scholarly journals BENCHMARKING IN UNIVERSITY TOOLBOX

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Anna KUŹMICZ

In the face of global competition and rising challenges that higher education institutions (HEIs) meet, it is imperative to increase innovativeness and efficiency of their management. Benchmarking can be the appropriate tool to search for a point of reference necessary to assess institution’s competitive position and learn from the best in order to improve. The primary purpose of the paper is to present in-depth analysis of benchmarking application in HEIs worldwide. The study involves indicating premises of using benchmarking in HEIs. It also contains detailed examination of types, approaches and scope of benchmarking initiatives. The thorough insight of benchmarking applications enabled developing classification of benchmarking undertakings in HEIs. The paper includes review of the most recent benchmarking projects and relating them to the classification according to the elaborated criteria (geographical range, scope, type of data, subject, support and continuity). The presented examples were chosen in order to exemplify different approaches to benchmarking in higher education setting. The study was performed on the basis of the published reports from benchmarking projects, scientific literature and the experience of the author from the active participation in benchmarking projects. The paper concludes with recommendations for university managers undertaking benchmarking, derived on the basis of the conducted analysis.

Author(s):  
Larissa Gren ◽  
Khalida Kurbanova

The article is devoted to the analysis of the thematic direction of the scientific literature on the formation of professional competence of future chemical engineers in higher education institutions of both domestic researchers and researchers from other countries (monographs, dissertation research); the classification of dissertation researches directions on the formation of professional competence of future chemical engineers in institutions of higher education is given; the necessity of further thorough researches of scientists on the issues of formation of professional competence of future chemical engineers in higher education institutions is proved. Promising areas of professional competence of future chemical engineers in higher education are use of international experience in the formation of professional competence and training of future chemical engineers in higher education in the educational process.


2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (7) ◽  
pp. 1018-1038 ◽  
Author(s):  
Issa Ibrahim Berchin ◽  
Vanessa dos Santos Grando ◽  
Gabriela Almeida Marcon ◽  
Louise Corseuil ◽  
José Baltazar Salgueirinho Osório de Andrade Guerra

Purpose This paper aims to analyze strategies that promote sustainability in higher education institutions (HEIs), focusing on the case study of a federal institute of higher education in Brazil. Design/methodology/approach The research was based on a scientific literature review on sustainability in HEIs, to identify the recurrent actions for sustainability in these institutions; and a case study of a federal institute of higher education in Brazil, to illustrate how these actions are being implemented by HEIs. Findings Concerns about sustainability, prompted by the Brazilian federal legislature, led federal HEI to change its internal processes, infrastructure and organizational culture toward sustainability. Practical implications The findings presented in this study, more specifically the sustainability plan of the Federal Institute for Education, Science and Technology of Santa Catarina, aligned with the recommendations proposed, can be used and replicated in other HEIs. Originality/value Scientific literature about organizational changes led by sustainability concerns, in HEIs specifically, still needs more attention in the academia. By addressing the case of a Brazilian public institution of higher education, this paper contributes to the literature on sustainability in higher education by reporting the process of implementation of a sustainability plan.


Author(s):  
Ivan M. Gryshchenko ◽  
Mykhailo O. Verhun ◽  
Andrii S. Prokhorovskyi

This article attempts to verify the relevance of building a network of energy knowledge hub centres to tackle the priority objective in enhancing energy efficiency and energy saving management in higher education institutions. It is emphasized that the issues of careful and wise use of fuels and energy resources challenge more government efforts, active use of advanced projects to manage energy saving and energy efficiency through the integrated use of different energy sources. The study argues that to identify the potential for energy saving, setting regulatory indicators of energy consumption, determining the key energy saving measures and target objects in the public sector where energy saving programs are planned to be implemented, there is a need to conduct energy surveys with further developing of energy passports for buildings. In the frameworks of this study, the following research methods were used: abstract and logical analysis – to interpret the essence of energy saving concepts for universities; systemic approach – to identify the specifics of energy saving projects implementation in universities; in-depth analysis and synthesis – to forecast the university development priority area of the "Energy efficiency and energy saving"; system, structural, comparative and statistical analyses – to assess the energy consumption in universities; economic and statistical methods – to evaluate the level and the dynamics of the energy sources use before and after the implementation of project activities; graph-based and analytical methods – to facilitate visual representation and schematic presentation of forecasts for further development of energy efficiency and energy saving systems. The study offers a mechanism to shape a network of energy knowledge hub centres to forecast a priority development area of energy efficiency and energy saving programs in higher education institutions along with providing an overview on the process of energy saving based on energy knowledge hub centres by carrying out the following tasks: project identification, scanning, energy audit, implementation of an action plan, and monitoring. It has been verified that to enhance the energy supply system in the university buildings, the following objectives should be attained: using the energy knowledge hub to forecast the university energy efficiency and energy saving programme, implementing an automated individual heating station with weather regulation and installing new radiator heaters.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Elíseo Fernandes Sanches ◽  
Matheus Leite Campos ◽  
Luiz Eduardo Gaio ◽  
Marcio Marcelo Belli

Purpose Higher education institutions (HEIs) should assume their role as leaders in the search for a sustainable future. Consequently, such institutions need to incorporate sustainability into their activities. However, this needs to be done holistically and not with isolated and independent actions. Therefore, this study aims to develop a structure of sustainability action archetypes to help HEIs holistically incorporate sustainability in their strategies. Design/methodology/approach A systematic review of the literature was conducted focusing on the subject of sustainability in HEIs. Findings A structure of sustainability action archetypes for HEIs was proposed. Further, based on scientific literature, examples of actions were presented within each archetype. Practical implications This study provides HEI administrators and other organizations with a practical structure to enable the systemic incorporation of sustainability objectives and actions into institutional activities. Originality/value This study adapts the tool “sustainable business model archetypes” for a new purpose. This tool was initially developed to classify innovations of sustainable business models.


2020 ◽  
pp. 181-194
Author(s):  
Inga Sina ◽  
Aija Sannikova ◽  
Fawad Sajjad

This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of brands of European Higher Education Institutions as a key factor for foreign students. The globalization of education processes and the creation of a united European education area have increased foreign students' interest to study in Europe.Increasing unemployment, poverty, inconsistency in education, economic problems, political instability, low job opportunities, and unsafe environment are the undeniable reasons for young students to explore higher education opportunities in foreign countries. The main purpose of the research is to describe the factors affecting foreign students' choice ofEuropean Higher Education Institutions and provide information on the factors, which are of great importance. For achieving the aim, the previous research and scientific literature are studied, and a survey is conducted using a questionnaire. Investigation of the topic of brands of European Higher Education Institutions as a key factor for foreign students in the paper is carried out in the following logical sequence: the study of previous research and scientific literature and analysis of the survey results. Methodological tools of the research methods are the creation of a database of respondents, a survey on the factors impacting the choice of Higher Education Institutions in Europe by foreign students and analysis and interpretation of the survey results using nonparametric tests. The object of research is the field of Higher Education in Europe, and the subject of the research is consumer choice in Higher Education in Europe. The paper presents the results of an empirical analysis on brands of European Higher Education Institutions as a key factor for foreign students. It showed that four groups of factors – regional, political financial, and educational – play a significant role in the choice of European Higher Education Institutions by foreign students. The research empirically confirms and theoretically proves that the most significant role in the choice of Higher Education Institutions in Europe for all level of students – Bachelor's, Masters and Doctors - play educational factors, the least significant role – political factors. The results of the Kruskal-Wallis H test show that there are statistically significant differences in the assessment of the role of factors in choosing the place of studies in Europe in different levels of study programs. The results of the research can be useful for decision-makers in Higher Education Institutions in Europe when working out different student attraction strategies, thus increasing the number of students and competitiveness. Keywords foreign students, globalization, Higher education, International Business Administration, students' choice.


Cancers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (23) ◽  
pp. 6048
Author(s):  
Joanna Jaworek-Korjakowska ◽  
Andrzej Brodzicki ◽  
Bill Cassidy ◽  
Connah Kendrick ◽  
Moi Hoon Yap

Over the past few decades, different clinical diagnostic algorithms have been proposed to diagnose malignant melanoma in its early stages. Furthermore, the detection of skin moles driven by current deep learning based approaches yields impressive results in the classification of malignant melanoma. However, in all these approaches, the researchers do not take into account the origin of the skin lesion. It has been observed that the specific criteria for in situ and early invasive melanoma highly depend on the anatomic site of the body. To address this problem, we propose a deep learning architecture based framework to classify skin lesions into the three most important anatomic sites, including the face, trunk and extremities, and acral lesions. In this study, we take advantage of pretrained networks, including VGG19, ResNet50, Xception, DenseNet121, and EfficientNetB0, to calculate the features with an adjusted and densely connected classifier. Furthermore, we perform in depth analysis on database, architecture, and result regarding the effectiveness of the proposed framework. Experiments confirm the ability of the developed algorithms to classify skin lesions into the most important anatomical sites with 91.45% overall accuracy for the EfficientNetB0 architecture, which is a state-of-the-art result in this domain.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Érika Pena Bedin ◽  
Luiz Carlos de Faria

This study aims to explore how the topic of sustainability in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) has been addressed in the scientific literature. It presents a systematic literature review of peer-reviewed journal articles published between 1975 and 2019. After that, bibliometric and content analyses were performed in order to identify the behavior and evolution of the literature and identify the frequency with which they appear in the text, making it possible to raise replicable and valid inferences to the data. The results of this study indicate that the theme is emerging since the year 2010 and with a strong focus on qualitative studies, focused on critical theory. The results indicate that although studies involve the tripod environment, economy, and society, there is still a gap in studies that deal with specific issues to solve practical problems and that analyze the impacts from a more holistic perspective. The combination of methods made it possible to identify and interpret the articles in the selected sample, but based on results reported by other authors, with little room for quality control and integrity.


Author(s):  
Іван Михайлович Грищенко ◽  
Олена Павлівна Кизимчук ◽  
Олег Олександрович Шевченко

The article seeks to discuss the issues of internationalization for higher education institutions that arose with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, in particular, the suspension of both student and staff academic mobility. However, academic mobility is the fundamental premise for the internationalization of higher education where students who cross borders with the desire to change their lives and the strive for better prospects are the most critical element of this mobility. The mobility of all the education process participants has become an important driver in ensuring and promoting education transparency and the access to quality education for everyone. In fact, within the past six months, prospective students are increasingly changing their intentions to study abroad, or defer their enrolment plans for subsequent years. The aim of this paper is to explore possible solutions for further implementation of internationalization principles into all university's activities framework under the quarantine and post-quarantine period. The research findings from the in-depth analysis of a range of higher education institution performances have revealed that one of the most promising areas to enhance university internationalization is a shift from actual to virtual mobility which is based on communication within the information and educational environment. In particular, the design of new competitive online courses in English and their large-scale promotion on the international market is another priority objective for internationalization during the quarantine. Apparently, University positioning in a virtual environment is a crucial factor to build attractiveness and competitiveness of higher education institutions in the global settings.


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