Call for paper proposals

Multipolar pressures on universities: local reactions to global policy
trends and rhetoric on university governance, internationalisation and
social inclusion

Guest editors:
Yann Lebeau - Centre for Higher Education Research and Information, The
Open
University (Milton Keynes, UK). [email protected] [2]

Ebrima Sall - Council for the Development of Social Science Research in
Africa (CODESRIA, Dakar). [email protected] [3]

Objective, rationale and scope
As spaces of production, diffusion and legitimation of knowledge,
universities around the world have for more than a decade, logically
found
themselves at the heart of the debate on the knowledge society, and of
the
wave of reforms it stirred up. In the UK, Senegal, France and Russia, the
rhetoric of the knowledge society stimulated a top down reformative
process
of "implicit" and "explicit" functions of universities as institutions
(Castells, 2000). It is worth noting that organisations of international
cooperation and/or regional integration (UN organisations, OECD, EU,
SADEC,
NAFTA....), as well as multilateral and bilateral donors, have all - over
the past ten years - included higher education developments in their
social
inclusion and poverty reduction strategies while, at the same time,
calling
for reforms in public administration and restructuring of national
systems
of education which could undermine the long term ability to innovate of
many
public universities. The restructuring, usually marked in higher
education
by the introduction of business/corporate managerial practices in
university
administration, greater institutional autonomy(but perhaps less academic
freedom), a dissociation of teaching and research functions, an
increasing
modularisation of the curriculum, the privatisation of student services,
and
an internationalisation of higher education through the development of
transnational higher education services, agreements, regulatory
frameworks,
generates nearly everywhere a transformation of higher education
landscapes
which is potentially undermining the quasi-monopoly that universities,
predominantly public institutions, have had in the production and
dispensation of legitimate knowledge. In a number of countries of the
South,
private higher education institutions might actually soon out-number the
public universities. The WTO's attempts to generalise the application of
free trade rules to services such as higher education, is likely to
complicate matters even further.

The consequences of this contradictory process, which has, on the whole,
boosted and widened participation in higher education through the
diversification/stratification of « HE systems » (while in many
instances,
posing serious questions as to what the very concept and mission of a
university are) vary considerably from one institutional or national
context
to another, according to the history of institutions, the nature and
orientation of the local demand for higher education, and the capacity of
states to control the reforms and the regulation of their HE systems.

The Cahiers de la Recherche sur l'Éducation et les Savoirs wishes to
throw a
comparative and critical light on the on-going transformations of
universities and higher education fields of countries in both the North
and
the South. The proposed thematic issue will, in particular, seek to
understand the impact of the above trends on the structure of national HE
systems (accreditation of new institutions and programmes, etc.), on the
regulation of access to HE programmes, and on curriculum organisation and
content. It will pose the question of, and try to find out, the extent to
which the concept of the university has itself evolved with the processes
referred to above. At a local level, particular attention will be paid to
institutional strategies regarding admission policies, language of
instruction, research policy, international/local partnerships in
teaching
and research, and on their consequences in terms of staff recruitment and
careers, student identities, sociability and level of engagement with
their
studies, social recognition of degrees, etc. It is hoped that
contributors
will critically analyse discourses on higher education reform, as well as
policy responses at various levels.

Submissions of proposals for papers are invited at this time to fit into
the
above sub-themes in order to provide a balanced and worldwide coverage of
the overall theme.

Papers will be based on empirical work undertaken by the authors, and
will
seek to contextualise observed phenomena of anticipation or reaction to
the
above trends from higher education systems, institutions and
constituencies,
or stakeholders.

Timelines
Paper proposals must be received by the Guest Editors by June 30, 2005 at
the latest.
The Guest Editors will review the proposals, and select a number for full
paper submission. The full papers will be requested for submission by the
end of November 2005.
The full papers will then be subject to a Peer Review process in
accordance
with the CRES procedures. Each paper will be reviewed by at least two
external reviewers, and the Guest Editors. It is hoped to have the peer
review and final revisions process completed by the end of February 2005.
The anticipated date of publication is September 2006.