Search Results for
"Higher education"

The fundamental impact of human capital on innovative performance is a consensual finding in the innovation literature. Universities play a pivotal role in fuelling innovation across various industries, providing students with essential knowledge and skills to generate new products, processes, and business models. However, while the crucial role of the university is undeniable, it should be remembered that human capital formation is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, influenced not only by factors such as institutional context and culture but also by the prevailing secondary education system. Since 1999, the Bologna Process has resulted in numerous reforms aimed at ensuring comparability among standard and quality of higher education qualifications in Europe. However, secondary school education systems vary significantly among countries. One of the most striking differences is the relevance attributed to vocational training programmes. Vocational training is essential for preparing students for specific careers and industries and focuses on the development of practical skills and knowledge that are directly applicable in the workplace. This paper analyses the impact of secondary school education on innovation performance in European regions. The rationale is that, despite a widely held belief that innovation requires workers with an academic education, vocational education and training is a major driver of innovation performance. We employ Eurostat data for the last two programming periods to and determine the extent to which secondary school systems and European Commission policy, specifically the European Social Fund Educational and Vocational Training theme, can contribute to innovation performance in European regions. © 2025 International Conference on higher education Advances. All rights reserved.

Employment outcomes are more strongly associated with specific career paths than with academic performance. Despite expanding university access, significant gaps persist between the training received and labor market conditions. The objective was to identify and analyze the factors that influence the employment situation of university graduates. A quantitative explanatory approach was used, with a sample of 3,009 graduates. A structured survey was administered, and the data were analyzed using Logistic regression, Lasso regression, and Random Forest models. The results show that the variables with the greatest predictive power are the type of contract, time spent working, and income level. In contrast, academic variables such as GPA and theoretical or practical training showed little relevance. In comparison, employability is more associated with specific career paths than academic merits. The study reveals important findings for universities to strengthen applied training, encourage early entry into the workforce, and develop monitoring systems that allow them to adapt their educational offerings to the real demands of the professional environment. Understanding the factors that influence graduate employability is crucial to enhancing the significance of education and improving professional opportunities. © © 2025 Portocarrero Ramos, Campos Trigoso, Cruz Caro, Reina Marín, Maicelo Guevara, Sánchez Bardales and Chávez Santos.

As graduating students transition into the professional world, they often find that their college education did not teach them the skills businesses demand. This disconnect between the skills learned during college and the skills needed to succeed within the workforce has led to increasing levels of unemployment and underemployment. Implementing entrepreneurial education in colleges could resolve many of the skill deficiencies both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. By training students entrepreneurial skills, colleges empower these students to think beyond conventional boundaries and develop productive economic activities. This paper reviews the positive impacts of entrepreneurial education in shaping the next generation of workers while also delving into theoretical frameworks, such as human capital and social cognitive theories, to understand the reasoning behind the success of entrepreneurial education. This research further addresses the steps and requirements for a successful implementation, the role of technology in the implementation process, and possible challenges faced which might impede on effective implementation. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025.

Rethinking the Academic Experience explores the collective experiences of everyone in higher education settings, from students to those who teach and support them. Malcolm Tight presents the academy as a single but highly complex and interconnected entity, examining its individual stakeholders and elements to better understand these institutions. © Malcolm Tight 2025. All rights reserved.

This study aimed to develop and examine the validity and effectiveness of a Project-based Teaching Factory (PbTF) model within the context of the chemical cleaning industry to enhance students' soft skills and entrepreneurial intention. The model was designed by integrating project-based learning and teaching factory practices and was developed through three main stages: planning, conceptual validation, and empirical testing. Validation involved six experts assessing content and construct validity, with results indicating a very high level of validity across all evaluated aspects. Empirical testing employed a one-group pretest-posttest design involving 24 students, using structured soft skills observation and the Entrepreneurial Intention Questionnaire (EIQ), both of which had undergone validity and reliability testing. Descriptive and inferential analyses revealed significant improvements across all aspects of soft skills and entrepreneurial intention following the model's implementation. An effect size of η2 > 0.80 in all aspects indicated a very strong impact of the intervention. These findings suggest that the PbTF model in the chemical cleaning industry is an effective and innovative pedagogical approach in academic education, with high potential for adoption in other higher education contexts to equip students with 21st-century competencies aligned with industry and business demands. © 2025 The Authors.

High rates of attrition in secondary transition research present a persistent challenge to sustaining research-to-practice partnerships (RPPs) in special education. Districts and schools often face structural, leadership, and personnel barriers that hinder their ability to participate fully in research, particularly in initiatives focused on improving postschool outcomes for students with disabilities. Similarly, higher education and research institutions contend with systemic challenges, including rigid timelines, funding constraints, and top-down research agendas, which can limit their ability to engage in RPPs. This conceptual paper introduces the School/District Readiness Rubric for Secondary Transition Research, a tool designed to assess readiness across five domains: institutional capacity, infrastructure and resources, administrative commitment, sustainability potential, and collaborative community partnerships. Informed by implementation science, RPP literature, and feedback from high schools that withdrew from a federally funded efficacy study, the rubric aims to minimize attrition, strengthen school-researcher collaboration, and enhance the long-term feasibility of transition research efforts. Practical guidance is offered for using the rubric to (a) align research initiatives with district and institutional priorities, (b) support grant development, and (c) co-design studies that are both methodologically rigorous and grounded in the realities of practice and policy contexts. © Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2025

Journal clubs are active learning approaches routinely used within academic research institutes and allied health professions to boost critical thinking, data analysis, and disseminate knowledge of novel research concepts. These group-based discussions regarding scientific literature aim to develop knowledge and facilitate the sharing of expertise. Many of these outcomes align with those highly desired for post-graduation employability. However, they are usually constrained to small defined student groups, with limited reported attempts to deliver journal clubs at scale within the undergraduate curriculum. Therefore, this study sought to compare the pedagogical efficacy of delivering journal clubs as both extracurricular and curriculum-embedded activities and determine if they are translatable into undergraduate curricula. Student feedback was assessed through anonymous surveys upon completion of both the extracurricular and curriculum-embedded journal club sessions. Pre- and post-session surveys were also provided to assess academic literacy knowledge acquisition. Both extracurricular and curriculum-embedded journal clubs had a positive impact on student experience, knowledge acquisition and transferable skill development. Most students stated they learnt a lot from the session (86.5%) with 78.8% stating that they preferred this learning experience to didactic lectures. Students also stated the session enhanced their confidence (76.9%) and teamwork skills (78.8%) and critical appraisal of scientific research (84.6%). Further pre and post-analysis revealed journal clubs significantly increased students’ knowledge of academic literacy. Students who participated in the extracurricular journal clubs scored their enjoyment and enhancement of their employability skills higher than in the curriculum-embedded session. No significant differences were observed when responses were stratified based on socioeconomic parameters. These data show that journal clubs are a valuable pedagogical tool for developing academic literacy and key transferable skills. We also for the first time showcase how journal clubs can be designed and delivered to be an appropriate and scalable pedagogical tool for large taught modules. © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).

This chapter discusses adult learning initiatives undertaken in the United Kingdom in the last 35 years. Drawing on a rich history of adult education, carried largely by local communities, adult education throughout the 1990s became increasingly formalised, standardised, and centralised. Spending cuts affected Further education Colleges, non-traditional Adult higher education students, and providers of Adult Liberal education. Short-term initiatives were introduced by the government primarily to boost employability and increase skills supply for economic growth. Apprenticeships gained prominence and led to the introduction of a levy in 2017. The late 2010s also saw a turn back to the local level with the instalment of Devolved Adult education Budgets. COVID-19 lockdowns accelerated the use of online and digital learning. In July 2024, the UK's newly elected Labour Government announced the establishment of Skills England to streamline skills policies and to create coherence between the fragmented work of stakeholders. © The Editors and Contributing Authors Severally 2025.

Slogans, myths, and isolated anecdotes are inadequate substitutes for documented history and contextual understanding. Literature on the history of higher education is dominated by ahistorical and contextually ignorant slogans. Seldom acknowledged, in discussions of the “decline” or “failure” of the modern university, is 1) how long it has been going on (at least since the 1960s); and 2) universities' own complicity in this long, complicated, and contradictory process. Myths intertwine inseparably with slogans to echo yet another “lost cause.” Our collective, as well as individual, pasts provide essential lessons if we know how to read and learn from them. More complicated is imagining a plausible better future for universities. In Reconstructing the “University”: From the Ashes of the “Mega- and Multi-versity” to the Futures of higher education, Harvey J. Graff, bringing experience from over 50 years as a professor, provides an accurate history of higher education, redefining the issues and terms to establish a new agenda.. © Harvey J. Graff, 2025.

This article uses Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory to conduct a relational analysis of the expansion of academia. Drawing on three case studies from the fields of research (open data), higher education (academization of vocational education), and knowledge transfer (real-world labs), we examine the dynamic interactions between the scientific field and its social environment. Our investigation shows that scientific expansion processes can take very different forms depending on social context. We observe contested incorporations, intrusions, and bridgings that feed back into academia as the hybridization of higher education, infrastructuring of research, and recoding of knowledge. Based on these empirical findings, we propose a relational research heuristic that should enable a better understanding of the multifaceted expansion of science in the future. © The Author(s) 2025.