Dear colleagues,
Volume 38, no. 6 of the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management is the last issue for the year, and this is to be my last year as editor. After 16 years, it is time for someone else to have a go! However, I will be assembling one more issue that will come out in 2017, as the copy deadline for the first issue of 2017 occurs during November 2016. The Journal has changed considerably over its 38-year life (to date), including its name change in 1997. In the spirit of both information and self-plagiarism, I refer you to ‘The Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management: an output analysis’ (Dobson, Citation2009).
And so onto the papers in this issue. Authors in Australia, India, Nigeria, Sweden and the UK are the presenters of this issue’s wisdom.
The first offering is on a topic of great interest to many Journal readers: the role of professional staff in ensuring positive student outcomes. Carroll Graham and Julie-Anne Regan identify four key factors which enable or inhibit the contributions of professional staff to successful outcomes, in this comparative case study of Australia and the UK. Rather than me spilling the beans here, please go and read the paper right now!
The humanities are often subjected to unfair criticism from political and public fronts, particularly from those with a blinkered view of the world. Iain Hay’s paper presents responses to critics, including expounding some of the strengths of the humanities. Fight on! We have no choice.
Transnational education, the provision of programmes overseas by a parent institution, is a topic of wide discussion in contemporary higher education. Sally Stafford and John Taylor explain how the impact of institutional management on the success of such ventures is much under-researched. Read all about it!
Australian campuses are increasingly diverse, not the least because of the huge proportion of international students studying on most campuses. Looking at religious diversity, Adam Possami and his colleagues present analysis of a survey of Muslim students at several universities in the state of New South Wales in Australia. They argue that these universities are ‘post-secular’, but were able to discover that city campuses tend to be more secular than regional and suburban ones, but that regional campuses tend to make a Muslim student more religious.
Leadership is a critical requirement in the contemporary higher education setting. Christine Blomqvist and her Swedish colleagues present a study of leadership challenges in the organisation of strategic research centres. They have identified four main themes of leadership challenges, and conclude that leadership and effective administration are vital for research collaboration.
Moving to Africa, Kubiat M. Ineme and Mfon E. Ineme examine the regular strike action that besets Nigerian higher education. Their paper reports on a study that examines the impact of job satisfaction and burnout on attitudes towards strike actions among employees of a Nigerian university, finding that employees with low job satisfaction and high burnout were more likely to support strikes. A tough problem to overcome for education authorities!
Finally, the focus is India. Niraj Kumar, a professor of rural management, considers agricultural higher education in India, seeking ways to make agricultural higher education more competitive. Based on the results of an extensive literature analysis, the paper suggests a three-level strategy for the implementation of marketing orientation in institutions of agricultural higher education.
Well, that’s it for another issue.