Conference Agenda

Metaphors figuratively pair ordinarily separate concepts in a way that is intended to be illustrative (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). Their use in relation to universities is not new – such as in case of the ivory tower (see Shapin 2012) – but it seems that while the juxtaposition can help us to think about phenomena in different ways, there is also a danger of them blurring our understanding (Lumby and Foskett 2011). As Tight (2013) mentions, sometimes the metaphor simply doesn’t fit because it obfuscates core characteristics, such as in framing students as consumers, apprentices, or something other than students. Metaphors have, though, been applied fruitfully, such as to consider tensions between different purposes for higher education such as knowledge republic or free market actor (Olsen 2007), and they are a common feature of debate and ‘battle’ over The University’s ‘soul’ (Deering and Sá 2018).

One common metaphor around universities is that of the landscape, and its prevalence across educational scholarship more broadly has led to it being identified as something of a buzzword (Terepyshchyi 2017). Its use in higher education in particular has been associated with a somewhat geographical turn in our language, such as shifting tectonic plates around universities (Caruana 2016), the climates of campus cultures (Sundaram and Jackson 2018), or disciplinary spaces, terrains, domains, or kingdoms (Chen and Hu 2012). Landscapes appear to be somewhat ubiquitous in higher education scholarship and wider writing, appearing in outlets ranging between official USAID reports (Lebrón et al. 2018) to mainstream media such as The Atlantic (Fallows and Ganeshanthan 2004). Google Scholar searches return 37,000 results on the term “research landscape”, and 13,000 on “academic landscape”, and there are other formulations. While it is important to draw a distinction between literal and theoretical uses of the term such as landscape planning or landscapes of practice, landscapes are clearly doing a lot of ‘work’ in and around higher education. What work that is, though, remains to be seen.

The focus of this paper is therefore on the use of the term landscape in higher education research and within that, “higher education landscape”, which returns over 30,000 results on Google Scholar. If, as the literature suggests, metaphors serve a function, what function – or functions – does this one serve for higher education? To be clear, the research question here is ‘how are landscapes as metaphors, and within that, higher education landscapes, used in higher education scholarship?’ Through a systematic review of the literature, this paper ‘maps’ the higher education landscape of higher education landscapes. It is hoped that exploring the application of this metaphor – and whether the juxtaposition illustrates or obfuscates – can provide useful insights into how higher education is conceptualised.

In recent years, the role of the state in internationalisation in higher education (HE) has been the subject of increasing research (Veerasamy and Durst 2021). Yet, only about 10% of countries around the world have a formal national internationalisation strategy, mostly concentrated in affluent democracies, and of those, over 80% of them are OECD members (Crăciun 2018). Thus, national internationalisation policies have primarily emerged in developed (democratic) economies, and amongst nations within the OECD, an organisation which, in the field of education, exerts its influence on national policy debates by governing through ‘numbers’ (e.g. Education at a Glance, PISA) and projecting global policies and norms, both directly and indirectly promoting the practice of policy mimicry and isomorphism.

Comparative studies on national internationalisation policies, on the other hand, would argue (at times implicitly) that, while such policies originate as a response to demands for ‘globalisation’, countries tend to be selective in deciding which metrics, policy instruments, or specific policy rationales to employ, often on the basis of their current needs (Sanders 2019). In striving to compete, nations may embark on a process of horizon scanning, to identify ‘what works’ and best practices elsewhere, facilitating forms of policy borrowing from high performers (Forestier et al. 2016). While scholars of isomorphism often argue that national systems are converging around a ‘single’ global model, dismissing any local or national variations as mere ‘diversity facades’ (Zapp, Marques, and Powell 2021), it should also be noted that policy borrowing is often subject to a process of translation and transformation (Cowen 2009), and that policies can be transplanted with little adaptation. Andrews, Pritchett, and Woolcock (2017), for example, argue that developing countries often adopt policies, programmes and institutional structures from developed countries, which helps improve their image and legitimacy; however, these solutions are often not fit for the local context and they are often required to borrow policies by their funders. The result is the transfer of ‘prefabricated’ solutions which ensures ‘successful failure’ as external best practices are adopted as policies, but fall short of their purposes, and do not promote innovation, experimentation or localised solutions.

This paper focuses on the role of the OECD in shaping internationalisation of HE policies in Israel and South Korea, two nations which are members of the OECD but on the ‘periphery’ in terms of those which have driven globalisation. We believe that this paper will provide a companion to the existing corpus of works on the internationalisation of HE in Europe.

This paper presents a historical analysis of the role of the Organisation for Co-operation and Development in Europe (OECD), in shaping the transformation of the higher education system, policies and institutions in Ireland in the early 2000s. As Vaira notes, powerful supranational agencies such as the OECD may serve as ‘institutional carriers’ which promote and disseminate ‘the wider rationalised myths’ of globalisation and define the context in which higher education institutions operate (Vaira, 2004, Walsh, 2018).

The historical study is framed by an analysis of two seminal reports, the review of higher education in Ireland by the OECD (2004) and the national strategy for higher education to 2030 (2011), widely known as the 'Hunt Report'. Both reports are underpinned by a similar ideological vision informed by theories of human capital formation and a shared conviction that higher education should be reformed to contribute effectively to a knowledge based economy. Higher education was positioned as a key determinant of national economic salvation in the Hunt report, which adopted a narrow conceptualisation of human capital theory broadly shared by the OECD.

The study explores the extent to which the national strategy adopted in 2011 constituted an example of 'policy borrowing' (Vaira, 2004) by national political and administrative elites from a dominant international discourse disseminated by the OECD, featuring structural rationalisation at system level, institutional reform to curb the autonomy of universities and more intensive regulation of higher education by state agencies. The process of policy formation by the two expert groups is considered to explore the ideological frameworks which they adopted and the extent to which the reports subscribed to a common reform agenda.

A key question for this paper is the extent to which both the OECD and the national strategy were influenced by neo liberalism and its associated organisational discourse of new public management (NPM). Neo-liberalism, described by Vaira as ‘not only a political rhetoric, or ideology, but a wide project to change the institutional structure of societies at a global level’, was never embraced uncritically by Irish policymakers in the late twentieth century. Both the OECD and the Hunt report in the early 2000s adopted much of the rhetoric of NPM, advocating a more hierarchical, empowered management within higher education institutions; increased accountability mechanisms for academic staff and more intrusive regulation by state agencies. Yet this apparent adoption of NPM within the Hunt report remained partial, coexisting uneasily with explicit support for academic freedom and institutional autonomy, albeit within a restructured higher education sector characterised by ‘directed diversity’.

The paper also gives weight to the differing economic and societal contexts for the two reports: the OECD review was undertaken at a time of relative economic affluence internationally and for the Irish economy, while the Hunt report was completed at the height of the economic crash which ultimately triggered a European-IMF bailout for the Irish state. There were significant limitations to the influence of supranational agencies, not least due to political, regional and fiscal constraints which impinged on national policymakers in an era of crisis.

The differences between the OECD review and the Hunt report largely reflected pragmatic political decisions on how best to implement shared objectives and values in a distinctive domestic context in which consensual decision-making on a partnership model was the norm and regional and local interests traditionally enjoyed significant influence. This paper will interrogate the shared ideological discourse and policy agenda expressed by both the OECD review and the Hunt report, while also exploring genuine differences in terms of the process of policy formation and implementation.