This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

Back cover text: If the new fin de siècle marks a recurrence of the real, Bent Flyvbjerg’s Rationality and Power epitomizes that development and sets new standards for social and political inquiry. The Danish town of Aalborg is to Flyvbjerg what Florence was to Machiavelli: a laboratory for understanding the real workings of power, and for grasping what they mean to our more general concerns of social and political organization. Politics, administration, and planning are examined in ways that allow  a rare, in-depth understanding. The reader witnesses, firsthand, the classic and endless drama which defines what modernity and democracy are and can be.

This article presents the theoretical and methodological considerations behind a research method which the author calls ‘phronetic planning research’. Such research sets out to answer four questions of power and values for specific instances of planning: (1) Where are we going with planning? (2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What, if anything, should we do about it? A central task of phronetic planning research is to provide concrete examples and detailed narratives of the ways in which power and values work in planning and with what consequences to whom, and to suggest how relations of power and values could be changed to work with other consequences. Insofar as planning situations become clear, they are clarified by detailed stories of who is doing what to whom. Clarifications of that kind are a principal concern for phronetic planning research and provide the main link to praxis.

Taken together, the works of Jurgen Habermas and Michel Foucault highlight an essential tension in modernity. This is the tension between the normative and the real, between what should be done and what is actually done. Understanding this tension is crucial to understanding modern democracy, what it is and what it could be. It has been argued that an effective way of making democracy stronger is to strengthen civil society. This article contains a comparative analysis of the central ideas of Habermas and Foucault as they pertain to the question of democracy and civil society. More specifically, the discourse ethics of Habermas is contrasted with the power analytics and ethics of Foucault evaluating their usefulness for those interested in understanding, and bringing about, democratic social change.

Employing a theoretical framework derived from the policy innovation and diffusion literature, this research examines how variations over time and across state sociopolitical systems influence states' adoption of accountability policies in higher education. Specifically, factors influencing the adoption of three kinds of performance-accountability policies for public higher education in the period 1979-2002 were investigated. Findings from the event history analysis supported the authors' original hypotheses only in part; the primary drivers ofpolicy adoption were legislative party strength and higher-education governance arrangements, but the direction of these influences varied across the policies studied.

While the provision of higher education is becoming ever diversified, increased mobility among professionals requires greater standardization among qualifications so that they can be assessed by national authorities for decisions relating to recognition.  New methods to assess qualifications are also needed to combat the academic fraud that accompanies diversification of higher education. While national authorities may lack the competence to make judgments about the quality of academic programmes and institutions, there is little comparability of standards when academic institutions are both providers and judges of their own services. For this reason, external quality assurance is most commonly organized through the creation of independent administrative structures, i.e agencies that commonly function as professional buffer organizations between public authorities and higher education institutions. To meet with dynamics of change, new methods of quality assurance such as accreditation systems have become a concern in higher education and will be emphasize in this paper.

In this paper we argue that the use of the communicative theory of Jürgen Habermas in planning theory is problematic because it hampers an understanding of how power shapes planning. We posit an alternative approach based on the power analytics of Michel Foucault which focuses on ‘what is actually done’, as opposed to Habermas’s focus on ‘what should be done’. We discuss how the Foucauldian stance problematises planning, asking difficult questions about the treatment of legitimacy, rationality, knowledge and spatiality. We conclude that Foucault offers a type of analytic planning theory which offers better prospects than does Habermas for those interested in understanding and bringing about democratic social change through planning.

This study describes the quality of academic worklife (QAWL) within a comprehensive university in Australia. Academics responded to the Academic Work Environment Survey, a diagnostic instrument designed to assess the relationships between and among academics' demographic characteristics (age, gender, position, discipline area), work environment perceptions (role, job, supervisor, structure, sector characteristics), and work attitudes (self-estrangement, organisational commitment). Findings revealed positive QAWL features such as role clarity, motivating job characteristics, and low levels of self-estrangement (alienation). Negative QAWL features included role overload, low levels of job feedback, and limited opportunities to in¯uence university decisionmaking. Comments indicated that many academics feel disenchanted and demoralised with the tenets and practices of managerialism. The study concludes that comprehensive universities suffer from strategic dissonance. They want to deliver cost ef® ciencies and maintain institutional reputation (i.e. centralise), but also want to serve distinct market sectors and expand their revenue base (i.e. decentralise).

This article provides an answer to what has been called the biggest problem in theorizing and understanding planning: the ambivalence about power found among planning researchers, theorists, and students. The author narrates how he came to work with issues of power and gives an example of how the methodology he developed for power studies—phronetic planning research—may be employed in practice. Phronetic planning research follows the tradition of power studies running from Machiavelli and Nietzsche to Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. It focuses on four value-rational questions: (1) Where are we going with planning? (2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What should be done? These questions are exemplified for a specific instance of Scandinavian urban planning. The author finds that the questions, and their answers, make a difference to planning in practice. They make planning research matter.

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

The university branch campus is a phenomenon on the rise, but we have limited knowledge of the strategic choices underlying the start of these international ventures. The objective of this paper is to shed light on the motivations and decisions of universities to engage (or not) with the establishment of international branch campuses. As a point of departure, institutional theory has been selected to frame the potential motives for starting an international branch campus. Secondary literature, including professional journals and university reports and websites, has been analysed to obtain information that alludes to the motivations of universities for adopting particular strategies. It was found that university managements’ considerations can be explained by the concepts of legitimacy, status, institutional distance, risk-taking and risk-avoidance. We argue that universities should avoid decisions based on a single dimension, such as legitimacy, but rather consider a broad spectrum of motivations with reference to a range of theories and concepts rooted in different disciplines and traditions.

This paper identifies positive (motivating) and negative (demotivating) sources of academic work motivation in Australian universities. In 1998, the Academic Work Environment Survey (Winter, Taylor, & Sarros, 2000) was administered to a stratified sample (five positions, five disciplines) of 2,609 academics in four types of university (research, metropolitan, regional, university of technology). A total of 1,041 usable surveys were returned (response rate of 40 per cent). Across the sample, academics reported moderate levels of work motivation. Work motivation was found to be relatively strong at professorial levels but weak at lecturer levels. Quantitative and qualitative findings indicated the work environment in academe is motivating when roles are clear, job tasks are challenging, and supervisors exhibit a supportive leadership style. The work environment is demotivating where there is role overload, low job feedback, low participation, and poor recognition and rewards practices. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of study findings for university leadership.

Openness is a cherished value, if problematical practice, in the governance of public-sector institutions in the United States. Although the nation enjoys a long tradition of espoused commitment to the principle of “open government,” legal guarantees of citizens’ right to information about their government are a relatively modern creation. In the American states, these guarantees prominently take the form of open-meeting and records laws. Often known as sunshine laws, these provisions became widely institutionalized in state statute during the 1960s–70s, when, amidst the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, and other widely publicized episodes of corruption at the state level, public con.dence in governmental institutions and leaders plummeted. Although these laws vary in form from one state to the next, they share a similar purpose—to make public bodies more transparent and accountable by providing citizens with reliable access to and knowledge about the conditions and deliberations of those bodies.

Niccolò Machiavelli, the founder of modern political and administrative thought, made clear that an understanding of politics requires distinguishing between formal politics and what later, with Ludwig von Rochau, would become known as Realpolitik. No such distinction has been employed in the study of rationality. Yet I will argue that distinguishing between formal rationality and real rationality is as important for the understanding of rationality and planning as the distinction between formal politics and Realpolitik has been for understanding politics.

Purpose: This study highlights the strategies undertaken by " entrepreneurial " universities to leverage their bottom-line especially in response to withdrawals of public funding. Internationalisation has been the most prominent from setting-up overseas branch campuses to aggressive recruitment drives for international students; and more recently, the launch of new programmes to attract a wider market. Design/ methodology/ approach: Based on a documentary analysis, this study explores the future of curriculum development in entrepreneurial universities, using narratives around an " unconventional course " launch as a case illustration. Findings: The findings reveal an interesting interaction of innovation, opportunity recognition, risk taking, and proactiveness at play within a university environment. The study also highlights how instructors have, in the past, based their syllabi on celebrities – from Georgetown University to the University of South Carolina, Un...

Excellence and frontier research have made inroads into European research policymaking and structure political agendas, funding programs and evaluation practices. The two concepts travelled a long way from the United States and have derived from contexts outside of science (and policy). Following their conceptual journey, we ask how excellence and frontier research have percolated into European science and higher education policies and how they have turned into lubricants of competition that buttress an ongoing reform process in Europe.

During the last decade, several countries across the Middle and Far East have established higher education hubs, some of which have grown rapidly by attracting foreign universities to set up international branch campuses. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is by far the largest host of international branch campuses globally, having over forty providers at the end of 2009. The UAE higher education market has become highly competitive and, in the private sector, supply currently exceeds demand. This paper explores and analyses the outcomes and impacts of this market situation on student recruitment, the student experience, quality and institutional strategies. The long-term viability of international branch campuses in the UAE is also considered, in the context of local political and social issues.

Exploring how classroom attributes affect student satisfaction and performance in higher education classrooms continues to be a critical initiative among educators and researchers. Although specific classroom attributes and their impacts on student satisfaction and performance have been investigated independently, a holistic investigation of many of these attributes and their individual and cumulative impacts on student perceptions of their learning environments is missing. This paper takes a statistical approach to assess ambient, spatial, and technological attributes that can be found in higher education classrooms through an online survey conducted in six classrooms in a university. The paper provides insight for future evaluation of higher education learning environments by linking two Likert scales: one rating student satisfaction with classroom attributes and the other rating the impact of these attributes on student performance, and by analyzing the relationships between reported perceptions and student evaluations of different conditions. The results revealed that student perceptions rely heavily on spatial attributes, specifically visibility and furniture, and ambient attributes, specifically air quality and temperature, which are highly impacted by the design, management and maintenance of classrooms. The paper also investigated the impacts of non-classroom factors, including gender, seating location, cumulative GPA, college year and expected course grade, on student perceptions of learning environments. Results showed that perceptions of visibility, acoustics and furniture were more sensitive to non-classroom factors, followed by temperature, air quality, artificial lighting, room layout and software.

The growth in the number of international branch campuses (IBCs) has been one of the most striking developments in the internationalization of higher education in recent years.  IBCs are overwhelmingly branches of universities in the developed ‘West’.  The United States, the United Kingdom and Australia dominate provision.  In contrast, IBCs are concentrated in the Middle-East and Asia.  The cultural distance between the home and host countries of many IBCs is considerable.  This distance poses a major challenge for the successful management of an IBC.  Should it localize its curriculum and pedagogy to better meet the learning styles and educational needs of its students or should it provide an education experience that is comparable to that enjoyed by students on the home campus?  This paper takes as its theoretical framework the global integration – local responsiveness (I-R) paradigm.  Using an exploratory research design, it finds that the I-R paradigm can be operationalized for IBCs, to predict how faculty, the curriculum and research are likely to be localized in response to pressure from an IBC’s main internal and external stakeholders.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between employee engagement and employee job satisfaction in the Uganda Management Institute. A cross-sectional survey design was used with the target sample size being 118. Purposive, stratified and systematic sampling techniques were used to select respondents. Data analysis involved frequencies and percentages, Spearman rank correlation, coefficient of determination, regression, and ANOVA. There was a moderate positive relationship between employee engagement and employee job satisfaction. Employee engagement accounted for 21.3% of variance in employee job satisfaction; hence there is a relationship between employee engagement and engagement job satisfaction.

There has been no shortage of definitions of the concept of “critical thinking” over the years and the concept has been subject to much detailed scholarly work. In social and educational terms critical thinking is an important topic. Of late, critical thinking has also been widely discussed in the popular media, and the concept has been regarded as one of the most important graduate outcomes expected of a university education. However, despite this, scholars have yet to arrive at a holistic conception of critical thinking—a model of critical thinking as it were—that might usefully underpin the range of considerations about critical thinking that occur in the higher education literature. This paper: (1) reviews the various definitions and approaches to critical thinking, and (2) incorporates them into a single, coherent model. A number
of disagreements in critical thinking scholarship are outlined as ‘axis disputes’ arising from the proposed model.

In Norway, as in other western countries, the public sector has been facing administrative reforms influenced by New Public Management, NPM. The ideological foundation behind
NPM asserts that public sector organizations can improve their overall performance by introducing managerialism, technology and values emanating from the private sector. The NPM-influenced reforms have taken different trajectories in  different
countries, but their purposes and approaches are rather similar, namely: 1) increased efficiency, 2) enhanced accessibility for clients/users, 3) reduce public consumption, and 4) increase managerial accountability. This chapter focuses on the
last aspect, i.e. on how public sector managers are dealing with new institutional frameworks introduced by the aforementioned reforms. Management, or the lack of it, is both seen as one of the problems but also as a solution to the different problems facing the sector.

Leadership development (LD) activity and its effectiveness has not been explored rigorously across changing university settings globally. As Higher Education (HE) settings change radically throughout the world, HE professionals are operating in more uncertain environments, and leaders are taking increasingly complex and diverse approaches to their leadership roles. LD activities therefore become important in supporting this highly complex context, yet little is known in the literature about LD and its impact in HE. We examine peer-reviewed work on LD in HE settings globally to understand what may be learned about its content, processes, outcomes and impact. Our results suggest the current literature is small-scale, fragmented and often theoretically weak, with many different and co-existing models, approaches and methods, and little consensus on what may be suitable and effective in the HE context. We reflect on this state of play and develop a novel theoretical approach for designing LD activity in HEIs.

Knowledge transfer between universities and organizations is essential, not only for the organizations involved but also for the broader innovation system. Understanding the factors that drive or inhibit this process thus becomes a priority. Yet, the increasingly prolific academic literature dealing with university-business cooperation possesses a strong focus on barriers rather than drivers and only examines few of the cooperation activities that exist in practice. This paper offers a comprehensive review and analysis of an extensive set of barriers and drivers across seven university-business cooperation activities with a large sample of European academics from 33 countries. Results highlight that while the identified drivers significantly affect the development of all cooperation activities, barriers have more diverse effects. While significantly limiting research and valorization activities, they barely impact cooperation in education. Additionally, results show that even if academics perceive no barriers they still may not cooperate with business if there are no drivers in place. This paper concludes by discussing the relevant implications for research, management and policy development regarding university-business cooperation, leading to directions for future research.

The main purpose of the article was to identify and present the current situation and changes in higher education in the field of electricity and energy studies in the European Union countries. The specific objectives include determining the degree of concentration of education in the fields of electricity and energy in the EU countries, showing the directions of their changes, types of dominant education in this field, establishing the correlation between education in the fields of electricity and energy and the parameters assessing the achievement of circular economy assumptions in the energy sector. All Member States of the European Union were deliberately selected for research. The research period covered the years 2013-2018. The source of the materials is a literature review on the subject and Eurostat data. For the analysis and presentation of materials, methods such as descriptive, tabular, graphical, dynamics indicators with a constant basis, Gini concentration coefficient, concentration analysis using the Lorenz curve, coefficient of variation, Pearson's linear correlation coefficient were used. A high concentration of education in the fields of electricity and energy was found in several EU countries, the largest in countries with the highest energy consumption, i.e., in France and Poland. Changes in the level of concentration practically did not take place, only in the case of master's studies, there was an increase in concentration. However, the EU countries did not differ significantly in terms of the structure of the number of students studying electricity and energy.

This paper analyses the ranking of universities within the socio-political context of
neoliberalism and the organisational context of new managerialism. It examines the forces that
have facilitated the emergence of the ranking industry and the ideologies underpinning the
so-called ‘global’ university rankings. What the paper shows is that rankings are a politically
inspired mode of governance; they are designed to ensure that universities are regulated and controlled
in accordance with market values. The seemingly objective character of rankings, in particular
the use of numbers, creates an impression that what is of value in education can be simply
counted, hierarchically ordered and uncontrovertibly judged. The simplicity and accessibility of
rankings deflects attention from their political and moral purposes. Rankings are reconstituting
the academy, for both academics and students; they are a new mode of external governance
through which market values are reframing the social relations of education. They have altered
the cognitive and moral frames through which university education is being appraised. The paper
calls for a debate on the public interest objectives of universities in the context of growing market
regulation

Quality assurance (QA) regimes have become an increasingly dominant regulatory tool in the management of higher education sectors around the world. By one estimate, nearly half the countries in the world now have quality assurance systems or QA regulatory bodies for higher education. This paper explores the emergence and spread of QA regimes, the coalescence of regulatory logics around qualifications frameworks, and the broad confluence of such approaches in terms of their impact on the historically contested relationship between the state and university. By focusing on the interlocking regulatory logics provided by QA, the article explores how such approaches impose quasi-market, competitive based rationalities premised on neo-liberal managerialism using a policy discourse that is often informed by conviction rather than evidence.

The global landscape of higher education is an uneven field where
players like nation-states are placed in hierarchical and centre-periphery relations. This paper focuses on the global field of international student mobility (ISM) and investigates China’s place in the field using an analytical framework consisting of three key categories of ‘capital’: economic, human, and symbolic. Drawing on existing scholarship and author’s first-hand ethnographic research, the paper examines the case of China as both a source and a destination of ISM, and analyses the flows and accrual of these three forms of capital as consequences of outbound and inbound student mobilities. Analyses show that in a global ISM field characterised by asymmetries and inequalities, China’s place is arguably semi-peripheral economically and symbolically. It is argued that this country-focused macro perspective complements existing ISM scholarship’s emphasis on social reproduction at individual and private levels.

In the existing literature of knowledge exchange (KE) and higher education, there is limited but emerging cluster of research which undertakes a comprehensive analysis of various types of higher education institutions and patterns of KE engagement. Employing the empirical example of Hong Kong, this paper examines the interconnections between institutional types and patterns of knowledge exchange (KE) activities in the context of a global city. It found that during the short history of KE policies and activities, all public universities in Hong Kong have been building their capacities for this new intellectual premise in the last decade. Meanwhile, disciplinary comprehensiveness and research/education intensity of the universities affect their institutional responses to the global trend of KE. The typology of higher education institutions suggested by this paper puts forward a perspective to further understand the institutional patterns of KE in the twenty-first century.

The Arab world stretches from the Indian Ocean in the
East to the Atlantic Ocean in the West. Twenty Arab
countries occupy the southern and eastern shores of the
Mediterranean and border the Red Sea.
It is an area of historical importance, as it is the birthplace
of the world’s three Abrahamic religions. For centuries, the
region was a hub of groundbreaking science. It is of
contemporary strategic importance owing to its location
and a wealth of subterranean natural resources, essentially
in the form of oil and natural gas – 32% of the world’s
known natural gas reserves are to be found in the region –
as well as phosphate: Morocco alone possesses more than
half of the world’s reserves.
The region encompasses remarkable cultural similarities as
well as highly distinct political and economic systems with a
heterogeneous social fabric. Its peoples share a commonality
of language, history and religion but their societies are at
variance in terms of natural wealth, governance, currency,
traditions and socio-economic systems.
The period since the UNESCO Science Report 2005
appeared has been one of mixed fortunes for Arab
countries. The region has witnessed continuing political
upheaval and military conflict in the Gaza Strip and the
West Bank, Iraq, Lebanon and Sudan. The oil-exporting
Arab states of Kuwait, the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Qatar,
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have enjoyed a
short-lived downpour of revenue resulting from the hike
in international oil prices to a peak of more than US$ 140 a
barrel in July 2008. Conversely, oil-importing countries
such as Jordan, Tunisia and Morocco have faced fiscal
difficulties due to their mounting national energy bills, a
situation compounded by the associated rise in the cost of
imported food commodities.
The subsequent plummet in oil prices, which fell to about
US$ 40 by the end of 2008 before recovering slightly in
2009, has brought this exceptional situation to an end.
It has also highlighted the volatility of oil prices and the
need for Arab oil-exporting countries to diversify their
economies in future.
Notwithstanding these difficulties, the same period also
witnessed renewed interest on the part of many Arab
countries in reinvigorating science and technology (S&T)
and higher education, with the launch of a number of topdown
initiatives to support education and research. Some
of these will be highlighted in the present chapter. A
handful of countries have also approved plans to allocate
more resources to research and development (R&D),
among them Egypt, Tunisia and Qatar.
The current global economic recession may not affect
Arab states in the immediate term, as the banking sector
in the majority of Arab states is highly regulated and only
loosely linked to international money markets. However,
the economic fallout will ultimately be felt by all,
negatively affecting foreign direct investment flowing into
Arab countries and real estate markets. This will cause a
slowdown in economic growth and a rise in
unemployment in the region. Arab countries reliant on
exporting goods and services to the USA and European
Union (EU) and those that normally receive aid from these
quarters may suffer. Even before the economic recession
emerged in the last quarter of 2008, unemployment in the
Arab world was higher than in any other part of the world,
at around 12%. Young job-seekers constitute over 40% of
the region’s unemployed (UNESCWA, 2007).
Despite the international economic uncertainty, Arab
states will have no choice but to stimulate science,
technology and innovation (STI), together with the
education sector, if only to overcome some lingering
problems like food, water and energy insecurity. Arab
countries can also learn from the remarkable socioeconomic
progress of countries such as Brazil, China,
India, Malaysia and Mexico, due in part to S&T.

Higher education around the world is currently undergoing a neo-liberal administrative takeover. The drive to reduce
costs and increased bureaucratization do not serve any other purpose than increasing the power of the universities’
administration. The reasons for allowing this situation to happen are related to scholars’ inertia and subscribing to a belief
that academia can and should be impractical. As a result, the emerging corporate university, McDonaldized model relies
increasingly on contingent and deskilled faculty, effectively eliminating the traditional academic freedoms. We conclude with
suggestions for possible courses of action to make a constructive counter-movement to the radical changes taking place.
We propose that we can begin addressing the predicaments of higher education through re-discovering our role in the
society, by re-conceptualizing the disciplinary boundaries of academic fields, by forcing the de-bunkerization of academic
career and work, and by starting up multi-disciplinary learning communities at universities. We argue that collective action
is needed immediately, if any positive change is possible at all before more of higher education is more deeply degraded.

Although business and management education research has made great strides over the last decade, concerns about the area's legitimacy and attraction of new scholars continue to require attention. One of the obstacles that may impede the area's progress is a lack of knowledge of the influential works that may be useful in determining the nature and magnitude of potential contributions. Using Harzing's Publish or Perish and a broad list of search terms related to business and management education, we generated an initial list of 100 highly cited articles published since 1970. Fifty-eight of the 100 articles were published in or after 2000. After noting the most highly cited articles, their journal outlets, and their influence patterns with other highly cited articles, we conclude the article with potential research questions regarding development of research streams, the relative influence of new journals, and efforts to attract and increase the influence of business education scholars .

The study validates the higher education service quality (HESQUAL) scale using a confirmatory approach and tests an improved structural model that predicts student loyalty from image, perceived value, satisfaction, and service quality. The model delineates service quality into the functional and transformative (technical) aspects and treats functional service quality as a second-order factor comprising of nine sub-dimensions. The model is tested using data collected from 501 students enrolled in different higher education institutions in Mauritius. Results indicate that student satisfaction is influenced by technical service quality, image, and perceived value, but not by functional service quality. Both dimensions of service quality are significant predictors of image and perceived value. Theoretically, the study uses a comprehensive measure of service quality and demonstrates that it is worthwhile to consider functional service quality as higher-order model. Furthermore, the study distinguishes between functional and technical quality given their importance in shaping students' perceptions and behaviors.

This paper examines the extent to which the deregulation of Nigerian higher education (HE) has facilitated the McDonaldization of the universities. University education in Nigeria commenced in 1948 with the establishment of University College, Ibadan. After independence in 1960, subsequent governments expanded the number of universities, a policy based upon a lack of quality manpower in leadership positions created by the exit of British officials and the need to grant access to an increasing number of prospective students. In the 1970s, the number of universities increased accompanied by a decline in infrastructure, funding and working conditions. This resulted in several strikes and an exodus of academics to other countries. Instead of tackling the problems, the federal government shifted responsibilities by approving private ownership of universities in 1999 and by establishing the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) in 2001. Against this backdrop, this paper critically analyses how some of these reforms facilitated the McDonaldization of Nigerian universities. The paper reveals how this has resulted in an overloading of responsibilities on the faculty, erosion of academic autonomy, a prioritization of quantity over quality of publications, and an assumption of ‘customer’ status by students. The paper uses evidence from McDonaldized HE in western countries to discuss the implications of these developments and suggests some remedial measures.

Although the US business school model has come to dominate the business school landscape, European schools have developed their own identities, styles and approaches to management education. In particular, they focus on reflective, integrative and actionbased learning, public sector management and public policy issues and offer a greater sensitivity to international relations. This paper explains the evolution of business schools on both sides of the Atlantic and using evidence from rankings published annually by the Financial Times, addresses the key features of European business schools. It then maps the competitive characteristics and the relative strengths and advantages of European schools over their US counterparts.