Neo-Liberal Governance in Higher Education

This chapter analyzes the emerging trend in tertiary education to manage institutional reputation, and it offers evidence from case studies in developed and emerging economies to support the analysis. The evidence presented suggests that this activity is global in scope and is associated with the ever-increasing competitive environment in which universities and other tertiary colleges find themselves. The management of reputation appears to revolve around the core activities of research and teaching and the development of an international environment, suggesting a convergence of governance at the micro level. The purpose of the chapter is to provide a new perspective on neo-liberal governance in HE, and to show how the current emphasis on international competition and the knowledge economy affects individual institutions in different national systems in different ways. The chapter also points to the challenges that the quest for enhanced reputation may present managers.

Higher Education and IT

The introduction of IT in the learning process has completely transformed the way in which training is taught today, and the process of attracting new students has changed. This chapter discusses the changes in communication to new students and describes the main techniques to attract them to the Website of a business school or educational institution.

Improving Managerial Training Services in Project-Oriented Organizations with an Ontology-Alignment-Based Recommendation Mechanism

This chapter proposes a recommendation mechanism to enhance the managerial training in Project-Oriented Organizations (POOs). The mechanism is presented within the framework of an innovative system used to provide support to POOs during the acquisition and implementation of training services. The recommender engine has, as inputs, the knowledge gaps of the employees given by an assessment system and the alignment in RDF/XML format between two ontological representations: one for the management documents provided by POOs and one for the training curriculum offered to the POOs. The recommender engine makes suggestions for adapting the training curriculum to the POOs’ needs, by translating the ontology alignment result into a user-friendly form and by identifying Web resources suitable to fill up the knowledge gaps. The outputs are smart recommendations meant to personalize the training curriculum to POOs and, thus, to increase the competitiveness of POOs.

The Social Role of University Entrepreneurship

This chapter discusses the dimensions and characteristics of social entrepreneurship in universities and its role in developing sustainable communities. It argues that by building on social responsibility practices and creating an identity of a society-oriented university, one which is driven by a social mission and humanistic values and a sense of moral commitment to its communities, higher education institutions are more likely to succeed on the global market characterized by an increasing competition and a high degree of internationalization. Therefore, by understanding the driving forces which determine the social entrepreneurial behavior of the academic community, universities will be more successful in driving social transformation and achieving innovation. While the view of social entrepreneurship in university put forward in this chapter is far from complete, the authors see it as an important first step to enhance theoretical understanding of the phenomenon and facilitate future research.

Educational Foundations Supporting IT in Higher Education

Technology has always been welcomed in higher education as a means to improve student learning. However, technology application in higher education is usually driven by the technology fad itself without support from educational foundations in learning. This chapter argues that successful employment of IT in higher education requires a careful consideration of basic foundations in learning philosophy and learning. These foundations provide both the theoretical and empirical support to sustain technology as an integral component of technology in higher education learning. In addition to the historical and contemporary comments on educational foundations, examples are provided to assist the reader in implementing the suggestion to strengthen learning by the promise of technology to improve learning in higher education.

Pedagogy-Based Technology Enhancement in Tertiary Education

Formal instruction still occurs predominantly in classroom environment, despite the rapid progress in online learning. The authors present digital patterns for classroom instruction to support classroom learning and assist instruction developers. They advocate design patterns and learning activities to encapsulate digital educational resources into pedagogically sound reusable components. This chapter proposes pedagogical patterns to drive content providers to meet learner profiles in regular tertiary education environments. Taking their roots from behavioral learning discipline, these patterns are digitized as part of a separate process in learning production workflows. The authors describe the overall organization of a learning production enterprise and position the pedagogical factory to drive the supply of learning contents in increasingly digitized tertiary education institutions. This chapter reunites digital patterns to support personalization and conversational pedagogies in classroom contexts.

Entrepreneurship, Information Technologies, and Educational-Based Virtuous Circles in Post-Industrialized Economies

Information Technologies are transforming traditional educational models based on new communication skills. Using a comparative analysis, the scope of this work is two-fold: (1) to study the importance of entrepreneurship and R&D in tertiary education and (2) to analyze which conditions must change in order to contribute to adopt this new IT-based model by the more traditional countries or university institutions that do not research, arguing they are focused on short-term goals only. Using a single OLS econometric model, the author demonstrates that R&D in companies and universities, both public and private, are complementary, R&D applied in education guarantees future positive externalities and creates IT educational societies, while globalization favors capital and human resources mobility, not only nationally but also internationally.

Research and Practices on Teaching Mode of Engineering Courses Driven by Software Platform

This chapter introduces a model of “Problem refining + Paper presented + Project application + Software development + Patent declaration” on the basis of teaching practice and scientific research for many years. This is a mode of researching and practicing on engineering courses based on cloud computing. The main goal is to help students to understand and grasp the core technology of engineering courses. The employment situation of engineering graduates is very serious, while enterprise is lack of engineering employees that can be used. The reason lies in talent training problems. And this model can help us improve the teaching quality. In order to get the market recognition, meet the demands of the development of future work, and obtain competitive ability of quality control, the mode should be modeled and systematic.

Some Important Aspects to Enhance the Quality of the Technical Education System for Better Industry-Institute Interaction

The outcome of technical education system is fresh engineers/technicians who are the backbone of the industrial sector. It is the responsibility of faculty members, institutions, and industries to enhance the quality of this outcome to (a) achieve higher production rate and (b) manufacture the quality products to satisfy the customer needs in the global market. It is essential to update the curriculum, Teaching-Learning (T-L) process, and practical skills of faculty members according to the industrial requirements. This chapter presents different important aspects that can be scientifically implemented in technical education systems to escalate the quality of fresh engineers/technicians. The quality deciding factors are: industrial exposure to faculty members through the industrial case studies, inclusion of interdisciplinary subjects in the curriculum, implementation of structured project work, and planned industrial training for students. Another important element is to create the research and development environment in polytechnics and engineering colleges to inculcate the research capabilities amongst the students. In each aspect of this chapter, flow diagrams, models, implementation methodology, role of faculty members, students, institutions, and industries are presented and discussed. These aspects facilitate to generate intelligent, multidisciplinary skilled, and innovative technical manpower. Thus, the fruitful industry-institute-interaction can be achieved.

Indian Education System in the 21st Century

Education plays a vital role in developing a nation culturally, economically, and socially. That is why every nation focuses on this sector. For its improvement, all endeavors are made through formal education, non-formal, and distance education. The trend of education, particularly distance education, has developed considerably in developed countries and developing countries. Information technology plays a pivotal role for the development of education. This chapter introduces Indian Ancient Education System and structure of Indian Education System, and argues on distribution of schools throughout all categories of middle management, senior management, from state level to central level. The chapter focuses on all forms of education systems and ICT in school education systems with accreditation systems supported to nurture the Indian education system globally.