Research in Comparative and International Education

In a time where the student experience increasingly mirrors a customer-centric approach, universities are becoming comprehensive educational service providers. Beyond delivering courses and providing academic knowledge, universities are expected to cater to student needs and preferences. The emphasis on service quality is critical, as positive perceptions can enhance student satisfaction and foster retention, ensuring students feel valued and supported throughout their educational journey. Using a non-probability convenience sampling method, this study examines service quality perceptions among 1,535 university students in France and South Korea through an online survey. Exploratory factor analysis identified three key factors – personalized student support, service provision, and aesthetic ambiance – accounting for 63.7% of the variance. Personalized student support alone accounts for 48.2% of the total variance. Regression analysis established a statistically significant relationship between all three factors and student satisfaction. One-way ANOVA tests revealed that international students generally perceive service quality higher than domestic students across all factors. Additionally, only gender had a statistically significant yet small impact on personalized student support, while service provision was affected by gender, country of study, and student status. The findings contribute to service quality literature in higher education and suggest that universities implement tailored strategies to address diverse student needs, crucial for effective decision-making and resource allocation. These insights can influence policy by encouraging universities to develop culturally sensitive strategies and targeted interventions. Future research could explore longitudinal and qualitative designs to examine the evolution of service quality perceptions over time and investigate the dynamics of additional demographic variables and cultural factors to refine strategies in other educational contexts.

This paper examines the internationalization of Japan’s higher education sector, focussing on two non-elite private universities. The study provides rich insights into social actors’ personal experiences and perceptions on how resource constraints, decision-making structures, and governmental policies hinder internationalization on the ground. Through interviews with 15 participants at two non-elite universities in Japan, the study highlights the challenges faced by institutions reliant on domestic student fees and with limited alternative revenue options. Findings reveal that internationalization efforts are often limited by financial constraints, internal decision-making processes, and minimal integration of global perspectives into teaching. In particular, the strong veto power of faculty meetings (kyōjukai) and a consensus-driven approach resulted in the ‘decoupling’ of internationalization as an organizational goal from the interests of the departments, where the global dimension was not prioritized.

Ghana’s 2019 educational reform aims to instil in children a renewed sense of citizenship for deepening democracy and moving the nation out of poverty. These priorities are pertinent for primary schoolteachers in Ghana’s capital city, Accra, faced with the immediate challenge of reversing high youth unemployment, which is intensifying urban poverty. Based on interviews with 26 primary schoolteachers across three government schools, this study reveals how African Indigeneity, as part of these Ghanaian teachers’ Indigenous heritage, gave meaning to a more authentic, historic expression of citizenship in relation to their learners. Despite tensions around the inclusionary and exclusionary aspects of Indigeneity, as a key site of ethnic difference, these teachers sought to evolve it as a pedagogical tool for fostering unity in difference. The paper contends that foregrounding local epistemologies enables teachers to reinterpret citizenship in Accra, positioning them to reimagine their learners’ futures on their own African, Indigenous terms.

Gendered achievement patterns are persistently observed in the English-speaking Caribbean as elsewhere in the Global South. This study examined the role school climate plays in gendered experiences inside St Vincent and the Grenadines schools. We report on findings from a national school climate survey study conducted there that give insights on boys’ (n = 107) and girls’ (n = 118) perceptions of their school environment. Chi-square analyses demonstrate that at the item level, there were few differences in perceptions between boys and girls; however at the scale level, mean comparisons revealed significant differences on four of the eight scales. In each case, these differences reached a medium effect size (Kendall’s tau ≥0.47). We discuss findings in terms of strength and growth areas of these school systems, what the government of St Vincent and the Grenadines may consider for improving school climate, and how future studies can better incorporate student voice.

Teachers in India occupy conflicted social positions, both culturally valued and institutionally marginalised. We explore teacher perceptions of their autonomy through a survey of 177 teachers working in Chennai, India. Conceptually, autonomy offers insight into the degree of centralisation or professionalisation that structure the work of teachers. Our respondents reported high perceptions of autonomy across a range of domains, a surprising finding within the context of schooling in India. We argue our findings represent teachers making meanings of the concept of autonomy in ways that differ from other international contexts. We suggest these understandings include teachers interpreting their positionalities within a loosely coupled organisation, a teacher workforce seeking professionalism in a post-colonial institution, and persistent expectations of a culture of compliance. Teacher autonomy is understudied in India, and our tentative findings serve as a starting place for exploring teacher perceptions of their work in the rapidly changing institution of education.

This study addresses higher education corruption in the US by comparing it with that in Russia and does so by analyzing media reports on educational corruption that cover 20-year period from 1998 to 2017. US higher education is decentralized and autonomous, yet not entirely market-driven, while Russia still has a centralized higher education system characterized by weak links with industries and low economic effectiveness. Public opinion is influenced by the media, including when it comes to higher education corruption, but the national media is not particularly generous in highlighting this burning problem. In case of the US higher education corruption, the image projected by the media is that of fraud, while in case of Russian higher education, the projected image is that of bribery, nepotism, fraud, and incompetency. The standardized testing, called to improve the situation with corruption in college admissions, has received a mixed review in the media. In both cases, the area is admissions and the issue in general is access to higher education. Yet, the two country cases are very different, and this difference is contextually explained. In its core, these are financial issues in the US and scholastic abilities in Russia.

Given the increasing precarity of the academic job market and the growing presence of international academics, understanding the experiences of international early career academics is crucial for supporting their career development. In this context, local language competence is frequently cited as a critical factor in facilitating their institutional integration and social adaptation beyond academia. However, little research using quantitative approaches offers insights into the extent to which local language competence – Japanese, in our case – contributes to these outcomes. Using survey responses from such academics, we examine the relationships between their Japanese-language competence and institutional integration and social adaptation. Surprisingly, we observe no consistent pattern in institutional integration across different language competence levels. Although language competence is significantly related to social adaptation, particularly in interpersonal interactions, its effect size is minimal. These findings highlight the complexity of the relationship between international academics’ adaptation processes and their local language competence.