Research evaluation systems in many countries aim to improve the quality of higher education. Among the first of such systems, the UK's Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) dating from 1986 is now the Research Excellence Framework (REF). Highly institutionalised, it transforms research to be more accountable. While numerous studies describe the system's effects at different levels, this longitudinal analysis examines the gradual institutionalisation and (un)intended consequences of the system from 1986 to 2014. First, we analyse historically RAE/REF's rationale, formalisation, standardisation, and transparency, framing it as a strong research evaluation system. Second, we locate the multidisciplinary field of education, analysing the submission behaviour (staff, outputs, funding) of departments of education over time to find decreases in the number of academic staff

While higher education research has paid considerable attention to the impact of both ratings and rankings on universities, less attention has been devoted to how university subunits, such as Schools of Education, are affected by such performance measurements. Anchored in a neo-institutional approach, we analyze the formation of a competitive institutional environment in UK higher education in which ratings and rankings assume a central position in promoting competition among Schools of Education (SoE). We apply the concepts of "institutional environment" and "organizational strategic actors" to the SoE to demonstrate how such university subunits articulate their qualities and respond to the institutional environment in which they are embedded-by using ratings and rankings (R&R) to compete for material and symbolical resources as well as inter-organizational and intra-organizational legitimacy. Through findings from 22 in-depth expert interviews with members of the multidisciplinary field of education and a content analysis of websites (n = 75) of SoE that participated in REF 2014, we examine the stratified environment in which SoE are embedded (1). We uncover how R&R are applied by SoE within this competitive, marketized higher education system (2). Finally, we indicate the strategic behaviors that have been triggered by the rise of R&R in a country with a highly formalized and standardized research evaluation system (3). The results show both homogenization and differentiation among SoE in their use of organizational vocabulary and the applications of R&R while simultaneously revealing strategic behavior, ranging from changes in internal practices to changes in organizational structures.

No abstract

Co-authored research articles in the disciplinarily heterogeneous field of higher education have dramatically increased in this century. As in other fields, rising international co-authorships reflect evolving international collaboration networks. We examine higher education research over two decades, applying automated bibliometric topic identification and social network analysis of 9067 papers in 13 core higher education journals (1998–2018). Remarkable expansion in the volume of papers and co-authorships has, surprisingly, not resulted in a more diverse network. Rather, existing co-authorship patterns are strengthened, with the dominance of scholars from a few Anglophone countries largely maintained. Researchers globally seek to co-author with leading scholars in these countries, especially the US, UK, and Australia—at least when publishing in the leading general higher education journals based there. Further, the two-mode social network analysis of countries and topics suggests that while Anglophone countries have led the development of higher education research, China and Germany, as leading research-producing countries, are increasingly influential within this world-spanning network. Topically, the vast majority of co-authored papers in higher education research focuses on individual-level phenomena, with organizational and system or country-level analysis constituting (much) smaller proportions, despite policymakers’ emphasis on cross-national comparisons and the growing importance of university actorhood. We discuss implications thereof for the future of the multidisciplinary field of higher education.