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The current research aims at investigating the mediating effect of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) on the link between entrepreneurial education and choice of the university among students. The main focus of this paper is that when entrepreneurial education is properly-implemented at universities, it leads to several positive outcomes such as positive eWOM. Therefore, if the entrepreneurial education is used as a marketing model, it can be considered as the innovative model for attracting more students. By implementing this model, the university can enhance its approach to cultivating a positive image, potentially leading to increased student enrollments.

The study used a sample of 483 undergraduate students in different universities. As well, it used a structured questionnaire during the data collection. Additionally, the study used partial least squares (PLS-SEM) in analyzing direct and indirect relationships.

The findings of this study suggest that entrepreneurial education and eWOM are critical factors for student selection to the universities. This is because eWOM significant mediates the link between entrepreneurial education and university choice.

This study used cross-sectional design. Therefore, future research can use a longitudinal design in examining the link between independent and dependent variables so as to look into the changes over time.

The study presents potential strategies that universities can employ to market their programs more effectively. By strengthening their entrepreneurial education initiatives, universities can enhance their reputation and create positive eWOM, which can lead to higher enrollments.

This study offers innovative marketing approaches for universities and their programs. Instead of heavily investing in advertising, the study suggests that strengthening entrepreneurial education initiatives can be a more effective marketing strategy. The findings suggest that a positive reputation generated by strong entrepreneurial education initiatives can lead to positive eWOM, which, in turn, influences university selection. Therefore, universities can consider enhancing their entrepreneurial education offerings to attract more prospective students. The study also highlights the notion that quality speaks for itself, while a lack of quality requires advertising.

This study introduces three variables related to brands that have the potential to enhance university students' advocacy intentions. The research explores how university brand identification, the perceived prestige of the university brand and the social benefits associated with the university brand impact students' advocacy intentions. Additionally, the study examines the moderating role of gender in these relationships.

Cross-sectional surveys of 326 undergraduate students enrolled in a Spanish university, and structural equation modeling was used to test and validate the conceptual model.

The findings from the structural equation modeling indicate that university brand identification, perceived university brand prestige and university brand social benefits significantly influence students' advocacy intentions. Furthermore, the multigroup analysis reveals a gender difference in the factors influencing advocacy intentions. Female students demonstrate significance in all three antecedents, whereas male students only show significance in university brand identification and perceived university brand prestige.

The current study's findings provide several insights for higher education institutions in developing enduring and committed relationships with their students.

This study offers relevant insights into the body of research on university branding, explaining the students' advocacy intentions through the variables of university brand identification, perceived university brand prestige and university brand social benefits. Also, this study is a novelty in introducing empirical evidence for the importance of the moderating role of students' gender.

A university’s brand is a key competitive advantage in higher education (HE). This study examines the university's reputation’s intermediary impact on core services (emotional environment, perceived faculty and course suitability) and brand loyalty in private universities in Iran.

A quantitative method was used to achieve research objectives. The data collected from students enrolled in major private universities in the capital of Iran were analyzed to test the proposed model, both directly and indirectly, using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The findings confirmed all of the hypothesized relationships. Prominently, the core service construct (emotional environment, perceived faculty and course suitability) was found to be significantly affecting the university brand reputation. The study found evidence for the impact of university reputation on students' loyalty. Findings also indicated the presence of several indirect relationships among the considered dimensions.

Current research offers implications for universities that are met with the perpetual challenge of survival in the competitive HE marketplace. Findings from the study not only help build theory on university brand loyalty but also make an essential contribution towards guiding managers in developing effective strategies by building reputation and loyalty by concentrating on the most crucial determinants.

Although research in HE marketing is growing, the effects of university core services on building loyalty have not garnered attention, which is theoretically a vital construct. The paper presents a new framework to realize university brand loyalty with the help of integrated relationships among select dimensions in the setting of an emerging HE market.

The study aims to examine the entrepreneurial intentions (EIs) of tourism and hospitality (T&H) students in Ghana using the theory of planned behaviour (TPB). Specifically, the study examined the role of university support on students’ EIs and behaviour within the framework of TPB.

An online questionnaire was used to collect data from 929 T&H students from six universities in Ghana. Structural equation modelling using AMOS was used to test the stated hypotheses.

The results showed that perceived university support (PUS) played a key role in influencing students’ attitudes, subjective norms and behavioural controls towards their EIs. Furthermore, the EI of T&H students was also found to have influenced students’ entrepreneurial behaviours (EBs). All seven hypotheses were significant.

To increase the entrepreneurial drive of T&H students, universities and T&H educators need to provide support through strengthening experiential learning activities (guest speaker series, mentorship sessions, practicals and internships) to provide an avenue for students to be trained on risk management and failure recovery skills, develop positive attitudes and behaviours and learn from experts. Policymakers should also enact favourable laws to regulate business practices.

This is likely the first paper to address the issue of PUS for entrepreneurship amongst T&H students in the context of a developing country. Specifically, it addresses the role of universities and T&H educators in supporting T&H students to be entrepreneurs.

This paper aims to assess gender bias in Italian university student mobility controlling for the field of study. It uses data from the Italian National Student Archive (Anagrafe Nazionale degli Studenti – ANS) for the cohort of freshmen enrolled in the 2017 academic year. The macro-regional comparison unfolds across the following areas: North and Centre, Southern Italy and main Islands (Sicily and Sardinia).

The analysis is firstly carried out at the national level, and secondly, it focusses on macro-geographical areas. University mobility choices are thus investigated from a gender perspective, conditioning upon other theoretically relevant characteristics collected for the prospective first-year university student population enrolled in 2017. The authors analyse data in a regression setting (logit models) within the multilevel framework, which considers students at level 1 and the field of study at level 2. Gender differences in the propensity to be a mover – conditional upon the choice of the field of study – were captured by introducing random intercepts to account for clustering of students in fields of study and random slopes to allow the gender effect to differ among them.

Findings show that university student mobility in Italy leads evidence of gender bias. This has been detected using a multilevel random slope approach that allowed the authors to jointly estimate a slope parameter for gender within each field of study. Moreover, using a regression setting allowed the authors to control for heterogeneity in geographical, educational and socio-demographic characteristics across students. In line with previous empirical findings, the authors' data highlight the presence of a relevant mobility flow of university students from the South toward the North-Centre of Italy and lower mobility of female students compared to male students from the South and Islands.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, there are no studies in Italy, which investigate if families' investment in higher education in terms of selection of no-local universities are affected by gender bias and if geographical differences in this behaviour between macro-areas are in place. Thus, investigating students' choices in tertiary education allows the authors to shed light on the presence of gender bias in families' education strategies addressed to increase the endowment of students' assets for future job opportunities.

The purpose of this study is to establish the relationship between digital leadership and academic performance. It models the digitalization process, outlining why and how digital leadership is important for better academic performance. At the same time, this study examines the role of digital culture as a moderating variable in the direct relationship between main variables of the study. The study aims to expand the domain of academic performance at the university by including a much recent leadership-related aspect and organizational context of the digital culture.

The study opted for a descriptive study, using the survey instruments to collect the data. The sample population consisted of students currently enrolled at the Faculty of Business and Management, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Melaka, Malaysia. Based on the convenience sampling, 383 samples were drawn from the sample population. All items were adopted from previous literature, and expert feedback was obtained to examine the validity of the instruments. The data were analysed using SPSS and SmartPLS version 3.0.

This study provides empirical insights about how digital leadership is important for academic performance for the new millennials. Also, digital culture is found to provide significant moderation effect into the relationship. It suggests that universities must promote digitalization culture and embed the use of technology and digitalization into teaching and learning to cultivate a more effective learning process among university students. This is important as elements of digital leadership, including adaptive role, attitude, digital competency, digital skill and inspirational role, are found to significantly contribute to academic performance.

This study only focuses on samples taken from one of the faculties in one campus, thus limiting its scope. Future research is encouraged to replicate the same study setting to include larger sample size from different faculties, or perhaps from different universities. These propositions could help to better generalize the research findings on the practice of digital leadership on academic performance in the country. However, this study established a digital leadership model that can be applied to undergraduate students at the universities. Also, the inclusion of digital culture can strengthen the learning process.

This study includes implications for the development of digital leadership attributes and promoting digital culture within the university students and environment for engaging in a better academic performance. Digital leadership is found to be an important criterion of academic performance in this digital age society, and cultivating digital culture enhances students’ academic performance. These findings shall prompt the university to actively engage in fostering digitalization culture within the university. Also, the top management of the university should inform the students to be adaptive and cultivate the attributes of digital leaders, as their readiness to cope with the technological change has significant positive impact on their academic performance.

It is important to ensure that the future graduates that are being produced are ready to take on more challenges as digital leaders in the digital society. This might accelerate the country’s initiatives and efforts towards becoming a developed nation. Thus, investing in oneself to become digitally literate and competent might not only influence their academic performance, but they will also be equipped to fulfil one of the expectations of future employers of potential graduates, which is possessing digital leadership.

Digitalization is not only about the technology. It is about the people too. As the study on digital leadership is still in its infant stage, this study is unique as it is among the earliest to establish digital leadership constructs within the context of Malaysia. It informs the university that digital leadership provides significant contribution to academic performance. Thus, the university is encouraged to nurture digitalization, not only in the teaching and learning but also with the people within the university environment. Determining the right programs and plans for the curricular will help students to develop digital leadership attributes more effectively. Finally, improving digitalization among its students and culture is important, as these elements provide significant effect towards academic performance.

This study aims to understand the impact of student entrepreneurship and university support on faculty intrapreneurship. The authors also analyze the role of the university’s dynamic and ordinary capabilities and the environmental dynamism in which the university is embedded.

With a large survey data set involving 680 professors and 2,230 students from 70 Brazilian universities, the authors use a multimethod approach with partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

The PLS-SEM results demonstrate that student entrepreneurship indirectly influences faculty intrapreneurship through the interaction of students with faculty and entrepreneurs, in addition to proving the intense influence of university support on faculty intrapreneurship, especially in a slow-growth environment. Additionally, the authors confirmed the moderating effect of universities’ dynamic and ordinary capabilities on student interaction and university support, respectively, and some exciting differences considering the ecosystem dynamism. The fsQCA results deepened the differences between environments, presenting different configurations between the antecedents that lead to high levels of faculty intrapreneurship in fast and slow-growth environments.

The study makes a unique and significant contribution to the literature on faculty intrapreneurship by examining the cross-interactions between individual, organizational and environmental levels about the promotion of faculty intrapreneurship. From a practical point of view, it is possible to identify more effective, innovative and systematic ways to encourage faculty intrapreneurship in a developing country. The findings help open up the black box of faculty intrapreneurship.

In Germany, various approaches have been taken to tackle the current teacher shortage in technical and vocational education and training (TVET). One attempt to remedy the shortage in Bavaria has been the introduction of an engineering education study programme at universities of applied sciences. Ideal candidates for this programme should have an interest in both engineering and social interaction. For effective recruitment, therefore, it is necessary to know applicants’ characteristics such as their vocational interests. In this study, the vocational interest profiles of students in TVET teacher training programmes were identified and their interest profiles and further characteristics were compared with those of other VET students at universities and universities of applied sciences.

An online questionnaire based on Holland’s interest theory and adapted from the Allgemeiner-Interessen-Struktur-Test-3 (interest structure test) was administered to 85 students in TVET teacher training programmes at universities and universities of applied sciences in Bavaria. Items regarding reasons for choosing a particular study programme, university location and other personal details were added.

The vocational interest profiles of students at universities and universities of applied sciences can be described as similar but weakly differentiated. Insights are provided by the characteristics of students such as the majority being first-time academics in the family. The reasons for choosing the degree programme and university location highlight the fact that a large proportion of students in engineering education would not have chosen a teaching-related degree programme if it had not been offered at the respective university of applied sciences.

Although the sample in this study was small and, therefore, limiting, it represented a high proportion of TVET teacher training students in Bavaria and a substantial proportion of first-year students in TVET teacher training programmes at universities and universities of applied sciences in Bavaria (section 2.2 and 3.1). Thus, the findings provide valuable insights into commonalities in interest profiles between engineering education students at universities of applied sciences and other TVET students at universities. With respect to the domain of the chosen vocational specialisation, differentiated profiles emerged that, for example, showed a stronger artistic orientation among students in construction technology/wood. For further analysis, the previous variable-centred orientation of the analysis can be supplemented by person-centred analyses (e.g. cluster analysis and latent variable mixture modelling, LVMM) (cf. Leon et al., 2021).

The findings in this study reveal the potential for attracting candidates to universities of applied sciences if they prefer to study in rather rural areas close to their hometowns. With the aim to educate prospective teachers for future work not only in metropolitan regions but in rural areas too, offering bachelor degree programmes in rural areas would seem promising. A regional option can boost the recruitment of new students and attract candidates that otherwise would be unable to pursue studies or a career as a teacher in vocational education. The results of this study and those of previous studies suggest that universities of applied sciences can cooperate with universities to help solve the teacher shortage problem.

Overall, it is apparent that the students' interests reached comparatively high values in all interest orientations and thus are only weakly differentiated. If undifferentiated profiles indicate low levels of career readiness, this significantly affects the recruitment of young people for the teaching profession. Assessing career orientation and promoting vocational interests should be prioritised during secondary school education. Vocational orientation measures are essential and should provide insight into typical activities of daily work life in different professions and thus pique and foster interests.

This study provides insight into how to respond to the teacher shortage in VET by identifying important characteristics of engineering education students using vocational interest profiling.

This qualitative study interrogates the barriers that historically disadvantaged higher education students in South Africa face when it comes to access and success. It specifically explores the challenges black students encounter in gaining epistemic access within the South African higher education system.

This research draws upon empirical data collected from a mixed-methods research project conducted at six higher education institutions. It focuses on issues of epistemic access and success within humanities and sciences faculties. The dataset comprises interview transcripts involving 34 student and ten staff cases. Thematic analysis, aided by MaxQDA software, was meticulously conducted to extract and synthesise meaningful themes, crafting comprehensive narratives.

The study uncovers multifaceted challenges, including difficulties in understanding the admission process, financial barriers and language proficiency issues, faced by disadvantaged students when accessing universities and transitioning from basic to higher education. The research emphasises universities taking proactive measures, such as providing comprehensive early support, identifying at-risk students and collaborating with schools to prepare prospective students better. It advocates for the potential of resilience theory in addressing social justice issues related to access and success for these students. Furthermore, the study recommends developing inclusive curricula and underscores the need for universities to actively support disadvantaged students academically and socially.

This research departs from the conventional focus on physical access to universities, introducing a more comprehensive perspective that emphasises epistemic access as a pivotal aspect of higher education. Drawing on empirical data, it sheds light on the obstacles faced by disadvantaged students during the transition from high school to higher education while also exploring their resilience strategies.

This paper discusses the effectiveness of a consortium-based student mobility programme by investigating the impact of the Asian International Mobility for Students (AIMS) Programme. AIMS is a regional multilateral large-scale student mobility programme based on a consortium of 10 member countries and 87 member universities with the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization Regional Centre for Higher Education and Development (SEAMEO RIHED) as a facilitator. Over 6,000 students have participated in a semester-long intra-regional student exchange under AIMS since 2010.

The study employed questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews to investigate the impact of AIMS and its advantages as a consortium-based student mobility programme.

It was found that AIMS significantly impacted member universities by accelerating their internationalisation processes through increasing the number of inbound and outbound students and courses offered in English and so on. AIMS has promoted harmonisation among the members by developing common procedures and guidelines, providing platforms for mutual sharing of experiences and good practices and capacity building of international relations offices. AIMS has also had a significant impact on students by enhancing their regional identity and knowledge about the region of Asia, contributing to their development as future regional and global citizens. As advantages of AIMS, member universities efficiently built a foundation for international collaboration with common procedures and guidelines and shared their experiences through such venues as Annual Review Meetings. Students also feel supported by having clear guidance and find programmes prepared by host universities and SEAMEO RIHED useful.

This study is unique in that it empirically studies the impact of one of Asia’s largest student mobility programmes for the first time by analysing large-scale qualitative and quantitative data.