This book concentrates on a key figure in university life: the professoriate. It probes its conditions in a comparative perspective, bringing to the fore research findings from six countries with different historical trajectories, social visions, and degrees of insertion in capitalist modes of production: Denmark, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Russia, and Peru.

"The concept of world-class universities (WCU) has increasingly gained popularity in the past two decades around the world. WCU are regarded as cornerstone institutions of any academic system and imperative to develop a nation’s competitiveness in the global knowledge economy. The development of such universities is high on the policy agenda of various stakeholders worldwide, in both developed and developing countries and regions, and at both national and institutional levels, to promote their global competitiveness.Visibility and performance are among the most watched concepts in relation to develop WCUs, but remain complicated in nature and with no agreed upon definitions. Existing literature have focused on how to raise universities’ prestige, status, impact and rankings in the global and regional arena on the one hand, and how to enhance universities’ quality, efficiency, effectiveness and academic output on the other. However, whether visibility is a legitimate indicator of performance, or vice versa, is yet to be answered.Matching Visibility and Performance: A Standing Challenge for World-Class Universities provides insights of developing academic excellence from global, national and institutional perspectives, and intends to stimulate discussion on how universities can be ‘globally visible and locally engaged’ and how visibility and performance can be integrated and balanced in practice."

This book primarily addresses the variety and gaps in higher education across the globe, concentrating on the challenges to transitional and developing countries. It addresses the related issues of research capacity, research productivity, and research relevance and utility.

Universities around the world have embraced internationalisation at the policy level, but struggle to put that policy into practice, particularly at the coalface of teaching and learning. To date, faculty voices have been largely silent in the literature on internationalising the curriculum. This book begins to address this gap. What does ‘internationalisation of the curriculum’ (IoC) mean in practice? How is it conceived, implemented and assessed within specific disciplines, locales and types of institutions? Why does it matter? These questions are addressed in this book by academics teaching in the fields of business, education and health, in a range of institutions across North America, the Middle East, Europe, East Asia and Australia. Reflecting critically on personal experience, through a scholarly engagement with current research, each chapter offers new ways of thinking about internationalising curricula in an increasingly interconnected world. The editors’ commentaries draw out the tensions between personal, disciplinary and institutional motivations, imperatives, and interests – in other words, tensions between the ideal and the do-able – which come into play in the practice of internationalising the curriculum, and offer insightful suggestions for future research and practice. Critical Perspectives on Internationalising the Curriculum in Disciplines: Reflective Narrative Accounts from Business, Education and Health is essential reading for academics and administrators invested in exploring new ways to better prepare students for life and work in the 21st century.

Education is commonly thought to be a haven for the young. No matter how unstable the polity, no matter how dismal the prospects for the economy, education investments are often treated as sacrosanct. This is one reason for the popularity of education as part of foreign aid. Who could object to providing more opportunity for young people to study? Recently however, it has been discovered that education systems can be as corrupt as other parts of government and the economy; and that values of fairness and impartiality, once thought to be universal characteristics of education systems, can be supplanted by the interests of specific individuals, families and ethnic groups. Education corruption has now been found in all regions of the world, but it manifests itself in different ways. How do these differ from one region to another? What should be done to minimize education corruption? And what should be done to protect universities and employers in areas situated where there is little corruption from the products of those parts of the world where education corruption is the norm. This book will explain the meaning of education corruption and how it works; it will provide illustrations from Asia, Africa, Southeastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and it will propose actions and policies on the part of regional and international agencies to counter-act what is now likely to become a new and unexpected global crisis.

“Deftly avoiding both the zealous idealism of the policymaker and the cynical realism of the practitioner, the contributions to this volume offer empirically grounded, culturally nuanced analyses of university internationalisation in practice. Recommended reading for anyone interested in Japanese higher education today, and a fine example of how to blend engaging ‘insider’ stories with rigorous scholarly analysis.” – Jeremy Breaden, PhD (Melbourne), Lecturer in Japanese Studies, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Faculty of Arts, Monash University “An excellent timely publication! This book brings together critical insights and multi-dimensional understandings of internationalization, and international and intercultural practices in Japanese higher education. It will be an important sourcebook, a must-read for all interested in Japanese higher education and internationalization. It will certainly raise the bar of competencies and knowledge of the field.” – Terri Kim, PhD (London), Reader in Comparative Higher Education, Leader of the Higher Education Research Group, University of East London

Within higher education, world-class universities are regarded as elite research universities and play a critical role in developing human resources and generating new knowledge in the context of a knowledge-based economy. Governments around the world have made the operation of their universities at the cutting edge of intellectual and scientific development their policy priority; and top universities make every effort to compete at this global stage. “Paths to A World-Class University” provides insights into recent and ongoing experiences of building world-class universities, both at a national level and at an institutional level. It collects fifteen essays, most of which originated from papers presented at “The Third International Conference on World-Class Universities”, held in November 2009 in Shanghai, China, and organised by the Center for World-Class Universities of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Divided into two parts, the book: - focuses on the role of world-class universities in national systems; and - looks at institutional experiences and lessons in building world-class universities. This book not only represents a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the topic of building world-class universities, but can be seen a continuation of the previous two volumes on this topic - “World-Class Universities and Ranking: Aiming beyond Status” and “The World-Class University as Part of a New Higher Education Paradigm: From Institutional Qualities to Systemic Excellence”. All three books will be useful reading for students and academics in higher education generally, in addition to policy makers and informed practitioners.

University rankings are a relatively new phenomenon in higher education. Although quite an established practice in the U. S., it is only within the last decade that attempts to analyse university performance have spread to the rest of the world, and that we also have seen new global rankings appear—rankings attempting to measure university performance beyond national borders. No wonder that this trend is accompanied by a growing interest in studying rankings throughout the world. This book is written as part of the effort to better understand rankings and their effects on higher education. A serious approach towards university rankings implies that rankings should be analysed properly, including the methods used and the indicators chosen, and investigate the objectives claimed. If university rankings are considered as consumer information then everyone should have an interest in basing such guidance on valid and reliable data and methodology. A serious analysis should also discuss the wider implications of rankings as an emerging phenomenon in higher education. Consequently, the contributions to this book investigate and analyse how different rankings work, how they reach their conclusions, and on what data and methodology they are built. Furthermore it provides a critical reflection about the impact of rankings on higher education, how and in what way rankings influence policy-making, the structure of the sector, or the internal life of the sector.

What does higher education offer to make students competent actors in the world of work and other life spheres? This issue is most controversially debated in economically advanced countries since about four decades when higher education in economically advanced countries began to serve larger ranges of the occupational pyramid than merely the intellectually and professionally chosen few. The author of this volume analyzes a broad range of issues over four decades of his academic career. Employers’ and graduate surveys, secondary analyses of education and employment statistics as well as analyses of policy and academic debates form the basis of the key argument: Neither trust in expectations formulated by employers or in income and status as measures of successful study nor isolated claims for the pursuit of academic knowledge for its own sake and for the critical functions of higher education are a suitable reference frame for understanding the dynamic links between higher education and the world of work. A “match” between the number of graduates and the corresponding positions or between the competences acquired during study and job requirements cannot be expected. Students are more ambitious and strive for a broader range of goals than they can expect to be rewarded. Graduates have to be both highly qualified experts and sceptics as far as conventional wisdom is concerned, and they have to be prepared for indeterminate tasks. Key themes of this collection of essays are: the causes and consequences of an imperfect “match” between higher education and employment; the tensions between “employment” and “work” orientation in higher education; opportunities of a “highly educated society”; the dynamics of the variety of students, the patterns of the higher education system and the horizontal and vertical diversity of careers; different notions of higher education and the world of work among economically advanced countries; major controversial notions of professional relevance of study in policy and research debates.

Aiming to bridge theory and practice, each chapter outlines relevant literature, highlights key areas for consideration, and offers suggestions for real-world application. The book will be of interest to researchers, university students, expedition organisers, and outdoor instructors.