This is the century of addressing global challenges and crises as well as technological advances such as digitalization. Higher education as many other sectors is facing unprecedented demands and has to innovate and find creative transformative solutions that are radical from the status quo and business as usual approaches in running higher education.

Transformation of higher education can be understood as a radical, transformational or an incremental change in the policies and practices in higher education across the world. This summer school focuses on the topic of transformation of higher education taking into account its multi-level nature. As noted by Dee, van der Meulen and Leišytė (forthcoming), there are competing views to what extent higher education systems and institutions have been transformed. Some analyses suggest that higher education has already undergone a massive transformation, as technologies, markets, and government policies have yielded significant changes in the daily operations of universities (Deem, Hillyard, & Reed, 2007; Geiger, 2004; Musselin, 2010; Slaughter & Rhoades, 2004; Leišytė and Wilkesmann, 2016). Other arguments note that higher education is a highly institutionalized field where the rate of change is low, norms and traditions keep the status quo, and decoupled organizational structures forestall new initiatives (Dill, 1999; Krücken, 2003; Schimank, 2008).

The summer school invites contributions from the doctoral students and postdocs from higher education studies across the world. We are interested in the theoretical as well as the qualitative and/or quantitative contributions addressing various aspects of transformation in higher education in teaching, research or third mission. This includes but is not limited to the discussions of definitions of transformation, analysis of the actors involved in transformation, mechanisms and instruments of transformation as well as drivers as well as challenges associated with transformation of higher education systems and institutions. We especially welcome papers addressing work in progress from the PhD projects addressing the above issues.

The program will include keynote speeches, presentations and discussions of the work in progress of the summer school participants, workshops on various topics addressing the challenges of academic writing and the topics of particular aspects of transformation of higher education, such as digitalization of universities. The versatile social program will provide plenty of opportunities to network and to explore the industry culture of the Ruhr region, where TU Dortmund is located.

Program

The application deadline was 15 February 2022. Acceptance letters will be sent by 15 March 2022. Thanks for all submissions.

Fees

The participation fee for the whole week of the summer school including course materials and catering is 350, - Euro per person, on a self-funding basis.

See here for further notes on payment.