Search results

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

The six member nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have witnessed a significant jump in the quality of education since only the 1970s—becoming sovereign because of boom in oil resources and petrodollar prevalence—to the extent that the level of their higher education system nearly fulfills all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) standards. Among successful criteria undertaken by the most GCC universities are establishing partnerships with other foreign universities in developed countries and following international organizations’, such as UNESCO and the World Bank, recommendations by focusing on establishing knowledge economies in line with globalization. Looking into the GCC success stories, the focus of this research paper is Egypt, after the country’s last revolution on January 25, 2011. The Arab Republic of Egypt has a strategic location worldwide, is a vital peace keeper, especially in the Middle East and the Arab region, and has a rich oriental heritage: cultural, social, and traditional, in addition to its unique pharaonic history. Suggested selection of some tools of assessment would be elaborated in the Methodology section to assess the quality of national tertiary education. This chapter aimed at generally highlighting some aspects of evolution of national post-secondary system during the last two decades in an effort to come up with findings and recommendations to promote country’s higher education system. As in many other developing countries, in Egypt the university constitutes a social and political hope, and is one of the pillars of social mobility and economic development for the country. However, professional endeavors are repeatedly turned down in finding a suitable job or at least entering the labor market, resulting in a rise in unemployment rate. This is due to, on the one hand, the nature of the labor market, hence the fact that the supply of graduates exceeds the market demand for them, and on the other hand, the negatively affected quality of higher education, especially in the public sector, mainly being overloaded, which produces weak qualified potential employees. This—among other factors—contributes to the downfall of country’s economy. Many who graduate from a stronger private system encounter difficulties in either being classified as overqualified, and hence get refused and are unemployed, or are placed in a position that under evaluates their capabilities, and hence with time lose enthusiasm or escape (brain drain). In conclusion, conducting a comparison between Egypt’s private and public universities, as expected beforehand, would be in favor of the former because of having better facilities and qualified faculty, earning higher salaries, in addition to the use of advanced equipment and technology in academic research. Therefore, this research intended to expand in future the comparison to include other countries from the Middle East and North Africa region—similar to Egypt in its economic and social compositions—for mutual benefits of learning from the best practices and successful models.

The aim of the chapter is to investigate the changing structural position of post-secondary schools in Poland, seen from the perspective of the expansion of higher education from one side and the current reform of vocational education from the other. Do post-secondary schools enhance opportunities for those who might not otherwise consider further education, especially when we consider lower cost, open admissions and greater accessibility in comparison with higher education institutions? Or do they play a role of a ‘discounted’ and ‘undervalued’ education for those who could not manage to enter three-year-bachelor cycles in tertiary education and thus were forced to lower their initial educational aspirations? The opening up of higher education to new student populations was done by the rapid expansion of the private (paid for) sector and the fee-paying courses in the public sector. Liberal educational policy not only opened an opportunity for the privatization in higher education, but also expanded the market-driven provision at the post-secondary level. The discussion on the relevance of post-secondary vocational qualifications must be seen within the context of the continual inflation of diplomas/degrees and the unemployment of graduates after finishing higher education. Since 2010, there has been a reverse process initiated at the governmental level in Poland: reform schemes to increase the participation of young people in vocational education and training. However, the structural position and functions of post-secondary schools, as well as their role in the employability of young people, are not subject to any open discussion at the political level. This sort of status quo concerning post-secondary institutions means that their institutional identity issues are resolved and their structural position defined predominantly by market forces.

Globalization has become such an all-encompassing concept that it is almost meaningless. However, most scholars recognize that the term conveys in some manner or form a shrinkage of time and space such that events happening in one part of the world have the potential to impact other locales (Giddens, 1999; Held, 1991). Beyond this most basic meaning, it is hard to find any agreement on what the term actually conveys or when in fact the world actually entered a global age (Morrow & Torres, 2000). Given the vagueness of globalization as a concept, the challenge then is to be as clear as possible in discussing various forces related to globalization that may impact a particular phenomenon under study. In the case of this chapter, the phenomenon of interest is university transformation in the developing world.

This chapter explores how neoliberal higher education reforms in the United Republic of Tanzania (URT) during the 1990s and 2000s were shaped by the history of governance, schooling, and foreign donor involvement in the country following its independence in 1961. Against this backdrop, I examine how concepts of private versus public leadership, individualism, competition, and education’s place in the overall development scheme shifted over time, and the influence these changing conceptualizations had on the role of universities in Tanzania by the end of the first decade of the 21st century. In an international environment in which powerful funding agencies see neoliberal higher education policies and “knowledge societies” as the key to increased national competitiveness and poverty eradication in sub-Saharan Africa, this chapter shows how changes embedded in recent market-centered university reforms – in which the state is said to “steer” rather than “row” – have influenced the quest for equitable development.

The higher education system in Vietnam has expanded rapidly during the past two decades, creating opportunities for personal advancement by hundreds of thousands of young Vietnamese. On the limited evidence available, however, it appears that these opportunities have not been distributed equitably. Young people from better-off homes from urban areas and from the ethnic majority group seem more likely to have benefitted. Girls also appear to have benefitted, a trend that is a reverse of the past. In this paper, we report on the state of access to higher education in Vietnam and we report on areas of policy that relate to achieving a more socially inclusive higher education system.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The aim of this study is to assess the managerial practices in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) higher education sector through the lens of “new managerialism”.

An extensive review of new managerialism literature in higher education was conducted to develop a structured survey questionnaire. Using 176 useable responses obtained from the country-wide survey of academic staff, the underlying factor structure of new managerialism was first established using exploratory factor analysis (EFA), and then ANOVA was carried out to check whether there existed any difference in the six factors as well as for the individual items within each factor across the three types of Universities in the UAE, namely public universities, private-local owned universities and private-foreign owned universities.

The study unearthed a six-factor framework (monitoring and evaluation, transparency, bureaucracy, stakeholder engagement, research productivity and academic freedom and flexibility) of new managerialism comprising of 20 managerial practices. Of the six factors, significant difference was found for bureaucracy, stakeholder engagement and academic freedom and flexibility across different types of universities.

In terms of novelty, the study is the first attempt to explore new managerialism in higher education in the Middle Eastern context.

While boards of trustees have statutory authority over higher education institutions in the USA, how these boards exercise their power varies. The literature of higher education suggests a diminishing trustees’ presence and power across campuses in the nation. Recently, there have been many calls for trustee activism. But, the question: “what is the role of the trustees?” continues to be asked. Hence, the purpose of this study was to investigate, from the trustees themselves, what this role is and to analyze their responses on the bases of sectors, gender, educational backgrounds, and years of experience. The study concluded that role differences existed among sectors of higher education, limited differences based on gender, educational levels, and years of experience were found. Overall, the traditional role of trustees was upheld as the primary role of the board of trustees. The article recommends that an effective orientation program be offered to new trustees, board membership be diversified to include more women and minority members, and discussion of trustees’ role be done with attention to differences in sectors.