in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. This paper provides trans-Tasman comparisons that reflect the different national and international interests, positioning of science and the humanities and desired academic and student subject positions and power relations.

This paper adopts a Foucauldian genealogical approach that is informed by Wodak’s (2011) historical discourse analysis in order to analyse the reports’ discursive constructions of the national role of universities, the positioning of science and humanities and the development of desired academics and student subjectivities and power relations.

The analysis reveals the different positioning of Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand in relation to the Empire and the Cold War. It also demonstrates how Australian national interests were represented in these reports as largely economic and defence related, while Aotearoa/New Zealand national interests were about economic, social and cultural nation-building. These differences were also matched by diverse weightings attached to university science and the humanities education. There is also a hailing of traditional, enlightenment-inspired discourses about desired academic and student subjectivities and power relations in Australia that contrasts with the emergence of early traces of more contemporary discourses about equity and diversity in universities in Aotearoa/New Zealand.

The paper demonstrates the value of transnational analysis in contributing to historiography about university education. The Foucauldian discourse analysis approach extends existing Australian historiography about universities during this period and represents a key contribution to Aotearoa/New Zealand historiography that has explored academic and student subjectivities to a lesser extent.

The purpose of this paper is to distinguish the main features of the outburst of student radicalism at Sydney University in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The paper traces developments in student politics at Sydney University from the 1950s onwards, in both the Australian and international context.

The rise of the New Left was a moderate process in 1967 but became more energetic in 1969. This was aligned with a similar trajectory with the marches by radical opponents of the Vietnam war. The New Left: provided challenges to the university curriculum (in Arts and Economics) and challenged middle‐class values. Many components of the New Left claimed to be Marxist, but many such components rejected the Marxist commitment to the working class and communist parties.

The investigation is limited to Sydney University.

Although the endnotes list numerous references, these are largely specific. Very few general surveys of the New Left at Sydney University have been published.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the profiles of Australian, New Zealand and South African accounting faculty members. Additionally, the study investigates whether there are any differences in research productivity of the accounting faculty between countries as measured by peer-reviewed academic journal output.

This archival study uses details obtained from webpages of Departments of Accounting in the three countries to construct a profile of accounting academics.

Significant differences in the profiles of accounting academics were found that can be attributed to the institutional factors that exist in each country. Staffs at the junior lecturer and lecturer levels are more likely to be female, while senior lecturers and professors in all three countries were more likely to be male. While Australia and New Zealand had a similar percentage of staff holding PhD or equivalent academic qualifications, only a small proportion of the South African faculty held PhD or equivalent qualifications. A greater proportion of the South African faculty was professionally qualified compared to their Australian and New Zealand counterparts. New Zealand accounting faculty was more productive than their Australian colleagues, with South African academics being the least productive. Academics holding a doctoral qualification or equivalent were more productive than those that did not.

The research limitations relate to the use of websites as the primary data source. Incompleteness of information, inconsistencies in the type of information presented and a lack of comparability of information across institutions and countries may have led to some errors and omissions. However, given the relatively large sample size of 2,049 academics, this was not deemed to materially affect the final analysis.

The paper provides an important contribution to the literature on accounting academics. It is the first of its kind to present a comprehensive “snapshot” of the profiles of accounting academics at the universities in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

Introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2013.

Provides information about each source, discusses the characteristics of current scholarship and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a selected bibliography of recent resources on library instruction and information literacy.

The paper introduces and annotates periodical articles, monographs, and audiovisual material examining library instruction and information literacy.

Information is provided about each source, and the paper discusses the characteristics of current scholarship, and describes sources that contain unique scholarly contributions and quality reproductions.

The information may be used by librarians and interested parties as a quick reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.