This book discusses and analyses global policies and practices aimed at promoting equity in higher education participation and attainment. Although the massification of higher education systems has facilitated the participation of students from deprived backgrounds, socioeconomic inequalities persist in access to the most prestigious institutions and programmes. Privileged students benefit from a number of advantages in the competition for selective and scarce places: access to information, lower aversion to debt, higher expectations, better previous schooling and higher academic achievement. The chapters present a critical analysis of equity policies in different countries - with or without affirmative action policies, within a context of neoliberal policies or within a social democratic model - and the reasons why they have failed to promote equity and fairness, preventing students from achieving their full educational potential.This is an open access book.

This book analyses European higher education policies and their three main drivers: the European Commission, the European Court of Justice and the building of the European Higher Education Area through the Bologna Process. Central to the volume is the issue of European institutions' intervention in higher education: building a common area for higher education in a domain protected by subsidiarity is no easy task, and one that must consider the supra-national, national and institutional levels that all play a role in policy implementation. In this volume, the editors and contributors navigate within the tensions between the establishment of an internal market on the one hand and national sovereignty on the other. This volume will surely be of interest and value to those studying and working in the area of higher education policy and understanding relationships between European institutions and member states.

This book analyses the structural and institutional transformations undergone by doctoral education, and the extent to which these transformations are in line with social, political and doctoral candidates' expectations. Higher education has gone through profound changes driven by the massification and diversification of the student body, the rise of neoliberal policies coupled with the reduction in public funding and the emergence of the knowledge society and economy. As a result, higher education has been assigned new and more outward-looking missions, which have subsequently affected doctoral education. The editors and contributors examine these transformations and changes at the macro, meso and micro levels: wider and more structural changes as well as doctoral candidates' experience of the degree itself. This book will be of interest and value to scholars of doctoral education and the transformation of the university more widely.

This book presents a critical analysis of the implementation of the Bologna Process, its achievements and consequences, as well as its failures and lack of convergence problems. Over the last decade the implementation of the Bologna Process, an ambitious reform of European higher education systems, has attracted attention from politicians, academics, students and scholars in higher education policy. Taking Portugal as a case study, the book includes an analysis of the perceptions and the practices, formed at the institutional level in respect of the key objectives laid down at the European level, namely employability, mobility and attractiveness.

This book analyses the structural and institutional transformations undergone by doctoral education, and the extent to which these transformations are in line with social, political and doctoral candidates' expectations. Higher education has gone through profound changes driven by the massification and diversification of the student body, the rise of neoliberal policies coupled with the reduction in public funding and the emergence of the knowledge society and economy. As a result, higher education has been assigned new and more outward-looking missions, which have subsequently affected doctoral education. The editors and contributors examine these transformations and changes at the macro, meso and micro levels: wider and more structural changes as well as doctoral candidates' experience of the degree itself. This book will be of interest and value to scholars of doctoral education and the transformation of the university more widely.

This book analyses European higher education policies and their three main drivers: the European Commission, the European Court of Justice and the building of the European Higher Education Area through the Bologna Process. Central to the volume is the issue of European institutions' intervention in higher education: building a common area for higher education in a domain protected by subsidiarity is no easy task, and one that must consider the supra-national, national and institutional levels that all play a role in policy implementation. In this volume, the editors and contributors navigate within the tensions between the establishment of an internal market on the one hand and national sovereignty on the other. This volume will surely be of interest and value to those studying and working in the area of higher education policy and understanding relationships between European institutions and member states.