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The Society for Research into Higher Education

Monthly Archives: November 2025


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A topic modelling analysis of higher education research published between 2000 and 2021

by Yusuf Oldac and Francisco Olivos

We recently embarked upon a project to explore the development of higher education research topics over the last decades. The results were published in Review of Education. Our aim was to thematically map the field of research on higher education and to analyse how the field has evolved over time between 2000 and 2021. This blog post summarises our findings and reflects on the implications for HE research.

HE research continues to grow. HE researchers are located in globally diverse geographical locations and publish on diversifying topics. Studies focusing on the development of HE with a global-level analysis are increasingly emerging. However, most of these studies are limited to scientometric network analyses that do not include a content-related focus. In addition, they are deductive, indicating that they tried to fit their new findings into existing categories. Recently, Daenekindt and Huisman (2020) were able to capture the scholarly literature on higher education through an analysis of latent themes by utilising topic modelling. This approach got attention in the literature, and the study’s contribution was highlighted in an earlier SRHE blog post. We also found their study useful and built on it in our novel analysis. However, their analysis focused only on generating topics from a wide range of higher education journals and did not identify explanatory factors, such as change over the years or the location of publication. After identifying this gap, we worked towards moving one step further.

A central contribution of our study is the inclusion of a set of research content explanatory factors, namely: time, region, funding, collaboration type, and journals, to investigate the topics of HE research. In methodological terms, our study moves ahead of the description of the topic prevalence to the explanation of the prevalence utilizing structural topic modelling (Roberts et al, 2013).

Structural topic modelling is a machine learning technique that examines the content of provided text to learn patterns in word usage without human supervision in a replicable and transparent way (Mohr & Bogdanov, 2013). This powerful technique expands the methodological repertoire of higher education research. On one hand, computational methods make it possible to extract meaning from large datasets; on the other, they allow the prediction of emerging topics by integrating the strengths of both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Nevertheless, many scholars in HE remain reluctant to engage with such methods, reflecting a degree of methodological conservatism or tunnel vision (see Huisman and Daenekindt’s SRHE blog post).

In this blog post, our intention is not to go deep into the minute details of this methodological technique, but to share a glimpse of our main findings through the use of such a technique. With the corpus of all papers published between 2000 and 2021 in the top six generalist journals of higher education, as listed by Cantwell et al (2022) and Kwiek (2021) both, we analysed a dataset of 6,562 papers. As a result, we identified 15 emergent research topics and several major patterns that highlight the thematic changes over the last decades. Below, we share some of our findings, accompanied by relevant visualisations.

Glimpse at the main findings with relevant visuals

The emergent 15 higher education topics and three visibly rising ones

Our topic modelling analysis revealed 15 distinct topics, which are largely in line with the topics discussed in previous studies on this line (eg Teichler, 1996; Tight, 2003; Horta & Jung, 2014). However, there are added nuances in our analysis. For example, the most prevalent topics are policy and teaching/learning, which are widely acknowledged in the field, but new themes have emerged and strengthened over time. These themes include identity politics and discrimination, access, and employability. These areas, conceptually linked to social justice, have become central to higher education research, especially in US-based journals but not limited to them. The visual below demonstrates the changes over the years for all 15 topics.

  • The Influence of funding on higher education research topics

Research funding plays a crucial role in shaping certain topics, particularly gender inequality, access, and doctoral education. Studies that received funding exhibited a higher prevalence of these socially significant topics, underscoring the importance of targeted funding to support research with social impact. The data visualisation below summarises the influence of reported funding for each topic. The novelty of this pattern needs to be highlighted because we have not come across a previous study looking into the influence of funding existence on research topics in the higher education field.

  • The impact of collaboration on higher education research topics

Collaborative publications are more prevalent in topics such as teaching and learning, and diversity and social relations. By contrast, theoretical discussions, identity politics, policy, employability, and institutional management are more common in solo-authored papers. This pattern aligns with the nature of these topics and the data requirements for research. Please see the visualised data below.

We highlight that although the relationship between collaboration and citation impact or researcher productivity is well studied, we are not aware of any evidence of the effect of collaboration patterns on topic prevalence, particularly in studies focusing on higher education. So, this finding is a novel contribution to higher education research.

  • Higher education journals’ topic preferences

Although the six leading journals claim to be generalist, our analysis shows they have differing publication preferences. For example, Higher Education focuses on policy and university governance, while Higher Education Research and Development stands out for teaching/learning and indigenous knowledge. Journal of Higher Education and Review of Higher Education, two US-based journals, have the highest prevalence of identity politics and discrimination topics. Last, Studies in Higher Education has a significantly higher prevalence in teaching and learning, theoretical discussions, doctoral education, and emotions, burnout and coping than most of the journals.

  • Regional differences in higher education research topics

Topic focus varies significantly by the region of the first author. First, studies from Asia exhibit the highest prevalence of academic work and institutional management. Studies from Africa show a higher prevalence of identity politics and discrimination. Moreover, studies published by first authors from Eastern European countries stand out with the higher prevalence of employability. Lastly, the policy topic has a high prevalence across all regions. However, studies with first authors from Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean showed a higher prevalence of policy research in higher education than those from North America and Western Europe. By contrast, indigenous knowledge is most prominent in Western Europe (including Australia and New Zealand). The figure below demonstrates these in visual format.

Concluding remarks

Higher education research has grown and diversified dramatically over the past two decades. The field is now established globally, with an ever-expanding array of topics and contributors. In this blog post, we shared the results of our analysis in relation to the influence of targeted funding, collaborative practices, regional differences, and journal preferences on higher education research topics. We have also indicated that certain topics have risen in prevalence in the last two decades. More patterns are included in the main research study published in Review of Education.

It is important to note that we could only include the higher education papers published up to 2021, the latest available data year when we started the analyses. The impact of generative artificial intelligence and recent major shifts in the global geopolitics, including the new DEI policies in the US and overall securitisation of science tendencies, may not be reflected fully in this dataset. These themes are very recent, and future studies, including replications with similar approaches, may help provide newly emerging patterns.

Dr Yusuf Oldac is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education Policy and Leadership at The Education University of Hong Kong. He holds a PhD degree from the University of Oxford, where he received a full scholarship. Dr Oldac’s research spans international and comparative higher education, with a current focus on global science and knowledge production in university settings.

Dr Francisco Olivos obtained his PhD in Sociology from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He joined Lingnan University in August 2021. His research lies in the intersections between cultural sociology, social stratification, and subjective well-being, using quantitative and computational methods.


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How social mobility in HE can reproduce inequality – and what to do about it

by Anna Mountford-Zimdars, Louise Ashley, Eve Worth, and Chris Playford

Higher education has become the go-to solution for social inequality over the past three decades. Widening access and enhancing graduate outcomes have been presented as ways to generate upward mobility and ensure fairer life chances for people from all backgrounds. But what if the very ecosystem designed to level the playing field also inadvertently helps sustain the very inequalities we are hoping to overcome? 

Social mobility agendas appear progressive but are often regressive in practice. By focusing on the movement of individuals rather than structural change, they leave wealth and income disparities intact. A few people may rise, but the wider system remains unfair – but now dressed up with a meritocratic veneer. We explore these issues in our new article in the British Journal of Sociology, ‘Ambivalent Agents: The Social Mobility Industry and Civil Society under Neoliberalism in England’. We examined the role of the UK’s ‘social mobility industry’: charities, foundations, and third-sector organisations primarily working with universities to identify ‘talented’ young people from less advantaged backgrounds and help them access higher education or elite careers. We were curious – are these organisations transforming opportunity structures and delivering genuine change, or do they help stabilise the present system? 

The answer to this question is of course complex but, in essence, we found the latter. Our analysis of 150 national organisations working in higher education since the early 1990s found that organisations tend to reflect the individualistic approach outlined above and blend critical rhetoric about inequality with delivery models that are funder-compatible, metric-led and institutionally convenient. Thus – and we expect unintentionally on part of the organisations – they often perform inclusion of ‘talent’ without asking too many uncomfortable structural questions about the persistence and reproduction of unequal opportunities. 

We classified organisations in a five-part typology. Most organisations fell into the category of Pragmatic Progressives: committed to fairness but shaped by funder priorities, accountability metrics, and institutional convenience. A smaller group acted as Structural Resistors, pushing for systemic change. Others were System Conformers, largely reproducing official rhetoric. The Technocratic deliverers were most closely integrated with the state, often functioning as contracted agents with managerial, metrics-focused delivery models.   Finally, Professionalised Reformers seek reform through evidence-based programmes and advocacy, often with a focus on elite education and professions.

This finding matters beyond higher education. Civil society – the world of charities, voluntary groups, and associations – has long been seen as the sphere where resistance to inequality might flourish. Yet our findings show that many organisations are constrained or co-opted into protecting the status quo by limited budgets, demanding funders, and constant requirements to demonstrate ‘impact’. Our point is not to disparage gains or to criticise the intentions of the charity sector but to push for honest and genuine change. 

Labour’s new Civil Society Covenant, which promises to strengthen voluntary organisations and reduce short-termism, could create opportunities. But outsourcing responsibility for social goods to arm’s-length actors also risks producing symbolic reforms that celebrate individual success stories without changing the odds for the many. If higher education is to deliver genuine fairness, we must distinguish between performing fairness for a few and redistributing opportunities for the many. We thus want to conclude by suggesting three practical actions for universities, access and participation teams, and regulators such as the Office for Students.

  • Audit for Ambivalence 

    Using our typology, do you find you are working with a mix of organisations, or mainly those focused on individuals? (Please contact us for accessing our coding framework to support your institutional or regional audits.) 

    • Rebalance activity towards structural levers

    Continue high-quality outreach, but, where possible, shift resources towards systemic interventions such as contextual admissions with meaningful grade floors, strong maintenance support, foundation pathways with guaranteed progression and fair, embedded work placements 

    • Redesign accountability

    Ask the regulator to measure structural outcomes as well as individual ones, at sector and regional levels. When commissioning work, ask for participatory governance and community accountability and measure that too.

    We believe civil-society partnerships can play a vital role – but not if they become the sole heavy-lifter or metric of success. Universities are well positioned to embrace structural levers, protect space for critique, and hold themselves accountable for distributional outcomes. If this happens, the crowded charity space around social mobility could become a vibrant counter-movement for genuine change to opportunities and producing fairness rather than a prop for maintaining an unequal status quo. 

    In terms of research, our next step is speaking directly to people working in the ‘social mobility industry.’ Do they/you recognise the tensions we highlight? How do they navigate them? Have we fairly presented their work? We look forward to continuing the discussion on this topic and how to enhance practice for transformative change.

    Anna Mountford-Zimdars is a Professor in Education at the University of Exeter.

    Louise Ashley is Associate Professor in the School of business and management at Queen Mary University London.

    Eve Worth is a Lecturer in History at the University of Exeter.

    Christopher James Playford is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Exeter.