The study aims to examine how higher education institutions (HEIs) in three countries responded to the challenges of COVID-19 over a six-month period at the outbreak of the global pandemic. Employing document analysis, we examined 732 publicly available communications from 27 HEIs in Canada, China, and the USA. Through theoretical frameworks of crisis management and Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), we explore how HEIs respond to the pandemic and protect campus stakeholders. The study revealed common patterns in communication strategies during different stages of the pandemic that include accepting responsibility, emotional reassurance, and compensating victims. It also revealed key differences across social contexts and environments and distinct leadership styles. Findings offer insight into how HEIs communicated at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and inform the application of SCCT and crisis management theory to institutional behavior in the context of prolonged and intersecting disasters.
The study aims to explore which factors influence international students’ decision to pursue doctoral studies in Canada. Drawing on the push-pull model and the mechanism of educational decision making, this study uses semi-structured interviews to gather data and explores themes such as political and economic forces, institutional factors, social background and experience, and individual motivation in students’ decision making. Our study identifies multiple factors at the individual, institutional, and country levels that influence students’ decision making, including students’ past experiences, funding, faculty members, and immigration policies. Moreover, it finds that the factors vary by students’ regions of origin and disciplines of study. Our findings, focused on international doctoral students in Canada, add to the ongoing conversation about student mobility and add nuances on international students’ decision-making process in times of shifting landscape of higher education internationalization.
Even though the importance of technical and vocational education is acknowledged in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015, the university sector has dominated the discourse on the role of postsecondary educational institutions in sustainable development. This comparative study widens the scope of the inquiry by highlighting various contributions that community colleges (CCs) and technical and vocational education and training institutions (TVETs) are making to sustainability in several developed and fast-developing countries. It examines five independent case studies conducted in Canada, Chile, China, Taiwan, and the United States. The study demonstrates that CCs and TVETs are uniquely positioned to make substantial contributions to sustainable development and should be an important part of the discussion. It also identifies and explores the special features that allow CCs and TVETS to play a vital role in addressing the SDGs. The findings show that the SDGs related to economic development and social justice were a priority in all five case studies, while SDGs related to the environment were foremost in the two North American studies. The main barriers to sustainable development include the high cost of education, low completion rates, graduates' inability to secure employment commensurate with their education, inadequate funding and the reputation of CCs and TVETs as second-tier institutions.
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