The benefits of student–faculty interactions are substantial in fostering undergraduate students’ social and intellectual growth throughout their academic pathways. In particular, out-of-class interactions offer several opportunities for students to engage meaningfully with faculty members in the campus environment. This study employs a qualitative approach to investigate how students interact with faculty outside the classroom and how students interpret faculty’s accessibility for out-of-class interactions. It also seeks to understand the challenges faced by students during these encounters. The findings of this study indicate that students seek out faculty outside the classroom for several reasons, but most of all for grade-related issues. While some students experienced a positive perception of faculty behaviour during informal contacts, the issue of infrequent interactions was emphasized as one of the challenges. The study indicates a variety of situations causing hesitancy and preventing students from seeking help outside the classroom.

In this article, we study how meritocratic systems and gender equality concerns are negotiated across different organisational spaces in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Based on a case study of the organising of a tenure track system in a Swedish university, we suggest that the intersection of meritocratic processes and gender equality work can be analysed as a set of negotiated orders in these spaces. This fragmentation may imply problems for advancing gender equality agendas in relation to established notions of meritocracy but may also imply opportunities for change as existing organisational spaces can be reconstructed or new ones created. Our notions of fragmentation and negotiated orders thereby suggest that the current situation is both stable and legitimate and that re-negotiations need to involve reconstructions of the various spaces and not only interventions into them.

This study explores the role of network administrative organizations (NAOs) in science diplomacy (SD) by means of a qualitative case study approach. The case in point is a Swedish government initiative to coordinate the internationalization efforts of domestic funding agencies. We examine how the NAO IntSam balances between governmental directives and agency autonomy. Utilizing primary data from semi-structured interviews supplemented by internal documents and policy reports, the analysis delves into the challenges and potential of NAOs in harmonizing top-down directives with agency autonomy. The findings highlight IntSam’s role in facilitating collaboration and aligning domestic and international policy landscapes, while also revealing inherent tensions due to divergent governmental and agency priorities. This study contributes to understanding the complexities of coordinating cross-border Science, Technology, and Innovation efforts, offering insights into the nuances, potentials, and limitations of NAOs in the realm of SD.

Student participation in university classrooms plays a pivotal role in student learning and success in higher education. We conducted a qualitative study to comprehend how students navigate complex classroom environments. Our aim is to understand how students perceive class participation and interactions with teachers and how they interpret teaching practices vis-à-vis their participation. Data from 23 undergraduate students at one university in Mozambique were collected and analysed. The findings indicate nuanced views and experiences regarding student participation and interactions with faculty. Deterrents to classroom participation and interactions were identified. Contextual and cultural factors were paramount in revealing the types and qualities of interactions and classroom participation reported in this study. Furthermore, innovative teaching practices and faculty’s caring attitude and behaviour were linked to more active participation and positive feelings about learning.

This open access book expands the scholarly and policy debates surrounding digital transformation in higher education. The authors adopt a pluralistic conceptual framework which uncovers three analytical elements – contexts, mediations, and type of effects – for unpacking empirical manifestations. The publicly funded higher education systems in Nordic countries provide solid empirical insights into how digital transformations have gained ground before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, and chapter contributions demonstrate how international digitalisation trends (such as in the global EdTech industry) impact on the core activities of higher education institutions (HEIs). The findings underscore the importance of assessments that consider multiple sub-systems within HEIs, as well as the complex relationships between them. By unpacking Nordic dynamics in the light of global processes and developments, the approach adopted and the results generated are of relevance to a much broader, global audience of students and researchers in higher education.

Digitalisation-related challenges and opportunities in higher education are not new, but awareness of their transformative potential has increased, with global trends including massive open online courses (MOOCs) and other forms of technology-enhanced open education. The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasised the importance of flexible forms of teaching and learning, and, as a result, has intensified the adoption of technological platforms and solutions across the board. In this introductory chapter to the volume, the editors provide a state of the art on the topic of digital transformations, including clarifications on concepts and definitions, alongside the articulation of a systemic framework that considers the complexity, dynamic, and multifaceted nature of the phenomenon under investigation.

This article sheds light on some challenges that internationalisation raises for policymakers regarding public funding of higher education in a welfare state by examining policy logics for introducing tuition fees for international students in Sweden 2011. Using thematic analysis of documents related to the Swedish reform, we identify how an increasing number of international students was the perceived policy problem, threatening national students’ access to free higher education. Policy objectives included sharing the cost of internationalisation but also enabling control of cost and influx of international students, enhancing quality and strengthening national branding. Many of these objectives concur with more established understandings on why policymakers turn to the market according to a more neo-liberal ‘market’ logic. However, a policy mix of tuition fees and scholarships enabled a governance model of control, which more relates to a ‘welfare’ logic. Likewise, the policy problem indicates that a search for profit and revenue cannot simply explain tuition fee reforms for international students. By discussing how underlying normative assumptions at the policy formulation stage contrast reality ten years after the reform, it appears that revenue from the global market has been more significant for Swedish policymakers than the rhetoric suggests. 

Internationalisation of the curriculum has been the subject of various debates in recent years in higher education institutions. In particular, the need to incorporate local knowledge systems when internationalising the curriculum continues to be a major challenge in African universities. This study explores faculty members experiences inherent in the internationalisation of the curriculum at one Mozambican university. On the basis of semi-structured interviews with eleven faculty members, two research questions were investigated: (1) How do faculty members understand the internationalisation of the curriculum in their university? (2) How are local knowledge systems embedded in the internationalisation of the university curriculum? The findings revealed that the internationalisation of the curriculum is mainly understood in terms of developing intercultural knowledge, skills and values; mobility of students, teachers and academic programmes; and teaching international students and languages. Some practices suggest opportunities for a more decolonised approach in the internationalisation of the university curriculum, such as the integration of local languages and the practice of ethnoscience, with the main focus on ethnomathematics.

A broader systemic framework pertaining to multiple manifestations at various scales and involving an increasing number of internal and external stakeholders was introduced in the first chapter of the volume, and further explored empirically in the following chapters. In this final chapter, the editors further discuss the complexity, dynamic, and multifaceted nature of the phenomenon under investigation, and add perspectives on how to expand future debates on digital transformations in higher education.