Operationalising University Excellence in Doctoral Education: The Case of Top-Ranked Russian Universities

IF 1.7 3区教育学 Q2 EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

Higher Education Policy Pub Date : 2024-05-03 DOI:10.1057/s41307-024-00354-3

Elena Tsvetkova

{"title":"Operationalising University Excellence in Doctoral Education: The Case of Top-Ranked Russian Universities","authors":"Elena Tsvetkova","doi":"10.1057/s41307-024-00354-3","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>Numerous countries have implemented excellence initiatives designed to establish world-class universities, boost research productivity, build up staff capacity, and thereby reform doctoral education systems as part of this agenda. To date, the relationship between excellence-driven initiatives and leading universities’ doctoral education enhancement remains understudied in Russia. This study seeks to examine how seven top-ranked Russian universities responded to the Excellence Initiatives (5-100 Project and Priority 2030) at the institutional strategy level from 2012 till 24 February 2022. To explore this relationship and change in research education, documentary research was applied to a corpus of institutional strategies for excellence accompanied with governmental texts. Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was adopted and complemented with analytical lenses to understand and examine how university excellence is recontextualised and operationalised in doctoral education structures across these strategies. This CDA was enhanced with theoretical lenses to research how multiple forces behind governmental policies for globalisation, innovation, and international competitiveness shape this change in Russian doctoral education in relation to global trends, national priorities, and local needs. The paper presents and discusses emergent processes (with mechanisms and practices) and the universities’ meaning-making behind the normative and performative ‘enhancement’ in doctoral education constructed with the state’s dominant understandings of university excellence.</p>","PeriodicalId":47327,"journal":{"name":"Higher Education Policy","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.7000,"publicationDate":"2024-05-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Higher Education Policy","FirstCategoryId":"95","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-024-00354-3","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"教育学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH","Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Numerous countries have implemented excellence initiatives designed to establish world-class universities, boost research productivity, build up staff capacity, and thereby reform doctoral education systems as part of this agenda. To date, the relationship between excellence-driven initiatives and leading universities’ doctoral education enhancement remains understudied in Russia. This study seeks to examine how seven top-ranked Russian universities responded to the Excellence Initiatives (5-100 Project and Priority 2030) at the institutional strategy level from 2012 till 24 February 2022. To explore this relationship and change in research education, documentary research was applied to a corpus of institutional strategies for excellence accompanied with governmental texts. Norman Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was adopted and complemented with analytical lenses to understand and examine how university excellence is recontextualised and operationalised in doctoral education structures across these strategies. This CDA was enhanced with theoretical lenses to research how multiple forces behind governmental policies for globalisation, innovation, and international competitiveness shape this change in Russian doctoral education in relation to global trends, national priorities, and local needs. The paper presents and discusses emergent processes (with mechanisms and practices) and the universities’ meaning-making behind the normative and performative ‘enhancement’ in doctoral education constructed with the state’s dominant understandings of university excellence.

查看原文本刊更多论文

博士教育中卓越大学的可操作性：俄罗斯一流大学的案例

许多国家都实施了卓越计划，旨在建立世界一流大学，提高研究生产力，增强员工能力，从而改革博士生教育体系。迄今为止，俄罗斯对卓越计划与一流大学加强博士生教育之间的关系仍然研究不足。本研究旨在探讨从 2012 年到 2022 年 2 月 24 日，七所俄罗斯一流大学如何在机构战略层面响应卓越计划（5-100 项目和 2030 年优先事项）。为了探索研究教育中的这种关系和变化，文献研究被应用到与政府文本一起的卓越院校战略语料库中。研究采用了诺曼-费尔克拉夫（Norman Fairclough）的批判性话语分析（Critical Discourse Analysis，CDA）方法，并辅以分析视角，以理解和研究卓越大学如何在这些战略的博士教育结构中被重新语境化和操作化。理论视角增强了这一话语分析，以研究全球化、创新和国际竞争力等政府政策背后的多重力量如何根据全球趋势、国家优先事项和地方需求塑造俄罗斯博士教育的这一变革。本文介绍并讨论了新出现的过程（包括机制和实践），以及在国家对大学卓越性的主导理解下构建的博士教育规范性和表演性 "强化 "背后的大学意义建构。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

求助全文

约1分钟内获得全文求助全文

来源期刊

Higher Education Policy EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH-

CiteScore

4.60

自引率

6.20%

发文量

期刊介绍： Higher Education Policy is an international peer-reviewed and SSCI-indexed academic journal focusing on higher education policy in a broad sense. The journal considers submissions that discuss national and supra-national higher education policies and/or analyse their impacts on higher education institutions or the academic community: leadership, faculty, staff and students, but also considers papers that deal with governance and policy issues at the level of higher education institutions. Critical analyses, empirical investigations (either qualitative or quantitative), and theoretical-conceptual contributions are equally welcome, but for all submissions the requirement is that papers be embedded in the relevant academic literature and contribute to furthering our understanding of policy. The journal has a preference for papers that are written from a disciplinary or interdisciplinary perspective. In the past, contributors have relied on perspectives from public administration, political science, sociology, history, economics and law, but also from philosophy, psychology and anthropology. Articles devoted to systems of higher education that are less well-known or less often analysed are particularly welcome. Given the international scope of the journal, articles should be written for and be understood by an international audience, consisting of researchers in higher education, disciplinary researchers, and policy-makers, administrators, managers and practitioners in higher education. Contributions should not normally exceed 7,000 words (excluding references). Peer reviewAll submissions to the journal will undergo rigorous peer review (anonymous referees) after an initial editorial screening on quality and fit with the journal''s aims.Special issues The journal welcomes proposals for special issues. The journal archive contains several examples of special issues. Such proposals, to be sent to the editor, should set out the theme of the special issue and include the names of the (proposed) contributors and summaries of the envisaged contributions. Forum section Occasionally, the journal publishes contributions – in its Forum section – based on personal viewpoints and/or experiences with the intent to stimulate discussion and reflection, or to challenge established thinking in the field of higher education.