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Rethinking higher education studies: challenges, trends and new directions

This presentation dives into the theoretical landscape of higher education studies, questioning the nature of knowledge, development of assumptions, and academic agendas. It traces the field’s history, institutionalization, and global influences, proposing a new intellectual framework for understanding HE. The talk explores the political economy of HE knowledge, intellectual puzzles, and a call for a paradigm shift.

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Rethinking higher education studies: challenges, trends and new directions

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  1. Rethinking higher education studies: challenges, trends and new directions Rania Filippakou – University of Hull GCHE – 19th May 2016

  2. The aim To problematise the theoretical condition of higher education studies.

  3. Questions • What is good HE knowledge, and who says so? • How did our current assumptions about HE studies develop? • What should be the agendas of academic attention in HE studies?

  4. Structure • Believing in assumptions • The genealogy of the field • Towards an intellectual problematique

  5. Assumptions • Socio-economic objectives agreed upon by government and interested parties can succeed through the manipulation of certain structural frames. • Similar manipulation would yield equally fruitful results in the internal workings of HE. • Therefore, HE research should be ‘useful’, ‘robust’ and ‘relevant’ for policy formulation and policy delivery.

  6. Overlapping vocabularies ‘The specific problems on which higher education research tends to focus vary according to reform cycles and what is perceived or anticipated as a policy problem, e.g. the Bologna reforms, institutional governance and management, systems steering and structural developments, quality of teaching and learning, transition of graduates onto the labour market, funding of higher education, etc’ (Khem, 2015: 60-61).

  7. Genesis • Granville Stanley Hall, Clark University, USA (1893) • Strong believer in the scientific method and its application to the study of human nature. • HE as an area of applied psychology. • Aim: to educate a new generation of administrators and faculty. • Key issues: ‘higher pedagogy’, college and university problems, international perspectives. (Hall 1891). • Vision: implement his regional and national reform agendas.

  8. Locating the field • The birth of the motif of ‘science’. • Politically: The alliance of the ‘science’ of HE and political power. • Epistemically: HE practice as a transferable technology with a positivist view of progress (cf. Milam 1991; Tight 2012).

  9. The institutionalisation of HE studies • USA: By the 1960s more than 100 HE programmes offered degrees in HE (Fulton 1992). • A growing body of literature – The Carnegie Commission of HE (1967-1973) and the Carnegie Council on Policy Studies (1974-1980); The ‘Encyclopaedia of Higher Education’, edited by Clark & Neave (1992). • SRHE in the UK (1965); ASHE in the US (1983).

  10. Shifting spaces • Speaking in an ‘agency’ voice (e.g. EC, OECD, The WB). • The transfer of potential global solutions – further measures, targets and rankings. • A new form of performative internationalism.

  11. The political economy of HE knowledge • Class formation of qualified experts to work in the ‘industry’. • ‘Normal-puzzle’ HE (cf. Kuhn 1970): • Performance • Policy implementation • ‘New’ HE studies also includes international HE.

  12. A simple agenda • Motifs or ‘unit ideas’ of HE (cf. Nisbet 1966). • E.g. autonomy; space; time; the state; HE system, knowledge. • ‘System’ and ‘knowledge’ – three intellectual puzzles: • What are ways to understand the concept of ‘knowledge’? • How can we understand the problematique of ‘system’? • In what ways should we try to understand the relations of ‘knowledge’ and ‘system’?

  13. Conclusions • HE systems as compressed political messages. • Towards a new mode of thinking about HE, one in which the human being is placed in the centre. • The leftover vocabularies of neoliberalism, or a paradigm shift. • It might also be wise to ask ourselves: where are we going?

  14. References • Fulton, O. (1992). ‘Higher education studies’, in B.R. Clark and G. Neave (eds.), The Encyclopaedia of Higher Education, Vol. 3. Oxford: Pergamon Press. • Hall, G. S. (1891). ‘Editorial’. Pedagogical seminary.1(3): 310-326. • Kehm, B. (2015). ‘Higher education as a field of study and research in Europe’. European Journal of Education. 50(1): 60-74. • Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Second edition, enlarged. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. • Milam, J. H. (1991). ‘The presence of paradigms in the core higher education journal literature’. Research in Higher Education. 32(6): 651-668. • Nisbet, R. A. (1966). The sociological tradition. New York, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. • Tight, M. (2012). ‘Higher education research 2000-2010: changing journal publication patterns’,Higher Education Research and Development. 31(5): 723-740.

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