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Open research questions in Higher Education Governance and Development

1,361 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 20,509 Higher Education Governance and Development papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • The paper identifies the challenge of developing governance frameworks that can meet the demands of converging pressures. It highlights the need for adaptive capacity in governance actors, who must be able to read ambiguous signals and exercise judgement under uncertainty. The paper notes the challenge of translating the integrated model into practice, requiring deliberate development of complexity literacy in governance actors.

    Reconceptualising University Governance as Social Relations Work: Purpose, Orientation, and Practice in an Integrated Framework · 2026 · DOI

  • Prevailing governance frameworks are limited in their ability to meet the demands placed on South African public universities. Compliance-based, managerial, and structural approaches cannot address the complexities of university governance. There is a need for a new conceptual framework that can integrate multiple perspectives and approaches.

    Reconceptualising University Governance as Social Relations Work: Purpose, Orientation, and Practice in an Integrated Framework · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper identifies the challenge of providing quality education in the context of internationalization. It also recognizes the challenge of delivering on the core service dimension and quality in higher education institutions. The study notes the complexity of the modern higher education marketplace and the need for innovative solutions.

    Internationalization: Its Influence on Quality of Service, ‘Good’ University Experience, and Student Satisfaction in a Private University · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper identifies a gap in the literature regarding the construct of 'good university experience'. There is a paucity of studies that have modeled good university experience as a construct in its framework.

    Internationalization: Its Influence on Quality of Service, ‘Good’ University Experience, and Student Satisfaction in a Private University · 2026 · DOI

  • The dataset reflects a geopolitically filtered sample of international STEM scholars. Countries without active Fulbright programs, or those with historically limited diplomatic engagement with the United States, are absent or underrepresented in the data. The study must account for the uneven distribution of STEM participation across world regions and income classifications.

    STEM Participation in Global Higher Education: Core–Periphery Structures and Scientific Capital in Fulbright Foreign Student Program · 2026 · DOI

  • Further examination of the relationship between STEM participation and scientific capital, - Investigation of the impact of diplomatic relationships and bilateral agreements on STEM participation

    STEM Participation in Global Higher Education: Core–Periphery Structures and Scientific Capital in Fulbright Foreign Student Program · 2026 · DOI

  • The study identifies challenges in leveraging Hong Kong's role as a 'super-connector' with the Chinese Mainland to attract students beyond the Greater China region. The research highlights challenges in addressing inwardly mobile students' diverse needs. The study notes challenges in balancing economic capital gains from non-local undergraduate recruitment with policy discourse.

    Hong Kong's non‐local undergraduate recruitment: Policies, institutional practices and student perspectives · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a gap in understanding the core meanings and drivers shaping Hong Kong's expanding focus on inward international student mobility. Prior work has focused on individual-centred applications of Bourdieu's capital framework, but a more comprehensive approach is needed. The study aims to address this gap by examining the dynamics of economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital across macro, meso, and micro levels.

    Hong Kong's non‐local undergraduate recruitment: Policies, institutional practices and student perspectives · 2026 · DOI

  • The relatively modest response rate may reflect the emergent and uneven institutionalisation of curriculum decolonisation across the sector, - Limited empirical work across multiple institutions, - The study adopted a qualitative-dominant, mixed-method design which may have limitations in terms of generalizability

    Measuring what matters: Evaluating the impact of curriculum decolonisation initiatives in UK business schools · 2026 · DOI

  • More reflexive, theory-informed and context-sensitive approaches to evidencing transformation, - Research on how to offer a (de)colonised curriculum, understand its relevance and make evidence-informed changes to practice, - Studies on the impact of curriculum decolonisation on student outcomes

    Measuring what matters: Evaluating the impact of curriculum decolonisation initiatives in UK business schools · 2026 · DOI

  • One challenge is that the earnings rank of an immigrant father in the US income distribution might not fully reflect his ability or earnings potential. Another challenge is the lack of data on parental age and country of origin in the GSS. The study also faces the challenge of constructing proxies of individual income for fathers and sons in historical samples.

    Migrant success in UK Education: Are there lessons for government social mobility policy? · 2026 · DOI

  • The earnings rank of an immigrant father in the US income distribution might not fully reflect his ability or earnings potential. There is a gap in understanding how the intergenerational mobility of immigrants has changed over the last two centuries.

    Migrant success in UK Education: Are there lessons for government social mobility policy? · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper identifies the challenge of forecasting international student mobility in the face of increasing uncertainty. The analysis notes that sudden shifts in visa regulations, fee status, and geopolitical relations introduce volatility that is difficult to anticipate. The paper highlights the need for a more accurate forecasting model that can capture non-linear relationships and interactions.

    Machine learning forecasts suggest a concentration paradox in international student mobility to the United Kingdom · 2026 · DOI

  • The improvements are incremental rather than transformative. Predictive accuracy declines during periods affected by major policy developments. The results reinforce the limits of purely data-driven forecasting when faced with structural shocks and policy discontinuities. Sudden shifts in visa regulations, fee status and geopolitical relations introduce volatility that remains difficult to anticipate for traditional statistical and machine-learning models alike.

    Machine learning forecasts suggest a concentration paradox in international student mobility to the United Kingdom · 2026 · DOI

  • The primary contribution of the paper lies in extending the empirical understanding of Erasmus+ impact to under-researched non-HE sectors and offering a more suitable analytical framework for nuanced policy analysis of internationalisation across diverse educational contexts.

    Institutional transformation through participation in Erasmus+: the impact among Portuguese higher and non-higher education contexts · 2026 · DOI

  • Despite abundant literature on teaching performance, there is insufficient evidence on the process of evaluating teaching quality from the perspectives of both professors (a term used in this article to describe all staff who carry out teaching functions in HE institutions (HEIs)) and students.

    Evaluating teaching quality in higher education: stakeholder perspectives · 2026 · DOI

  • In doing so, such work ignores large swaths of the organizational field, including counterparts in the understudied community college, private career college, and theological sectors.

    Beyond Universities: Structural Stratification in Canadian Tertiary Education · 2026 · DOI

  • While the importance of inclusive decision-making is widely acknowledged, the specific conditions shaping Early Career Researchers’ (ECRs) involvement in institutional governance remain underexplored.

    We work, but we don’t decide: Exploring early career researchers’ leadership in university decision-making · 2026 · DOI

  • The article fills a significant gap in the literature as no previous specific decision-making methodology for IQAS was found.

    METHODOLOGY FOR DECISION-MAKING IN UNIVERSITY INTERNAL QUALITY ASSURANCE SYSTEMS · 2026 · DOI

  • This study addresses an identified gap in the literature concerning the absence of specific decision-making methodologies tailored to IQAS.

    METHODOLOGY FOR DECISION-MAKING IN UNIVERSITY INTERNAL QUALITY ASSURANCE SYSTEMS · 2026 · DOI

  • And yet, little is known about what college departments are doing to respond to this enrolment challenge.

    Time for a rebrand? Examining the efforts of college departments in the California State University system to reimagine, reinvent, reposition, and rebrand themselves in response to a changing higher education landscape · 2025 · DOI

  • However, there is limited research on how school districts spent pandemic aid and how education leaders prioritized these resources to achieve strategic goals.

    Pandemic Resource Allocation and the Spending Priorities of School Leaders · 2025 · DOI

  • Academia plays a critical role in providing scientific evidence for evidence‐based policymaking, yet its engagement with policymakers remains underexplored, particularly in the Global South.

    Academic Engagement in Policymaking: Evaluating the Demand and Supply in Pakistan's Policy Advisory System · 2025 · DOI

  • Despite the tremendous development of SFCUs, there is limited research on the motivations and driving factors of students choosing to study at SFCUs.

    Why do Chinese High School Graduates Choose Sino-Foreign Cooperative Universities? A Grounded Theory Approach · 2024 · DOI

  • Facilitating public issue formation through trading zones where collaboration with other healthcare governance actors occurs without consensus over meanings and priorities, POs address suffering among patients in nondemocratic situations where expert knowledge dominates and public participation is generally unwelcome.

    The Trading Zones of Patient Participation: Public Issue Formation in Nondemocratic Situations · 2024 · DOI

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1,361 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 20,509 Higher Education Governance and Development papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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