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This article focuses on regional-level cooperation in higher education by examining the functional, organizational and political approaches (FOPA) framework for higher education regionalization and using supra-national regional universities as established and successful examples of regional-level higher education cooperation among countries.

A conceptual framework is used to provide the structure for analyzing the key approaches to higher education regionalization, followed by an analysis of supra-national regional universities to demonstrate the application of the model.

The FOPA framework for higher education regionalization includes three approaches. The first is the functional approach, which includes both collaborative academic and research activities among higher education institutions as well strategies and policies to help align systems across a region. The second is the organizational approach, which focuses on networks, organizations, institutions and programs, which facilitate partnerships. The third is the political approach, which includes regional-level agreements, declarations and strategic plans to promote higher education collaboration. Key higher education activities for each approach are discussed in generic terms, with examples provided from major regions of the world.

The research was based on desk research only. No interviews were conducted.

A conceptual analysis and a model were provided for the concept of regionalization of higher education and for regional universities, which can help readers locate their interests and research in the regionalization of higher education. Examples of three different types of regional universities were provided to give concrete illustrations of a regional university.

One of the rationales driving regional universities is to address and increase a sense of regional identify and to meet the social, economic and educational needs of the specified region.

Regional universities, such as the University of West Indies, Arab Open University and the Pan-Africa University, are an understudied phenomenon. Using them as innovative and sustainable examples of higher education regional cooperation and the FOPA model, this study illustrates how single-campus, multiple-campus and virtual regional universities are functioning to meet the diversified needs and priorities across a region through cooperation among countries.

The purpose of this article is to analyze main principles, forms and approaches to education quality evaluation in the process of establishment, development and crucial changes in the state accreditation of educational institutions and study programmes in Russian higher education in the last 20 years.

The major research method used in the paper is the qualitative analysis of legal and statistical documents, research papers and accreditation practices, which impacted the development and transformation of accreditation forms in Russia.

The transformation process of state accreditation during the last 20 years was conditioned by the changes in the state education policy and socio-economic situation. In a short period, under the influence of internal and external factors, Russian higher education has experienced significant changes in the structure of higher education and quality assurance. This resulted in different approaches to accreditation: state and independent, mandatory and voluntary, national and international.

The research outcomes may be applicable in the countries with developing accreditation systems and comparable scope of education.

The study identifies the tendencies in the development of higher education and quality evaluation.

The paper systematizes the tendencies of development in quality assurance and distinguishes specific features and diversity of forms of the quality assurance in one of the largest systems of higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence on the importance of cross-border cooperation in the quality assurance of transnational education (TNE) by offering a comparative overview of how TNE is quality assured by both sending and receiving countries. Through this comparative analysis, it will be possible to appreciate the diversity of approaches to TNE. The paper also shows that for the foreseeable future, progress towards effective and effiicient quality assurance of TNE cannot rest on the hope of developing an internationally agreed framework, but it must rest on strengthening cooperation between quality assurance agencies operating within different national frameworks.

This paper looks at four key sending countries of TNE, the UK, Australia, the USA and Germany, considering the main drivers for out-going TNE, its main features and how it is quality assured. It then considers the same aspects from the perspective of receiving countries of TNE, looking at four key receiving locations, China, Dubai, Singapore and Hong Kong. It also offers an overview of some recent international initiatives aimed at fostering cross-border cooperation in the quality assurance of TNE.

In the backdrop of this overview of different approaches to TNE, this paper will conclude that for the foreseeable future it is not possible to develop an internationally agreed view and approach to TNE and its quality assurance. This conclusion allows the author to focus on the importance of cross-border cooperation amongst quality assurance agencies in sending and receiving countries for the effective and efficient quality assurance of TNE.

This is the first comparative study of different countries’ approaches to TNE and its quality assurance, taking into account both sending and receiving countries. It allows pointing to the key different features in different countries’ approaches and illustrates how these often relate to the underlining national strategic priorities and drivers for TNE (either in-bound or out-bound). It also allows the international community to realise that in the absence of a viable shared and agreed international framework for the regulation and quality assurance of TNE, it is of paramount importance to focus efforts on inter-agency cross-border cooperation in order to ensure that TNE continues to be of good quality and relevant to the respective communities.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the impact of activation policies in contexts of public-oriented employment services.

The fieldwork was conducted in Italy, using the regional case of Emilia-Romagna as a representation of public-oriented models. The empirical research relies primarily on quantitative research methods by means of impact evaluations based on very rich and recent administrative data that includes 20,014 observations. These are integrated with some interesting insights from qualitative research tools by means of semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in the fieldwork.

The overall level of effectiveness of activation policies does not seem to be particularly high. However, the results show that, to some extent, there are more advantages for job seekers furthest from the labor market. The stronger efforts made to assist those disadvantaged groups are probably related to a loss in the overall effectiveness of the system.

This analysis has focused on a substantially homogeneous and economically developed region. Indeed, Italian activation policy reforms have been implemented differently in different areas of the country. Similar to other Southern European countries, they are characterized by regional fragmentation and implementation gaps in activation policies.

The findings of the present study are relevant to policymakers who deal with activation policies and to both public and nonpublic organizations involved in this field. It seems plausible to support the possibility that public-oriented models could represent a proficient alternative to proposals relying heavily on market-based interventions. Such evidence becomes particularly interesting in the aftermath of the Great Recession when this model is confronted with the consequences of the economic crisis.

The paper adds to the literature on public-oriented models, while overcoming some of the limitations of earlier research, which has been restricted mainly to cases with early traditions of marketized services.

The study analyses the role that open social innovation (OSI) perspective played for Fondazione Banco Alimentare Onlus (FBAO), a food bank in Italy, in responding to the COVID-19 crisis. It answers the following research question: how does a crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, stimulate the adoption of OSI practices to revamp the activities of FBAO and facilitate appropriate solutions to carry out its social mission?

This study employs a qualitative approach. It is based on a single case study.

The study shows how COVID-19 has stimulated the adoption of OSI practices to continue to meet the social mission, creating innovative projects or finding new ways to do the same things.

The study is based on a single case study.

The paper contributes insights into the literature on OSI, examining how inbound and outbound OSI mechanisms can modify business models and increase the adaptation capacity of food banks and their effectiveness. In addition, it provides a rich context in which the social value drivers provided by OSI are studied.

This paper applies the OSI to a food bank to evaluate what this action mode produces for the food bank during a health crisis. Specifically, this is the first paper that studies the COVID-19 crisis response of a food bank from the OSI perspective, focusing on the inbound and outbound OSI processes that characterized the entire network of relationships.

This study examines how an externally imposed management control system (MCS) – hospital accreditation – influences the salience of organisational tensions and consequently attitudes of management towards the system.

Data are collected using a case study of a large public hospital in Spain. In-depth interviews were conducted with 27 senior and middle managers across different functions. Relying on the organisational dualities classification in the literature, tensions are unpacked and analysed.

Evidence is presented of how hospital accreditation increases the salience of organisational tensions arising from exposition of the organisational dualities of learning, performing, organising and belonging. Salient tensions were evident in the ambivalent attitudes of management towards the hospital accreditation system.

The role of mandatory external control systems in exposing ambivalence and tensions will be of interest to organisational managers.

The study extends the management control literature by identifying an active role for an external MCS (accreditation) in increasing the salience of organisational tensions and triggering ambivalence. Contrary to the prior literature, the embedding of both poles of an organisational duality into the MCS is not a necessary precondition for increased tension salience. The range of attitudes towards MCSs beyond those specified in the previous literature (positive/negative/neutral) is extended to include ambivalence.

Since the turn of the 21st century, various institutions of higher education have been established in the Gulf Cooperation Council region, several of which are branches of universities from North America, Europe, Australia, and other regions. Quality education is currently a required component in the models of collaboration between Universities; yet the literature suggests that challenges remain in how the quality education will be practiced in a region that lacked for long time private universities. In this paper, we present an exploratory investigation to determine what could be learned by studying the practicalities of collaboration and accreditation of a newly established institution in Oman, namely, Dhofar University. The case study focuses on the practicalities of DU’s external collaboration, national accreditation, and good practices University-wide and within the College of Engineering in particular. The paper aims to present and analyze challenges, good practices, faculty and staff experiences, and solutions that could be a useful pattern for similar institutions. The investigation builds on an internal University-wide self-study and an external review by an accreditation council.

Kerala is one of India's most advanced states in human development and other social indices. This study aims to look at the management education scenario in Kerala from a macro-perspective and examines the existing trends, major issues and present challenges facing the sector.

The study is driven by previously unexplored secondary data published by India's apex technical education regulator–All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). Qualitative and quantitative assessments are assimilated from the organization, dissection and categorization of unit-level data.

Business schools (B-schools) in the state are facing acute distress in enrolments. There are intra-regional variations in institution count and occupancy rates. The vast majority of the institutions have no accreditation at all. The entire sector is facing a protracted decline.

The study has relied primarily on descriptive statistics considering a single discipline within the higher education sector in Kerala. Future studies should look at other disciplines (engineering, medicine) simultaneously. Use of statistical methods like panel data regression would be beneficial to find hidden trends in cross-sectional and longitudinal time-series data.

Management education in Kerala is facing an existential crisis. This has implications for the state's economic development. The paper creates strong imperatives for government policymaking to forestall the complete decline of the sector.

A highly literate state with advanced human development indices need not be a suitable location for building a knowledge-based economy. Government policy has strong implications for the development and sustenance of higher education. The relationship between government and business schools are symbiotic.

The paper maps the progression of B-schools from local to global. A typology of privately funded B-schools is proposed. The conceptual framework advanced in this study can contribute to further literature development. The suggested policy initiatives are applicable not only to Kerala but also to other tightly regulated markets.

I historically compare changes in institutional frameworks creating academic positions linked to temporary employment by analyzing university employment statistics in Chile, Colombia, Germany, and the USA. I find that temporary academic positions were institutionalized through the creation of previously inexistent academic categories called a contrata in Chile, de cátedra in Colombia, “junior professor” without tenure in Germany and “postdoc” in the USA; used in higher education and employment laws since 1989, 1992, 2002, and 1974, respectively. Under institutional frameworks demanding the maximization of students and research, universities have increasingly contracted academics through temporary contracts under rationales that differ between regions. In Colombia and Chile, public university leaders and owners of private universities contract such teaching positions to expand student numbers through lowering costs. In Germany and the USA, employment insecurity is mostly driven by temporary scientific positions under a main rationale of scientific expansion. The share of temporary positions has increased exponentially in Colombia and Germany in recent decades, whereas in the USA there has only been an increase since 2012. Moreover, in Chile, the share of permanent positions has decreased since 2012. The common trend is one of isomorphism of vertical academic structures sharing a pyramidal form, with a wide base of academics working under conditions of contractual insecurity. Such trends follow a rationale for maximization of student numbers as well as administration, and scientific production that is in tension with prioritizing wellbeing and improvement of academics’ working conditions. Yet, in these environments, the institution of tenure in the USA and recent Chilean regulations on accreditation represent mechanisms counteracting precarious employment.

Regionalisation in education has gained increased interest and importance because of the increasing collaborations among neighbouring nations. Definitions of the term vary, and more so the regionalisation practices and initiatives of higher educational institutions. In the Philippines, the emphasis on regionalisation has become even more pronounced with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Integration Vision. This vision of the ASEAN is geared towards enhancing regional collaboration and the creation of an ASEAN identity and puts education at the forefront, considering it as a strategic objective to achieve the region’s development agenda of economic, social and cultural growth. It becomes of paramount importance then to examine how regionalisation in education is understood by university constituents, its manifestations in terms of institutional activities and especially, how the ASEAN Integration shapes these initiatives and constructions of regionalisation. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Using a multiple case study design that looked at three higher education institutions (HEIs) in the Philippines, this study found that regionalisation is associated and interchanged with internationalisation in terms of purpose, goal and activities, but is differentiated in dimensions of geographical location and orientation.

Institutional initiatives pertaining to regionalisation were largely functional and mostly open and soft collaborations. The ASEAN Integration creates an ASEAN-centric consciousness, and functions as an opportunity for expanding partnerships, institutional niches and programmatic initiatives; and for legitimising regionalisation and internationalisation goals.

These definitions and approaches to regionalisation have significant policy implications as HEIs strive to respond to the challenges of the Integration.