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The UK government has taken the lead in accelerating the capacity of higher education to engage with sustainability accounting and adopting a novel systematic approach toward a collective implementation of and contribution to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The UN SDG 16 “Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions” promotes the (re)building of effective and accountable institutions. In line with the institutional logics metatheory, we provide empirical evidence on how the alignment between social mechanisms alongside the reputation of higher education institutions (HEIs) and SDGs on transparent and responsible service (SDG 16) affect the students' overall experience. Using a sample of 142 UK HEIs, interpretative content analysis and ordinary least squares, the results show that integrating HEIs' responsible-oriented research agenda proactively with high sustainability reputation adds significantly to greater student satisfaction.

Education to an international standard that can provide successful careers has arguably been the main drive of many parents to allocate scarce financial resources to the education of their progenies. Competition for high-calibre degrees has seen an explosion of opportunity in the private education sector. As many Global South countries do not have the equivalent control of standards provided in the United Kingdom (UK) by the Quality Assurance Agency, this can lead to dissatisfaction with the qualifications received in the Global South. This chapter aims to explore the factors influencing participation in higher education in the Global North versus the Global South, particularly where these relate to or vary by locality, and the relative influence these have on the propensity of the learners living in these areas to progress into higher education in local universities. The conceptual framework and methodology provided in this chapter show the differences between transnational education (TNE) as primarily a standalone or independent activity supported by a UK higher education institution (HEI)/provider versus being a collaborative effort between a UK host university and a South/Southeast Asian HEI university partner. The methodology provides a strategy for UK host institutions to best provide carefully aligned independent or collaborative partnerships with the partner country regulatory bodies. The chapter concludes with the author’s personal reflections and recommendations based on decades of collaborative and independent university provision of TNE. These reflections are focused on design-based courses in selected South/Southeast Asian HEI partnerships with the College of Architecture and Design at Birmingham City University.

This article aims to address the response from the higher education (HE) sector in the United Kingdom (UK) to the full-scale war in Ukraine which started in 2022.

Relying on theoretical ideas of neoliberalism and the collection and thematic analysis of relevant official communications from six UK universities, the article uncovers three major ways in which these universities have been responding to the war.

They include (1) altruistic responses, (2) the promotion of equal treatment of all people and (3) the condemnation of the invasion and its implications for UK’s international cooperation in HE. These responses suggest the strengthening of the liberal ideals in the UK HE sector, heavily dominated by marketisation.

This analysis is significant not only for advancing a very limited scholarship on the topic of HE in the context of this war but also for understanding the development of the neoliberal landscape of UK HE and neoliberalism as a phenomenon in times of crises.

In this paper, we concentrate on the use of research assessment (RA) systems in universities in New Zealand (NZ) and the United Kingdom (UK). Primarily we focus on PBRF and REF, and explore differences between these systems on individual and systemic levels. We ask, these days, in what way(s) the systemic differences between PBRF and REF actually make a difference on how the two RA systems are experienced by academic staff.

This research is exploratory and draws on 19 interviews in which accounting researchers from both countries offer reflections on their careers and how RA (systems) have influenced these careers. The stories they tell are classified by regarding RA in universities as a manifestation of the spectacle society, following Debord (1992) and Flyverbom and Reinecke (2017).

Both UK and New Zealand academics concur that their research activities and views on research are very much shaped by journal rankings and citations. Among UK academics, there seems to be a greater critical attitude towards the benefits and drawbacks of REF, which may be related to the history of REF in their country. Relatively speaking, in New Zealand, individualism seems to have grown after the introduction of the PBRF, with little active pushback against the system. Cultural aspects may partially explain this outcome. Academics in both countries lament the lack of focus on practitioner issues that the increased significance of RA seems to have evoked.

This research is context-specific and may have limited applicability to other situations, academics or countries.

RA and RA systems seem to be here to stay. However, as academics we can, and ought to, take responsibility to try to ensure that these systems reflect the future of accounting (research) we wish to create. It is certainly not mainly or solely up to upper management officials to set this in motion, as has occasionally been claimed in previous literature. Some of the academics who participated in this research actively sought to bring about a different future.

This research provides a unique contextual analysis of accounting academics' perspectives and reactions to RA and RA systems and the impact these have had on their careers across two countries. In addition, the paper offers valuable critical reflections on the application of Debord's (1992) notion of the spectacle society in future accounting studies. We find more mixed and nuanced views on RA in academia than many previous studies have shown.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent of voluntary disclosures in UK higher education institutions’ (HEIs) annual reports and examine whether internal governance structures influence disclosure in the period following major reform and funding constraints.

The authors adopt a modified version of Coy and Dixon’s (2004) public accountability index, referred to in this paper as a public accountability and transparency index (PATI), to measure the extent of voluntary disclosures in 130 UK HEIs’ annual reports. Informed by a multi-theoretical framework drawn from public accountability, legitimacy, resource dependence and stakeholder perspectives, the authors propose that the characteristics of governing and executive structures in UK universities influence the extent of their voluntary disclosures.

The authors find a large degree of variability in the level of voluntary disclosures by universities and an overall relatively low level of PATI (44 per cent), particularly with regards to the disclosure of teaching/research outcomes. The authors also find that audit committee quality, governing board diversity, governor independence and the presence of a governance committee are associated with the level of disclosure. Finally, the authors find that the interaction between executive team characteristics and governance variables enhances the level of voluntary disclosures, thereby providing support for the continued relevance of a “shared” leadership in the HEIs’ sector towards enhancing accountability and transparency in HEIs.

In spite of significant funding cuts, regulatory reforms and competitive challenges, the level of voluntary disclosure by UK HEIs remains low. Whilst the role of selected governance mechanisms and “shared leadership” in improving disclosure, is asserted, the varying level and selective basis of the disclosures across the surveyed HEIs suggest that the public accountability motive is weaker relative to the other motives underpinned by stakeholder, legitimacy and resource dependence perspectives.

This is the first study which explores the association between HEI governance structures, managerial characteristics and the level of disclosure in UK HEIs.

The purpose of this paper is to consider how the open access policy environment has developed since the Rights Metadata for Open Archiving Project’s call in 2003 for universities and academics to assert joint copyright ownership of scholarly works and investigate whether UK universities are moving towards a joint copyright ownership.

The paper analyses 81 UK university copyright policies to understand what proportion make a claim over: IP ownership of all outputs; the copyright in scholarly works; re-using scholarly works in specific ways; and approaches to moral rights. Results are cross-tabulated by policy age and mission group.

Universities have not asserted their interest in scholarly works through joint ownership, leaving research funders and publishers to set open access policy. The paper finds an increased proportion of universities assert a generic claim to all IP (87 per cent) relative to earlier studies. In total, 74 per cent of policies relinquished rights in scholarly works in favour of academic staff; 20 per cent of policies share ownership of scholarly works through licensing; 28 per cent of policies assert the right to re-use scholarly works in some way; and 32 per cent of policies seek to protect moral rights. Policies that “share” ownership of scholarly works are more recent. The UK Scholarly Communication Licence (UK-SCL) should have an impact on this area. The reliance on individual academics to enforce a copyright policy or not to opt-out of the UK-SCL could be problematic. The paper concludes that open access may still be best served by joint ownership of scholarly works.

This the first large-scale analysis of UK university policy positions towards scholarly works. The paper discovers for the first time a move towards “shared” ownership of scholarly works in copyright policies.

The purpose of this study is to examine the amount and the nature of the voluntary intellectual capital (IC) disclosure of UK universities, the relation between performance and amount of IC disclosed; and the opinion of UK universities on a mandatory disclosure of IC.

Content analysis was used to examine the amount and nature of IC disclosure of the annual reports of 30 UK universities. Directors of Finance were chosen as representatives to submit an online questionnaire about IC statements and the mandatory reporting of IC for universities.

Findings suggest that the amount of IC information disclosed by UK universities in their annual reports is low. UK universities were identified as being over‐regulated and having low awareness of IC.

IC framework used for the content analysis was specific to Austrian universities and the online questionnaire responses were limited. Few adaptations were made but it is necessary to perform a preliminary study to better understand the characteristics and functioning of UK universities.

Further research and recommendations are provided. Introduction of mandatory disclosure of IC reports would contribute further to the increase of the burden. Therefore at the present time voluntary IC disclosure is the best option.

No previous research was conducted for UK universities. This brings new expertise regarding IC disclosure in higher education and forms a sound basis for future research. Universities could benefit in improving assessment of their intangible assets, performance measurements, allocation of resources and benchmarking exercise.

Publishes more than sixty abstracts on various aspects of higher education, from 1996 journals. Ranges over technology, quality, business‐education links, financing higher education, gender issues, learning and assessment, learning organizations, educational change, and the place of research in higher education.

This chapter explores the impact of postgraduate entrepreneurship and enterprise (E&E) education in UK Universities on the entrepreneurial actions of foreign students by reference to students from the second largest transition economy, Russia. The research identifies the most popular courses selected by foreign students for UK study and to identify and qualify the related student experience in order to identify correlations with how graduates exploit entrepreneurial opportunities upon return to home country. British universities have placed increasing dependency on foreign students which has increased pressure to enhance curricula to ‘embrace a wider global context’. Universities have been pressured also to play a new role in society by pursuing a ‘third mission’ of economic development to support the traditional roles of research and teaching. The increase in supply of HE providers has increased competition for students so curricula have to be innovative in order to attract them. An interpretivist philosophy and qualitative methods was employed across three phases, to study university managers, selected according to university and contact with foreign students; Russian non-government officials, selected to comment on the nexus of issues around Russian business and college education; and graduates (‘past’ and ‘recent’), selected according to country of origin, focus of studies and choice of university. This study confirmed that ‘the UK has a long tradition of the university third mission role’ where ‘HEIs are independent, self-governing bodies’, ‘most or part-funded by government’ and since 1992, seen an increase in the overall number; universities have been especially aggressive in pursuing foreign students so have led in designing attractive programmes and curricula. Findings show that modern UK University E&E teaching is effective in changing foreign students’ entrepreneurship perception and behaviour. The university/course selection and teaching/learning experience combine to produce measurable post-study entrepreneurial actions, whether in starting new or joining existing businesses with new found knowledge, social capital and ways of viewing the world.