As the internationalisation of higher education has become an important element in university global competitiveness, universities are engaged in initiatives to internationalise their curricula. Among the strategies employed to internationalise the campuses is the recruitment of highly skilled international faculty. The recruitment of such faculty is fraught with challenges of integrating and socialising the faculty into the academic ethos and social fabric of the university and community. This study presents the findings of a qualitative case study conducted on international faculty in a Southwestern university engaged in an ambitious programme of transformation into a global campus. Using embedded intergroup theory and boundary heightening as theoretical constructs, the study identifies the isolation of the faculty through excessive intrinsic careerism, collegial and community isolation, minimal professional development opportunities, and exclusionary politics of teaching and scholarship that occasionally translated into stereotypical comments, physical violence in class and offering courses that were unpopular. The study recommends enhancing opportunities for international faculty interactions, strengthening the integration practices evident in successful units, and providing staff development opportunities for both chairs and international faculty in order to boost professional and social integration of the faculty.
In this study, the transformation of a Kenyan public university through marketisation and privatisation was investigated qualitatively. By focusing on senior university administrators, deans, department heads, union leaders, student leaders and senior scholars at Kenyatta University the study identified the reasons for, and strategies used to achieve, marketisation and the consequences. External factors -pressure by multilateral financial institutions and global trends in favour of the market place and private finance in higher education -and internal factors, including social demand for higher education alongside the government's budget rationalisation agenda, were the impetus for the transformation.Strategies used in marketisation included the corporatisation of university management through the de-politicisation of the university chancellorship, competitive recruitment of the vice-chancellor, administrative reconfigurations involving mergers and downsizing, registration of unions and revitalisation of student leadership and commercialisation of learning. These developments resulted in role conflicts over various offices, insider recruitment, administrative misalignment, loss of faculty power in governance, collective bargaining failure and disruption of learning and institutional instability.
Reform in higher education financing in Kenya has been occasioned by both endogenous and exogenous variables. Internal pressures of a declining economy, rapid demographic growth and increased inter-and intra-sectoral competition for scare financial resources, couple with external neo-liberal doctrine championed by global donors like the World Bank have resulted in a new market-competitive policy of financing higher education. This paper analyzes the equity and risk effects of the new policy for the main stakeholders, namely students, academics and institutions themselves. The paper contends that the policy shift has had a significant effect on equity just as it has introduced universities to risks through engagement in academic capitalism with its emphasis on marketization of university programs and services. The paper concludes with suggestions on some policy options that could help to mitigate the negative consequences of this new policy.
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