Gerardo L Blanco

Amidst global competition in higher education, colleges and universities adopt strategies that mimic and adapt business practices. Branding is now a widespread practice in higher education; multimodal advertisement is a manifestation of emerging branding strategies for universities. While the visibility of brands in higher education has grown substantially in recent years, its empirical study has lagged.  This article reports on findings from a study that employed social semiotic and multimodal analysis to explore text and visual rhetoric as brand construction strategies in publicly displayed university advertisements. After analyzing photographs representing advertising campaigns from 16 different universities displayed in an urban public transportation system, I suggest that universities construct their brand identity through messages that emphasize multiple choices and convenience, but construct success according primarily to corporate standards and values.

Social media sites and other contemporary technologies open the possibility for the construction of online identities that are loosely connected to physical bodies; this construction allows individuals to edit their identities constantly, in a continuous process of self re-creation. In parallel, universities utilise printed and electronic media to present themselves in the best light possible through the process of branding, which—it is argued here—constitutes an instance of hyperreal identity assemblage. This article explores the ethical implications of researching brand construction in university advertisements. The authors reflect upon the ethical implications of conducting educational research on university identities when such identities rely on the representations of racially minoritised students. Online identity construction through technology invites a discussion of postmodern notions of self and reality; this article presents an exploration of a postmodern ethics for educational research.

Institutional accreditation in higher education holds universities accountable through external evaluation; at the same time, accreditation constitutes an opportunity for higher education leaders to demonstrate the quality of their institutions. In an increasingly global field of higher education, in which quality practices become diffused across national boundaries, U.S. institutional accreditation has been adopted in many countries as a form of external quality assurance. This study follows an ethnographic case study approach to explore in depth how a Mexican institution of higher education, located only a few miles away from the U.S.–Mexico border, engaged in the process of institutional accreditation with a U.S. regional accrediting agency. Four themes constitute the finding of this study: (a) Reputational value is the central motivation to pursue U.S. accreditation given that, through accreditation, the institution in Mexico became connected to internationally recognized universities; (b) despite several benefits, the accreditation process established a complex division of labor in which members of the academic staff are necessary yet distanced from decision making; (c) compliance with highly challenging—yet construed as fair—standards legitimizes both the accreditation process and the U.S. accreditor; and (d) language and translation are valuable concepts to understand the accreditation process. Together, these findings suggest that U.S. accreditation may be approached as an exercise of global position taking.

This article explores the concepts of brand and franchise in the development of international quality assurance. The impact of corporate language and culture on higher education is evident and has been extensively analysed. Recent attention given to branding of universities reflects the ever growing influence of corporate language and ideas. This paper presents a conceptual exploration, grounded in a case study that documented the accreditation process of a Mexican university by a US regional agency. Discourses of exclusivity and legitimacy were widespread in the case; US accreditation was construed as a symbol of international quality given that US higher education hosts world-renowned universities with reputations that, like brands, can be franchised internationally. It is argued here that such new developments warrant further study and critique.

Accountability and quality assurance have become central discourses in higher education policy throughout the world. However, accountability and quality assurance involve power and control. Practices and ideas about quality developed in the Global North are spreading rapidly across the Global South leading to increased uniformity in the approaches to quality assurance. Given the significant asymmetries that divide Global North and Global South, this article maps inter-discursive relations among key texts that influence policy development on international quality in higher education and explores the applicability of colonial discourse as a perspective for understanding this increasing international convergence.

Quality practices in higher education involve more than compliance with standards and technical mandates. It is argued here that quality in higher education can be analyzed as symbol and performance. In order to illustrate these concepts, the paper utilizes translation as heuristic to analyze the implementation of US institutional accreditation in Mexico. Such analysis unearths the power relations that underpin the emergent internationalization of quality practices in higher education.

Quality practices, including rankings, accreditation, and the pursuit of world-class status receive substantial attention in the current literature in international higher education. However, understandings of quality across international contexts remain elusive. This paper reviews relevant perspectives on quality and presents an alternative model for conceptualizing quality as an organizational process and as value in higher education, in light of internationalization. Our proposed organizational process model connects quality, access, relevance and investment in higher education.

The underlying paradigms that influence research on quality have remained alarmingly under-researched; this paper analyses the constraints that a technical-rational approach for the study of quality in higher education imposes. Technical rationality has been the dominant paradigm that shapes research on quality in higher education. Alternatively, political and symbolic perspectives are discussed in order to conceptualise and frame future research in the study of higher education quality. This article concludes with a discussion of the implications of different approaches. It is argued that the study of quality in higher education needs to be revitalised by new conceptual perspectives that go beyond technical-rational assumptions.

Quality assurance in higher education has become an endeavor of global proportions. Leaders within institutions of higher education are required to make choices about what quality assurance and self-regulation mechanisms to implement and how to respond to external pressures in an environment of increased accountability and competition. University leaders also need to make choices about what standards of quality their institutions will follow. This paper outlines the changing environment of international quality assurance and its implications for management practice and further research. Critical engagements with quality assurance are necessary in order to make decisions that are not only effective but also consistent with the institutional mission and the purposes of higher education. While quality in higher education becomes global, university leaders encounter new opportunities to exercise institutional agency.

International education, particularly through study abroad experiences, has the potential of preparing students for a globally interconnected world. While challenging, it is necessary to translate aspirations of global citizenship into educational programs and assessing their effectiveness. A necessary step in such process consists in taking a close and critical look at the challenges and possibilities for the development of global citizenship through education abroad. In this paper, I follow a decolonizing autoethnographic approach to explore obstacles for the development of global citizenship through education abroad. If education abroad is to promote global citizenship and character development, I propose a more authentic engagement with the local cultures and a better understanding of globalization—before going abroad—is necessary.

Higher education is rapidly expanding and diversifying across all regions of the globe. Much of that growth has been absorbed by the expansion of the private and for-profit sector, a trend that is particularly prevalent in Asia. Higher education is not only expanding but is also becoming increasingly global, with a mix of different corporate, academic, national and ethnic cultures influencing and becoming embedded within post-secondary institutions. Thus far, few studies have focused on developing nuanced descriptions of the organisational and cultural challenges involved in the development of new for-profit institutions within rapidly expanding higher education systems. This qualitative case study utilised individual and group interviews among members of the academic staff and administration to provide an in-depth look at a newly created for-profit institution of higher learning in the Philippines. Following a modified grounded theory analysis process, findings illustrate how different and sometimes conflicting layers of culture impact efforts to create a new for-profit higher education institution.

This study explores models of educational management used in postsecondary institutions in the five northwestern provinces of the People’s Republic of China (Shaanxi, Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai, and Ningxia). As higher education in the People’s Republic of China expands and undergoes significant changes, a nuanced understanding of the organizational structures in Chinese higher education is increasingly important. This qualitative study included group interviews with university administrators from institutions in each of the five northwestern provinces. Drawing on Birnbaum’s (1988) seminal work describing models of organization in higher education in the United States, the findings suggest four models of organization that are for the Chinese context. These models are: Tiao-Kuai Xitong (Vertical-Horizontal system), Confucian Guanxi, Authoritarian, and Dialectical. The study explores the complexity and diversity that characterizes Chinese higher education with important implications for the ongoing educational reform within China, as well as for developing a more sophisticated contextualized notion of Chinese higher education in the West.

Those who believe that higher education institutions should be more than competition and market driven enterprises may welcome “Universities and the public sphere: Knowledge creation and state building in the era of globalization” as a valuable contribution to the articulation of universities as independent spaces for critique and analysis. The editors have assembled contributions that are intellectually ambitious yet accessible to a broad readership; the chapters present conceptual discussions that transcend national, regional and disciplinary boundaries while remaining connected to diverse local settings. “Universities and the public sphere” discusses stories of unintended consequences, inconspicuous connections and rarely imagined possibilities in face of the prevailing neoliberal status quo in higher education. The title and subtitle reveal the commitment by contributors and editors to “the university’s role in creating public goods, social justice and a more egalitarian society” (p.1).

Researchers in international higher education have paid increased attention to the efforts that colleges and universities undertake in response to globalization. These initiatives and programs—usually defined as key components of internationalization (Altbach & Knight, 2007; Knight, 2004)—often require the participation of individuals and institutions in more than one country. We argue that successful international endeavors in higher education require establishing and developing authentic international collaboration between partners.

The larger project of which this research is a part examines collaborations between scholars in the global South and the global North. Given the disparities in access to resources and power within an increasingly globalized world, partnerships across these two spheres have the potential for both (a) great mutual benefit and (b) further exploitation, oppression and injustice that have historically plagued interaction between the spheres as the result of colonial and post-colonial dynamics. This study focused on collaborations among academics and institutions in Mexico and the U.S., including the characteristics of these collaborations, the history of specific collaborations, the benefits and challenges of international collaborations, the role of institutions in supporting these collaborations, and how the technical, relational, and cross-cultural skills of the individual collaborators contribute to the overall success of the endeavor. It also examines how larger cultural disparities between global north and south as expressed through the conceptual frameworks of post-colonialsim, globalism, and feminism are examined and integrated into the collaborative relationship itself.

Critical internationalism provides a framework for examining tensions by acknowledging the historical disparities between global North and global South. Drawing from the literature on collaboration and postcolonialism, with a particular emphasis on agency and imagination, this paper lays a theoretical foundation for further research.

Inserted in the larger subject of compressed ethnographies in international contexts, this paper explores the use of multimodal semiotic analysis to analyze visual data collected in compressed ethnographies.  Having established that compressed or rapid ethnography constitutes a subset of ethnographic inquiry (Baines & Cunninghman, 2011; LeCompte & Schensul, 2010), this paper explores the relevance of multimodal semiotic analysis (Unsworth, 2008) when conducting compressed ethnography. Given that compressed ethnographies often take place amidst time and resource limitations (Baines & Cunningham, 2011), the use of technology as an aid is frequent, especially in the form of photography, video and audio recordings. It has been argued that multimodal semiotic analysis can serve as an interpretative framework when ethnographic fieldwork relies on visual and audio-visual data (Dicks, Soyinka & Coffey, 2006). Given that the use of visual and audiovisual data is frequent when conducting compressed ethnographies (Jeffrey & Troman, 2004), multimodal semiotic analysis can be useful when conducting compressed ethnography.  Based on a study that followed principles of compressed ethnography design (Blanco Ramírez, 2013; in press), this paper discusses the use of multimodal semiotic analysis as a framework for interpreting photographic data collected to support compressed ethnography design.  Based on data from the case studies and methodological discussion, semiotic analysis is presented as a valuable interpretive tool when analyzing visual information. The use of this strategy is further discussed, along with and its potential implications for other international studies.