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International students as a national project: how states brand their higher education

by Evelyn Kim, Annette Bamberger and Sazana Jayadeva

From student choice to state strategy

International student mobility is often framed as a story of individual aspiration. Students, it is widely assumed, choose destinations based on rational calculations of what they stand to gain: prestigious degrees, global networks, enhanced career prospects, and immersion in new sociocultural contexts amongst others. This narrative centres students and to a lesser extent institutions, which compete for their patronage. Yet it often obscures the role of the state in shaping where, and how, international education is imagined in the first place (Bamberger & Kim, 2022; Sidhu, 2006).

The recruitment of international students has increasingly become a national project. While established destinations such as the UK have long maintained coordinated campaigns and online platforms to promote their higher education systems, what is particularly noteworthy today is the spread of such initiatives across a wider range of countries. Governments now invest in coordinated branding campaigns, frequently under the moniker “Study in X” websites (such as Study in Hong Kong and Study in Germany), that promote entire higher education systems under the national banner, often accompanied by social media channels such as Facebook and YouTube. These platforms are carefully curated spaces through which states project what they perceive makes their country distinctive and attractive as a study destination.

We argue that this constitutes a form of nation branding: the strategic creation and projection of ‘the nation’ throughhigher education (Kim & Bamberger, 2025; Lomer et al, 2018). These campaigns do not focus solely on academic excellence or global competitiveness. They weave together claims about innovation, economic power, cultural richness, affordability and safety, constructing an integrated narrative in which higher education becomes a gateway to the nation.

The persuasive strategies used in these campaigns vary. Some build credibility through rankings and research metrics, while others appeal to emotion by invoking culture and a sense of belonging. Still others foreground practical considerations such as affordability or post-study employment opportunities. Across these approaches, national higher education branding relies on distinctive “identity markers” to position countries as attractive study destinations Particularly in contexts associated with geopolitical or social tensions, branding efforts may seek to recalibrate external perceptions by foregrounding narratives of excellence and stability, while leaving more contentious political realities out of view.

It is in such contexts that national higher education branding becomes most revealing. As we examine in our recent article, India, Israel and South Korea offer striking examples (Bamberger et al, 2026). These countries embarked on higher education internationalisation at different moments, with Korea taking an early lead in the 2000s, while India and Israel launched major initiatives in the late 2010s. All three have seen notable growth in international student enrolments over the past two decades, even if they still host far fewer students than established Anglo-European destinations. Each is also a relatively young political state with strong ethnonational identities, close ties to diasporic communities, and enduring regional geopolitical tensions. These dynamics shape how the nation is perceived internationally, making higher education branding a particularly strategic tool.

To explore how destinations beyond the established core construct their national higher education brands, we analysed how three government-affiliated websites – Study in Korea, Study in India and Study in Israel – have evolved since their launch, drawing on both archival versions of the websites and their current content. We traced the identity markers these websites create over time: who they claim to be, what they omit, and how they try to persuade prospective international students.

What quickly became clear was that these platforms do far more than market universities. They tell a broader story about the nation itself. Familiar tropes in higher education marketing, such as academic excellence and global competitiveness feature prominently, but so too do promises of cultural experiences, inclusive and vibrant student life, and future career opportunities.

Yet the stories these websites tell are not the same. While several identity markers recur across the campaigns, each country communicates them in strikingly different ways.

Different paths, different priorities

One of the most striking findings from our research is that national higher education brands evolve in markedly different ways. The trajectories of these campaigns reflect shifting national priorities, as well as how each country positions itself within the global higher education landscape.

South Korea’s branding demonstrates the greatest degree of adaptation. Early versions of the Study in Korea platform emphasised the country’s rapid transformation from post-war hardship to global economic success, drawing on emotional and credibility-based appeals. Over time, however, the narrative shifts toward measurable indicators of performance, with global rankings, international assessments such as OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment, and employability becoming central to claims of excellence. These comparisons often highlight how neighbouring countries perform, particularly where they rank lower. In this way, regional comparison becomes evidence of South Korea’s educational strength.

More recently, emotional appeals have re-emerged through international student ambassadors and social media storytelling, alongside a stronger emphasis on post-graduation employment opportunities, reflecting mounting concerns about South Korea’s shrinking workforce.

India’s campaign, by contrast, has followed a trajectory of relative continuity, albeit with subtle shifts. The Study in India website consistently foregrounds civilisational heritage, multiculturalism and the country’s long history as a centre of learning, positioning India as both ancient and globally connected. In early versions of the website, it drew on narratives predominantly associated with Hindu civilisational traditions to position India as an enduring source of knowledge and spiritual heritage. These were complemented by claims about the scale and diversity of India’s contemporary higher education system, as well as portrayals of India as a “pocket-friendly” and accessible destination.

However, more recently, signs of change have begun to emerge. There has been a gradual recalibration in emphasis, with a relative de-emphasis of cultural and civilisational narratives in favour of more pragmatic appeals to affordability, accessibility and global competitiveness. While the overall framing remains stable, these shifts suggest an attempt to reposition India more clearly within an increasingly competitive international education market.

Israel represents yet another trajectory. Since its launch in 2017, the Study in Israel website has changed relatively little despite major geopolitical developments, suggesting that national higher education branding may not always be a sustained policy priority. The campaign continues to project a stable narrative centred on innovation, positioning higher education within the country’s reputation as a “Start-Up Nation”. In this framing, higher education is closely associated with research intensity, technological entrepreneurship and strong links to high-tech industries. The campaign also emphasises academic excellence and draws on representations of Israel’s religious and historical heritage, alongside a tourism-oriented student experience. It further constructs distinct appeals to both international students and the Jewish diaspora.

What the branding leaves unsaid

Notably, the campaigns also reveal what is left unsaid. None of the websites explicitly addresses the longstanding geopolitical tensions surrounding these countries, including regional conflicts such as Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan, and the Korean peninsula. Instead, these platforms largely sidestep overt political issues and historical disputes, foregrounding alternative narratives that present the nation as stable and welcoming.

Multiculturalism and openness are frequently emphasised, particularly in the cases of India and Israel, where appeals to tolerance and diversity help construct an image of inclusivity. Safety also emerges as a prominent marker in Israel’s campaign, which provides detailed descriptions of security infrastructure while simultaneously presenting an image of harmonious coexistence that downplays more complex social and political realities.

This selectivity, we posit, is not incidental, but the result of deliberate curation in how the nation is represented to external audiences. What is highlighted, and what is omitted, reflects a broader effort to position the country favourably within international student mobility flows, echoing critiques of national education branding as a selective and performative practice (Stein, 2018).

Seen in this light, national higher education branding becomes more than a strategy for attracting students. It is a state-led project through which countries mobilise particular identity markers and, in doing so, position themselves within an increasingly competitive and multipolar global higher education landscape.

Evelyn Min Ji Kim is Lecturer in Education in Asia at the UCL Institute of Education, where she also serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Global Higher Education. Her research centres on student happiness and well-being policies, the global governance of education policymaking, and the internationalisation of higher education.

Annette Bamberger is Lecturer in Higher Education, UCL Institute of Education and Senior Lecturer and Head of Higher Education Track at Faculty of Education, Bar-Ilan University.

Sazana Jayadeva is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Surrey. She is an Associate Editor of the journal Sociology and co-convenes SRHE’s International Research and Researchers’ Network. She is also affiliated with the GIGA Institute of Asian Studies in Germany as an Associate Researcher. Her research revolves around the broad themes of education, migration, and digital and social media.


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Telling by hand: why academics need a different kind of reflection

by Elizabet Kaitell

On slowing down, noticing, and visual reflective journaling in the accelerated university

There are mornings when I arrive at my workstation, and my mind is foggy, my shoulders tight, before I have even opened a single email. Sometimes this is the residue of a difficult week. Sometimes it is something from outside work entirely, something happening in my life, in my body, in the people I love, that has followed me here, because, of course, it has. We do not leave ourselves at the door.

This is something we rarely say plainly in academic life: that we are not separate from our private selves, our families, our losses, our fears. We are embodied and embedded, porous, complex, open organisms, shaped by and shaping the environment we inhabit. What happens at home registers in the body that shows up to teach. What happens in a difficult seminar is carried home. The influence runs in every direction at once, and no amount of professional resolve, resilience training, or determined compartmentalisation changes this. The body does not take instructions. It registers, carries, and tells what our environment imprinted on us, often in ways we only notice when we finally slow down. This matters more than it might first appear: our sense of self is anchored in our capacity to feel and interpret these physical sensations — we do not fully know ourselves without access to them (Van der Kolk, 2015). And yet the conditions in which we increasingly work make exactly this kind of noticing harder.

We work increasingly in what Vostal (2016) calls the ‘accelerated academia’, a culture that prizes productivity, accountability, and efficiency at the expense of human sustainability (Mountz et al, 2015). These conditions require scholars to ‘excel at work rather than be well’ (Nørgård et al, 2024, p 133), with university staff showing significantly lower well-being than the general population (Kinman & Wray, 2021). In this environment, something quietly gets lost: our capacity to notice what is actually happening in our bodies, our encounters with students and colleagues, and in the texture of our everyday working lives.

I have been learning, slowly, imperfectly, to work with this rather than against it. Not to lock things away before I enter the classroom, but to notice what I am carrying, to let it surface with some gentleness, and then, with practice, to let it move through rather than accumulate. That is what this piece is about.

A different kind of reflection

Over the past few years, emerging from my doctoral research, I have been dwelling on a practice I refer to as Visual Reflective Journaling (VRJ). It began as a method of generating data about my own academic experience, but became something more: a way of staying with experience rather than rushing past it. Knowing is not confined to cognition but emerges through ongoing interactions between bodies, materials, and environments, and VRJ became a way of engaging these entanglements in practice.

The practice is deliberately simple. A notebook. A pen. Words, images, marks, fragments, brought together not to produce something polished or insightful, but to let the hand move in response to what the body already knows. Drawing on Ingold’s (2013) notion of ‘telling by hand’, where drawing is understood as a way of telling that keeps us closer to sentient engagement with the world, mark-making becomes a way of remaining closer to experience as it unfolds rather than processing it from a distance. A stick figure cycling uphill can carry more truth about a difficult week than three paragraphs of structured reflection.

VRJ starts not with a framework but with the body. Before writing or drawing anything: what is here right now? Is there tightness somewhere? Heaviness? A sense of bracing? These are not trivial questions. Our bodies carry the emotional labour of teaching, the tension before a difficult seminar, the weight of anonymous feedback that research suggests disproportionately targets women and marginalised colleagues (Heffernan, 2023), the physical and emotional effects that accumulate from student incivility (Lampman et al, 2009). By translating these somatic cues into marks, images, and fragments, we begin to see patterns that no single incident review would reveal. In doing so, we hold together words, images, and bodily experience in ways that can generate forms of knowing that exceed what any one mode might evoke alone (Ellingson, 2017).

Not a tool. Not a solution.

I want to be clear about what VRJ is not. It is not a coping strategy, not a resilience intervention, and not an institutional remedy for structural problems. Proposing an individual practice within a sector under systemic pressure risks reproducing exactly the narratives of self-management that make academic life harder. VRJ does not fix workloads, or eroded professional trust, or the conditions that produce burnout.

What it offers, more modestly, is a practice of attunement, a way of remaining present to one’s own experience within conditions that actively discourage it. Arts-based reflective practices have been shown to deepen reflection and heighten awareness of personal and contextual influences on practice (McKay & Barton, 2018), while visual journaling specifically can support mood repair and emotional sense-making in ways that purely verbal reflection cannot (Drake et al, 2011). Viewed through the lens of slow scholarship as a counter-narrative to accelerated, productivity-driven academic cultures (Nørgård et al, 2024), VRJ is a small enactment of deliberate slowness: pausing, noticing, staying with what is there rather than managing it away.

An invitation

You do not need artistic skill. You do not need special materials. What I would invite is this: find a notebook you like the feel of, keep it somewhere close, and occasionally, after a teaching session, at the start or end of a working day, when something is sitting with you, open it and spend five or ten minutes with whatever is there. Draw. Write fragments. Make marks that don’t mean anything yet.

A journal entry at the end of a working day, pausing before leaving, noticing what the day had left in my body before asking it to carry anything else. The dense, tangled marks at the head capture the weight of an overcrowded mind, and the beginnings of a migraine that comes when too much has accumulated, from work, from life, from everything at once. The orange lines tracing the neck and shoulders map tension and the persistent discomfort of an injury still healing. The circled warmth in the stomach is anxiety, not dramatic, just present, as it often is. This is not an analysis. It is simply noticing. [Figure 1].

Figure 1: End of Day

Over time, the practice generates its own knowledge. The journal becomes less a static record and more a space where past encounters, present sensations, and imagined futures intermingle (Phelps, 2005) The body’s quiet registrations, the things we have been moving too fast to notice, begin to become visible. And something in how we move through academic work starts, gently, to shift.

The body that shows up

This shift is not only personal. It touches something more fundamental about how we understand the academic body itself. Building on Dania and Ovens’ (2026) conceptualisation of academic bodies as lively material presences, continually producing and absorbing meaning through their encounters, I suggest that accelerated academic cultures privilege edited, high-functioning scholarly personas, rendering the lived body comparatively invisible. The body that walks into a seminar room is not a neutral delivery mechanism. It carries the morning’s difficult email, the tension from a conversation that didn’t go well, the particular exhaustion of a week that has asked too much. Students sense this, not consciously, perhaps, but in the quality of the encounter, just as we sense what they are carrying into the room with them. Within such conditions, VRJ creates a space in which the academic body can appear not as a polished performance but as a sensing and responsive presence.

Telling by hand is a way of letting that body back into view. Not to resolve the structural pressures shaping higher education – those remain, and individual practices cannot undo them. But within those pressures, VRJ may open small moments of freedom: spaces where experience can be explored rather than managed, where embodied forms of knowing can quietly reassert their place, and where the academic body can appear not as a performance to be sustained but as a presence to be inhabited.

Elizabet Kaitell is a Senior Lecturer in Learning and Teaching at Kingston University’s Learning and Teaching Enhancement Centre. She completed her doctorate at the University of Roehampton, where Visual Reflective Journaling emerged as part of her a/r/tographic methodology and sparked a curiosity that has continued to evolve since. She has a longstanding interest in embodied ways of knowing and ‘whole body selves’ in higher education.


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From TPS to USS – is now the time to move pension scheme?

by John Ingoe

Amid increasing financial pressures, a number of universities are considering a move from the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) to the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) for their teaching staff. In this blog post, I take a deep dive into each scheme to explore whether this makes sense.

On the surface, moving university teaching staff from the TPS to the USS seems rational. USS employer contributions are currently 14.5% of salaries, compared with a TPS employer rate of 28.68% of salaries. Even if we also allow for differing benefit structures, we can say that both offer valuable Defined Benefit (DB) pensions. But is cost the only consideration? In this blog post I will argue that it is not…

How USS and TPS work

Let’s take a step back and consider how each scheme operates. While both are DB in nature, they are fundamentally different beasts.

USS – an overview

USS is a multi-employer, private sector, funded hybrid scheme – meaning that it offers both DB and Defined Contribution (DC) benefits – and is managed by trustees. It currently provides members with a DB pension of 1/75th of salary (plus a lump sum of 3/75th) up to the salary threshold, as well as DC benefits on salary above that level.

The contributions paid by both employers and employees are invested, and pensions are paid out of the assets held. Under funding regulations that apply to the scheme, the trustee carries out a funding valuation every three years, or more quickly if needed, with the next one due as at 31 March 2026.

The results of those funding valuations determine the employer and employee contribution rates that will be paid between each valuation cycle – although the process isn’t quite as straightforward as that suggests. The 2026 valuation will determine the contribution rates payable from 2027; these will be reviewed again following completion of the 2029 valuation.

TPS – an overview

TPS is a public service, unfunded, pay-as-you-go DB scheme. It offers members a DB pension of 1/57th of salary. Contributions paid by employers and employees are used to pay current pensioners, with HM Treasury meeting the balance.

TPS isn’t governed by the same funding regulations as USS, but a funding valuation is carried out every four years, in a similar way to USS.

These valuations determine the employer contribution rate. The next valuation is due with an effective date of 31 March 2024 (yes you read that right), with the results of that valuation likely (but not certain) to result in changes to the employer contribution rate from 1 April 2027.

A brief history of the USS

Volatile contribution rates, benefit changes and industrial action

Since April 2016, USS has experienced repeated shifts in contribution rates and benefit design, with the latter often used as a lever to mitigate the former. Employer and member contribution rates rose between 2016 and 2023, before falling significantly in 2024, as shown below:

Effective dateEmployer rateMember rateTotal
April 201618.0%8.0%26.0%
April 201919.5%8.8%28.3%
October 201921.1%9.6%30.7%
October 202121.4%9.8%31.2%
April 202221.6%9.8%31.4%
January 202414.5%6.1%20.6%

However, the above table somewhat downplays both the impact of the 2020 valuation and the contribution rate increases that would have occurred had significant changes to benefits and the valuation methodology not been made. The schedule of contributions dated September 2021 would have seen contribution rates increases to 38.2% of salaries for employers and 18.8% of salaries for employees.

In the end, benefits were reduced to avoid this. From April 2022, this resulted in:

  • A lower rate of future pension build-up
  • A reduced salary threshold, which determines the split of DB and DC benefits earned
  • Capped inflation protection.

The outcome of the 2020 valuation was not particularly well received by either members or employers. The majority of these changes were reversed in 2024.

Impact of financial markets on USS

The USS employer rate is essentially determined by the size of any funding shortfall or surplus, and the cost of future benefit accrual. Changes in the value of pension scheme liabilities and the cost of future benefits are driven by changes in financial markets, and in particular bond yields. Changes in asset values depend on the actual assets held, and these will often move in different ways from the liability value. There can be significant swings in the funding position as a result of this mismatch.

This volatility was demonstrated in the valuations carried out between 2018 and 2023. A funding shortfall of £3.6bn in 2018 increased to £18.4bn in 2020 but then flipped to a surplus of £7.4bn in 2023. These changes were predominantly driven by unprecedented changes in bond yields, which went from c1.7% (2018) down to c0.7% (2020), and then up to c3.8% (2023).

While there were several second order changes (changes to demographic assumptions; changes to the funding target; member experience; asset performance), these tended to be drowned out by the impact of changing bond yields.

A brief history of the TPS

Sharply increasing contribution rates

TPS employer rates have risen sharply since 2019, as shown below:

Effective dateEmployer contribution rate
September 201516.48%
September 201923.68%
April 202428.68%
April 2027Next scheduled change

Since 2019, the TPS employer rate has increased by almost 75%. For many employers (including local authority-maintained schools and academies), grant mechanisms have largely cushioned these increases. Our understanding is that post-1992 universities have not been insulated, prompting difficult strategic choices.

While the employer rate has risen significantly, member rates have remained broadly stable over that period, increasing by around 0.3% of salaries.

Impact of lower expectations of economic growth on the TPS

Pension valuations estimate the size and timing of future pension payments using financial and demographic assumptions. Those future payments are then converted to a present value using a discount rate – which can be thought of as an advance allowance for expected long‑term investment returns.

“I thought the TPS held no assets,” you say. Well, you’d be right. But there is a notional pot of assets, as well as a notional shortfall to be made good. That may be one for another blog, but it does underline that the discount rate remains a key assumption.

A lower discount rate means more money must be set aside today, making pension costs more expensive. Even relatively small movements in the discount rate can have a big impact on contributions. For unfunded public service schemes such as the TPS, the discount rate is the SCAPE rate (Superannuation Contributions Adjusted for Past Experience) – which is linked to long‑term UK GDP growth, as forecast by the Office for Budgetary Responsibility (OBR).

As long‑term GDP forecasts fell over the past decade, the SCAPE rate also fell. This has been the principal driver of higher TPS employer contribution rates, outweighing the impact of other valuation assumptions.

How costs might change in the future

In both schemes, contribution rates are determined by factors beyond the control of sponsoring employers. The table below sets out the key influences on the costs of each scheme:

DriverTPSUSS
Economic assumptionsCosts are driven by the SCAPE discount rate, which is linked to long-term UK GDP forecasts.Liability values can be sensitive to long-term bond yields and inflation expectations.
Investment performanceNo impact as TPS holds no assets. Its notional pot of assets increases in a prescribed way.USS investment performance directly affects funding position. It can move differently from liabilities.
Benefit designBenefits are set out in legislation. Short-term changes are unlikely.Benefit structure directly affects cost of accrual. Changes have been made to avoid large contribution increases.
Demographic trendsLongevity and other member behaviours influence valuations.Longevity and other member behaviours influence valuations.
Regulation and governanceKey valuation assumptions are set by HM Treasury, and are potentially subject to political influence.Valuations must reflect regulatory expectations and employer covenant considerations.

Key drivers of the TPS

The key driver of the TPS contribution rate is the SCAPE discount rate. The current SCAPE methodology based on the GDP approach was introduced in 2011 and reviewed ten years later, as scheduled, during the last completed valuation cycle. This framework remains in place unless HM Treasury directs otherwise.

While recent headline GDP growth has been modest, it’s the long‑term GDP forecasts that determine the SCAPE rate. The OBR’s long‑term projections (published in July 2025) show a material improvement compared with those underpinning the current 28.68% TPS employer rate.

If this improved outlook persists, the SCAPE discount rate will rise (potentially materially) and, all else being equal, from April 2027, the TPS employer rate will go down (potentially materially).

So, all else being equal, we might expect the TPS employer rate to fall from its current rate in 2027. But that’s not guaranteed – “all else being equal” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and almost never turns out to be the case.

Other valuation assumptions – including salary growth, inflation, longevity and scheme member behaviour – will also influence the result. Perhaps more importantly, long-term GDP forecasts can change – reflecting changing views due to macroeconomic factors or political pressures. And finally, there is still scope for HM Treasury to tweak the SCAPE rate methodology.

Until the HM Treasury valuation direction is published, nothing is set in stone

Key drivers of the USS

There are more moving parts driving the USS employer rate than there are in the case of TPS. Asset performance, changes in long-term bond yields, covenant strength and benefit changes can all alter employee and employer rates. And while past performance is not an indication of the future, we only have to look back to the 2020 valuation to see the possibility of the employer rate exceeding 30% of salaries.

While we don’t expect to see material changes following the 2026 valuation, there are no guarantees that this will continue to be the case after the 2029 valuation. USS continues to invest heavily in growth assets, so some volatility is to be expected. While the expectation is that these assets will provide higher returns in the long term, a valuation is a snapshot of a moment in time, and a 31 March valuation date often coincides with some financial shock or other.

USS also operates in a regulatory environment that pushes DB schemes to link liability measurements to bond prices. This can result in a funding position (assets v liability value) that can move materially, and any deficit arising from that is likely to result in increased contributions. UCU and UUK are working with USS to put in place a valuation methodology which looks to mitigate this volatility, but this may only soften, rather than remove, future swings in position due to changes in financial markets.

Finally, the higher education sector is facing more financial pressures than ever before. All else being equal, this could lead to a stronger funding target (and therefore increased contribution rates).

Which is better – TPS or USS?

It depends.

Each employer faces a unique set of challenges, and appropriate pension strategies will vary. As with any decision about pensions, it’s about balancing risk and reward. There’s a definite short-term gain for employers from moving to USS (all else being equal), but scheme costs will vary over time. USS may be more cost-effective now, but that may not always be the case. There are signs that the TPS employer rate could fall from 2027 (potentially materially), while costs and benefits in the USS are intrinsically more volatile due to the different funding approach.

In any case, it’s not enough to simply compare the cost of the two schemes. Each offers a different level of benefits for members, at a different cost to members, and with a different perceived value for members.

All in all, not a straightforward decision and one that requires a lot of consideration.

John Ingoe is an Associate Partner and Head of Employer Actuarial Services at First Actuarial, a Gallagher Company. He has over 18 years’ experience working with employers such as higher education institutions and other not‑for‑profit organisations. He helps them meet strategic pension challenges including defined benefit scheme funding, multi‑employer pension arrangements and complex pension change projects. www.firstactuarial.co.uk. john.ingoe@firstactuarial.co.uk


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From ad hoc to constructive: the ABC levels of GenAI integration in business education

by Qianqian Chai and Xue Zhou

Introduction – the challenge of GenAI integration in business education

Since the release of ChatGPT, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has rapidly entered higher education. Business schools, with their strong ties to industry and emphasis on applied skills, provide a particularly important setting for examining GenAI’s role in curriculum design. Yet, while adoption has expanded quickly, the educational outcomes of GenAI integration have not been consistent (Kurtz et al, 2024). Across cases, educators identified both benefits and risks, including engagement, skills development, and overreliance. This unevenness suggests that rather than reflecting a single trajectory of adoption, early practice appears to involve different approaches to integration. The central issue is not whether GenAI is used, but how different approaches shape outcomes.

This blog draws on our recent study of GenAI integration in business modules at a UK Russell Group university (Zhou et al, 2026). Through a qualitative analysis of 17 educator cases across 24 modules, we examined how GenAI was incorporated into curriculum design, and how different approaches were associated with distinct benefits and challenges. Using the lens of constructive alignment (Biggs, 1996), we identified three patterns of integration: ad hoc, blended, and constructive, which together form the ABC levels for understanding how GenAI is integrated into curriculum practice. We use these levels to explore why some approaches appear more educationally effective than others. In particular, this blog will offer research-informed insights into how GenAI can be integrated more effectively and sustainably in business higher education. While the cases are drawn from business education, the patterns identified and principles of constructive integration have wider relevance across disciplines where GenAI is increasingly embedded in curriculum design.

ABC levels of GenAI integration in the business curriculum

Our analysis identified three levels of GenAI integration: ad hoc, blended, and constructive. Table 1 outlines these distinctions across key dimensions.

Table 1 ABC levels of GenAI curriculum integration

Constructive integration represents a qualitatively different approach, grounded in constructive alignment, where intended learning outcomes, teaching activities, and assessment are deliberately designed to develop and evaluate students’ ability to use GenAI critically and effectively. At this level, GenAI is not an optional or supporting tool, but an integral component of disciplinary learning, with a clear pedagogical purpose and coherent role across the curriculum.

By contrast, ad hoc integration is characterised by occasional and isolated use, where GenAI is introduced as an optional or experimental tool without being planned into the broader curriculum design. Blended integration moves beyond this by incorporating GenAI into selected learning activities or tasks, giving it a more purposeful pedagogical role, but its use remains only partially embedded. Both approaches therefore fall short of the coherence and strategic alignment that define constructive integration.

The distinction between these patterns is therefore not simply a matter of more or less GenAI use, but of how GenAI is positioned within the curriculum: as an experiment, as a support, or as a capability to be deliberately developed. Although developed from business education contexts, this typology offers a lens that can be applied more broadly to understand how GenAI is positioned within different disciplinary curricula.

Why constructive integration matters

Across the cases, GenAI integration generated benefits and challenges across students, educators, and institutions. At the student level, reported benefits included stronger engagement, confidence, and employability-related skills, while the main risks centred on overreliance, inequality, ethical concerns, and ineffective outputs. For educators, benefits included efficiency gains, professional learning, and improved teaching performance, but these were accompanied by increased workload and the need to redesign activities and assessments. At the programme level, GenAI enhanced curriculum relevance but raised concerns about academic standards.

Figure 1 shows that these benefits and challenges were not distributed evenly across the three patterns of integration. Constructive integration displayed the strongest and broadest benefits, while ad hoc and blended approaches showed narrower gains alongside more exposed challenges. In other words, the issue is not whether GenAI brings value or risk, but how curriculum design shapes the balance between them.

Figure 1 Trade-offs of GenAI integration: challenges (red) vs benefits (green)

What makes constructive integration different is not the removal of challenge, but the stronger presence of educational value. In the study, constructively integrated cases were linked more clearly to student engagement, capability development, employability, and curriculum relevance because GenAI was embedded through aligned outcomes, activities, and assessment, rather than added on as a tool or support. Importantly, these cases also showed stronger educator development, including pedagogical reflection and confidence, despite workload pressures. This suggests constructive integration enhances both student outcomes and educator learning by embedding AI within coherent curriculum design.

How constructive integration is achieved

Table 2 presents examples from the modules in this study, showing how GenAI was constructively integrated into existing pedagogical strategies without requiring curriculum redesign.

Table 2 Constructive GenAI Integration into Existing Pedagogical Strategies

Taken together, the cases suggest several practical principles for integrating GenAI more coherently within the curriculum. These principles are not specific to business education, but reflect broader curriculum design considerations that can be adapted across disciplines with different pedagogical traditions.

  • Integration builds on existing pedagogical strategies: GenAI should be embedded within approaches already familiar to the discipline, such as project-based or simulation-based learning, without requiring curriculum redesign (Chugh et al, 2023).
  • Sharpen the role of GenAI by disciplinary purpose: In different contexts, GenAI supported strategic analysis, research and synthesis, reflective thinking, or data interpretation. Its value depends on alignment with module aims (Zhou & Milecka-Forrest, 2021).
  • Make AI use purposeful through assessment and evaluative tasks: In stronger cases, GenAI was connected to tasks that required students to interpret, justify, compare, or critique AI-supported outputs, rather than simply using AI to complete tasks (Biggs & Tang, 2010).
  • Support deeper student engagement through scaffolding: Structured guidance, such as prompting strategies, comparison activities, and reflective tasks, enabled more critical and purposeful use (Cukurova & Miao, 2024).

Overall, constructive integration is less about introducing new tools than about redesigning existing curriculum elements so that GenAI is meaningfully aligned with disciplinary learning.

Conclusion

The ABC levels developed in our study show that GenAI integration in business education does not follow a single trajectory but ranges from ad hoc and blended use to constructive integration. The key difference lies in approach: constructive integration embeds GenAI through aligned outcomes, activities, assessment, and scaffolding. The challenges observed across GenAI integration practices suggest an urgent shift from ad hoc GenAI integration toward strategic and constructive integration in business education. In this way, higher education can support students’ employability and capability development, strengthen educators’ professional and pedagogical confidence, and enable institutions to sustain coherent, future-facing curricula.

Dr Qianqian Chai is a Lecturer in Business and Management at Queen Mary University of London and Chair of the AI in Education Innovation Sub-committee in the School of the Arts. Her research focuses on AI in higher education, including curriculum design, academic integrity, and policy. q.chai@qmul.ac.uk

Professor Xue Zhou is a Professor in AI in Business Education and Dean of AI at the University of Leicester. Her research interests include digital literacy, digital technology adoption, cross-cultural adjustment, and online professionalism. xue.zhou@le.ac.uk


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Can folk pedagogies help us understand the limited impact of research on higher education?

by Alex Buckley

The SRHE conference is a great place to see our field in all its glory. From the sessions I attended in December 2025, one thing that was abundantly clear was the desire of so many HE researchers to change the world. A distinctive feature of contemporary HE research – reflecting the social sciences more broadly – is the focus on political and ethical issues, with avowedly political and ethical intentions. The improvement of society is often the explicit end, rather than the more humble improvement of our own part of the education system.

Despite this desire to make a difference, higher education research has for many years been held up as an area where the impact of those working in the field is not what it could be. As George Keller said in 1985, “hardly anyone in higher education pays attention to the research and scholarship about higher education”,

Asking the right questions?

There hasn’t been a lot of work on the gap between research and practice in HE – though there is a fair amount in the schools sector from which we can extrapolate, to a greater or lesser extent – but one issue that has received some attention is the fundamental one: are researchers actually asking the right questions?

Vivianne Robinson is a researcher who has laid a substantial amount of blame at the feet of researchers, who “have little to offer by way of alternative solutions, when the problems they have been studying are not those of the practitioner” (Robinson 1993). I have recently used Robinson’s model of Problem-Based Methodology to explore whether research about exams in higher education does engage sufficiently with the challenges that teachers take themselves to face. The results were not encouraging.

One of the more straightforward of Robinson’s criteria for impactful research is that researchers should be addressing teachers’ beliefs, and correcting them where they are erroneous. That’s important, but what if those beliefs are hard to shift? We all have stubborn hunches about how higher education works: good ways of motivating students, how to write feedback that will make students pay attention, how to clearly communicate complex ideas. What if there are teacher beliefs that are deeply embedded, so deeply that we don’t always know we have them, but that aren’t helping us and need to change?

One idea that has been explored in the school sector, but has largely passed us by, is the concept of ‘folk pedagogies’. This idea was developed in the 1990s as an extension of the more famous concept of ‘folk psychologies’: the tacit theories that we all have that allow us to make sense of people’s behaviour. For Jerome Bruner, a natural next step from folk psychologies was the idea that we have intuitive theories about how people learn.

“Watch any mother, any teacher, even any babysitter with a child and you’ll be struck by how much of what they do is steered by notions of ‘what children’s mind are like and how to help them learn,’ even though they may not be able to verbalise their pedagogical principles.” Bruner (1996)

There has been some research in the school sector about the implications of this idea, particularly in terms of how much difference research makes to educational practice. Folk pedagogies have two features that will make them a factor in the impact of education research: they interfere with the uptake of new research-based ideas and approaches, and they are stubborn. On the first point, the idea is that new ideas about higher education will have to replace the old if they are to influence teachers; and on the second, evidence suggests that even where trainee teachers have ostensibly internalised more scientific theories of learning, the folk pedagogies come creeping back.

In the case of higher education, what might these commonsense, intuitive theories look like? They might just be very general ideas about how people learn, applied to the particular context of higher education. Bruner identifies a range of broad folk pedagogical views, such as one which sees ‘children as knowers’, with a focus on the gathering and organising of facts. Perhaps one kind of folk psychology of higher education would be the application of that idea specifically to students in universities rather than other sectors: a focus on the selection, organisation and retention of propositional knowledge within degree programmes. Perhaps there are also specific intuitive theories about higher education that influence teachers’ practices. Perhaps there is a folk intuition that university students should not be spoon-fed – that they must take responsibility for their own learning and seek to develop their own views. Perhaps there is a folk intuition that students should encounter challenging views that encourage them to question their own certainties. In the absence of research, we can only speculate (and introspect).

Respecting the ‘folk’

The idea that teachers have deep intuitions about how students learn, that those intuitions can prevent them from acting on more evidence-based beliefs, and that those intuitions are hard to shake; none of those ideas are particularly earth-shattering. They are probably common sense among those researching and enhancing higher education. The value of the idea of ‘folk pedagogies’ lies instead in the way that it encourages us to take those intuitions seriously, both as an object of study and a powerful barrier to change.

Rather than dismissing intuitions about higher education – as ignorant beliefs and hide-bound traditions – we can study them. What are they? Where do they come from? How do they change? The idea of folk pedagogies is not pejorative. There’s no shame in having intuitions about how learning works. As with folk psychological theories, they are necessary parts of how we navigate the world, and something we can’t do without. There is also deep wisdom to be found in those intuitions, even if they are sometimes misleading. Research goes wrong by departing from common sense, at least as much as the other way around.

Acknowledging the existence of folk theories of higher education can help improve the impact of our research in all sorts of ways. We can research them, to understand why teachers and students (and others) do what they do, and the conditions in which deep intuitions can change. It can help us understand where – and why – research has departed so far from common sense as to be of little practical relevance.

It can also help us understand the scale of the challenge. In much of what we do, we’re seeking to modify what university teachers do, which very often means changing how they think. The reality is that we aren’t usually changing superficial, specific beliefs, at least not where the improvements we’re seeking are substantive. We’re changing deep beliefs picked up over a lifetime. Our model of improvement may then need to fit the old adage: if you’re not making progress at a snail’s pace, you’re not making progress. That’s a bit different from annual quality enhancement cycles or short-term strategic initiatives. We can change the world, but it will take time.

References

Bruner, J. (1996). The culture of education. Harvard

Robinson, V. M. J. (1993). Problem-Based Methodology: Research for the Improvement of Practice. Pergamon Press

Dr Alex Buckley is an Associate Professor in the Learning & Teaching Academy at Heriot-Watt University, Scotland. His research is focused on conceptual aspects of research and practice in assessment and feedback.


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Changing landscape of international student mobility

by Hans de Wit, Philip G Altbach and Lizhou Wang

In its many diverse forms – including degree study, credit earning, branch campuses, and others – mobility remains a major aspect of international higher education. But mobility patterns are shifting. While the South-North movement remains primary at the world level, new patterns and modes are emerging. This blog describes these new patterns and their rationales. It is based on our chapter ‘International student mobility in a changing global environment: key issues and trends’, in: Simon Marginson, Catherine Montgomery, Alain Courtois and Ravinder Sidhu (eds), The Future of Cross Border Academic Mobilities and Immobilities: Power, Knowledge and Agency, published by Bloomsbury.

Notably, student and scholar mobility has become a mass enterprise, with more than six million students studying outside their countries in 2021 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2024). But, although global student mobility is a significant factor and at the core of internationalisation efforts, it is limited to a small and mainly elite sector of the global student population. Six million global students represent a small proportion of the 254 million students pursuing higher education worldwide. Nevertheless, the mobility of learners, teachers, and scholars has always been a key dimension of higher education.

‘Internationally mobile students’ often refers to degree-mobile students who move to a foreign country for educational purposes and receive a foreign tertiary/higher education degree on a student visa. The predominant pattern of degree mobility at the world level has been from the Global South to the Global North, although there is also significant degree mobility within the Global North, in particular within Europe, and from the United States to Europe, as well as the reverse. Initially, the South to North flow consisted largely of small numbers of elites from colonies to the imperial countries. This movement increased significantly after independence, for example, students travelling to the UK and France. This kind of mobility also extended to other key Anglophone countries, including the United States, Canada, and Australia, which have maintained a dominant destination position. On the supply side, the fastest growth in outgoing students has been from Global South countries. From 1995 to 2010, the main sending countries worldwide were China, India, and Malaysia.

Shifting mobility patterns

While South-to-North and, to some extent, North-to-North mobility remain numerically dominant, there is a trend towards multipolarity and intra-regional student mobility. According to Van Mol et al (in E Recchi and M Safi (eds), (2024) Handbook of Human Mobility and Migration (pp 128–47). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishers), the past fifteen years have witnessed a challenge to the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon and Western countries, with new educational hubs gaining prominence. A more diverse set of countries now exerts greater relative influence in the overall student mobility network.

In particular, intra-regional mobility is growing in the South, from low-income towards middle-income countries. For China, the top senders are neighbours South Korea, Thailand, and Pakistan. For Russia, the top senders are nearby Kazakhstan, China, and Uzbekistan. Likewise, South Korea and Japan have become top study destinations for students from Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia. For Argentina, all the top sending countries are also from South America: Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Paraguay, and Bolivia. Interestingly, some of the sending countries present themselves as new destinations, for instance, Kazakhstan and Vietnam. What drives these changes?

Macro-level drivers for international mobility

In the dynamic landscape of international higher education, macro-level factors, beyond the control of individual countries, higher education institutions (HEIs), and students, wield significant influence in changing mobility patterns. In many sending countries, the enhancement in higher education quality, along with economic development, plays an important role. For example, in East Asian countries, such as Japan and South Korea, the national higher education systems have now achieved excellent quality and become attractive study destinations for international students. And other countries follow.

Economic and financial considerations

Another global factor shaping the mobility landscape is the increasing commodification of education. Anglophone high-income countries have particularly benefited financially from this market. For example, in the academic year 2022–3, over one million international students at US colleges and universities contributed more than $40 billion to the US economy and supported more than 368,000 jobs (NAFSA, 2023). For the UK, the figure for the total economic contribution was £41.9 billion in the 2021/2 academic year (Higher Education Policy Institute, 2023).

At the same time, high living and tuition costs, coupled with increased xenophobia and visa and other restrictions in the Global North, have driven many students from the South to pursue education in non-Western nations where tuition and living costs are less expensive. These economic pull factors make the emerging study destinations attractive to many international students, especially those from middle-income and lower-income families.

Soft power and cultural influences

Many countries and institutions prioritise international student recruitment as a key target in their strategies for the internationalisation of higher education because of the value they place on securing soft power, cross-border cultural influence, and improved university rankings.

At the national level, countries utilise strategic policies and national agencies to promote international student recruitment and subsidize inbound mobility. Activities and initiatives involve various national actors that aim to build a comprehensive ecosystem in supporting immigration regulation, university cooperation, language training, and scholarships. Examples include the Indian government, which launched the Study in India flagship project in 2018 in collaboration with various government departments to enhance its global identity through international education initiatives. Similarly, the Education Plan in China’s Belt and Road Initiative showcases the political and diplomatic motivations behind its internationalisation strategy and international student recruitment.

Demographic change, labour market, and migration

For many countries in the Global North, significant demographic decline and the need for skilled labour have made it challenging to find sufficient talent domestically. Attracting talented international students, faculty, and professionals, as well as encouraging student retention, are often crucial strategies for higher education in high-income and middle-income countries.

Important in the above-mentioned factors are the many ways in which migration and student mobility cross over. Education functions as a significant migration doorway for a large minority of students moving from the Global South to the Anglophone countries. Tensions and controversies arise regarding international students’ post-study options, labour market needs, and immigration policies.

Complex and multilayered

In the words of Van Mol et al (2024, p141), international student mobility is ‘complex and multilayered’. It is influenced by a variety of changing contexts and related push and pull factors. There is no such archetype as ‘the international student’, as there are different forms of student, stakeholder roles, and motivations for mobility. In degree mobility, one can observe a gradual shift from a predominantly South-North movement towards a more diverse movement, with dominant sending countries, particularly in Asia, increasingly becoming receiving countries.

Revenue generation remains a dominant pull factor in the Anglophone higher education sector. Another key consideration is increasing the stay rate of international students so as to better meet skilled labour needs.

At the same time, geopolitical tensions, national security concerns, and nationalist anti-immigration sentiments and policies are becoming important obstacles to international student mobility. While international students and the revenues they generate are important in a few countries, perhaps more important to the global economy as a whole are patterns of high-skilled immigration related to student mobility. These patterns contribute to inequalities, impact remittances, influence scientific collaboration, and affect many other factors in numerous countries.

As countries navigate these complex dynamics, the strategic management of international student flows and integration of skilled graduates into the labour market will be crucial for maximising the benefits of global education and fostering international collaboration. Ultimately, understanding the evolving nature of international student mobility is essential for policymakers and educators who seek to enhance the internationalisation of higher education and address the broader challenges and opportunities it presents.

Hans de Wit is Emeritus Professor and Distinguished Fellow of the ‘Center for International Higher Education’ (CIHE) at Boston College. He is IAU Senior Fellow in the International Association of Universities (IAU) and Co-Editor of Policy Reviews in Higher Education (SRHE).

Philip G Altbach is Research Professor and Distinguished Fellow at the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, where from 1994 to 2015 he was the Monan University Professor.

Lizhou Wang is an Assistant Professor at the Waseda Institute for Advanced Study, Waseda University, Japan. Lizhou conducts research on the internationalisation of higher education, including international mobility and research collaboration.


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Reclaiming the academic community: why universities need more than metrics

by Sigurður Kristinsson

For decades, talk of “the academic community” has flowed easily through mission statements, strategy documents, and speeches from university leadership. Yet few stop to consider what this community is or why it matters. As universities increasingly orient themselves toward markets, rankings, and performance metrics, the gap between the ideal of academic community and the lived reality of academic work has widened. But this drift is not merely unfortunate; it threatens the very values that justify the existence of universities in the first place.

This blog explores why academic community is essential to higher education, how contemporary systems undermine it, and what a renewed vision of academic life might require.

What do we mean when we talk about “community”?

The word “community” can be used in two different senses. One is descriptive: communities are simply networks of people connected by place, shared interests or regular interaction. From this sociological standpoint, academic communities consist of overlapping groups (faculty, students, administrators, service professionals) brought together by institutional roles, disciplinary identities, or digital networks, perhaps experiencing a sense of belonging, solidarity, and shared purpose.

But in debates about the purpose and future of universities, “community” is often used in a normative sense: an ideal of how academics ought to relate to one another. In Humboldtian (1810) spirit, contemporary advocates like Fitzpatrick (2021, 2024) and Bennett (1998, 2003) envision academic community as a moral and intellectual culture grounded in shared purpose, generosity, intellectual hospitality, mutual respect, and the collective pursuit of knowledge. From this philosophical perspective, community is not just a cluster of networks to be analyzed empirically but a normative vision of how scholarly life becomes meaningful. This aspirational view stands in stark contrast to the conditions shaping many universities today.

The pressures pulling academic life apart

For several decades, developments in universities around the world have been hostile to academic community. While the precise mechanisms vary, academics report strikingly similar pressures: managerial oversight, performance auditing, intensifying competition, and the steady erosion of collegial structures and shared governance. Five threats to academic community are particularly worrisome:

Organisational (not occupational) professionalism

In her analysis of how managerial logic has co-opted the language of professionalism to justify top-down control in public institutions, Julia Evetts (2003, 2009, 2011) introduced a distinction between occupational and organisational professionalism. Occupational professionalism in academia implies membership in a self-governing community of experts committed to serving society through knowledge. Today, however, universities increasingly define professionalism in organisational terms: compliance with targets, performance indicators, and standardised procedures. The result is a hybrid system: academics retain some autonomy, but it is overshadowed by bureaucratic accountability structures that fragment communal relationships and discourage collective responsibility (Siekkinen et al, 2020).

Managerialism

Managerialism prizes measurable production outputs, standardized procedures, and vertical decision-making. As Metz (2017) argues, these mechanisms degrade communal relationships among academics as well as between them and managers, students, and wider society: decisions are imposed without consultation; bonus systems reward narrow indicators rather than communal priorities; and bureaucratic layers reduce opportunities for collegial dialogue. Managerialism replaces trust with surveillance and collegial judgment with quantification.

Individualism

The rise of competition – over publications, grants, rankings, and prestige – has amplified what Bennett (2003) called “insistent individualism.” Colleagues become rivals or useful instruments. Achievements become personal currency. In such settings, it is easy to see oneself not as part of a community pursuing shared goods but as an isolated producer of measurable outputs. This ethos erodes the solidarity and relationality necessary for any robust academic culture.

Retreat from academic citizenship

Academic citizenship refers to the contributions – committee work, mentoring, governance, public engagement – that sustain universities beyond research and teaching. Yet because these activities are difficult to measure and often unrewarded, they are increasingly neglected (Macfarlane, 2005; Feldt et al, 2024). This neglect fragments institutions and weakens the norms of shared responsibility that should hold academic life together.

Troubled collegiality

Collegiality includes participatory and collective decision-making, a presumption of shared values, absence of hierarchy, supportiveness, a shared commitment to a common good, trust beyond a typical workplace, and professional autonomy. It has long been central to academic identity but has become contested. Some experience collegial labor as invisible and unevenly distributed; others see managerial attempts to measure collegiality as just another way of disciplining staff. Efforts to quantify collegiality may correct some injustices but also risk instrumentalizing it, turning a relational ideal into a bureaucratic category (Craig et al, 2025; Fleming and Harley, 2024; Gavin et al, 2023).

Across all these pressures, a common thread emerges: the forces shaping contemporary academia weaken the relationships required for intellectual work to flourish.

Why academic community matters

If community is eroding, why should we care? The answer lies in the link between community and the values that higher education claims to serve. A helpful framework comes from value theory, which distinguishes between instrumental, constitutive, and intrinsic goods.

Community as instrumentally valuable

Academic community helps produce the outcomes universities care about: research breakthroughs, learning, intellectual development, and democratic engagement. Collaboration makes research stronger. Peer support helps people grow. Shared norms encourage integrity, rigor, and creativity. Without community, academic values become harder to realize.

Community as constitutive of academic values

In many cases, community is not merely a helpful means but a necessary constituent. Scientific knowledge, as philosophers of science like Merton (1979) and Longino (1990) have long emphasized, is inherently social: it requires communal critique, peer review, and collective norms to distinguish knowledge from error. Learning, too, is fundamentally relational, as Vygotsky (1978) and Dewey (1916) argued. You cannot have science or education without community.

Community as intrinsically valuable

Beyond producing useful outcomes, community enriches human life. Belonging, shared purpose, and intellectual companionship are deeply fulfilling. Academic community offers a sense of identity, meaning, and solidarity that transcends individual achievement (Metz, 2017). In this sense, community contributes directly to human flourishing.

How community shapes academic life

Several examples show how academic values depend on community in practice:

Debates about educational values

The pursuit of academic values requires reflection on their meaning. Interpretive arguments about values like autonomy, virtue, or justice in education contribute to conversations that presuppose the collective norms of academic community (Nussbaum, 2010; Ebels-Duggan, 2015). These debates require shared standards of reasoning, openness to critique, and a shared commitment to better understanding.

Scientific knowledge and academic freedom

No individual can produce knowledge alone. Scientific communities ensure that discoveries are evaluated, replicated, and integrated into a larger body of understanding. Likewise, academic freedom is not a personal privilege but a communal norm that protects open inquiry (Calhoun, 2009; Frímannsson et al, 2022). It depends on solidarity among scholars.

Teaching as communal practice

Education flourishes in relational settings. Classrooms become communities in which teachers and students jointly pursue understanding. Weithman (2015) describes this as “academic friendship” – a form of companionship that expands imagination, fosters intellectual virtues, and shapes future citizens.

Across these cases, community is not optional; it is essential to academic values.

Rebuilding scademic community: structural and cultural change

Given its importance, how might universities cultivate stronger academic communities?

Structural reform

Universities should try to resist the dominance of market logic. Sector-wide policy changes could help rebalance priorities. Hiring, promotion, and reward systems should value teaching, service, mentorship, and public engagement rather than focusing exclusively on quantifiable research metrics. Without structural support, cultural change will be difficult.

Cultural renewal

A healthier academic culture requires a different mindset—one that foregrounds generosity, relationality, and shared purpose. In Generous Thinking, Fitzpatrick (2021) argues that building real community requires humility, conversation, listening, and collaboration. Community cannot be mandated; it must be practised.

This requires academics to challenge competitive individualism, share work equitably, strengthen trust and dialogue, and reimagine collegiality as a lived practice rather than a managerial tool. Most importantly, it requires us to recognize ourselves as fundamentally relational beings whose professional purpose is intertwined with others.

A moral case for academic community

Academic community is not only epistemically valuable; it is morally significant. Relational moral theories argue that human flourishing depends on identity and solidarity. We become the moral human beings we are through our communal relationships (Metz, 2021).

Applying this to academia reveals that collegiality is grounded in shared identity and shared ends. Since the moral obligations created by academic relationships remain professional, collegial community does not require intrusive intimacy. Far from suppressing dissent or professional autonomy, solidarity requires defending academic freedom and academic values generally.

A relational understanding of morality thus implies that the ideal of academic community promises not only a more fulfilling and coherent sense of occupational purpose, but also a way of relating to others that is more satisfying morally than the current environment individualistic competition.

Conclusion: the future depends on community

Universities today face an existential challenge. In the rush to satisfy markets, rankings, and managerial demands, they risk undermining the very relationships that make academic life meaningful. Academic community is not a nostalgic ideal; it is the cornerstone of learning, knowledge, virtue, and human flourishing.

If higher education is to reclaim a sense of purpose, it must begin by cultivating the social and moral conditions in which genuine community can grow. This requires structural reforms, cultural renewal, and a shared commitment to relational values. Without such efforts, universities will continue drifting toward fragmentation, losing sight of the goods they exist to protect.

Rebuilding academic community is not merely desirable. It is necessary – for the integrity of scholarship, for the flourishing of those who work within universities, and for the public good that higher education is meant to serve.

Sigurður Kristinsson is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Akureyri, Iceland. His research applies moral and political philosophy in various contexts of professional practice, increasingly intersecting with the philosophy of higher education with emphasis on the social and democratic role of universities.


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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.

Paul Temple


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Will US science survive and thrive, or fade away?

by Paul Temple

When Robert Oppenheimer graduated from Harvard in 1925, young American scientists wanting to work with the world’s best researchers crossed the Atlantic as a matter of course. As a theoretical physicist, Oppenheimer’s choice was between Germany, particularly Göttingen and Leipzig, and England, particularly Cambridge. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know that Cambridge didn’t work out for him, so in 1926 he went to work with Max Born, one of the leading figures in quantum mechanics, at Göttingen, receiving his doctorate there just a year later. His timing was good: within a few years from the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, attacks on academics, Jewish and otherwise, and then of course the Second World War, had destroyed what was perhaps the world’s most important university system. Let us note that academic structures, depending on relatively small numbers of intellectual leaders, usually able to move elsewhere, are fragile creations.

I used to give a lecture about the role of universities in driving economic development, with particular reference to scientific and technological advances. Part of this lecture covered the role of US universities in supporting national economic progress, starting with the Land Grant Acts (beginning in 1862, in the middle of the Civil War for heaven’s sake!), through which the federal government funded the creation of universities in the new states of the west; going on to examine support for university research in the Second World War, of which the Manhattan Project was only a part; followed by the 1945 report by Vannevar Bush, Science – the endless frontier, which provided the rationale for continued government support for university research. The Cold War was then the context for further large-scale federal funding, not just in science and technology but in social science also, spin-offs from which produced the internet, biotech, Silicon Valley, and a whole range of other advanced industries. So, my lecture concluded, look at what a century-and-a-half of government investment in university-derived knowledge gets you: if not quite a new society, then one changed out of all recognition – and, mostly, for the better.

The currently-ongoing attack by the Trump administration on American universities seems to have overlooked the historical background just sketched out. My “didn’t it work out just fine?” lecture now needs a certain amount of revision: it is almost describing a lost world.

President Trump and his MAGA movement, says Nathan Heller writing in The New Yorker this March, sees American universities as his main enemies in the culture wars on which his political survival depends. Before he became Trump’s Vice-President, JD Vance in a 2021 speech entitled “The Universities are the enemy” set out a plan to “aggressively attack the universities in this country” (New York Times, 3 June 2025). University leaderships seem to have been unprepared for this unprecedented assault, despite ample warning. (A case where Trump and his allies needed to be taken both literally and seriously.) Early 2025 campus pro-Palestinian protests then conveniently handed the Trump administration the casus belli to justify acting against leading universities, further helped by clumsy footwork on the part of university leaderships who seem largely not to have rested their cases on the very high freedom of speech bar set by the First Amendment, meaning that, for example, anti-Semitic speech (naturally, physical attacks would be a different matter) would be lawful under Supreme Court rulings, however much they personally may have deplored it. Instead, university presidents allowed themselves to be presented as apologists for Hamas. (Needless to say, demands that free speech should be protected at all costs does not apply in the Trump/Vance world to speech supporting causes of which they disapprove.)

American universities have never faced a situation remotely like this. As one Harvard law professor quoted in the New Yorker piece remarks, the Trump attacks are about the future of “higher education in the United States, and whether it is going to survive and thrive, or fade away”. If you consider that parallels with Germany in 1933 are far-fetched, please explain why.

SRHE Fellow Dr Paul Temple is Honorary Associate Professor in the Centre for Higher Education Studies, UCL Institute of Education.