Centre for Global Higher Education

18 May 2023, CGHE webinar Polina Ivanova, Ritsumeikan University The role of civil society in helping incoming international students to adapt to the host country and integrate into the broader community has largely remained unseen, as most prior studies have focused on universities and government policies. This talk attempts to fill this gap in research on international students’ mobility and provide insights into practical ways in which interaction with civil society organisations (CSOs) is already helping international students feel less lonely and more included.

The talk describes two independent studies of Japan and Australia, allowing us to compare interactions between CSOs and international students in different environments: an established and globally leading study destination in a Western and English-speaking country, on the one hand, and an emerging regional hub in a non-Western and a non-Anglophone nation, on the other.

The Australian case is a study in progress focusing on volunteer organisations supporting international students in New South Wales, including during the COVID-19 crisis. Results of the Japanese case study will be published in a forthcoming monograph, Civil Society and International Students in Japan: The Making of Social Capital (Routledge, 2023). This study shows the possibilities for international students in Japan of creating social capital in the short term in culturally and socially diverse groups. It highlights international students’ agency and the active part they take in some Japanese CSOs, which challenges the guest-host dichotomy of the previous literature. The book also includes a chapter on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on international students and their support organisations in Japan.

Despite their weaknesses and limitations, local CSOs in both Japan and Australia act as alternative providers of international student support co-creating networks of trust, exchange and cooperation.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/networks-of-support-civil-societys-role-in-integrating-international-students-in-japan-and-australia/

16 May 2023, CGHE webinar Ly Tran, Deakin University

Diep Nguyen, Deakin University International student engagement in the host country is crucial to ensure their meaningful international education experience. Effective engagement with international students is based on a holistic approach and understandings of how aspects of a cross-border student life are interlinked and inter-dependent on each other, including academic performance, connections with domestic students and communities, mental health and wellbeing, employment, accommodation, finance, life plans, and aspirations. This presentation draws on a research project funded by the Australian Government through the International Education Innovation Fund (IEIF). The project aims to identify good practice and develop a series of Guides and resources to enhance international student engagement. The research process includes desktop analysis of existing literature and good practice examples; three surveys, capturing over 6,000 responses from international students, graduates and stakeholders; 11 consultation workshops with 213 stakeholders and interviews with 40 key stakeholders. The presentation addresses international student needs for support and help-seeking manners across areas of engagement such as:

• Engagement with teaching and learning
• International and domestic student engagement
• International student engagement with their local communities
• Intercultural communication, English language and learning skills
• Mental health and well-being
• Engagement in work-integrated learning and employability
• Accommodation, finances and student rights
• Crisis navigation

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/international-student-engagement-and-support/

11 May 2023, CGHE webinar

Ka Ho Mok, Lingnan University (Hong Kong)

YU Baohua Lucy, Lingnan University

Chinese international students compose the largest group of full tuition-paying students globally and are important to hosting destinations both culturally and financially. However, the obstructed international mobility caused by COVID-19 has changed their international applications. As the world gradually resumes its previous mobility level, it is important to comprehend what pull factors can effectively attract students for marketing purposes. This quantitative research re-examines the established pull factors considered and valued by prospective Chinese international students and their parents and discovered that (1) a combination of five to six factors can be sufficient for Chinese students to decide on an overseas destination, (2) cost, global rankings, and Chinese employment prospects have become the most substantial factors in destination choices, (3) opportunities for immigration and overseas employment are no longer significant, and (4) students and parents view international education with different interpretations. The marketing implications are discussed.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/pull-factors-in-choosing-a-higher-education-study-abroad-destination-after-the-massive-global-immobility-a-re-examination-from-chinese-perspectives/

9 May 2023, CGHE webinar

Ravinder Sidhu, University of Queensland

International academic mobility has long been celebrated for the possibilities it holds out for extending the boundaries of knowledge and enabling innovation. The multinational sourcing of scientific talent is normative as seen in celebratory narratives of ‘brain circulation’. At the same time, discourses of ‘global science’ and ‘global knowledge economy’ are used as spatial practices, differentiating and categorizing cities, countries and regions into centres and peripheries of knowledge making and innovation. In this presentation I draw on the concept of ‘epistemic living spaces’ as proposed by sociologist, Ulrike Felt, to discuss the life and work realities of internationally mobile mid and early career Life scientists in two cities, Singapore and Brisbane. These narrations of border-crossings – geographic, disciplinary and epistemic- gesture to the institutional logics and value systems constructed by contemporary regimes of global science. Although valorised in public discourse as assets in producing knowledge hubs, innovation clusters and technopoles, scientists’ do not experience frictionless mobility. The normative machineries of global science are premised on gendered competition and stratification, with implications for personal and professional lives, felt most sharply by early career scientists. Encouraged to self-steer towards a lived neoliberal subjectivity, scientists can be deterred from becoming critical practitioners of the arts and crafts of the Lifesciences (‘subjects of critique’). Global science is a malleable and paradoxical space where cutting edge innovation mingles with sorting techniques to determine who and what kinds of practices of inquiry are of value. Small-scale studies exploring epistemic living spaces bring texture and nuance to understandings of mobility and immobility and political subject making in global science regimes.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/the-immobilities-of-internationally-mobile-scientists-in-global-science-regimes/

4 May 2023, CGHE webinar Aline Courtois, University of Bath

The effects of international mobility on academic careers are classed, racialised and gendered (Morley et al., 2018; Sang and Calvard, 2019) yet ‘early career’ academics experience increasing pressure to present as mobile and adequately internationalised (Sautier, 2021). How is the ‘internationality imperative’ (Hamann and Zimmer, 2017) experienced by those who have endured long-term academic precarity? What role do mobility and internationality, or the lack of, play in how they make sense of their professional and personal trajectories? How do these intersect with gender, class, age, family status, nationality and race in the Irish context?

We draw on our project, ‘The Precarity Penalty: The effects of long-term precarious work on higher education workers’ lives, careers and well-being’, to explore mobility and internationality in relation to long-term precarity. We conducted biographic interviews with 40 academics with experience of long-term precarity (i.e. looking for an academic post for at least 5 years) in and out of the Irish higher education sector. Our participants include Irish-born and migrant, mobile and non-mobile academics, men and women. Problematising the notion that precarious work is a short-term and necessary feature of academic careers, we highlight the cumulative effects of academic precarity on professional and personal lives, and how it makes mobility an increasingly difficult, uncertain and deeply unequal strategy. To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/mobility-or-precarity-constructions-and-uses-of-international-mobility-among-long-term-precarious-academics-in-ireland/

2 May 2023, CGHE webinar Catherine Montgomery, Durham University Internationally mobile doctoral students play a crucial role in enabling globalised universities to generate new knowledge and innovations. These flows of doctoral students, as highly skilled migrants, constitute ways to create knowledge across and within certain boundaries. In this presentation I will construct doctoral student mobility as knowledge generation and explore the ways in which this form of knowledge mobility might become an increasingly significant part of future cross-border mobility.The paper rests on a two-year funded ESRC impact project examining international doctoral research as a coherent body of knowledge. Using the British Library’s digital repository EThOS, a collection of up to 500,000 doctoral studies carried out in British universities, the research analyses the theoretical, methodological and practical impact of international doctoral research for social, cultural and community organisations. The exponential development of Artificial Intelligence has presented endless opportunities to mine the digital repositories where doctoral theses are now stored and, most importantly, to synthesise the research and generate summaries and outcomes. This project has developed an AI tool which performs clustering and text summarisation that could enable users to easily access and utilise the research of the EThOS collection without the need for laborious manual sifting through its extensive repository. This could enable international doctoral knowledge to cross borders in a myriad of different ways. The presentation will discuss this work in the context of future cross-border transnational mobilities, acknowledging international doctoral research as marginalised, ‘Southern knowledge’ (to use Raewyn Connell’s now widely employed term) embedded in global divisions and long-standing patterns of inequalities in power, wealth, and cultural influence. At the same time, it can be argued that internationally mobile doctoral students are part of privileged mobile networks which characterise their knowledge creation as part of a future transnational elite. Against these complexities, the presentation explores the future of doctoral knowledge as transnational mobility, augmented by artificial intelligence. To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/international-doctoral-knowledge-and-the-future-of-cross-border-academic-mobility-perspectives-from-digital-scholarship/

27 April 2023, CGHE webinar

Miguel Antonio Lim, University of Manchester

Icy Fresno Anabo, University of Deusto

Anh Ngoc Quynh Phan, University of Auckland

Drew Elepaño, Coventry University

Gunjana Kuntamarat, University of Deusto

The study aims to map the student and labour mobility trends in the ASEAN region, examine the supply side and demand side perspectives on the value of intra-ASEAN student mobility on graduates’ career outcomes, and provide recommendations to further enhance and understand the links between mobility and employability.

This report presents the findings of the EU-SHARE commissioned study entitled ‘Graduate Employability in ASEAN: The Contributions of Student Mobility’. The report collates the qualitative data gathered from a review of literature and 83 qualitative interviews with relevant stakeholders (43 formerly intra-ASEAN mobile graduates and 40 labour market representatives hereon referred to as LMRs) from four countries (Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam) and three broad sectors (Engineering and ICT; Education; and Business, Social Sciences and Humanities).

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/graduate-employability-in-asean-the-contribution-of-student-mobility/

25 April 2023, CGHE webinar

Gerardo Blanco, Center for International Higher Education at Boston College

While international education has undergone significant transformations in recent years, it has been recognized that universities and countries that want to attract students from other countries have to pay attention to their branding and reputation. Racial imaginaries are part of global academic mobility. While discourses of inclusion and diversity are prominent in the marketing of academic exchange programs, their origins and legacy are more complex. The Fulbright Program is the flagship U.S. international exchange program and constitutes one of the most ubiquitous brands in the world of international education. It can be argued that the Fulbright Program is the most visible face of international education in the U.S. However, J. William Fulbright, the architect and namesake of the successful exchange program that celebrated 75 years of operation, has come under scrutiny as higher education in the United States responds to the call for racial justice in higher education and all spheres of social life. Amid the Black Lives Matter movement and other racial justice initiatives, higher education institutions (HEIs) in the United States and local governments have moved in the direction of removing Confederate statues and other symbols, along with the names of slave-owners and of those who supported racial segregation and racism. This webinar focuses on the juxtaposition of the Fulbright Program’s brand and its historical racial legacy.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/racialization-and-international-academic-mobility-mixed-legacies-in-the-fulbright-program/

20 April 2023, CGHE webinar

Simon Marginson, University of Oxford

Higher education has two sets of purposes, intrinsic and extrinsic. The intrinsic or inner purposes can be wholly carried by agents within the institution. With the extrinsic purposes, agency is shared between agents within the institution and other agents outside the institution, such as employers and government. The intrinsic purposes are the classical core of higher education: the formation of students as autonomous persons (what Get Biesta calls ‘subjectification’); and the transmission, creation and dissemination of knowledge, activities which have become joined. Educational formation is immersion in knowledge, and faculty labour is fashioned as a teaching/research nexus. This essentially cultural assemblage has shaped the distinctive internal organisation of the sector, and its reproduction. Teaching and learning, and scholarship and research, are grounded in epistemic disciplines, study programmes and departments/schools. The extrinsic purposes constitute the external social roles played by higher education, its institutions and agents. This extrinsic domain includes higher education’s role in forming and unequally allocating social status, its role in preparing students for work, the professions and occupations, and applications of higher education to such areas as industry innovation, and regional development. Whereas is the case of the intrinsic purposes, value is determined on academic grounds, in the case of the extrinsic purposes the social partners share in defining and determining value. However, while the inner intrinsic purposes of higher education can be achieved without the extrinsic applications, the reverse is not true. The capacity of higher education institutions to fulfil their extrinsic purposes rests on their intrinsic capabilities in education and knowledge.

In recent years in higher education policy and public debate, one of the extrinsic purposes of higher education, its role as preparatory for graduate work, occupations and professions, has come to dominate in the governance of higher education in many countries. The intrinsic subjectification function is central to the lifelong benefits that students gain from higher education, to their personal agency and capability in shaping their lives, at work and everywhere else, but economically-minded governments seem scarcely aware that this function exists. Economic policy models the student as a consumer and self-investor and defines the graduate in extrinsic economic terms as a unit of human capital with a market value. This forces the square peg of higher education into a round economic hole for which it is unfitted. The primary purpose of higher education is now said to be the production of ‘employable’ graduates. In UK the Teaching Excellence Framework sought to evaluate and measure teaching and learning not in terms of what is learned, let alone the contribution of higher education to self-development, but in terms of graduate earnings, and student satisfaction in consumer surveys. The notion of ‘low value courses’ has taken hold: programmes associated with relatively low average graduate salaries. This ignores all the other factors that shape earnings, and ignores the rationales for those programmes in self-formation, socialisation and the public good (e.g. nursing). Australia has ‘job ready graduates’ and micro credentials. The transition to work is to be shortened by truncating the intrinsic educational experiences of students.

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To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/intrinsic-higher-education-and-the-threat-of-the-employability-mantra/

18 April 2023, CGHE webinar

Peter Mandler, University of Cambridge

There has been an under-discussed ‘swing to science’ in student choices at school and university in the UK since the late 2000s. Attempts to explain subject choice tend to focus on periods when students are seen to be making the ‘wrong’ choices – i.e. swings away​ from science. So the swing to science in the last 15 years has received less attention. This talk looks at the reasons for the earlier swing away​ from science between the 1960s and the 2000s, and considers which factors no longer operate or have gone into reverse, and whether there are new factors in play. Even when the swing began is hard to determine. It calls for a deeper dive into student motivation than can be provided by quantitative exercises based on either investment or Bourdieusian models. What lies behind reported motivations such as ‘interest’, ‘enjoyment’, ‘utility’ or ‘career’? How do these motivations differ in meaning and intensity between people of different social classes and genders? Can we parse the swing as not about science vs humanities but as about particular kinds of science and non-science subjects?

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/the-swing-to-science-retrospects-and-prospects/

4 April 2023, CGHE webinar

Marek Kwiek, AMU University of Poznan, Poland

In this presentation, the global academic profession is explored through a study of digital traces left in publications. A large-scale, generational, and longitudinal approach to academic careers is tested. We discuss how to examine 4.3 million nonoccasional scientists from 38 OECD countries publishing in 1990–2021. Our interest is in the changing global distribution of young male and female scientists over time and across disciplines. The usefulness of global bibliometric data sources (termed structured Big Data) in analyzing scientists and scholars is explored. Our focus is on four dimensions: gender, age, discipline, and time. Traditional aggregated data (e.g., UNESCO, OECD, Eurostat) are unable to show a much nuanced picture of the changing gender dynamics within and across disciplines and age groups, including gender parity (50%/50%). Limitations of bibliometric datasets in studying academic careers are explored, various trade-offs are shown, and a global approach is contrasted with a national-level approach. The methodological choices and their implications are discussed, and new opportunities to study academic careers globally are explored in practice.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/big-data-in-practice-women-and-men-in-global-science/

30 March 2023, CGHE webinar

Hoonhui Cho, University of Oxford

The presentation gives a brief account of higher education policies in South Korea with particular focus on understanding contemporary changes in policy making and governing work. It starts with overviewing theoretical resources which are helpful in formulating the frame of reference. Theories on the state and governance are reviewed, and a cultural approach is suggested as the methodology for interpreting policies and institutional changes in higher education. Then it evaluates whether ideas on globalisation and neo-liberalism can contribute to understanding policy contexts in East Asian countries. The second part explains historical and political contexts of South Korean state in which higher education has been formulated and developed in particular ways. This part specifically discusses state-academy relations in South Korea under the backdrop of the historical influence of Confucian tradition, the process of modernisation after the Korean War, and subsequent state-driven economic development. In this context, globalisation or neo-liberal strategy is considered as an effective policy discourse of state-managerialism which was actively employed by the South Korean government in 1990s.

Informed by these contextual elements, this presentation tries to understand recent changes in higher education policies in South Korea. It asks how higher education policies define problems and legitimate their solutions, under what circumstances. Accomplishing economic development in the 4th industrial revolution has always been at the top of the national agenda in South Korea. The recent outbreak of COVID-19 has unveiled new conditions for the workings of higher education. The new government emphasises nurturing ‘digital talent’ as a primary goal of higher education. A series of higher education policies has been proposed in the government in order to reach the goal. One of key ideas is ‘support without control’. The Ministry of Education tries to reduce government regulations and support the self-governing powers of universities. Renewing the research assessment system and introducing block-grant in higher education are also emerging agendas. The importance of industry-academy cooperation is increasing as a useful developmental strategy. Universities are being re-conceptualised as innovative sites that can enable the rehabilitation of regional communities across the country.

In the historical development of higher education in South Korea, strong connections between the state and universities are visible. Contemporary higher education policy agendas can be understood in this ongoing context. Nonetheless, this presentation is not inclusive at all and the conception of ‘the public good of higher education in South Korea’ needs to be elaborated. It is expected that scholarly works and academic discussions will follow.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/understanding-higher-education-policies-in-south-korea-guiding-perspectives-historical-contexts-and-policy-problems-of-new-government/

28 March 2023, CGHE webinar

Susan L. Robertson, University of Cambridge

Thomas Piketty and colleagues (Piketty 2020; Gethin, Martinez-Toledano and Piketty 2021), amongst others, point to what appears a paradox; that in many Western societies, a significant rise in the level of social inequalities over the past two decades has not been accompanied by an equivalent rise in political demand for redistribution, via class-based politics. Jonathon Mijs (2021) also points to a similar paradox; that citizens in more unequal societies are less concerned about social inequalities than those in more egalitarian societies. How do we make sense of these findings that is at the same time characterised by the rise of authoritarian populism and significant shifts from left to right in the USA, UK, Brazil amongst others?

Is the rise of xenophobic ‘populism’, Piketty (2020) asks, the outcome of these inequalities, or are they the result of longer-run structural changes? Could it be that they represent a realignment, and cleavage, along education lines (Gethin, Martinez-Toledano and Piketty 2021: 6; see also Bovens and Wille 2017). And if so, what are the implications of this? Would the promotion of greater access to higher education be a means of stimulating a shift to a left political agenda? In Capital and Ideology (2020), Piketty embraces this as a solution to the problem of inequality and the basis for a more radical liberatory politics of the kind that Rosa Luxemburg envisaged (Mills 2020).

In my presentation I problematise these seductive knowledge societies/cleavage accounts arguing they are: (i) overly teleological and prioritise a benign cosmopolitan; (ii) that Left voting is viewed as emerging from the work-logic of person-to-person workers as if these occupations have not been governed by neoliberal logics; (iii) that higher education is black boxed and placed beyond ideology; and higher education is treated as a ‘variable’ making invisible the dynamics that Luxemburg (1951) pointed to in The Accumulation of Capital: capitalism is dependent on expanding into new spheres of social life.I conclude by arguing that higher education itself needs to be cleaved from the jaws of what Fraser (2022) calls ‘cannibal capitalism’ and argue for a radical reworking of higher education as a key institution engaged in knowledge production that enables it to be constitutive of social democracy, social transformation, and social justice.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/knowledge-societies-higher-education-and-political-cleavages-paradoxes-in-search-of-explanations/

23 March 2023, CGHE webinar

Terhi Nokkala, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland

Jussi Valimaa, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland

Ksenia Romanenko, Higher School of Economics, Russia

Aleksei Egorov, Higher School of Economics, Russia

Sergey Malinovskiy, Higher School of Economics, Russia

David Mills, University of Oxford

In the final webinar in the CGHE series on the contributions of higher education, we discuss higher education’s contribution to national and world culture, and to the formation of elites in regional society in Russia.In presenting higher education and culture, Terhi Nokkala, Jussi Valimaa and Ksenia Romanenko move from urban development to college movies and many places between. The size and range of the contributions of higher education to culture, a feature of higher education across the world, have yet to be fully understood. In beginning to map the cultural dimension, the chapter draws on both literature and empirical evidence, including an analysis of the web pages of 120 higher education institutions across the world, and a survey of cultural artefacts related to higher education. The chapter shows that higher education institutions extensively support cultural infrastructure such as libraries, museums and gardens, and provide cultural activities in universities and communities, and also help to shape political culture and at times, national identities. Higher education institutions also contribute to cultural industries including cinema, television and literature, and the university and its agents are increasingly prevalent in novels, television and film.

How does higher education contribute to the formation of leaders and the allocation of people to leadership positions in society? While national elite formation has been explored little attention has been given to regional leaders in Russia. Aleksei Egorov and Sergey Malinovskiy show that recent transformations in higher education, including massification and stratification of the sector, have implications for its role in relation to elite formation. The formation of regional political elites in Russia has been affected by these changes. Based on 3,737 individual biographies of members of the regional elite, the chapter examines their educational background including field of study and tier of institution, and traces changes in these patterns over time. While this analysis cannot explain the effects of higher education in the skills, knowledges and sensibilities of elites, it throws light on its role in social allocation and suggests its potential as a mode of legitimation.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/the-contributions-of-higher-education-4-contributions-to-national-culture-and-regional-leadership/

21 March 2023, CGHE webinar

Johanna Witte, Bavarian State Institute for Higher Education Research and Planning, Germany

Rita Locatelli, Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy

In the third webinar in the CGHE series on the contributions of higher education, Johanna Witte brings us to what is arguably the most important work of all: higher education and the great civilizational challenge posed by accelerated climate change. Higher education and science have played a double role thus far: they have been engaged in the technological progress which has led to climate crisis, while at the same time they are now central to monitoring the problem and offering solutions. Conceptually, higher education’s role in relation to the climate crisis is best understood in terms of global common goods and the social embeddedness of higher education and science. However, higher education needs sufficient autonomy from political and economic structures, and sufficient public funding, to fulfil the common good role. In ecology there are manifold current and potential contributions of higher education including research, education, third mission roles and public debate. The chapter considers institutions’ roles as consumers and campus infrastructure; and discusses the roles of individual and collective actors including institutional leaders, academics, students, self-governing bodies, and governments.

Rita Locatelli presents the UNESCO-origin idea of education’s role in furthering the global common good, as a way to understand the potential contribution of the higher education sector to democracy. Higher education produces a broad range of collective goods, as well as the individualised goods that receive the main attention in neo-liberal policy settings. However, tendencies to the privatisation of provision and of funding, not universal but often pronounced, have weakened the association between the shared collective virtues of higher education and ‘public’ provision by states. The chapter reviews different meanings of ‘public’ and ‘public/private’ in higher education, and their policy use, noting that in Anglo-American countries, especially, a conceptual and practical impasse has been reached. The public/private dualism of economics blocks from view the full social value of higher education. A more useful notion is the communicative and universal public, the inclusive democratic relations embodied in ‘public opinion’ and ‘public sphere’. This public is not in a zero-sum relation with private good. The UNESCO concept of ‘common good’ takes that understanding further. It moves beyond questions of ownership or distribution to include the kind of social relations that are fostered. Common good is premised on participative and solidaristic communities. It is created in civil society as well as the state, and involves private as well as public actors, though state engagement is important in securing equity. When applied to higher education the notion of common good is a useful heuristic and objective that counters the attenuated notion of society in the market model. The chapter concludes with reflections on the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic in higher education, which highlights the problems of financing a collective approach to provision, but underlines the need for it.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/the-contributions-of-higher-education-3-contributions-to-global-ecology-and-the-common-good/

16 March 2023, CGHE webinar

Glen A. Jones, University of Toronto, Canada

John P. Haupt, University of Arizona, United States

Jenny J. Lee, University of Arizona, United States

Leading off in the second webinar in our CGHE series on the multiple contributions of higher education, Glen Jones in ‘The professoriate and public policy’ discusses the contributions of institutions to public policy, which are extensive in many countries. The chapter explores the range of interactions between the professoriate and government in almost every sector of government policy activity. It begins by establishing a basic framework for analysis, focusing on the sectoral nature of public policy, the role of policy networks, the organizational structure of universities, academic work and the specialization of knowledge. It then explores three types of interaction between the professoriate and government: as advisors/consultants to government, as advisors/consultants to other policy networks, and as members of an attentive public. The chapter discusses key challenges in each of these types of interaction, and how they contribute to public policy.

In ‘US-China collaboration in science for the global common good’, John Haupt and Jenny Lee note that researchers from China and the United States (US) are the two largest producers of global scientific publications, and works co-authored by Chinese and US researchers are by far the largest body of collaborative work in research. This collaboration plays a central role in the collective common good that is constituted by global science. The chapter examines the growth in measures of US-China bilateral and multilateral collaborations between 2001 and 2020 and examines patterns by field of study. China-US research outputs are mostly bilateral rather than multilateral – in terms of finance and research leadership the US is more dependent on China than vice versa – but the growth of China-US collaboration is associated with an increase in network connectedness and ‘density ‘ in which the evolution of China-US ties resembles larger trends in the rapidly growing global science system. However, the growing political disruption of US-China research collaboration might undermine this major contribution to the global common good.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/the-contributions-of-higher-education-2-contributions-to-government-and-to-global-science/

14 March 2023, CGHE webinar Brendan Cantwell, Michigan State University, USA Simon Marginson, University of Oxford, UK Daria Platonova, Higher School of Economics, Russia Anna Smolentseva, University of Cambridge, UK

The multiple contributions of higher education pose a challenging problem for both policy makers and scholars. There are no commonly agreed definitions and measures and the discussion is plagued by simplifications of a complex emergent reality. For example, policy makers often work with a narrow and reified notion of higher education as individual pecuniary benefits, coupled with limited public good spill-overs from the higher education ‘market’. This business model of higher education, familiar to policy economists, obscures much of the real work of the sector in student learning and development, and in relation to knowledge, thereby leading to under-estimation of most of its impacts in the economy, society, polity and culture. The new open access book Assessing the contributions of higher education broadens the discussion by examining different facets of higher education and its social connections, and tackles the conceptual and empirical challenges in devising an approach both rigorous and comprehensive. In the first webinar in this special CGHE series on the findings of the book, Simon Marginson will introduce the main themes and list the chapters. He will then pass to his fellow editors who will discuss their own chapters.
To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/the-contributions-of-higher-education-1-seeing-higher-education-as-a-state-seeing-higher-education-and-society/

9 March 2023, CGHE Webinar

Naseeb K. Bhangal, Michigan State University 

Tasnim A. Ema, University of Dhaka 

Riyad A. Shahjahan, Michigan State University  

This webinar reports insights from published research which seeks to decenter the Global North knowledge production about ‘work–life balance’ (WLB) in academia by applying a temporal gaze to illuminate WLB possibilities in Bangladeshi academia where institutional WLB policies are absent. Drawing on Adam’s (2008) timescapes and Flaherty’s (2002) time work concepts, we focus on Bangladeshi women faculty’s experiences as an example of how a temporal gaze can help illuminate the interrelationships between time, gender, and life transitions underlying women faculty accounts of WLB in a Global South context. Drawing on the narratives of three Bangladeshi women faculty in different career stages and family statuses, we probe how women faculty manipulate, control, or customize their temporal experience (i.e. temporal agency) in response to local gendered norms and life transitional episodes (e.g. separation, academic mobility, illness, and/or retirement). We demonstrate how WLB is not a static outcome, but a work-in-progress, and that a temporal lens helps illuminate multiple time work strategies that emerge during life transitional episodes. We argue that a temporal lens troubles the outcome (quantitative, clock-oriented) and spatial orientation of WLB practices, as our participants constantly blurred work/home boundaries refracted across social positionality, gendered norms, and relationships. By examining the temporal dimensions underlying WLB, we contribute a comprehensive understanding of the interrelationships between academic/personal life, various roles, and temporality in a South Asian context.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/a-temporal-gaze-on-work-life-balance-in-academia-time-gender-and-transitional-episodes/

28 February 2023, CGHE webinar 

Søren S. E. Bengtsen, Aarhus University, Denmark 

Lynn McAlpine, University of Oxford  

The Humanities doctoral education in Denmark is experiencing various, and sometimes contradictory, pulls from a variety of different stakeholders. To facilitate career trajectories within academia, Humanities PhD students in Denmark are encouraged to choose the format of the article-based dissertation (dissertation by publication) rather than the traditional monograph. This means that Humanities research is sometimes experienced as being forced into a less hermeneutic and more positivistic, or instrumental, epistemic mindset. At the same time, alternative academic careers are pushed from within the institution in collaboration with career and entrepreneurial units, where the focus is increasingly put on generic competences and transferrable skills relevant for the industry and professional job market. Here, the humanities researchers experience being alienated within vocabularies and trajectories of innovation and entrepreneurship. Further, the Humanities PhD is increasingly funded through external and private funding and partnerships, where individual PhD students becomes part of a research team headed by a PI who is also the main supervisor. The partnership-model directs the focus of the Humanities PhD towards a more strongly predetermined, professionally and instrumentally oriented research design – often in conflict with disciplinary and institutional traditions. The manifold transitions in the Danish Humanities PhD risk creating a ‘torn curriculum’ with implications such as academic ‘schizophrenia’, epistemic confusion, and pedagogical uncertainty – especially in relation to blurred forms of ownership and agency in relation to the PhD seen in the complexity of various stakeholders within and beyond the university. On the other hand, however, there are also signs of new forms of student and supervisor agency, an increased interdisciplinary awareness, and a move from an individual towards a collective understanding of ownership and collaboration.  

The seminar presents the background, conceptual framing, and preliminary findings from the research project ‘Research for impact: integrating research and societal impact in the Humanities PhD’, a 4-year Sapere Aude research project funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF). The research project is unique in its way of both researching through a multi-layered (national policy, through experiences of institutional leaders and PhD students) and multi-modal (policy documents, job descriptions, and qualitative interviews) approach. Also, the project takes an interdisciplinary research approach drawing from both from philosophy, anthropology, and social theory. For instance, the research undertaken in the work-packages of the project combines an anthropology of policy with critical discourse analysis of qualitative semi-structured interviews with Heads of Graduate Schools at five Danish universities, together with research leaders, doctoral supervisors, and doctoral students. Also, the project has a philosophical anchoring, analysis and critical discussion cutting across the work-packages, with basis in critical realism and speculative realism.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/transitions-in-the-humanities-phd-a-case-study-from-denmark/

23 February 2023, CGHE webinar 

YU Baohua Lucy, Lingnan University  

Traditional sending countries of international students in East Asia have emerged as increasingly desirable higher education destinations. Yet little is known about the experiences of international students in East Asia as most research focuses on those in the Anglophone West. This study aims to study the intercultural communication, adaptation, and acculturation strategies of international students in Hong Kong. In-depth interviews were conducted with international students from other Asian countries (n=14) and Western countries (n=10). The findings identified a paradox between the international students’ enthusiasm to engage with students from other backgrounds and a lack of interactions and friendships with local students. First, cultural and language differences were perceived to create a wall separating them from the local students, inhibiting a cosmopolitan learning environment. Second, international students primarily identified with peers with a shared national or cultural background who could provide a readymade community. Third, international students often reported sociocultural adaptation challenges and feelings of being outsiders, potentially exacerbating psychological adaptation problems. Based on these findings, a framework is proposed depicting interactive and responsive relationships among intercultural communication, adaptation, and acculturation. It is concluded that it is important to put forward initiatives aimed at realising the benefits of international student mobility for both international and local students.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/international-education-in-hong-kong-paradoxes-in-intercultural-communication-adaptation-and-acculturation-strategies/

21 February 2023, CGHE webinar

Golo Henseke, IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society

The share of graduates in the British workforce more than doubled between 1995 and 2020. Using worker-reported job task data from the Skills and Employment Survey 1997-2017, this presentation develops, validates and deploys a novel index of graduate skill use to assess the state of the graduate labour market in Britain. Changes in job tasks drove the expansion of degree requirements until 2006 but decoupled during the period of the Great Recession. Compared with 1997-2006, the growth of graduate skill use slowed over 2006-2017. Nonetheless, typical graduate skill use by education level remained remarkably stable over 1997-2017. To estimate the wage returns to graduate skills use, we develop a pseudo-panel analysis that accounts for the close relationship between tasks and individual skills. Relying on differential exposure to task-biased technological change, we identify a substantial return to graduate skill use. According to the estimates, differences in graduate skills use explain 80% of the typical wage gap between graduates and non-graduates.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/tracking-graduate-skills-demand/

16 February 2023, CGHE webinar   

Yusuf Ikbal Oldac, Lingnan University  

Global science is set to experience different times in the 2020s, as it increasingly becomes multipolar. China surpassed the US in terms of the number of scientific papers in 2020 in most scientific databases. This scenario is expected to have implications not only in East Asia but also beyond the region. Against this backdrop, this paper investigated the scientific influence of the US-China competition on six major Muslim-majority science systems. Multiple data sources were used to collect data for the bibliometric analyses, which included the trend analysis of collaboration patterns, discipline-based collaborations, authorship patterns for responsibility in collaborations and citation premium of collaborations with the US versus China. All the analyses consistently demonstrated that the US is losing out its scientific influence on the selected Muslim-majority science systems to China. Analysis results indicated that an astonishing increase in collaborations with China-based scientists occurred in the last decade. Half of the selected Muslim-majority science systems collaborated more with China-based scientists, whereas the other half collaborated more with the US in 2021, indicating a fifty-fifty split. The collaborations with China-based authors garnered higher citation premiums for the selected Muslim-majority science systems than the collaborations with the US.  

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/tectonic-shifts-in-global-science-us-china-scientific-competition-and-the-muslim-majority-science-systems-in-multipolarising-science/

14 February 2023, CGHE webinar   

Yuting Shen, University of Hong Kong 

Yanzhen Zhu, University of Hong Kong 

Lili Yang, University of Hong Kong  

Speakers: Yuting Shen, Yanzhen Zhu 

Discussant: Lili Yang Chair: Simon Marginson  

Yuting Shen: ‘Incorporating Traditional Chinese Knowledge in Research: The Case of Chinese Humanities and Social Sciences’

Yanzhen Zhu: ‘Transforming Chinese intellectual traditions into explicit knowledge: Pains and gains of China’s scholars’

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/traditional-chinese-knowledge-as-global-resources/

9 February 2023, CGHE webinar   

Jihyun Lee, Ulster University  

International education is both political and ethical in nature. However, for too long it has focused on economics, placing the recruitment and retention of students (and hence the extraction of student fees) above the question of political and ethical relationships between key actors involved in international student mobility (ISM). Importantly, discussions of the politics and ethics of ISM have been thus far relatively underexplored from an institutional perspective. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 55 non-EU international students who were enrolled in or had recently completed postgraduate degrees from three UK universities, this paper aims to expose how international student mobility in and through UK higher education is underpinned by relations of power or domination. Specifically, with a focus on the institutional contexts which influence international students’ experiences during and after their studies, my research underlines the significance of a place of study (in this case, individual higher education institutions) and brings into question the homogenised construction of international students and their experiences in the UK. This study has wider implications for policy and practice in terms of highlighting the political and social responsibility of universities for their international students, as well as facilitating discussions of inclusivity and social differences amongst internationally mobile students within and beyond the UK.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/is-international-education-ethical-and-political-enough-rethinking-the-ethics-and-politics-of-international-student-mobility/

7 February 2023, CGHE webinar   

Milica Popović, Central European University in Vienna 

Hannah Jones, University of Warwick  

Our talk will consider the discursive and legislative curbing of academic freedom in the name of unifying national memory narratives. In a time when illiberal regimes seem on the rise, as do illiberal elements within so-called liberal democratic regimes, academic freedom finds itself at the centre of memory wars. Hegemonic national narratives, through legislation and open public attacks, stand juxtaposed to the quest for knowledge and historical research.  

In Poland, memory laws are interfering with academic freedom, to the point of scholars undergoing judicial prosecution based on a suit filed by the Polish Anti-Defamation League. In Russia and Belarus, the definition of what constitutes a “rehabilitation of Nazism” was expanded, together with associated penalties. In 2018, in China a law prohibited “misrepresentation, defamation, and attempts to deny the deeds and spirits of heroes and martyrs, or to praise or beautify invasions”. Yet, beyond the “usual suspects” we can note deterioration within the Western European contexts. In the UK a controversial Higher Education (Freedom of Speech Bill) is causing much concern about whose freedom will be protected or restricted, following government ministers’ statements about defunding research into histories of empire and refusing places on museum boards to academics conducting decolonial research. In France the government has been calling for investigation of “unrepublican” scholars while in the German context, scholars like Achille Mbembe and Michael Rothberg have been attacked widely in public media. Censoring bills have increased in number across the United States and in the European Parliament, declarations and resolutions have been adopted aimed at specific interpretations of historical narratives.  

How can historians and memory scholars’ pursuit for truth advance in the times of legislated history and regulated truth? How do historians and memory scholars keep their academic integrity in the face of heavy legislative threats, judiciary processes and possible imprisonments? To what extent do these frameworks influence self-censorship and impact whole disciplines?

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/legislating-history-rebuilding-the-nation-no-freedom-for-academics/

31 January 2023, CGHE webinar   

Nadiya Ivanenko, University of Oxford  

[Note: This webinar was originally recorded as a video and prominently features several images related to the topic. For this reason, we recommend viewing the original recording and/or presentation slides alongside the podcast. You can find these on the CGHE website: https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/higher-education-in-ukraine-past-overview-present-state-and-future-perspectives/]

The presentation gives an overview of the development of higher education in Ukraine focusing on contemporary education policies and some of the problems the country faces in implementing education reform. It provides brief historical survey of the higher education in Ukraine, past and present education development in the country. It covers policy and structure of the Ukrainian education system and present key education issues in the country. The talk also presents the social and political issues which impact on the higher education system and governments’ responses to recent local, regional and global events. The presentation mostly focuses on the modern reform of the higher education system in Ukraine. The primary purpose of it was to achieve true quality improvement in higher education and the transformation of Ukrainian educational system to become truly competitive in the European Union. The presentation analyzes the provisions of the new Law on Higher Education which are underpinned by a democratic and pro-European agenda. It follows the progress of the reform of the higher education system in Ukraine, implementation of the Law, significant challenges in its implementation, arising out not only of the long-established nature of the post-Soviet higher education system, but also from the continued war in the eastern region of the country and present Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine.  

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/higher-education-in-ukraine-past-overview-present-state-and-future-perspectives/

26 January 2023, CGHE webinar

Leonard Cheng, Lingnan University 

Mickey McDonald, Great Lakes Colleges Association  

Speakers: Leonard Cheng, Mickey McDonald 

Chair: Ka Ho Mok  

Leonard Cheng: “Arts and humanities may be down but will not be out: A perspective from East Asia’s liberal arts education, boya education and cultural quality education”   

Mickey McDonald: “A reflection on the status of liberal arts education in the U.S.” 

To view the original webinar video recording, abstracts, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/humanities-and-arts-east-and-west/

24 January 2023, CGHE webinar   

Marijk van der Wende, Utrecht University 

Rui Yang, University of Hong Kong  

Speakers: Marijk van der Wende, Rui Yang 

Chair: Simon Marginson  

Marijk van der Wende: ‘The Liberal Arts and Sciences in a changing European higher education landscape’  

The re-emergence of liberal arts and science education since the 1990s in European countries was seen as an innovation in higher education. The fact that this was in a way also a return to the classical approach of the curriculum known from the medieval European university, was over stemmed by the idea that this US model of undergraduate education could well fit an increasingly utilitarian context as driven by notions of knowledge economy and global competitiveness. 

It was seen as to contribute to the concurrent aims and expectations of the time: internationalization and interdisciplinarity of the curriculum, the development of 21st century skills, more selectivity (excellence) and differentiation at system level.  

But beyond these innovative and utilitarian features, how was the liberal aspect actually considered and perceived? What about the inherently related values of personal freedom and development, in relation to both curriculum as an individual and intellectual journey and community as a social and civic process? What about the local, national and global dimensions of the expected responsible citizenship as an outcome?  

The question whether it can actually be taken for granted that this implies democratic citizenship and whether a liberal education can exist in an illiberal context at all (Van der Wende & Kirby, 2016) deserves further reflection in the context of recent and seemingly ongoing developments in (and around) Europe.  

Liberal education became a target of illiberal regimes; the CEU was banned from Hungary and Smolny (St. Petersburg) was deemed by Russia “an undesirable organization” and closed. These trends seem to be part of illiberal reactions to higher education, associated with growing populism and (neo)nationalism. Yet illiberal trends may also come from within, associated with wokeness and cancel culture, and paradoxically perhaps, some liberal arts and science colleges in Europe seem to be hotspots of such trends.  

Rui Yang: ‘Invigorating China’s Soul: A Sustained Effort of Contemporary Chinese Academics in the Humanities and Social Sciences’  

Ever since China’s institutionalization of a modern knowledge system based exclusively on Western experience in the mid-19th century, Chinese thinkers turned to the West for truth. The system provides little space for China’s vast indigenous intellectual traditions. Meanwhile, Chinese traditions remain omnipresent and ubiquitous in the society. The fundamental differences between Chinese and Western traditions have created great difficulties for educators and the educated. Such struggles have continued well into the present. For over a century, China’s thinkers have never felt settled spiritually, and its formal education fails to serve the society most effectively. Globalization has now intensified the need for integrating both traditions on one hand, and provides unprecedented possibilities to achieve so on the other. This talk explores the desperate search for spiritual homeland by contemporary Chinese academics. It aims to interpret such efforts from a perspective of intellectual pluralism.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/humanities-and-arts-east-and-west/

19 January 2023, CGHE webinar   

Akiyoshi Yonezawa, Tohoku University 

Sae Shimauchi, Tokyo Metropolitan University, International Center  

Speakers: Akiyoshi Yonezawa, Sae Shimauchi 

Chair: James Robson  

In this webinar, we first overview the historical context of the humanities and liberal arts in East Asia, focusing on the bottlenecks in the humanities and social sciences in Japan. Then, we examine the practices of international undergraduate education by focusing on the liberal arts in five, mostly medium-sized, countries with quite different geopolitical contexts: the Netherlands, Australia, Malaysia, South Korea, and Japan. We analyze whether the reforms of undergraduate education in these countries are moving in the direction of global convergence or divergence based on the respective contexts of each country’s society and higher education system. We explore whether changes are based on intrinsic values and directions inherent to universities and higher education arising from their education and research activities, or extrinsic values and directions demanded by society and industry, such as human resource development and industrial innovation. Our findings show that no single direction can be argued to be a “global trend.” This implies that each country and university should carefully examine and identify the global landscape and the most relevant direction to pursue in terms of university education.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/gaining-international-perspectives-through-undergraduate-education-comparative-case-analysis-focusing-on-international-liberal-arts-provision/

17 January 2023, CGHE webinar 

Simon Shun-Man Ho, The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong (HSUHK)  

Speaker: Simon Shun-Man Ho 

Chair: Ka Ho Mok  

Seeing the limitations of many large research-intensive and technology-led universities, this talk will share with participants on our experience in developing and running a smaller liberal-art-oriented institution adopting the unique ‘Liberal + Professional’ education model. It is based on the belief that the purpose of undergraduate education is not solely to help students acquire better job prospects and economic purposes, but also to cultivate their personal values and transferrable core humanistic competencies, thus preparing them to tackle future work and life challenges with confidence and fulfilment. This allows students to have another option of undergraduate education to choose from.  

In this education model, ‘Liberal’ refers to a broad-based and cross-disciplinary approach to connect knowledge domains, facilitate thinking, and solve problems, with strong emphasis on humanities and social sciences. Students regardless of their majors are nurtured to appreciate the importance, power and uses (both economic and intrinsic) of humanities and arts.  

‘Professional’ means that many major programmes are of a professional nature, with the aim of equipping students with the in-depth competencies required to enter into chosen professions. Nevertheless, business, management and IT are treated as liberal arts subjects centred on ‘human values”.  

The aim is to nurture young talents with critical thinking, innovative minds, human caring attitudes, moral values and social responsibility. Graduates’ self-assessment and independent employers’ surveys inform that this education model has been effective in achieving our education missions. Some challenges and suggestions to enhance the role of arts and humanities will also be discussed.  

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/integrating-liberal-arts-and-professional-education/

12 January 2023, CGHE webinar   

James Robson, University of Oxford  

Speaker: James Robson 

Chair: Simon Marginson  

The purpose of Higher Education is increasingly framed in economic terms: as a means for graduates to gain a positional advantage in the labour market and increase their earnings while also ensuring ‘the economy’ is supplied with workers with the knowledge and skills demanded by employers. Consequently, graduate labour market outcomes and salary returns are increasingly used to measure the quality of education and training and as a key regulatory mechanism in Tertiary Education systems around the world. Arts and Humanities subjects, at an aggregate level, tend to provide relatively modest labour market returns to graduates, particularly compared to STEM and medical science subjects, and often face intense criticism for failing to provide students with the skills demanded by employers. Consequently, the Humanities find themselves in a rumbling state of crisis and having to justify their value and importance in the face of these critical economic discourses.  

Such justifications largely fall into three main arguments: approaches that emphasise the intrinsic value of the Humanities to society; approaches that emphasise the long term labour market value of transferable skills associated with humanities subjects for individual graduate; and arguments that emphasise the broader value of the creative industries to the economy at a macro level. However, neither sidestepping the economic critique or rooting justifications in economic orthodoxy has succeeded in providing a truly compelling response to concerns about poor employment outcomes or skills mismatch. The economic critiques and the different forms of advocacy rarely come together in meaningful dialogue.  

Therefore, in this presentation, I argue that there needs to be a fundamentally shift in the discourse and the mode of justifying the Humanities by problematising orthodox assumptions around and the role Humanities Graduates can and, in normative terms, should play in the economy. Using the concept of narrative, I will argue that the ‘narrative skills’ humanities graduates develop, while not necessarily closely aligned with technical skills demands, are key for increasingly fragile and uncertain labour markets marked by job churn, rapid transformation and technological development. They lead to resilient employees able to navigate economic uncertainty in a flexible manner. However, more importantly, narrative skills are crucial for envisioning new social and economic futures, imperative given the pressure for economic transformation in the face of the climate disaster. Therefore, in this webinar I will argue that the Humanities have a critical, normative role in developing graduates with the skills to become agents of meaningful economic change.  

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/resilience-flexibility-and-normativity-rethinking-the-role-of-the-humanities-in-the-economy/

10 January 2023, CGHE webinar 

Ka Ho Mok, Lingnan University (Hong Kong)

Speaker: Ka Ho Mok
Chair: James Robson

In the last decade or so, people have begun to question the value of university education when come to graduate employment and employability issues. In particular, some commentators even raise the question about the relevance and value of liberal arts education the contemporary society with increasing attention given to STEM subjects for career preparation of young people. This presentation sets out against the context of COVID-19 pandemic crisis to critically examine the role of liberal arts education in Asia, with particular reference to examine the value of liberal arts education in preparing responsible citizens for the challenging times. The critical reflections of the role of liberal arts education in Asia would offer us comparative insights when repurposing university education in the context with intensified pressure for vocationalizing higher education.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/repurposing-university-education-the-role-of-liberal-arts-education-in-asia/

3 Nov 2022, CGHE Webinar

Simon Marginson, University of Oxford

The concept of ‘internationalisation’ in higher education has absorbed remarkable attention in the last three decades. Papers by Jane Knight and colleagues in 1994-2004 established broad support for a practice-oriented definition. The most cited version, intended to constitute a common approach across the world, stated: ‘Internationalisation at the national, sector and institutional levels is defined as the process of integrating an international, intercultural, or global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of post-secondary education’. Here internationalisation was seen as controlled by agents in higher education, in contrast with ‘globalisation’ which was seen as primarily economic, external to higher education and potentially dangerous to educational values. In this ideological reading internationalisation, operating within the nation-state framework, was seen as a filter and defence in relation to global forces. The formula ‘globalisation is changing the world of internationalisation’ while ‘internationalisation is changing the world of education’ became widely accepted.

However, since the mid 2000s and especially since Brandenburg and de Wit (2011) suggested ‘the end of internationalisation?’ it has been evident that all is not happy in the internationalisation camp. There has been a raft of redefinitions, supplementary clauses, and unsuccessful calls for a new paradigm. On one hand, the definition is too inclusive: national governments are wedded to global knowledge economy agendas, and commercial cross-border education, rankings and competition have undermined the ideal of a benign internationalisation. These pathologies cannot all be blamed on economic globalisation.

On the other hand, the definition is too exclusive: there is more to global relations in higher education and knowledge than economic competition; and there has been growing pushback from non-Western countries for whom Western-driven internationalisation is synonymous not with enhanced agency and control but the suppression of agency, in continuity with the colonial era. Arguably, matters can only move forward if we step outside the definition, its ambiguous universal ideal and its constrained geography and geo-politics.

In the light of developments in cross-border higher education the paper will review the discussion of ‘internationalisation’, isolate three flaws in the definitional approach, and suggest an alternative terminology for both scholarship and practice.

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/is-the-idea-wrong-or-is-the-flaw-in-reality-on-the-definition-of-internationalisation-of-higher-education/

8 December 2022, CGHE webinar 

- Xin Xu, University of Oxford 

- Andrea Braun Střelcová, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science 

- Giulio Marini, IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society 

- Futao Huang, Hiroshima University (Japan) 

- Yuzhuo Cai, Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland  

The past decades have witnessed the increasing cross-border mobility of academics, although the COVID-19 pandemic has brought significant challenges to it. Asia, or the broadly conceptualised ‘Global East’, has developed several attractive destinations for international academics. Among them, mainland China is the focus of this webinar.  

Notably, the most recent literature has identified a new cohort of international academics in China, who are non-Chinese academics with long-term and full-time positions. This webinar explores this new trend. The speakers will present a critical review of the existing scholarship, and report findings from three empirical research projects. They will address the following questions: Who are international academics working in China? What are their work roles, their motivations and challenges in pursuing a career in Chinese academia? Are they satisfied with their (academic) life in China, and will they stay? Can China attract international academics on a large scale in the long-run?  

Speakers will unpack conceptual and methodological ambiguities in the existing research, and propose a new typology to define international academics in mainland China, and discuss future research agendas in this area.  

To view the original webinar video recording, presentation slides, and chat transcript, please visit the CGHE website at https://www.researchcghe.org/events/cghe-seminar/international-academics-in-mainland-china-what-do-we-know-and-what-do-we-need-to-know/