Globalizing forces have both transformed the higher education sector and made it increasingly homogenous. Growing similarities among universities have been attributed to isomorphic pressures to ensure and/or enhance legitimacy by imitating higher education institutions that are perceived as successful internationally, particularly universities that are highly ranked globally (Cantwell & Kauppinen, 2014; DiMaggio and Powell, 1983). In this study, we compared the strategic plans of 78 high-ranked, low-ranked, and unranked universities in 33 countries in 9 regions of the world. In analyzing the plans of these 78 universities, the study explored patterns of similarity and difference in universities’ strategic positioning according to Suchman’s (1995) 3 types of legitimacy: cognitive, pragmatic, and moral. We found evidence of stratified university strategies in a global higher education landscape that varied by institutional status. In offering a corrective to neoinstitutional theory, we suggest that patterns of globalization are mediated by status-based differences in aspirational behavior (Riesman, 1958) and “old institutional” forces (Stinchcombe, 1997) that contribute to differently situated universities pursuing new paths in seeking to build external legitimacy.

This paper focuses on the education of migrant children in Beijing. As of the late 1990s, the Chinese Government has developed several policies to address educational issues among migrant children. The present study analyses data from interviews with key education personnel in Beijing to explore the outcomes of the implementation of such migrant children’s education (MCE) policies and the reasons for variation from policy design. The data suggest that there is poorer equality in terms of education among migrant vs. local children than the government has reported. Migrant children are faced with numerous strict admission procedures for public schools. The Chinese Government has not prioritised educational equality, despite professing to do so. The capability and motivation of local institutions for policy implementation are less adequate than might be expected. Using Honig’s model of policy implementation, this research shows that the outcomes of the MCE policies are a product of interaction between policy design, participants and implementation context.

Universities have been expected to do more to solve economic and social problems in the knowledge-based society. Many universities have tried to become more entrepreneurial in order to respond to the overloaded demands from external society. However, the notion of entrepreneurial university is still quite vague, and so this paper firstly tries to propose a comprehensive framework describing the entrepreneurial university. Facing the increasing global competition, the national governments have also push universities to do more for the society and to be accountable for their “effectiveness” and “quality”, by using the new public management techniques. However, these managerialism approaches have posed serious challenge for the development of entrepreneurial universities. In order to better balance the expectation for being entrepreneurial from the external industry and society, and the managerialism requirement from the government, this paper proposes to reassert the responsibility of universities in the accountability era, moving towards “Entrepreneurial Universities 2.0”.

Neo-liberal reforms have triggered the emergence of new professionalism of teachers. This study adopts the perspective of inhabited institutionalism theory and proposes that teachers are not passively influenced by the new professionalism but that they can also respond to it differently based on their own sense-making. Using in-depth interview data from Chinese high school teachers, this study finds that two contradictory but coexisting forms of managerial professionalism strongly influence teachers: examination-oriented professionalism and quality-oriented professionalism. Meanwhile, three patterns of teachers’ reactions to externally-imposed professionalism are identified: ‘Why bother?’, ‘Struggling’, and ‘Meaningless’. The findings provoke further discussion of the potential influence of teachers’ responses to the new professionalism and professional development.