How do meta-organizations affect extra-organizational boundaries? The case of university associations

How do organizational associations affect extra-organizational boundaries? This chapter addresses this question by looking into the long-established practice among universities to form associations. In order to examine how associations delineate boundaries in universities’ institutional environment, the chapter draws on the scholarly work on categories and conceptualizes associations as meta-organizations. The chapter finds that category-based identities, and other organizational characteristics, enacted to demarcate members from non-members play a central role in this process. In following these lines of demarcation on a sample of 185 national and international university associations a typology emerges, accompanied by a global diffusion pattern. Three sets of institutional conditions are then identified as being conducive to this process: (1) the twentieth-century university expansion and the consolidation of national higher education fields, (2) the intensification of cross-border interaction and the advent of international institutions, and (3) the formation of a global field and the rise of competition as an ideological imperative.

Functional Differentiation and University Expansion in Chile

Over the last few decades, education has acquired a fairly robust social identity worldwide and participation in higher education has also become increasingly common. Building upon Luhmann’s theory of society, in this paper we analyze the expansion of higher education in Chile, specifically looking at the transformations the Chilean higher education system has undergone and the interactions between this system and its social environment. We will include statistics to clarify the extent of the changes to – and costs of – increasing inclusion. We will also focus on the ever-changing rationales for the expansion (or contraction) of higher education in Chile. Altogether, our analysis show not just how the Chilean system of higher education adapts to its social environment, but also how individuals and other function systems currently adapt to this system and how it is organized. We end with a brief reflection on the ways in which education may or may not make a difference to society and a discussion on whether our findings shed any light on the evolution of other countries’ education systems.

Life stories: biography and creativity

This chapter traces the engine of the pioneers' success and discusses their earlier lives, hinting or reflecting on how these experiences may have shaped their research. It begins by analyzing how the pioneers' were influenced by the communities where they grew up. Looking at the pioneers' families as a whole, even though this generation for which unprecedented university expansion brought rare opportunities for upward mobility, the chapter examines the pioneers' working-class families and old Oxbridge intellectual aristocracy. It notes that some of the key factors which brought them opportunities were due to national social changes and international events. The chapter also looks at how the older generation generally benefitted from Second World War experiences that took them out of their social-class cocoon. The chapter then discusses the pioneers who chose to explore other cultures rather than to research their own communities. It emphasizes social class injustice, racism, and gender injustice.

Effectiveness of public university expansion in Brazil: comparison between the situation of graduated and dropout students

Starting in 2007 with the implementation of the Support Program to Restructure and Expansion Plans of Federal Universities (Reuni, acronym in Portuguese), Brazil doubled the number of admissions in public higher education within a decade, while also making the admissions process more inclusive. However, this rapid expansion has led to criticism regarding the loss of quality in public higher education. The objective of this study is to compare the labor market performances of successful graduated and dropout students who majored in four disciplines that encompass this expansion policy. The nonparametric Binomial and Mann-Whitney tests were used to compare the performances of the groups of students who had successfully graduated and those who had dropped out of their courses at the Planaltina campus of the University of Brasilia (UnB-FUP). The performance of the graduated students in our sample was worrisome, as our results show that there is a high number of unemployed students and, that among those employed, few work in the area they majored in, raising doubts about the effectiveness of the policy to expand the number of admissions in higher education held in Brazil.

The Worldwide Instantiation of the University

This chapter describes the multi-dimensional expansion of the university, focusing especially on its accumulating numbers and global diffusion. It stresses the transcendence and universalism of the university at the global level. It also analyzes how university expansion is expected to occur earlier and more fully in the global core than in the global periphery, in democracies than in dictatorships, in the natural sciences than in the social sciences or humanities, and in world-class research universities more than local teaching colleges. The chapter highlights the university as a global institution and the global knowledge society that arises upon it. It examines the spread of universities around the world and studies local instances of a general model that is a central point to sociological neo-institutional theory.

Fearing Such a Lady: University Expansion, Underemployment, and the Hypergamy Ideal in Kampala, Uganda

In Uganda, the cultural norm of hypergamy, which dictates that husbands should have higher economic and social status than wives, is pervasive and influential. Yet hypergamy has recently been challenged by women’s gains in education relative to men and by an unemployment crisis leaving educated young men unable to find steady work. Using interviews with recent university graduates in Kampala, we investigate how highly educated young adults navigate frictions between the hypergamy ideal and these recent transformations in gendered status. Some women reduce the salience of hypergamy by preventing their relationships from becoming serious, while other women intentionally perform the role of submissive housewife while preserving their autonomy. Men reframe their romantic circumstances to underplay their inability to achieve economic hypergamy, portraying educated women as undesirable and characterizing their partners as nonmaterialistic. These findings reveal how demographic and economic changes reconfigure relationship norms, gendered power dynamics, and family formation processes.

Place making as a form of place taking

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine perceptions of institutional encroachment and community responses to it. Specifically, it focuses on residents’ perceived effects of hospital and university expansion and the role of place making on gentrification in core city neighborhoods. This study offers insights into the processes driving neighborhood displacement and the prospects for grassroots efforts to curb it. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected through focus groups with residents and other stakeholders in working class, minority neighborhoods which were identified as being in the early stages of gentrification. Nine focus groups were held across three neighborhoods experiencing institutional encroachment. The analysis was guided by standpoint theory, which focuses on amplifying the voices of groups traditionally disenfranchized from urban planning and policy processes. Findings The findings suggest that residents perceived institutional encroachment as relatively unabated and unresponsive to grassroots concerns. This led to heightened concerns about residential displacement and concomitant changes in the neighborhoods’ built and social environments. Experiences with encroachment also increased residents’ calls for greater grassroots control of development. Originality/value This analysis illuminates how gentrification and displacement results from both physical redevelopment activities of anchor institutions and their decisions related to place making. The conclusions highlight the importance of empowering disenfranchized groups in the place-making process to minimize negative externalities at the neighborhood level.