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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 study aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of how discursive practices shape the promotion of public relations undergraduate programmes in the context of market-driven UK higher education.

Research combines a descriptive analysis of the UK universities offering public relations undergraduate degrees and a critical discourse analysis of the online prospectus entries of 25 public relations undergraduate programmes (often called “courses” in the UK), focussing on the course/programme overview and career path sections.

This wide-ranging review of UK universities’ communication of their public relations provision demonstrates that although the student as consumer has choice, the presentation of the programmes is sometimes “headline grabbing” and often positions public relations as a tactical subject, emphasising promotion and practical skills. Overall, public relations is taught alongside subjects such as marketing, journalism and advertising, and these subjects are foregrounded in promotional material when discussing teaching and potential career paths. Public relations is a difficult subject to explain within the confines of a university prospectus, with the result that it is frequently presented as a promotional practice with little connection to management, leadership or academic research.

To the best authors' knowledge, this is the first study exploring the discursive practices that shape the promotion of public relations undergraduate programmes in UK universities.

This chapter presents a genderwashing critique of UK historic universities. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, it conceptualizes genderwashing and gender-based violence (GBV). Underpinned by feminist subjectivity, raising consciousness to women's situated lived experiences, examples of public declarations of gender equality by UK historic universities are considered alongside women's experiences of GBV. Using Walter's (2022) genderwash varieties, university hypocrisy is illustrated by women academic handmaidens, abuse of women in Professional Services, and women standing up to GBV. This chapter contributes “Eradicating and Silencing Women’”and “Asking the Minority to Fix It” as genderwash processes, theorizing how genderwashing (or genderbleaching) in historic universities not only perpetuates the falsehood of practicing equality but also provides a veil to conceal GBV.

This research examines how universities enhance the virality of their social media messages among students. Specifically, we explore whether and how positive affective content in universities’ social media posts can influence sharing behavior. We also investigate the mediating roles of perceived effort and positive emotional reaction, as well as the moderating effect of visual content (i.e. photos).

Drawing upon the emotions as social information model, we conducted (1) an online experiment (N = 222) and (2) text analysis of 1,269,798 Twitter posts extracted from the accounts of 94 UK universities over 11 years (2010–2020) to test our hypotheses.

The findings show that social media posts containing positive affective content encourage sharing behavior and the relationship is mediated by both perceived effort and positive emotional reaction. An additional finding suggests that the use of visual content (photos) strengthens the relationship between positive affective content and sharing behaviors through an interaction effect.

This study contributes to the scant research focusing on positive affective content in the higher education context. The findings shed light on how universities could create social media communications that engage current and prospective students.

The purpose of this study is to examine the underexplored link between entrepreneurship education (EE) and graduate employability in the higher education (HE) sector in the United Kingdom (UK).

The study draws on a thematic content analysis of semi-structured interviews with 45 professionals in UK HE, representing the “supply” side of EE.

The findings demonstrate a unidirectional link between EE and employability outcomes. This link is affected by societal, stakeholder-related, and teaching and learning-related factors.

Although the value of universities’ initiatives connecting EE and employability for economic development is emphasized, the study does not provide direct empirical evidence for this effect. Macroeconomic research is needed.

EE and employability would benefit from knowledge exchange between universities’ stakeholders and a broader understanding of what constitutes a valuable graduate outcome.

The study reveals the benefits of EE on a micro level. Participation in EE supports the connection between individual investments in HE and employability.

Based on human capital theory, many policymakers regard EE as a vehicle through which the relationship between investments in HE and career success on a micro level and economic growth on a macro level can be nurtured. Challenging this logic, the study highlights the potential of institutional theory to explain a contextualization of the link between EE and employability on a national level.

Business schools are vital in promoting responsible management (RM) – a management grounded in ethics and values beneficial to a wide array of stakeholders and overall society. Nevertheless, due to deeply embedded institutional modernistic dynamics and paradigms, RM is, despite its importance, repeatedly marginalised in business school curricula. If students are to engage with RM thinking, then its occlusion represents a pressing issue. Drawing on the United Kingdom (UK) business school context, this paper aims to examine this issue through a framework of institutional theory and consider the role played by (modernistic) institutional accreditation and research assessment processes in marginalisation of RM.

This study used an exploratory qualitative research method. Data were collected from 17 RM expert participants from 15 UK business schools that were signatories to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Management Education through semi-structured in-depth interviews and analysed using the six phases of Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis.

The study identifies a potent institutional isomorphic amalgam resulting in conservative impacts for RM. This dynamic is termed multiple institutional isomorphic marginalisation (MIIM) – whereby a given domain is occluded and displaced by hegemonic institutional pressures. In RM’s case, MIIM operates through accreditation-driven modernistic-style curricula. This leads business schools to a predilection towards “mainstream” representations of subject areas and a focus on mechanistic research exercises. Consequently, this privileges certain activities over RM development with a range of potential negative effects, including social impacts.

This study fills an important gap concerning the need for a critical, in-depth exploration of the role that international accreditation frameworks and national institutional academic research assessment processes such as the Research Excellence Framework in the UK play in affecting the possible growth and influence of RM. In addition, it uses heterotopia as a conceptual lens to reveal the institutional “mask” of responsibility predominantly at play in the UK business school context, and offers alternative pathways for RM careers.

The recruitment and promotion of teaching academics in the UK is constrained by a complex array of career progression barriers. These barriers have led to an increasing trend of horizontal career (lack of) progression. The purpose of this paper is to reveal and discuss linearity and horizontality constrictions, challenges and issues impacting on potential careers in tourism academia.

This study uses a leading UK national academic recruitment website to gather data and insights from across 137 posted jobs related to tourism between 2020 and 2022.

The main findings of this work note the constrictions of the UK academic job market and the consequences it poses for academics within tourism and beyond. It is proposed that future research to further understand the realities faced by academics is needed to prompt action for change to create more enriching career development.

The contribution of this study centres around sense making a phenomenon that exists but is not often talked about within academia (whether in tourism or beyond). For academics and managers, this paper presents an opportunity to reflect more holistically on careers with a view to instigating valuable change moving forward (for oneself or others). There is also a dearth of studies relating to career progression of tourism higher education educators.

This article problematises the international student label by critically examining the mechanisms that actively portray international students as necessarily different, deficient and uncritical. It broadly aims to tackle the following issues: (a) to challenge the underpinnings of the international label; (b) to uncover the role of neo-essentialist representations of cohorts of students labelled international in sustaining financial exploitation and deficit narratives; and (c) to criticise the current hyper-internationalisation strategy widely adopted by UK HEIs.

The paper mainly relies on findings from research that adopted narrative inquiry to explore the experiences of students labelled international. Data were collected via a series of interviews with 15 postgraduate students at a university in the north of England. The paper also makes use of brief statistical analyses to provide a general overview about the status of UK higher education (international student admission, net economic impact and income).

The paper reveals the underpinnings of the international label and how it is mobilised to other non-UK-domiciled students. The paper equally establishes a strong link between hyper-internationalisation and the (un)sustainability of the UK’s higher education sector.

The research is expected to raise important questions around the experiences and realities endured by students labelled international. In particular, the paper challenges the international label and the mechanisms that sustain the label at institutional levels.

The paper calls for abandoning the international label as a marker of a presumed difference. Equally, the paper highlights the current unsustainability of the UK’s higher education sector and suggests a gradual cap on international tuition fees to alleviate some of the educational inequalities endured by students international, and to ensure the sustainability of the higher education sector.

This is the first research that openly challenges the international label and substitutes it by “students labelled international”. Equally, this is the first paper that recommends to cap international tuition fees on account of findings from students' narratives and statistics that reveal the unsustainability of the UK's higher education sector. Finally, the paper’s conceptual contribution includes a reference to the idea of hyper-internationalisation.