The IAFOR
Academic Review
Volume 2 | Issue 2

Collected
Essays on
Higher
Education

ISSN: 2188-9570

THE IAFOR ACADEMIC REVIEW

3

CONTENTS

27

12

1.

20.

35 .

Introduction

Widening Access or

Is it Cheating if Nobody’s

Michael Liam Kedzlie

Narrowing Student

Watching? Conflicting

3.

Choice? The Re-

Beliefs about Dishonesty

Meeting the Challenge

Emergence of Elitism inin Online Learningof Higher Education:

The UK Higher Education

Christine Piper, Lori K.

Creating Transformational System

Tanner & Richard Hartsell

Spaces that Empower

Steve Talbot, James

44 .

Learners

Johnson & Alan Reeves

Critical Thinking as aJeannie Herbert

27.

Tool for the Development

12.

French Higher Educationof Interdisciplinarity in

American Business

Culture Changes andUniversity Education

Education: Past, Present,

the Internationalization

Maria Bednarikova

and Future Trends

Strategies of Universities

Steven L. Rosen(Field Research)
Darya Loyola

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35
Editorial Committee

Rev. Professor Stuart Picken, IAFOR Chairman
Dr. Joseph Haldane, IAFOR President & CEO
Mr. Michael Liam Kedzlie, IAFOR Research and Policy Manager

The IAFOR
Academic
Review

Advisory Board, Conference Chairs and Cultural Studies

Volume 2 – Issue 2 – July 2016

Professor Sue Jackson, Birkbeck, University of London, UK –EditorMichael Liam Kedzlie

Professor Barbara Lockee, Virginia Tech, USA – IAFOR

Production
Rachel Dyer

Information and Society

Published by The International
Academic Forum (IAFOR),Japan
IAFOR Publications ©
Copyright 2016
ISSN: 2188-9570 (online)
www.iafor.org
Sakae 1-16-26-201, Nakaward, Aichi, Japan 460-0008

Programme Advisors

IAFOR Interdisciplinary Programme Director for Education

International Director of Programme for Technology, Education,
Professor Michiko Nakano, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan –ACE/ASCET2015 Conference Co-Chair

Professor Keith W. Miller, The University of Missouri, USA –ACSET2015 Conference Co-Chair

Front cover image
FlickrCreativeCommons/RileyCallow

“FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial Committee Introduction

Welcome to Issue 2 Volume 2 of The IAFOR Academic Review. In this edition we, the editorialcommittee, bring together a selection of the most interesting contributions from our Education
conferences, with respect to discussion surrounding Higher Education and Learning. In manyeducational settings and contexts throughout the world, there remains an assumption that teachers
are the possessors of knowledge, which is to be imparted to students, and that this happens in neutral,
impartial and objective ways. However, learning is about making meaning, and learners can experience
the same teaching in very different ways. Students (as well as educators) are part of complex social,
cultural, political, ideological and personal circumstances, and current experiences of learning will
depend in part on previous ones, as well as on age, gender, social class, culture, ethnicity, varying
abilities and more. The papers selected by the editorial committee for this special edition certainlyreflect the international, intercultural and interdisciplinary approach that lies at the heart of both
IAFOR and the global goals of Higher Education that we both work and live in as career academics.
Sincerely,
Michael Liam Kedzlie
Editormkedzlie@iafor.org

Contributors
Jeannie Herbert (AM) is Foundation Chair of Indigenous Studies at Charles Sturt University,
Australia. Following a long career as a teacher, guidance officer and educational administrator andmanager, she has, during the past two decades in the university sector, established a reputation forstrong leadership and innovative thinking in Indigenous Education. Professor Herbert was awarded
an Australia Medal in the 2012 Queen’s Birthday Honours for her work in education, particularly
through improvements to educational outcomes for Indigenous Australians. Her current research
focus is education/research as a tool of empowerment for Indigenous peoples.
Steven L. Rosen is an associate professor teaching American Studies in the Department ofIntercultural Studies, Prefectural University of Hiroshima, Japan. His main area of teaching andresearch is American business history, and also U.S. economic history. He is also interested in thechanging role of American business in the global market place. In the paper outlined in this edition
Steven Rosen postulates that traditional business education in America through most of the 20th
century has aimed at providing tools for short-term profit maximization within the context of thevertically integrated corporation.
Steve Talbot, James Johnson and Alan Reeves of The University of the West of Scotland, UK, havean interest in higher education trends, particularly those affecting socially excluded groups. Theircurrent research interests include economics teaching in higher education and the socio-economic

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FROM THE EDITOR

impact of the co-operative business model. Together they have published several refereed articles andattracted funding into research on social exclusion and higher education. In their paper “Widening
Access or Narrowing Student Choice? The Re-Emergence of Elitism in the UK Higher Education
System”, the authors reveal how higher education systems in many parts of the world have struggled
to reconcile falling state support with widening access and increasing participation of previously
excluded groups.
Darya Loyola researches at University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in the Directorship of International
Relations where she has been working for a number of years within the context of international
relations of higher education in China, Russia and France. During this time she has been observing
the process of internationalisation in these very diverse contexts and educational systems. Ms Loyola
is currently writing her doctoral thesis focusing on the public policy changes driving the current eraof the internationalized markets within higher education. In her paper “French Higher Education
Culture Changes and the Internationalization Strategies of Universities (Field Research)”, Ms Loyola
reveals how France is following the global trends of internationalising higher education. Her researchshows how both governments and institutions work on their policy approaches to promote theirtertiary education system abroad and it needs to make its “offer” more attractive to gain a competitive
advantage over other foreign universities and tertiary education systems. She postulates that thecompetition is now driven by the world-recognised American and British institutions and boosted by
the international rankings, which influence on the institution policies.
Christine Piper is currently a professor in the Construction Science & Management Department
at Clemson University, USA. She holds a Doctorate of Project Management from the University ofSouth Australia, a Master’s degree in Construction Science & Management and a Bachelor of Science
degree in Architectural Design, both from Clemson University. She teaches in the areas of scheduling,
project management, cost control and marketing on the undergraduate and graduate levels. She hascompleted research in the areas of distance learning and craftworker productivity; developed training/educational programs for the construction industry; and has provided consultative services to various
construction companies. Lori K. Tanner is the Director of Education, Outreach, and Workforce
Development at Clemson University, South Carolina, USA. Prior to the joining Clemson University,
Dr. Tanner was the director for the Student Technology Enrichment Program at the University ofSouth Carolina Upstate (USC Upstate). As director, she focused on faculty professional development
and student engagement while moving the university to be more technologically fluent. She taught avariety of subjects for the School of Education including literacy, technology, curriculum, and researchmethods. Dr. Tanner’s research has provided insight and expertise in coordination of curriculum
development, technology integration, and support for faculty, staff, and students. Richard Hartsell
is an Assistant Professor teaching the Foundations of Education Program in the Education Faculty
University of South Carolina Upstate, USA.
Mária Bednáriková is an Assistant Profesor of Department of Human Sciences at Faculty ofMaterials Science and Technology STU in Bratislava, Slovakia.

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Meeting the Challenge of Higher Education:
Creating Transformational Spaces that Empower Learners

By Jeannie Herbert, Charles Sturt University, Australia
Introduction
This paper is premised upon the reality of education delivery in a modern world. A world in which we, as
educators, must look beyond the learning needs of past students to ensure that our current policies, programs andpractices have the capacity to deliver an education that prepares present and future students for meaningful
engagement in the productive life of his or her society. But increasingly this is a world in which the old establishedthinking that determined the boundaries or borders around the social, cultural, economic and political processes
that operated within and beyond various national states is evolving, possibly even threatened, by a world that is,quite literally, beyond our experience. The theme for this conference, “Learning and Teaching ThroughTransformative Spaces” alerts us to the real challenge of the future for us as educators – the need to transform
ourselves in order to meaningfully engage with our students and their learning needs.
The paper considers how effectively the creation of transformational spaces might enhance the capacity of Higher
Education to meet challenges associated with addressing cultural diversity in ways that enable students fromdifferent cultural backgrounds to empower themselves through their university experience. Using the term
‘empower’ is a deliberate ploy here for if we return briefly to the world that many of us know, boundaries or borders
have, over time, been used for various purposes including the creation of divisions that could then be used toinclude some while simultaneously excluding others. Much has been written about how colonialists used borders
to take control of the land and resources of others, to subjugate and destroy the culture of the previous inhabitants

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and to impose their cultural and economic supremacy in order to dominate those they had invaded (Fong Chua
& Poullaos: 2002). But could this be changing in a global world, where new technologies have led to an explosion
not only of knowledge but, equally important, its accessibility. Modern media contributes to this accessibility byensuring we are all aware of the massive changes that could be perceived as breaking down the old World orderwhile simultaneously destroying those borders of exclusion. Amidst the constant noise created by 24-hour news
cycles bombarding us with highly dramatic descriptions of catastrophic events, it can be difficult to maintain our
focus on the purpose of our work as educators. Yet, it is vital that we acknowledge the chaotic state of our current
world for such action highlights the relevance of our work in delivering education that does prepare people toparticipate effectively in the world in which they live, thus empowering themselves through their education. We
must also acknowledge that it is easy to talk about people from culturally diverse backgrounds ‘empowering’themselves through higher education. Such words project a dual image of universities opening their door to those
who missed out on a university education and of those who missed out, suddenly deciding the time had come forthem to go get a university education and build a better life for themselves. Based upon my own life and work
experience, I would argue that the reality is somewhat different. Hence, this paper will consider the following
questions:
1.
2.
3.

Is it important for modern universities to create transformational spaces for addressing cultural diversity?
How do people whose families have suffered serious inter-generational education disadvantage, empowerthemselves through tertiary education?
What needs to happen in communicative spaces to enable Indigenous students and /or other colonized groups
to engage in transformative learning?

Context for Discussion
The challenges inherent in these questions will be considered within the context of higher education delivery for
Indigenous students in contemporary Australia.
Universities in Australia
Any consideration of the modern university in Australia must acknowledge Australia’s long colonial history andthe reality that, as a British colony, early Australian universities reflected the traditions of the colonizer, hence,
were established to ensure upward social mobility to the elite in society. Following the election of the Whitlam
Labor Government of the early 1970s, the focus shifted to social justice and the subsequent abolishment of
university tuition fees, forced universities to open their doors to students from a diversity of educational
backgrounds. Successive Federal Labor Governments, in the 1980s, despite their stated concern for equity,
implemented more economically driven policies aimed at ensuring a more competitive Australian workforce(Herbert: 2012). Hence, there has been huge growth in student enrolment, especially of students from equity
groups, in Australian universities; a shift to preparing students for employment in the professions; and a need to
employ academic staff with professional experience. The need to produce graduates with specific professional
competencies has tended to overshadow production of critical thinkers. Governments’ commitment to economic
rationalism over recent decades has resulted in policy making and subsequent service provision being increasingly
dominated by managerial demands around issues of accountability - standards, efficiency and productivity - driven
by political masters preoccupied with shaping a world that reflects neoliberal beliefs while maintaining the colonial
centre-periphery power structures that underpin capitalism. As a result many academics feel their role, relative tothe purpose of universities, has been devalued, their capacity to deliver the relevant, quality education that is their‘raison d’etre’ is being eroded away and nobody is listening. The resulting discontent means Australian universities
may not always be welcoming sites for the disadvantaged student seeking self-empowerment.
Indigenous Australian Student Cohort
Over recent decades, with the expansion of globalization, many who work in universities have experienced
increasing student numbers together with increasing cultural diversity in the student body. Working in the fieldof Indigenous education in Australia, catering for cultural diversity has been the focus of my work over many
decades and it is that work experience, as teacher, manager and researcher, that leads me to suggest that what
happens in Australian Indigenous education could be seen as a microcosm of wider cross-cultural education
environments.
Australian colonial texts, with their references to ‘the blacks’, ‘the savages’, ‘the Aborigines’, implied a oneness, acertain cohesion, but in reality Australia’s Indigenous peoples, Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Island peoples,comprised a diversity of groups occupying many distinct lands. There is a paucity of the written record in regard
to Aboriginal populations at the time of invasion but various estimates suggest a total population around 750,000

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people, with 700 different languages (Australian Museum: 2013). While population recently reached 500,000,
few Aboriginal languages have survived.
It is important to acknowledge that, under contemporary Australian law, an Indigenous person is defined as aperson of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander descent who identifies and is accepted as such by thecommunity in which he or she lives. Identification is determined by: descent; self-identification; and community
acceptance. In this paper, the term Indigenous will be used to denote Australian Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait
Island peoples and it is their educational experiences, as colonized peoples, that inform any discussion of thepotential of
education as a tool of self-empowerment. This is a critical aspect of this paper for Australia’s colonial legacy has
ensured that education in Australia continues to be influenced by Western values and beliefs (Herbert, 2003: 2526). Many universities have failed to recognise the ‘pervasive and unrelenting persistence of the invasion ofAboriginal Australia’ (Dudgeon cited in Herbert, 2003:75), a reality that has long diminished their capacity todeliver education that is empowering for Indigenous students.
Enabling Transformative Education
Finally, having provided a brief insight into the factors that have impacted upon Indigenous students participatingin Australian universities, the evidence of recent research will be used to provide a way forward. In recognition of
the students’ own agency in choosing to participate in the research, this paper will use student quotes to enable
student voices to speak out, to share their experiences and insights concerning their engagement in the university.
Analysis of those ‘voices’ will indicate what might constitute a ‘communicative space’ that enables Indigenous
students and/or other colonized groups to engage in transformative learning.
Transformative Education for Culturally Diverse Learners
Transformative education essentially seeks to ‘transform’ how one views the world and one’s place within thatworld. In his Theory of Transformation Learning Mezirow argues that ‘learning is understood as the process ofusing a prior interpretation to construe a new or a revised interpretation of the meaning of one’s experience toguide future action’ (1996:162).
Nagata cites Lennox (2005) work around the on-going attempts to define transformation, highlighting her choiceof O’Sullivan, Morrell, & O’Connor’s (2002) work to provide a tentative definition of integral transformative
learning.
Transformative learning involves experiencing a deep, structural shift in the basic premises ofthought, feeling, and actions. It is a shift of consciousness that dramatically and permanently alters
our way of being in the world. Such a shift involves our understanding of ourselves and our self
locations; our relationships with other humans and with the natural world; our understanding ofrelations of power in interlocking structures of class, race, and gender; our body-awarenesses; ourvisions of alternative approaches to living; and our sense of possibilities for social justice and peace
and personal joy (Lennox cited by Nagata, 2005:46).
This shift to thinking about who we are and how we become who we are enables learners to become more awareof issues of social justice and the importance of critically engaging in the discourses surrounding their own identity
and their own positionality relative to those discourses (Kemmis: 2000). Such active engagement in their own
learning, in the critical reflection and decision-making around who they are and where they wish to be is an
essential element of transformative learning especially for culturally diverse students who may have limited
experiences of engaging with and understanding the discourses that define their identity and how such identity
may have been used to position them within their higher education learning environments (Lennox cited by
Nagata: 2005).
Communicative Spaces
This paper considers how the opening up of communicative spaces in universities might enable all learners –researchers, teachers and students – to engage more effectively in an education process that is empowering for all
within both individual and collective contexts. This focus aligns with Habermas’s views around communicative
action and its critical place ” as the core concept” (cited by Kemmis, 2000:4) of philosophical modernity.
While such positioning is important, however, Wicks & Reason also stress the importance of what happens rightat the beginning, in the discussions and actions that determine what isneeded. They cited Kemmis (2001) argument that:

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The first step in action research turns out to be central: the formation of a communicative
space which is embodied in networks of actual persons . . . A communicative space isconstituted as issues or problems are opened up for discussion, and when participants
experience their interaction as fostering the democratic expression of diverse views . . . [andas permitting] people to achieve mutual understanding and consensus about what to do . . .
(Wicks & Reason, 2009:243).
Relevance Of Transformative Education Practice In Australian Universities
The historical record demonstrates how education has been used to position Indigenous peoples within Australiansociety and, in the process, created a discourse of ‘failure’ that continues to permeate Indigenous education bothin terms of student achievement and teacher expectations (Herbert, 2003:2012). It also reveals why Indigenous
Australians are relative newcomers into the academe.
But, despite changes that began to occur in the 1960s, as a result of the international social and technologicalchanges of the 1950s-1960s, the impact of 170 years of colonial oppression became increasingly evident in thelevels of educational disadvantage suffered by Indigenous Australians. Despite the desire to improve the socialand economic circumstances of Indigenous peoples and increase access to schools, especially primary schools,
education continued to fail Indigenous Australians well into the 1980s. But this decade also marked a real change
in the public profile of Indigenous Australians as ideals of self-determination began emerging. The National
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education Policy (NATSIEP), endorsed and implemented in 1990, was awatershed in the history of Indigenous education in Australia, for it was: a) the first policy to deal specifically witheducation for Indigenous Australians; and, b) the first attempt to connect policy, schools and communities. It
failed, however, to address the social environment in which Indigenous students lived and the reality that poor
educational outcomes were deeply embedded in societal structures that continued to reflect colonial attitudes andthe protection of Centre power (Herbert:2012).
The crucial breakthrough came in 2000 when governments began to recognise that the broader disadvantage
suffered by many Indigenous peoples appeared to be affecting the capacity of governments, education providers
and students themselves to improve Indigenous educational outcomes. They acknowledged that Indigenous
education policy couldn’t be developed in isolation from other areas that would likely impact upon the social andeconomic wellbeing of Indigenous peoples and implemented structural changes to ensure Indigenous peoples’
engagement in what is termed a whole-of-government approach to policy development and implementation. This
was a critical development as Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2011 census data revealed that Indigenous
peoples comprised 2.5 % of the total Australian population and Indigenous students comprised 1.4% of all
university enrolment in 2010. Population parity remains a future goal and Indigenous Australians remain
significantly under-represented within the Australian system of higher education. It has been difficult for such asmall group, to make the diversity of their voices heard.
Implications for Higher Education
While change has been limited and slow, it is encouraging. More significantly, however, change is beginning tooccur in higher education with reports of increased:
1. enrolments of school leavers with successful Year 12 completions; and2. participation of Indigenous students in disciplines other than the arts, humanities, social science and teacher
education.
The importance of such change was evidenced in 2012 when for the first time population parity was achieved for
Indigenous students enrolling in the first year of medicine in universities across Australia. A small but significant
achievement indicating that some Indigenous students are discovering that education can be a tool of
empowerment. Upon reflection, these changes representing the emerging reality in Indigenous higher educationin Australia, are particularly enlightening for they imply that something transformative may be beginning to takeplace in certain learning environments or within certain learners. And, there is evidence to support this argumentin the small but growing number of qualified:• Indigenous peoples taking up positions in the professions of law, medicine, engineering, science, accountancy
and so on; and• Indigenous academics, including at professorial level, being employed within Australia’s universities.

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The following brief consideration of some of the findings from my PhD study into Indigenous success in higher
education will be used to consider the potential of higher education to become a site for opening up communicative
spaces that encourage learners – researchers, teachers and students – to engage in transformative education.
Student voices drawn from my thesis will inform the discussion. Most of the students in this study perceived
higher education as the pathway to realising their personal and professional aspirations, creating better futures forthemselves and their families and achieving equality with their fellow citizens. Many students talked about their
feelings of inadequacy within the university community, identifying lack of English language skills and/or very
limited previous school experience as critical factors in their ‘not knowing what to do or how to do it’. Many had
no knowledge of university protocols around expected behaviours, where or how to access whatever support theyneeded or how to deal with racist attitudes from staff and other students.
The Research
The research comprised a small qualitative study of 50 respondents participating in either individual interviews or
focus group meetings, designed to explore Indigenous students’ lived experience in relation to their own education.
Questions sought reflective responses from participants thus allowing some space for people to make their own
choices about the knowledge they wished to share, an important consideration in a study that sought todemonstrate a commitment to processes of decolonization, of healing, of transitioning and transformation as
individuals. Interview transcripts were returned to individuals so they could participate in a second interview ifthey desired to make changes to what they had said. This enabled them to participate in the decolonisation
process and engage in their own transformation. Respondents were invited to share their opinions, thoughts andfeelings about success and the experiences they considered had enabled them to become university students and/or
academic staff. Data was gathered during 2001, in three universities, all of which had Indigenous support units.
The following themes - power, knowledge, culture, community, diversity, language, policies and racism – emergedout of the data and were used as analytical tools to examine the university experience.
Research Findings And Implications
The majority of students in this study indicated they came to university to acquire the knowledge and skills theyneeded to get a better job, in terms of salary and security, thus enhancing their life opportunities. Over 50% of
students considered their university studies were enabling them to become more critical thinkers and a similar
number believed they were becoming better communicators. While these are vital aspirations for educational
empowerment the fact that they can also be transformational is revealed in the following:
Margaret explained that she had come to university, thinking of herself simply as ‘Margaret’ but suddenly she
became ‘black’, ‘female’ and ‘disadvantaged’. She was shocked by this and went and talked to the Professor in aneffort to work out how to deal with these labels. She also experienced considerable conflict as a result of people inher classes — both lecturers and students — referring to Indigenous peoples in what she considered to be
derogatory terms. After putting up with it as long as she could she was finally unable to remain silent.
The word ‘black’ was used really openly and I felt that some students didn’t want to be . . . toparticipate in your group. I mean it was not done in an ‘in your face way’ but you can read the bodylanguage . . . one day, in a group discussion, I got sick of them using the word ‘black’ so I stoodup and said, ‘Excuse me, using the word ‘black’ like this upsets me. We’re future social workers,
we’re going out to work with different people — Indigenous peoples and ethnic groups. I thinkthat we should be thinking about how to get on with these people, how to relate to them. I thinkit’s time you left that word ‘black’ out of your vocabulary.’ Then the lecturer turned around to me
and said, ‘So, what do we call them?’ I said, ‘Everybody has a name . . . use people’s names andwhy can’t we refer to Aboriginal people or Indigenous people?’
Ultimately, Margaret’s determination to bring such issues out into the public domain proved transformational for
all engaged in that learning space for it forced people to consider their attitudes not only within the context of
fellow students but also beyond the university into their future workplace environments and the wider community.
Significantly it also caused the lecturer to reflect upon the language she was using within the learning setting andthe hidden messages she was conveying as a result. While she did modify her language, she also followed
Margaret’s lead and established class discussions to critically reflect upon a range of sensitive issues that could have
implications for these students in their future workplaces.
Other Critical Findings
Students in this study identified the following as the most critical factors in enabling them to achieve the outcomes
they wanted from their higher education.

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1. Access to Indigenous support units. All universities in this study, offered enabling and foundation programs in
addition to general pastoral support for all Indigenous students studying in the university. Respondents indicatedsuch units were the most positive form of enabling support universities could give their Indigenous students.
Len, who had attempted two mainstream programs prior to enrolling in the tertiary access program, provided
some valuable insights.
When I first came to university, I went straight into a mainstream program. I thought I could
handle that. My self-esteem was pretty low and I found it extremely hard to build my confidence.
You put in assignments and just get over the line or go into exams and just get through or fail . . .
It was just one big struggle all the time . . . coming into the access has made a big difference. I’m
getting good marks because I’m getting encouragement and I’m talking with the lecturers because
over here they have an interest in their students. In mainstream, no-one cares if you’re struggling,it’s like ‘so what if you drop out!’
A majority of students identified the importance of being able to return to the Centre between lectures, to be with
their own people, to feel they belonged. Others talked of feeling proud to be able to bring their non-Indigenous
fellow-students over to the Indigenous unit when they wanted to find a place to work together on some aspect of
their course. Only two students in this study did not perceive the socialisation aspect of these units as critical tothem being able to ‘hang in there . . . to survive’.
Essentially, these centres encouraged students to come in and actively engage in discussions with others - students
and staff – as a means of enabling them to identify, explore and question what was happening to them and how
they might deal with some of the issues they were confronting. Solving their own problems in this way was not
only empowering for the individual but also enabled them to move on with minimal disruption to their studies.
2. Encouragement to take responsibility for their own learning. Research respondents revealed that, despite some
initial reluctance, they grew to value opportunities where they could participate in formal and informal activities
that focused on identifying factors that enabled them to effectively engage in their university learning. That suchactivities were an important component in building their personal capacity to persist in their studies, was revealed
through the number of critical issues they identified including: relationships with teaching staff and other students;
language – spoken, written and body; access to tutors; cultural affirmation; racism, and, most importantly, being
treated as equals.
Many students raised the inappropriate use of language, by teachers or fellow students, that made them feelculturally excluded and impacted upon their ability to engage. Such concerns did not apply only to spoken language
as Margaret explained:
It didn’t matter what I did she would write comments all over it. I know I probably didn’t havegood writing skills but she would write ‘you need to go and learn to talk proper English’ . . . thatsort of thing.
Almost 80% of respondents suggested that the quality of relationships with teaching staff was a critical factor for
Indigenous students and, in particular, the capacity of lecturers and tutors to provide support and demonstrate
respect for students was considered to be paramount for students seeking success. Yvonne revealed that one of thethings that made her feel valued in the university was ‘having people willing to listen, having the lecturers maketime for me . . . I had a big fear about that. When they gave me their time it made me feel I was worth something’.
While students generally spoke positively about their learning interactions, some revealed how damaging negative
experiences could be.
I remember in a first year lecture . . . I put my hand up and asked a question and the lecturer yelled
at me that there was no such thing. The lecture theatre was full and she nearly killed me with that.
About six weeks later, we had a lecture on the very thing I had asked about. That really killed me.
I never had any input into her lectures after that, I wasn’t game to speak (Margaret).
I would be asked to explain some aspect of culture…but then they would give the impression that
I was just talking a lot of rubbish (Lorraine).

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These comments encapsulate the sense of powerlessness that too many students experienced, particularly during
their initial engagement in mainstream studies. The use and misuse of power in educational encounters was afrequent focus of discussions involving students and staff in the centres. Ultimately, many of the students in thisstudy attributed their capacity to confront and overcome such issues as having emerged out of their being able toengage in such discussions in a space where they were able to say whatever needed to be said.
Racism could be overt or covert, blatant or subtle:. . . there were a couple of lecturers . . . no matter how hard I tried, it was never good enough.
In my third year . . . I was doing a theory subject and it didn’t matter what I did, I’d only get apass. It was like there was a ceiling put there. Other students would read my assignments andwouldn’t be able to see anything different to their assignments yet they would get distinctions
and I would get passes . . . I want to believe everybody wants us to succeed but I don’t know ifthat’s true. Cross-cultural training should be mandatory for all lecturers (Mary).
Various students were confronted with the dilemma of trying to maintain and validate their own cultural values
and knowledges whilst having to learn and appreciate knowledge that was constructed and underpinned bywestern values. A critical issue for students attempting to incorporate their own culture into behaviour, classdiscussions, assignments - was the degree to which lecturers, tutors, fellow students might understand orappreciate a different viewpoint. Some found other ways of dealing with such situations as Ben, a law student
explained:
Racism is one of those things that people confront when they have to or when it’s easy . . . but for
Indigenous students, they’re still . . . wary of it. They’re pretty awake up to the fact that it’s there,
but often misunderstand the position as far as getting into university. It’s still there! That was mybiggest — well, you know, you see it outside in the mainstream and you think . . . well it doesn’tmean that people who study are any more intellectually-minded than the bloke out on the street
who’s digging the ditch. When it suits them they will both fall into the same pit. It’s a lot to dowith peer pressure. We know that and accept it but we also have to confront it when we have to.
A couple of years ago, Henry was here - a pale faced bloke. A group of them were criticising him
for saying he was an Aboriginal. Next day I gave the four of them a heap of material on
Aboriginality. A week later they handed it back to me. They didn’t say anything but they stopped
calling Henry the ‘white Aboriginal’. That’s how we dealt with it. Henry was pretty upset but I
said, ‘It’s something we know is there, it’s a part of life and the university is just a part of thecommunity so it’s no different to life anywhere’.
Conclusion
Based on the evidence of the data, I concluded that the students in this study had, through their very personal
revelations concerning the importance of their personal growth in line with their cultural identity, demonstrated
their increasing competence to operate within both, or either, western and Indigenous frameworks. I argued thatmany of these students were seeking to create new discourses rather than simply engaging at the interface to buy
into the discourses of the other. They were moving from the margins of the university to take their place at thecentre and beginning to articulate what they wanted from the university (Herbert, 2003:257). They were
empowering themselves.
It is important to acknowledge that a specific focus of this research was to explore issues around education as atool of empowerment and whether or not Indigenous students participating in Higher Education programs inAustralia, could, in fact, empower themselves through their studies, given that, over the past two centuries,
education had failed to deliver on its promise for their peoples. The dialogues presented in this paper illustrate
how some of the students in this diverse group discovered that they were able to take responsibility for their own
empowerment once they found their own voices. This was relatively easy for those who were articulate individuals– they were simply engaging with different people and situations. For others, however, it was often a frustratingprocess before they reached the point where they could no longer remain silent, where they had to change their
behaviour and engage in a transformational process. Significantly, most of the students who found their voice,discovered that developing the capacity to deal with issues that directly concerned them, in a straightforward, calmmanner was highly effective in getting their message across, in being able to engage other learners – their fellow
students, tutors and lecturers – in discussions that inspired critical reflection and collaborative problem solving as
equals. Ultimately, the reality of these outcomes – Indigenous empowerment and attitudinal change for all learners– proved the value of opening up communicative spaces that encourage learners – researchers, teachers and

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students – to engage in transformative learning. These outcomes also demonstrated that having transformed
themselves through their engagement in empowering communicative spaces, these Indigenous students hadprovided the catalyst for a transformation that would enhance the capacity of their university to meet thechallenges of creating educational spaces that would empower learners from a range of culturally diverse
backgrounds.

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References
Australian Museum.
Introduction to Indigenous
australianmuseum.net.au/Indigenous-Australia-Introduction

Australia.

Retrieved

28/5/2013

fromAustralian Bureau of Statistics 2076.0 Census of Population and Housing: Characteristics of Aboriginal andTorres Strait Islander Australians, 2011. Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@nsf/Latest
products/2076.0M…
Fong Chua, W & Poullaos, C (2002) ‘The empire Strikes Back? An exploration of centre-periphery interaction
between the ICAEW and accounting association in the self-governing colonies of Australia, Canada and South
Africa, 1880-1907’, pp.409-445, Accounting Organisations and Society.
Herbert H J (2003) Is success a matter of choice? Exploring Indigenous Australian notions of success within thecontext of the Australian university, PhD thesis, RMIT, Melbourne.
Herbert J (2012) ‘Ceaselessly circling the centre: Historical contextualization of indigenous education within
Australia’, History of Education Review, 2012, 41(2), pp.91-103, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Kemmis, S (2000) ‘Educational research and evaluation: opening communicative space’ The 2000 Radford
Lecture, AARE Conference, December 5th, 2000, University of Sydney, Australia.
Kemmis, S (2001) Exploring the relevance of critical theory for action research: Emancipatory action research in
the footsteps of Jürgen Habermas. In P. Reason & H. Bradbury (Eds.), Handbook of action research: Participativeinquiry and practice, pp. 91–102, London: SAGE
Mezirow, J (1996) Contemporary paradigms of learning. Adult Education Quarterly Spring, Vol.46(3), pp.158172.
Nagata, A L (2006) ‘Transformative Learning in Intercultural Education’, Intercultural Communication Review,
2006,pp.39-60.
Retrieved
29/5/2013
fromhttp://humiliationstudies.org/documents/NagataTransformativeLearning.pdf
Wicks, PG & Reason, P (2009) ‘Initiating action research: Challenges and paradoxes of opening communicative
space’, Action Research, Vol. 7(3), pp.243-262, 2009, SAGE Publications.
Image: Bernard Oh/Flickr Creative Commons

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American Business Education: Past, Present, and Future Trends

By Steven L. Rosen, Prefectural University of Hiroshima, Japan
Abstract
Traditional business education in America through most of the 20th century has been aimed at providing tools
for short-term profit maximization within the context of the vertically integrated corporation. However, startingin the 1970s a number of social and economic historical events have presented inescapable challenges to MBA
and other business education programs. The first was the breakdown of Fordism and the Keynesian welfare statein the 1970s followed by the explosion of a new wave of globalization. The second was the Silicon Valley digital
revolution of the 1990s with its informal corporate culture and horizontally integrated management style. The
third significant event was the collapse of Enron in 2001 which, along with other major accounting scandals, led
to the introduction of corporate social responsibility (CSR) education. The global economic crisis of 2008 madeCSR education even more compelling, and resulted in critical self-reflection in the field of business education as
well as economics. Finally, the impending global environmental crisis has reached such a tipping point thatbusiness and business education has moved from an adversarial relationship with environmentalists to a new stancebased on win-win strategies. It is the aim of this paper to give a detailed analysis of how all these major historicalchanges have impacted business education, and further to evaluate to what degree business schools may beundergoing a radical reorientation away from purely capitalist aims to more social contract values.
This paper examines American business education in its historical context. It argues that a paradigm shift isoccurring in the business world which can be characterized as a shift away from the traditional trajectory ofindustrial capitalism and further, that this shift is being picked up by and reflected in modern business education.

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This shift includes a new emphasis on sustainability, stakeholder value over shareholder value, and a deepening
sense of social contract. This new stance toward business management is may replace the old paradigm which
conceives of business education as geared primarily towards profit maximization, i.e., short-term, shareholder
profit. This has also traditionally included an antagonistic and often exploitative relationship to labor, and has also
had an exploitative relationship with the natural environment. This paper will attempt to appraise and evaluate
whether this traditional stance is being undermined and whether or not a revolutionary paradigm shift is in factoccurring within American business education today
Business is the most popular major in higher education. Today, over 100,000 MBA’s are granted each year in the
U.S.; it is indeed the most popular graduate degree in the world. (Datar 2010, p. 18) Furthermore, 25% of allbachelor’s degrees in America are in business. (Amdam 2010, p. 594) Business provides the basic functional skills
necessary to run a successful enterprise (no small feat to be sure). Business leaders and entrepreneurs have not only
altered the world economy in new directions, but have also profoundly altered the contours of society and world
culture (for better or worse, is an evaluative judgment outside the scope of this paper). (Walsh 2011, p. 215)
Indeed, revolutionary changes in society and economy and technology seems to be moving into two countervailingdirections at once; on the one hand, people with graduate degrees in business and economics have, through greed
and avarice and in some cases even criminal malfeasance, led us to an economic credit crisis; they have led us down
the path of recession and credit crisis. (Tett 2012, p. 307) On the other hand, one only needs to look at list ofsome of the top entrepreneurs of modern business history to readily realize that the innovative firms they started
have affected the contours of our entire social-economic world in highly creative and beneficial ways, throughinnovative technology and creative global business management.
Michael Dell: in the 1990s he was one of the first to exploit lower transport and communication costs, thus
starting us on the path of extended global supply-chains which characterize modern business and economics today.
Howard Schultz (Starbucks): Starbucks has made the traditional 17th century European style coffee houseubiquitous around the globe.
Steve Jobs: facilitated the IT revolution through innovations which brought high level digital communication,entertainment and computing technology for everyone personal use
Mark Zuckerberg: popularized social networking systems (SNS); 1 out of every 12 people on the planet have a
Facebook account
Jim Bezos (Amazon): transformed the way we do retail business
Sergey Brin and Larry Page (founders of Google): designed a revolutionary and powerful search engine which hasenabled us to retrieve information which previously was unavailable to most mortal men and women.
This is but to name but a few; it’s interesting to note that this list, and other lists of key entrepreneurs like Anita
Roddick (Body Shop), Sam Walton (Wal-Mart), and Richard Branson (Virgin Group) are business leaders
without MBA’s or business degrees of any kind. Indeed, the fact that much business innovation has come frompeople not formally trained in business has not been lost on business educators, who now try to foster innovationand entrepreneurship as an essential part of their curricula. (Datar pp. 256-7)
Historical Excursus: Business Education in the Context of the Rise of Industrial Corporate Capitalism
In the latter half of the 19th century, America entered an era which saw the rise of industrial corporate capitalism
on an unprecedented scale (usually referred to as the Second Industrial Revolution). Through new technology andnew energy sources based on fossil fuels (oil, and coal) industrial production could attain new levels of extractionand exploitation of both labor and materiel never before seen in the history of mankind. Monopoly capitalism andthe limited liability corporation transformed America into the richest nation on earth, a status which it still
maintains today. The corporation became the multinational corporation in the 20th century and, sociologicallyspeaking, became (and still is) the dominant institution of our time. (Kelly 2003, p. 57)
In 1881, the prestigious Wharton School of business at the University of Pennsylvania was founded, as a way toprovide higher level business skills beyond the commercial science courses being offered at the time; the complexityof the new economies of scale demanded it. (Amdam 2010, p. 584) It was explicitly founded in order to address

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the needs of the American industrial revolution—the need for highly qualified business people to manage large
corporations in this new economy based on mass production and economies of scale. (Amdam 2010, p. 581)
Ford Motor Company became the richest corporation in the world in the 1920s, and represented a new type ofbusiness orientation called Fordism, which was the dominant business paradigm or model in the 20th century, atleast until the 1970s. (Kipping 2010, p. 97) This model entails the vertically and horizontally integrated
corporation using scientific principles. It was, however, not Ford Motor Co., but Alfred Sloan at GM whodeveloped a management paradigm which heavily influenced American business education throughout the 20th
century. In addition to the scientific principles and production style of Ford, Sloan introduced the science ofmarketing, and perfected a model of the vertically integrated corporation with separate operating divisions allunder one roof. (Lamoreaux 2010, p. 41) General Motors became the prototypical multinational industrial firmin America, a symbol of America’s corporate prowess.
The emphasis on business education was explicitly profit maximization, and by the 1950’s, when the United States
became the sole global superpower, business education attempted to perfect a scientific approach to profit
maximization, using scientific quantitative methods modeled on the RAND Corp. and other scientific thinktanks. (Walsh 2012, p. 522) A core curriculum emerged with a heavy emphasis on the quantitative functional
skills for finance, accounting, logistics, marketing, and in addition to that, micro and maco economics forbusinessmen. At Harvard, the case study method was introduced as the general method of choice, which became
the model for many business schools to use for learning how to apply quantitative models and methods to real life
business situations. (Rosett 1982: passim) Consequently, the American MBA became viewed by the whole world
as the premium qualification for executive management. (Walsh 533)
A major crisis hit the U.S. economy in the 1970’s resulting in the breakdown of Fordism and the Keynesian
welfare state (and the beginning of the end of powerful labor unions). Business schools, however, were slow or
failed to react to the new demands of the global marketplace; there was the aping of Japanese management
strategies rather than a real serious attempt to develop new business orientations or conceptual paradigms
concerning the foundations of business consciousness. (Kipping p. 100)In the 1980s, Reaganomics offered a new capitalist ideology, or more precisely, the revival of an old ideology offree market capitalism, but in the guise of a new terminology- the supply-side economics of Milton Friedman:deregulation, privatization, and tax cuts for the investor class (the supply side). In this new ideology, labelled bysome “neoliberalism;” the belief that if businesses thrive and GDP grows, all segments of society will benefit
because the wealth will “trickle down.” Though this theory sounds very charming, in practice, such macroeconomic
results were never realized; supporting the investor class through tax cuts and deregulation resulted in greater
concentrations of wealth for that class of individuals. At that time (1980s onwards), off-shoring, out-sourcing anda general deindustrialization of American economy led to a downward pressure on wages and the gradualdissolution of labor unions bargaining power. Thus there resulted a shift in wealth away from the working class(who became the working poor), and toward the upper strata of the socio-economic ladder.
So called “trickle-down economics” became a code word for the rise of the business yuppie class in which Adam’s
Smith classical economic paradigm became reduced to the proposition, “greed is good.” The MBA became the
new ticket to drink from this well of capital gains (Yau 2012, p. 2); and corporations and people with MBA’s
generally did well in the 1980s. In 1989, after the Berlin Wall came down, American economic confidence washigh, and the American MBA was held in high esteem by business persons all over the globe; other nations began
to found business schools based on the American model.
In the 1990s, a technological revolution, the likes of which have arguably never been seen in history, occurred
mainly in northern California; the digital revolution which came mostly out of Silicon Valley, transformed theface of the global market place. Silicon Valley venture capital represented a real paradigm shift in many ways.
These successful companies were horizontally rather than vertically integrated with a young, casual, intellectualand social conscious orientation. (Graham 2010, p. 360) Many of these start-ups came not from experienced
MBA trained executives but from young computer scientists and electrical engineers. Business education wasforced to integrate IT skills into their core curricula, but did so without changing the fundamental outlook, which
was short-term profit maximization based on scientific-quantitative strategic models. (Walsh 2012)
However, three significant events occurred in the course of business and economic history which reverberated inpolitics and society and, though at first had little impact on business education, eventually influenced the content

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and even mission of business education. The first was political; in 1999 the streets of Seattle erupted in violent
protests during the WTO Ministerial Conference. At first this had little or no impact on business education;business schools at this time were still influenced by and operating under the assumption of the economist Milton
Friedman, who asserted that it was not the role of the business firm to be a charitable institution; it was the roleof government regulation to protect the environment and provide social welfare, not corporations. Their economic
and legal obligation was solely toward shareholder profit; Milton’s supply-side economic theories (enriching theinvestor class as a way to achieve maximum GDP growth) indeed influenced business schools throughout the 80s
and 90s. The influence of Reaganomics (deregulation, privatization, cutting social welfare supports) was still
strong in business circles.
Nevertheless, the WTO protests in Seattle signaled the beginning of the end of complacence, the raising ofawareness, that the attitude of neoliberal economic policies (embodied in international institutions like the WTO,IMF and the World Bank) was good for multinational corporations, but not necessarily for the rest of humanity.
The dangers of unfettered capitalism were articulated on the television news for all to see; the American public atlarge started to become more attuned to the relationship between the activities of large multinational corporations
and three detrimental trends: (1) labor exploitation in the third world and developing nations, (2) the increasing
concentration of great wealth in the hands of a few nations or individuals, and (3) that much extractive technology
was leading to irreversible environmental destruction.
WTO and G7 meeting protests seemed not to have impacted the content or direction of business education in
America in any significant way, however, in 2001, an event in the business world did have a seismic effect on
business culture and business education: the collapse of Enron. Enron Corporation was listed as the sixth largest
corporation in America before it bankrupt in 2001. Along with it, one of America’s oldest and most respectedaccounting firms, Arthur Anderson went out of business, as the result of shady accounting practices, and evenoutright fraud. This event, and the subsequent collapse of WorldCom, forced a radical reexamination of the way
businesses operated in America. (Datar p. 161) Though, from a business point of view, it was primarily andaccounting scandal, the Enron scandal led to soul searching about the ethical foundations of the way business was
conducted in America, and the way business managers were being taught. A renewed emphasis on CSR andbusiness ethics began to emerge; no longer were such courses relegated to the backburner of the curricula, they
became an essential part of a new emphasis on business leadership. Indeed, many of the top business schools today
highlight leadership as a centerpiece of their educational mission. (Datar, pp. 86-89)
Finally, the biggest crisis in economic history since the Great Depression occurred in and around 2008, not onlywith the collapse of the large Lehman Bros. investment bank, but also the near collapse numerous other financial
institutions (like AIG), deemed “too big to fail.” Credit markets around the world froze due to the collapse of the
U.S. housing market, in which banks around the world had invested heavily. “Securitized assets with inflated value
was seen as a risk-free way to effortlessly create wealth.” (Korten 2013, p. 2) In terms of economic policy, thecredit crisis of 2008 resulted in a critical reassessment of the value of deregulation. In terms of business practices,
there has been even more soul searching and renewed calls for more training in business ethics and corporate social
responsibility (CSR). The spectacle of investment bankers awarding themselves huge bonuses while sinking theirown ships, requiring large capital infusions of taxpayer money was becoming unacceptable, not only to the generalpublic, but to teachers at business schools as well.
Thus new courses and a renewed emphasis on CSR emerged in business schools around the world. (Doane 2005,
p. 24) However, CSR has been roundly criticized and even condemned from both within and without businesseducation; in no way can be regarded as constituting a paradigmatic shift in business thinking. A clear case inpoint is Wal-Mart Corp. which has made sustainability a centerpiece of its management strategy, but only because
it is good for the bottom line. “CSR strategies may work under certain conditions, but they are highly vulnerable
to market failures.” (Doane p. 24) In other words, if, at any time, it turned out to be unprofitable, then the firm
would turn away from their green orientation in a heartbeat. At best, it gives a false confidence, implying thatissues of social ethical issues can be easily fit into a course curriculum which is otherwise orientated to profit
maximization; at worst it becomes a kind of window dressing, an excuse for inaction and even a mask for fraud.
Indeed, Enron during its heyday was highly touted for having a strong emphasis on CSR and social concerns. “No
one could argue that these types of changes add up to a wholesale change in capitalism as we know it, nor thatthey are likely to do so anytime soon.” (Doane p. 24)

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A New Paradigm?
“….according to Old Paradigm logic, economic growth will generate the financial assets necessary to correct for
related social and environmental harms.” (Korton 2013, p. 3)
The traditional aim of business education is of course, to train students in the basic functional skills necessary to
run or management a company. Beyond the core functional skill courses like accounting and logistics, there areother courses which are broader and deeper in that they draw on research from the social and behavioral sciences
as well- micro and macroeconomics, human resource management strategy, governance, and entrepreneurship,organizational leadership courses require more than econometric or computational skills. Further, there are a newrange of courses in such areas as ethics and globalization, and innovation- courses which go well beyond the purely
technical scientific courses of the core curriculum.
Until very recently, in American business education, there was scant attention paid to leadership as opposed tofunctional skills; in other words, management in its broadest sense over purely business administration. The Yale
School of Management in recent years has shifted its curriculum to emphasize the importance of such skills andother schools around the world have followed suit. This has meant “…giving equal weight to instrumental andhumanistic aims, rather than casting either as means for the other’s ends. Making the case for authenticity, service,equality, concern for the planet just as fervently as the case for shareholder value maximization. Balancing
instruction and assisted reflection, on oneself and on the cultures we live in. Brokering new connections.
Stimulating imagination.” (Bennis 2:2005) All of this sounds very much like a fundamental paradigm shift. To
what degree have these new paradigm goals been realized? There is no empirical data to support a definitive
conclusion on this but some historical trends can be noticed.
The rising importance of these new courses indicates that business schools see their mission as much more thanthe mere training of profit maximizers (the traditional capitalist aim), and more in tune with what has been termedsocial contract goals. (Bennis 2005:1) For example, there seems to be a shift in perspective such that businessstudents should not only be trained in issues of regulatory compliance, but in how to contribute to the common
good through such things as socially responsible investing and sustainability practices. (HBR Blog, 2012
‘Unilever’s CEO on Making Responsible Business Work’) However, the question still remains as to whether or
not we are witnessing in a truly new paradigm shift away from profit maximization and models for economic
efficiency. Such a paradigm shift would, above all else, be focused on creating real value, not merely stockholder
value (Hanauer 2014, p. 33) The focus would not be on compliance to regulation so much as cultivating an attitude
a priori in which regulatory compliance is not even an issue because it would be the intention of the firm to makeproducts or provide services in sustainable and socially beneficent ways. Indeed, the fact that such firms do exist
is evidence of a potential paradigm shift in business; that such firms (South West Airlines, Google) are often usedas business school case studies suggests that educators, at least, take seriously the notion that a fundamental revisioning in business management is desirable. Indeed, not only American business schools, but even more so,
European MBA programs explicitly advertise themselves as providing the tools necessary to function in the everchanging global market place which includes social contractual goals such as fair trade, sustainability, socially
responsible investing, and increasing stakeholder value. (Mangan 2010, p. 2)
Conclusion
It is clear that business education in America and around the world is undergoing some profound changes. Manyof the biggest shifts are related to globalization- the nature of the global market place in the digital age where wesee many new emerging markets and an ever shifting ground which is requiring business schools to adapt anddevelop new, more flexible models which move beyond the core functional skills. (Lurie 2009) The new paradigm
which has been emerging in the business world for some time, and is beginning to make its way into businesseducation at various levels is a renewed idea of social contract, with an additional conceptualization that nature issacred. (Eisenstein 2011, p.392 &passim) In other words, we are beginning to see a profound and radical sense ofsocial community and essential interconnectedness. (Rifkin 2009, p.503 & passim)
A Harvard Business Review blog, piece entitled, “Are Business Schools Clueless or Evil?” by Ganpiero Petriglieri,
associate professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD, says that that business schools must share responsibility
for the “lapses in judgment and unfettered self-interest that wreaked havoc on the global economy and sankpeople’s trust in corporations.” (Petriglieri 2012) He goes on to point out that there are two camps of critics- oneis those who paint business schools as clueless, distracted by academic theories, and a second group whose criticism

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is more severe. They see business education as a force of evil, perpetuating an amoral view of the world, peddlingtheories that support selfish elitism; the only true moral value in the universe of business being the bottom line.
In this context, to conceive and experience nature as fundamentally sacred would indeed be a paradigmatic shift
for business. “The monetization and commodification of relationships, competition for individual financial
advantage, and abandonment of attachments to place are celebrated as contributions to increased economic
efficiency and accelerated development progress as defined by growth in GDP.” (Korten 3)
Commitment to sustainability in and of itself does not constitute a paradigm shift if the primary motivation ofsuch policies is maximizing the firm’s profits. It is interesting to note that Unilever’s CEO, Paul Polman admitted
that such an integrated (holistic/sacred) business model which his firm has adopted is not the norm. “Nobody has
ever really made that public commitment, and nobody has ever really achieved it. Otherwise, the world wouldn’t
be facing these challenges.” (HBR Blog 2012) The dominant paradigm in business and business education closes
in on itself- “is incapable of self-correction.” (Korten 5) In business education they may indeed teach students how
to establish value added partnerships with NGO’s, but what about in the case where there is no cash value forsuch a partnership, but rather only because it’s the right thing to do based on a radical commitment to the socialand environmental commons?
What would then constitute a real paradigmatic shift in business education and business culture? Below is thiswriter’s formulation:
Old paradigm: exploitation (of labor)
New paradigm: appreciation (no longer seeing labor as deficit or debit on the bottom line, as is the case withmost business education)
Old paradigm: technology is designed to extract from nature useable wealth.
New Paradigm: technology is designed to develop in a sustainable way
Business education needs to move beyond the parameters of cost efficiency metrics to a different vision of businesseducation. As noted above, the innovative entrepreneurs listed above who have changed the world, arguably forthe better, do not contain any MBA’s! It’s almost as if business education needs to catch up with these businessvisionaries who are moving us beyond the parameters of an unsustainable paradigm. Rather than seeing personalenrichment as sacred, realizing one’s dependence on and connection with nature (Loy 2007, passim) and humanity,
and sublimating the quest for one’s exclusive personal gain for the good of the whole, would signal a profoundparadigmatic shift.

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References
Amdam, R. (2010) ‘Business Education,’ in The Oxford Book of Business History. Pp.581-602. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Bennis, W. and O’toole (2005) ‘How Business Schools Lost Their Way,’ Harvard Business Review. pp.1-3 [May2005]
Datar, S., Garvin, D. and Cullen, P. (2010) Rethinking the MBA: Business Education at a Crossroads. Boston:
Harvard Business Press.
Eisenstein, C. (2011). Sacred Economics: Money, Gift & Society in the Age of Transition. Berkeley, Ca.: Evolver Press.
Graham, M. Graham, M. (2010) ‘Technology and Innovation,’ in Oxford Book of Business History
Hannauer, N. and Beinhocker, E. (2014) ‘Capitalism Refined,’ Democracy Journal, Winter 2014
Harvard Business Review/HBR Blog Network (2012) ‘Unilever’s CEO on Making Responsible Business Work,’
http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/05/unilevers-ceo-on-making-respon/ retrieved Nov. 22, 2013.
Jones, G. (2007/2010). The Oxford Handbook of Business History. Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press.
Kelly, M. Kelly, M. (2003) The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy. San Francisco: BerretKoehler Pub. Inc.

Kipping, M. et. al. (2010) ‘Business History and Management Studies’ in Jones, G., The Oxford Handbook of
Business Studies
Korten, D. (2013) ‘The Pursuit of Happiness: A New Development Paradigm,’
Living Economies Forum. http://livingeconomiesforum.org/living-earth-paradigm
Lamoreaux, N. et. al. (2010) ‘Economic Theory and Business History,’ in Jones, G., The Oxford Handbook of
Business History.
Lipartito K. (2010) ‘Business Culture,’ In The Oxford Book of Business History. pp. 603-628. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Lovett, C. (2010). ‘American Business Schools in the Post-American World,’ Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept.
6.
Loy, D. (2007) Money, Sex, War, Karma. Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications
Lurie, B. (2009). ‘The New Social Contract for Green Business,’ Harvard Business Review Blog. May, 11.
http://blogs.hbr.org/2009/05/the-new-social-contract-for-gr/
Mangan, K. (2010) ‘Global Focus Draws Students to Europe for Business,’ The Chronicle of Higher Education,
Sept. 26.
Michael, B. (2003) Overview andhttp://works.bepress.com/bryane_michale/21.

CritiqueofCorporate

SocialResponsibility.

January,

Petriglieri, G. (2012) ‘Are Business Schools Clueless or Evil?’ Harvard Business Review, Nov. 14.
Rifkin, J. (2009) The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis. New York: Jeremy
P. Tarcher.

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Rosett, R. (1982) ‘Business Education in the United States,’ Selected Paper Graduate School of Business, The
University of Chicago. No. 59 [Nov. 1982]
Tett, G. (2009/2012) Fools Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets andUnleashed a Catastrophe. London: Abacus
Walsh, J.P. (2011) ‘Embracing the Sacred in Our Secular Scholarly World,’ Academy of Management Review, Vol.
36, no. 2, pp. 215-234(2012) ‘Mie Augie and James G. March: The Roots, Rituals, and Rhetorics of Change: North American Business
Schools after the Second World War,’ Administrative Science Quarterly 57:522
Yau, S. and Brutoco, R. (2012) From Current Business Paradigm to the Second Renaissance. World BusinessAcademy Common Cents, (January 20) 1-11
Email: rosen@pu-hiroshima.ac.jp

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Widening Access or Narrowing Student Choice?
The Re-emergence of Elitism in the UK Higher Education System

By Steve Talbot, James Johnston and Alan Reeves,Business School, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley
Abstract
Higher education systems in many parts of the world have struggled to reconcile falling state support withwidening access and increasing participation of previously excluded groups. Evidence from the UK higher
education system suggests that this tension has led to the re-emergence of a bifurcation of the education systemalong social class lines. The paper explores the experience of the different categories of UK-university as they
manage the changed socio-economic environment in which they operate. Contrary to the aims of much EU policy
and the various structural changes introduced within the higher education sector since the 1960s, lessons from the
UK experience suggest that a form of elitism has re-emerged in the provision of certain subjects. We show how a
combination of market forces, government policy and other developments in the UK higher education landscape
may lead to the withdrawal of the key subjects for many vulnerable groups. We look at economics provision acrossthe UK to show how a silent process of differentiation and stratification may take place and that this may be to
the detriment of national policies on social inclusion in higher education.

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Introduction
Like many EU countries the UK has undergone major structural change to its system of higher education
provision. While the nature of the driver for change within individual countries is unique, the main collective
force for change is the desire to improve the international competitiveness of the EU region. The desire at the EU
level is to replicate the perceived dynamics of the US system of higher education which is deemed to have furnishedimpressive economic and innovative performance. Trow (2000) casts doubts on the robustness of the resultant
European model of the university and its ability to meet the challenges associated with globalisation due to an
innate lack of flexibility of governance. Critically for Trow, and others, European models of Higher Education
are characterised by high levels of government involvement, unlike in the US where market forces play a muchlarger role (Huisman, Meek and Wood 2007). The reliance on markets as an arbiter of US higher education
provision reflects the significant structural change at two key junctures in its past1 when it was necessary to rapidly
expand higher education provision and the legacy of this change is deemed to have bestowed the competitive
advantage of flexibility and adaptability on US universities. As Trow (2000) notes, the structural changes reflectedwider societal change within the US (e.g. abolition of slavery) and consequently the ability of US universities toact autonomously in terms of provision and enrolment. The result is that the US is traditionally seen as more
responsive to changes in the market for education and is able to pioneer new access arrangements such as credit
transfer and articulation with high schools.
To emulate the success of the US higher education system and to meet the increased challenges of globalisation,
the role of European universities has been gradually changing over the past 30 years. To better reflect the US
model a conscious effort has been made to combine the traditional university missions of research and teachingwith a new, third mission. EU universities now have an explicit mission of socio-economic engagement (Nelles
and Vorley 2010) aimed at unlocking the knowledge within universities through a partnership between
government, industry and Higher Education (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000). This utilitarian vision of theuniversity mission has been heavily supported by national (Mawson 2007) and supranational bodies, especiallywithin the EU (EU 2006, EU 2008) and further afield (OECD 2007). The move to a more utilitarian approach
was an EU-wide phenomenon with the creation of the European Higher Education Area and compatible
overarching frameworks for qualifications that were part of the Bologna process instigated in 2000, although
Teichler (2008) questions how successful this has been. Adding to the momentum towards a utilitarian approachto the Higher Education sector, the 2007 Lisbon Declaration of the European Universities’ Association
recognised the concerns of universities by stating the need for university autonomy but deferred to the ‘managerial
and economic priorities’ of governments (Anderson 2010). Traditional university activities of research, teaching
and knowledge transfer activities are deemed to become more effective at the socio-economic level if universities
are encouraged to engage in each sector of the triple helix model: the knowledge society, economic competitivenessand social cohesion. Explicitly, the overall aim of EU higher education policy is to make the European university
system a model of best practice by ensuring that there are sufficient resources, effective networks and increased
outreach and international appeal of European universities (The Role of the Universities in the Europe ofKnowledge COM 2003/58).
In the UK there has been a gradual move towards a triple-helix-type model for higher education In 1963 theRobbins Report (Committee on Higher Education 1963) paved the way for the creation of the third mission byrecognizing the need to overcome the damaging effects of an overly-differentiated provision of post-school
education by creating so-called chartered universities (i.e. new non-traditional universities). In 1992 the Furtherand Higher Education Act recognised the need to widen further socio-economic engagement in higher education
by removing the distinction between universities and polytechnics/colleges. As a consequence, the UK Higher
Education sector has become an intricate pattern of institutions able to perform the functions of a university,
Tight (2011) with the result that the UK a more diverse Higher Education system than many European countries(Huisman, Meek and Wood 2007). While education is a devolved responsibility in Scotland, the Robbins andDearing changes were fully adopted. This top-down approach to higher education reform resulted in a small
country (Scotland) having nineteen university-type institutions (Universities Scotland 2012) and appearing tooffer US-style flexibility and improved student choice. Allied to these changes there was a further weakening of
the demarcation between higher education and further education through a series of articulation agreements
between some universities and the further colleges. The result is that in Scotland 17 per cent of higher educationlevel students attend programmes delivered at Further Education institutions (Mullen 2010) leading to further
1

Two key junctures were the end of the civil war and the early part of the twentieth century.

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education becoming more like US community colleges rather than old style technical colleges (Gallacher 2006).
For the purposes of this paper it is the nature of the articulation between further education colleges and theuniversities that is the main area of contention when looking at issues of social inclusion.
Is there evidence of widening access?
Scottish policies designed to widen access to higher education to previously excluded groups have been a success.
In 2009, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) introduced the ‘Framework for Equality, Access and Inclusion’
which set out and summarised the actions of the various stakeholders at national, regional and local level tasked
with assisting in widening access but particularly to improve access to higher education. Data appears to confirm
this policy has been successful, with around 20 per cent of entrants to undergraduate study entering universities
through the articulation route whereby students study Scottish Credit and Qualification Framework2 (SCQF)
Level 73 (Higher National Certificate) and Level 8 (Higher National Diploma) at a further education college
before continuing to Level 9 (degree) at a degree awarding institution (Universities Scotland). SCQF Levels 7
and 8 define the first two rungs on the Scottish higher education ladder and by offering Levels 7 and 8 further
education institutions play an important role in the pursuit of wider access. Figures show that in 2010-11, 185,290
Scottish students studied at Scottish higher education institutions while a further 37,220 students attended further
education colleges to study for Higher National Certificates (17,968) and Higher National Diplomas (19,252).
Thus around 17 per cent of students at Levels 7 and 8 attended a further education institution. (The figure forhigher education is around 20 per cent higher if non-Scottish students are included but it is difficult to get a
precise picture due to the way the data are gathered (Croxford, Howieson and Steele 2011However, as will become
clear, taking the further education route to Levels 7 and 8 before attempting to complete a degree at university
means that much of the richness of higher education landscape will be denied to those on this route. In addition,
it is the socially excluded who traditionally take this route and therefore have a much more limited higher
education horizon that those accessing higher education with school-based qualifications.
Impact of policy
While access to higher education has undoubtedly been widened, the real issue when discussing social inclusion
is whether all groups have the same access to the whole higher education landscape. The nature of the issue ismore subtle than gross numbers of the socially excluded actually attending university. There is a silent dynamic at
work that operates on the demand for higher education and on the supply of higher education which leads to abifurcation of the sector to the detriment of disadvantaged groups. The result is a higher education systemcharacterised by product differentiation among universities and access stratification on socio-economic classgrounds among students (Gallagher 2006). While the emergence of differentiation and stratification in the UK
higher education sector has been established (see for example Gallagher 2006, Croxford and Patterson 2006) but
what have not been identified before are the details of the silent dynamic at work. We present evidence that may
be of interest to universities in other countries on the details of the silent dynamic and how it appears to work
against the aims of policies designed to alleviate social exclusion.
The relevance of widening access policies to the provision of university programmes is that if population groups
previously under-represented in higher education have aptitudes and programme preferences that aresystematically different from those of the groups that have traditionally populated the UK higher education
system, and students entering universities through access programmes tend to study at certain types of institutions,then the pattern of demand faced by new universities will change and will also be different from the pattern ofdemand faced by old universities, with some programmes being a lot easier to fill than others. It is clear thatstudents from lower socio-economic classes are much more likely to attend new universities and, to the extent thatnot having traditional academic qualifications will be reflected in different university programme preferences, will
want to study other subjects.

	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  	
  
2

The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework Partnership promotes lifelong learning in Scotland.

3

For a detailed explanation of the academic framework and the respective positions of HNC and HND level
qualifications in the Scottish higher education framework see:
http://www.scqf.org.uk/content/files/SCQF_Level_Descriptors_for_website_-_Feb_2010(2).pdf

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As the discussion so far indicates, the number of students attending higher education has increased and the roleof the further education sector has helped provide a pathway for many students new to higher education. However,a major imperfection in the UK system means that ‘some students are disadvantaged at school compared to pupils
at private schools and cannot get to the university they deserve’ (Simister 2011:135). Gallacher (2006) shows how
a dual process involving social stratification and differentiation by higher education institutions appears to militate
against the erosion of this imperfect system preventing the establishment of a more meritocratic system. We now
look at the experience of a subject which has traditionally been viewed as one of the more difficult subjects andone requiring relatively high entry qualifications.
The emergence of differentiation in economics provision in Scottish higher education and the role of university
autonomy
Recent research by the authors into the current state of economics degrees within the UK found that somethingquite profound has happened and that this had wider societal implications: economics had become an elite subject
whose provision is restricted to a few elite universities. To help explain this it is possible to view economics
provision as having two distinct elements, teaching (named economics degrees) and research. Analysis of the data
reveals that old universities were much more likely to offer an undergraduate degree in economics than new
universities and the difference is prominent. Indeed, the best predictor of whether a university offered an
economics exit title was almost certainly whether it was categorised as old or new. The data set includes 65 new
and 54 old universities. Approximately three quarters (48 out of 66) of the universities offering single programmesin economics, business economics or financial economics were old. In contrast, three quarters of new universities
did not offer an economics exit award in 2011-2012.
In terms of named degree programmes and research, economics has disappeared in all post-1992 institutions in
Scotland. So-called Chartered universities (those established under Robbins in 1963) while still offering economic
degree programmes have to some extent retreated from economics research defined as entry in the Economics andEconometrics Unit of Assessment of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). Only the four ancient universities
maintain the duality of economics provision and economics research as defined above. This is an important point
as this duality maintains the elitism of these universities and hence the future employment prospects of theirstudents. The consequence of structural change in higher education is quite clear: economics has become an ‘elite’subject increasingly the preserve of the ancient universities who draw their students mostly from the mostadvantaged sectors of society. Shattock (2001) identifies a set of themes that support this structural divide between
what he calls the ‘old’ universities and the post-1992 institutions with one outcome being the retreat of somesubjects from the latter group. Such research supports the notion of a process of rationalisation, whereby someinstitutions abandon certain subject areas and our research confirms that in Scotland this process has impacted on
economics provision. A similar pattern emerges for the UK as a whole, with the best predictor of whether auniversity offers an economics title being whether it is old or new, with 75 per cent of old institutions offering
economics degrees in contrast to only 25 per cent of post-1992 institutions.
Lessons for others
A key lesson for universities in other countries is the role played by universities in this process of rationalisation.
In Scotland as in the rest of the UK, universities enjoy a high degree of autonomy in terms of deciding what
provision they will offer prospective students. The continuing autonomy of universities appears to have resulted
in a degree of rationalisation of economics beyond what any government would have seriously been able to propose
without a major campaign of resistance by the economics profession. It is this autonomy which has enabled there-emergence of a differentiated higher education landscape that was supposed to have been removed in the UK
by the structural changes of 1963 and 1992 The interesting aspect is the emergence of clear differences in theextent of economics provision along the structural divide: all ancient and two chartered universities (Dundee andStirling) had economics programmes and economics research, two of the chartered universities had economics
programmes but no economics entry in the research assessment exercise (Strathclyde and Heriot-Watt) and finallyall of the post-1992 institutions had no economics programmes and no economics research.
As mentioned earlier, the key issue is not access to higher education (access has been widened) but the gap between
the most advantaged and the least advantaged in gaining admission to the ancient and chartered universities.
Because many post-1992 institutions have abandoned key subject areas it is to be that expected job prospects andaccess to the professions will be constrained. Scotland is not alone in this as a similar picture seems to emerge
from England. According to the Office for Fair Access (OFFA), while there have been substantial increases inparticipation in higher education among the least advantaged 40 per cent of young people over the last fifteen
years, the participation rate among the same group of young people at the top third of universities has remained

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virtually unchanged over the same period (Office for Fair Access 2010). Moreover, the most advantaged twenty
per cent of young people were around six times more likely than the least advantaged group to attend in the mid1990s and this increased to around seven times by the mid-2000s. Thus, the evidence suggests that strategies toimprove access have only been partially successful as equality in participation has not being achieved. This is our
main thesis: that access to higher education has improved but it is not equal access to all subjects; for many students
from disadvantaged backgrounds the door to economics remains almost closed. This raises some serious issues forpolicymakers.
Changes described in this paper would also seem to reflect a change in the nature of higher education, particularlyin the new universities, where the emphasis is on training people for work rather than providing an education per
se. In other words, the utilitarian approach favoured by Dearing has some unexpected results. With increased
specialisation in the sector overall, the task of educating students in the traditional manner and subjects has to amuch greater extent been allocated to the old universities. The recent criticisms from employer organisations
appear to suggest that the new universities are not always being successful in their allotted role (CBI/NUS, 2011).
If market rates of pay are a reflection, at least in part, of worker productivity, the fact that economics graduates
earn relatively high levels of remuneration (Chevalier, 2011) suggests, all else being equal, that the study of
economics raises to a greater extent than some other subjects the ability of individuals to contribute to economic
growth and to enjoy the rewards from doing so. If members to lower socio-economic groups are unable to accessthe subject due to it being withdrawn from the sorts of universities that these sorts of people typically attend, thiswill risk damaging their career prospects. It is not possible to quantify the number of people who may select‘second best’ subjects or who may decide not to go to university at all as a result of their preferred option not being
available but it is potentially a serious loss. In a sense the market might be failing to allocate enough resources tothe study of economics and this may be grounds for government providing some sort of subsidy for the study of
economics in the new universities.
However, market forces, government policy and other changes in the UK higher education landscape would
appear to have conspired to set the UK higher education system on a path that has reduced the opportunity forpeople from lower socio-economic groups to participate in the public debate on this vital issue. The reason forthis is that if access to old and new universities is stratified along social class grounds (and there is a lot of evidence
to suggest that this is the case - see for example, Gallacher, 2006 and Boliver, 2011) and if new universities are
increasingly removing economics degree programmes (and the evidence presented above shows that this isincreasingly the case) then students from lower socio-economic groups will have less access to the study of
economics at an advanced level. The resultant weakening in the voice of these groups may have skewed thenational debate on the crisis in unexpected and undesirable ways. This is something which universities in otherparts of the world need to be aware of.

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References
Anderson, R. (2010). The 'idea of a university' today. History and Policy. [online]. Available at:
http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-paper-98.html (Accessed 8 March 2012)
Boliver, V. (2011). Expansion, differentiation, and the persistence of social class inequalities in British higher
education. Higher Education, 61 (3): 229-242.
Chevalier, A. (2011). Subject choice and earnings of UK graduates. Economics of Education Review, 30 (6):1187-1201.
Committee on Higher Education (1963). Higher Education: Report of the Committee Appointed by the Prime
Minister Under the Chairmanship of Lord Robbins 1961-63, Cm 2154. London: HMSO.
Croxford, L., Howieson, C. and Steele, D. (2011). Recording and reporting student articulation from Scottish
colleges to Scottish HEIs through UCAS: ELRAH Research report and specification of change requirement.
[online]. Available at:
http://www.elrah.ac.uk/Documents.aspx?itemID=bc5bdc4e-9933-41e4-ab7f-745f88c0f247(Accessed 2.12.2012).
Croxford, L and Paterson, L. (2006). Trends in social class segregation between schools in England, Wales andScotland since 1984. Research Papers in Education, 21(4), 381-406.
Etzkowitz, H. and Leydesdorff, L. (2000). The dynamics of innovation: from National Systems and ‘‘Mode 2’’ toa Triple Helix of university–industry–Government relations. Research Policy. 29, 109–123.
EU, Commission of the European Communities (2006). Cluster modernisation of higher education. Brussels,Doc. MHE 7.
EU, Commission of the European Communities (2008). Towards more knowledge-based policy and practice ineducation and training. Brussels: EU, SEC (2007) 1098.
Gallacher, J. (2006). Widening access or differentiation and stratification in higher education in Scotland. Higher
Education Quarterly, 60 (4), 349–369.
Huisman, J., Meek, L. and Wood, F. (2007). Institutional Diversity in Higher Education: a Cross-National andLongitudinal Analysis. Higher Education Quarterly, 61: 563–577.
Mawson, J. (2007). Research councils, universities and local Government – building bridges? Public Money andManagement. 7(4), 265-272.
Mullen, F. (2010). Widening Access to Higher Education Policy in Scotland. SPICe Briefing SB 10-09.
Edinburgh: Scottish Parliament.
Nelles, J. and Vorley, T. (2010). From policy to practice: engaging and embedding the third mission incontemporary universities. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy. 30 (7/8), 341-353.
OECD (2007). Higher Education and Regions: globally competitive, locally engaged. Paris: OECD.
Office for Fair Access (2010). What more can be done to widen access to highly selective universities? Bristol:
Office for Fair Access.
Shattock, M. (2001). The academic profession in Britain: A study in the failure to adapt to change. Higher
Education, 41, 27–47.
Simister, J., (2011). Elitism and meritocracy in UK universities: the UK needs investment in its labour force.
Higher Education Quarterly, 65 (2), 113–144.

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Teichler, U. (2008). The changing patterns of the higher education systems in Europe and the future tasks ofhigher education research. In J. Brennan, J. Enders, J. Valimaa,
Tight, M. (2011). How many universities are there in the United Kingdom? How many should there be? Higher
Education, 62 (5): 646-663. [online]. Available at: http://www.springerlink.com/content/3146w04v65x78605)(Accessed 29 February 2012).
Trow, M. (2000). From mass higher education to universal access: the American advantage. Minerva, 37, 1–26.
Universities Scotland. [online] Available at: http://www.universities-scotland.ac.uk/ (Accessed 4 December2012).
June 2013
Image: Chris Beckett/Flickr Creatvie Commons

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French Higher Education Culture Changes and theInternationalization Strategies of Universities(Field Research)

By Darya Loyola, University Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, France
Abstract
France is following the trend of internationalization in higher education. Both governments and institutions workon their policy to promote their education system. French universities enter the international market of higher
education and they need to make its offer more attractive to gain a competitive advantage over foreign universities.
The competition is driven by the world-recognized American and British institutions and boosted by theinternational rankings which influence on the institution policies. While on the governmental level theseevaluations are taken into consideration to pursue the reforms, our filed research shows that French universities
are conservative enough not to brings important changes to its education culture. In this article the results of filed
research at 3 public universities are presented. This filed research consisted of the interviews with university vicepresidents responsible for the elaboration and for the realization of institution's internationalization strategy. The
result of these interviews is a deeper understanding of the main features of French higher educationinternationalization strategy and its impact on the evolution of higher education system and its culture.
Higher education world is the reflection of society development. The main, basic, principles of society are definedand glorified in higher education institutions, they are refined at higher education culture. Changes that modern
society engages for higher education systems are discussed with fear, pride and prejudice. What seems objective
and timely for higher education policy-makers seems unnatural for the conservatives of higher education.
Internationalization has become not a trend but a necessity for the universities all over the world: they try to findtheir place internationally and work on their “internationality”, they compete for better status and sources. It has
been more than a decade since the beginning of Bologna process for the European universities to realize that they
are not alone in this world and a birth of several academic rankings within last 10 years boosted intra-university
competition on the international scale. The decision-makers at higher education institutions face the challenge to

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elaborate the right internationalization strategy given the certain context and the certain sources. Our analysis is
an attempt to examine the actual policy of France to make French universities more international. To make thisanalysis more tangible this article includes the data of the field research at three French higher education
institutions where the internationalization strategy leaders (vice-presidents and directors responsible forinternational relations) were interviewed on the subject of the internationalization strategy of their institutions.
Being attractive = risking a culture loss?
According to the data of UNESCO on the international students mobility France is the forth most popular hostcountry in the world for foreign students after the USA, the UK and Australia (UNESCO, Institute for statistics,2012). Three leading countries belong to the same traditions in higher education; also their higher education
systems have many similar features in terms of financing. French education system is different in many ways. The
scientific literature both in English and in French is abundant for the comparative studies for France-UK andFrance-USA differences (Premfors, 1980; Buisson, 2004). Going through the information on the financial sourcesof Anglo-American universities and the cost per student per year at the highly-ranked prestigious universities, it
is obvious for any scholar, that public institutions in France could not offer anything close to dreamy campuses,
or service, or status, or a salary based on the name of the institution marked on the diploma. France spends 11
630 euros per student per year, which is average in Europe (OECD, 2012). And yet, it is the forth most attractive
country in the world for international Bachelors, Masters and PhDs.
France has its natural appeal for foreign students originating from Francophone or the countries with historicgeographical ties with France. Its lure in terms of tuition fees is also natural. Tuition payment if France is 181
euros per year for Bachelor, 250 euros per year for Masters degree and 380 euros per year for Doctorate program(French Ministry of Higher Education and Research data, 2013). France is culturally seductive too, and the social
security system works well for foreigners. That is basically why France keeps up with the leading host countries
for international students. However, French universities are not ranked as high as the universities of the USA andof the UK (ARWU, 2013; Times Higher Education, 2012 - 2013).
French governments of the last decade have made many efforts to turn the internationalization to the way that
French universities could become more recognized internationally, more visible internationally and just moreinternational.
The aims of law no 2007-1199 of the 10th of August 2007 (Loi no 2007-1199 du 10 aout 2007 relative aux libertéset responsabilités des universities) - - law LRU in French abbreviation, were first, make the university more
attractive, second, to leave the palsy of universities governance and third, to make universities research more visible
internationally. After the beginning of 2007 university reform, the French minister of higher education Valérie
Pécresse visited the Jiao Tong scholars, creators of Shanghai ranking to introduce the higher education reform
undertaken in France and to underline the positive changes for French universities (. Particularly, it was mentionedthat the universities will become bigger and more interdisciplinary, which is assured by the creation of federal
universities – poles of research and higher education (PRES in French abbreviation). This visit shows close
attention of preceding French government at academic rankings and the intention to improve the place of French
universities.
In addition to the structural - making public universities bigger, more heavy in terms of research and visible fromfar, - there is a governmental call for promotion of excellence and selectivity. In the Report for French Senate« L'autonomie des universités depuis la loi LRU : le big-bang à l'heure du bilan » of 26th march 2013 (Gilot, D.,
Dupont A., 2013) the French senators confirm the objective of LRU to make French higher education model
more attractive according to the rankings criteria and the growing international competition between universities.
The excellence is represented by the world-recognised highly ranked American and British institutions which
belong to the higher education culture of the capitalist economic system of the developed states. The excellenceof these institutions is found on their financial autonomy and autonomy of their governance. The same reportcites the European Council that called European higher education system for excellence at their institutions. The
word “excellence” is going throughout the report which became a footstep of the project of new law – law Fioraso- adopted in France on the 9th of July 2013 (LOI n° 2013-660 du 22 juillet 2013 relative à l'enseignement supérieuret à la recherche).
Apart from continuing the policy of the reinforcement of universities’ autonomy and the corrections in theirgovernance, a new law project also introduces the obligation of courses in English language at French universities.

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This generates a long debate for French academic society. On the one hand, it makes French universities more
attractive for international students who do not speak French. The incoming mobility numbers would rise. The
paid education programs will find their consumers. On the other hand, the quality of this education will loose
whether linguistically or scientifically. What is more, one of the sides of the attractiveness of France, the capitalof the Francophone, was its open door for French-speaking countries. This was also favourable for the promotionof the French language. Now, when the capital of the club has adopted another second major language, it looses
a little bit of its cultural identity.
In the Report of International Association of Universities of the 28th of June 2012 “Internationalization of higher
education: trends and indicators” there is a page with the listed risks brought by the internationalization for thesystems of higher education (Egron-Polak, E., 2012). There are particularly three risks which sound relevant in
the debates of the actual French higher education policy: commercialization of education programs, the raise of
the competition between universities and the loss of the cultural identity.
By the letter French higher education culture is based on the secular education independent from any political,
economic, religious or ideological dominance. It tends to the objectivity of knowledge; it respects the diversity ofopinions and guarantees to the education and the research the possibilities of free scientific, constructive criticaldevelopment. (Code de l'éducation - Article L141-6). By the spirit it is based on the equality of chances, freeaccess to higher education and academic democracy. Is France changing its higher education culture?
Rob Cuthbert in his report Changing the Higher education culture – Is it possible? (Cuthbert, R., 2009) tries tohighlight the possible changes in the UK higher education which are: globalisation, managerialisation,marketisation, massification, diversification, privatisation and academic capitalism. More and more scholars inFrance are worrying about the academic capitalism (Conférence annuelle du DIM IS2-IT 2013). Even if thesetrends seem of current importance if France, it is necessary to examine the institutions policy to see the foundationsof their internationalization strategies and how capitalistic and Anglo Americanized they become.
Modern conservative university
In order to see if the practices at the institutions of higher educations in France are different from the general
governmental line the interviews of universities decision-makers on the internationalisation strategy wereconducted. We chose 3 French universities to find out their internationalisation strategy. This survey does notinclude any private higher education institution. French higher education is represented by its public institutions- 80% of students study at public universities, which, basically, define the system of higher education in France(Campus France, 2012).
First university is specialized in Law, Economy and Human sciences. In 2012-2013 it had 39 876 students, 7712
of them were foreign students. The annual budget was, 203 560 453,22 euros, 11% of it - proper financing. In
our research we call it UniHumans. Second university UniScience - is specialized in Science and Mathematics. It
is ranked 1st in France, 6th in Europe and 37th worldwide in the Academic Ranking of World Universities(ARWU) where it was 1st among French universities. In 2012-2013 it had 270289 students, 4780 of them foreign students. Budget - 400 million euros. Third university – UniMedicine is an interdisciplinary university
with a very strong research in medicine, biotechnologies, social sciences and psychology: 38900 students totally,
4000 foreign students, budget of 333 millions euros. This data on the universities is published at the web-sites ofuniversities.
All together these three French universities cover 23, 5% of the total number foreign students in the region of Ilede-France and 7, 5 % of the total number of foreign students in France.
We have interviewed the vice –presidents responsible for the international relations. These vice-presidents are thepersons which with its team elaborate the international strategy of the institution and present it in a form ofquadrennial plan. We have interrogated these internationalisation policy decision-makers on the different issues
related to the international competition and its effects of the universities strategy (Loyola, D., 2013).
The first questions aimed to reflect interviewees on the space where their universities compete with otheruniversities from all over the world and if it was the international market of higher education. All threeinterviewees said that they had to admit that international market of higher education exists and should be taken
into consideration. An internalization strategy leader of UniMed said that this market is violent. However, being

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aware of the existence of the international market of higher education and their leaders and actors, two of threeinterviewees had difficulties to give a definition to the market. Only internalization strategy leader of UniHumans
clearly stated his concept of international market of higher education, the offer and the demand, though he said
that he “does not like the word market”, because this international higher education market “is not a regularmarket, in a sense that there is a global place where offer and demand meet, and there is no pay, the strict amountof money to give to acquire the good. Here, I want to say, that the ability to pay is important, but if you want to
get into a very prestigious American university for a Bachelor degree you have to pay a lot, but you also have toshow very good academic results. Thus, on the one hand, the selection is done by money, on the other hand by
the academic results. A very good student who is looking for a doctorate school will always find a place where he
will be offered a scholarship, so they pay him to come, so it works inversely: an institution, the offer-maker of the
PhD program, will pay the students. Here, in Europe, many universities do that as we have doctorate contracts.”
With this approach the conception of market is not seen as a place of economic and status competition between
universities, but as a zone where both parties are something to offer and something to take. The student is unlikely
seen as a consumer: a foreign student pays same amount of money, little considerable amount of money comparing
to the state financing of its cost (Loyola, D., 2013).
Three interviewees gave different characteristics to the market, and took some time to find words to describe themarket. The internationalization strategy leader of UniScience admitted that “it is not easy to talk about themarket as the reflection on the market is poor”. The first market-question responses and reactions suggest thatwith the intensifying internationalisation French universities feel the competition between institutions on theinternational level, but still do not reflect on the “marketisation” of this space.
Mainly for the reason of symbolic tuition fees the reflection of French universities on the policy of attractivenessfor international students has a different psychology – not to have many foreign students to earn money and astatus in rankings, but to get international in research to win national and regional competition.
The internalization strategy leader of UniMed says that university does not have any strategy to attract Bachelor
candidates but to integrate foreign undergraduates into French Masters and most importantly PhDs “for theultimate result – their contribution to the advancement of knowledge and the science in France”. Same idea wasexpressed by internalization strategy leader of UniScience: “we do not have to choose our students for Bachelor
programs, but for Masters and doctorate programs. We have a lot of PhD candidates coming from abroad”. Hereis a French specificity of the French higher education market for foreign students: the offer is mostly Master and
PhD programs. Even a very good public university of a good repute in France does no make money on foreign
students (if it is not a very specific program, often a joint-degree taught partially/fully in English). Also, a public
French university has an obligation before the state to accept all students for the first year of Bachelor without any
selection within a limit of places. Basically, they are obliged to take everyone who is eligible and applied earlier
within a deadline; the universities do not get to choose their undergraduate students and their potential. With
regards to Masters and PhD, there is a selection with an evaluation of the whole profile of a potential candidate:
his academic records, work experience, other extra scholar activities, and also well explained motivation and a logic
personal project which has a place and application of the desired degree. So there is no economic interest to attract
students at the first cycle, but to select students for the second and third cycle: the students that might bring somevaluable research results, which could upgrade the status of university and might serve as an advantage in thenational competition for government grants (Loyola, D., 2013).
The absence of tuition fees for usual programs and the lack of paid programs make the international strategy
leaders at universities focus more on the partnership with ranked foreign universities in order to establish goodexchange programs and then proceed with joint degrees. This becomes the core of their internationalization
strategy. Internalization strategy leader of UniScience defined his mission as to “develop the agreements with thebest universities in the world, to create a VIP club of research-based universities” and for this reason, he has to“improve the shop-window, the visibility of his university, the communication” not to attract the students, but
partners. Internationalization strategy leader of UniMed admitted that university is more interested in theestablishment of joint labs than in attraction of foreign students.
All three decision-makers agreed that the international competition plays an important role in the elaboration ofuniversity strategy. However, here again the motivation is more the national status than international.
Internationalization strategy leader of UniMed while answering this question mentioned only the importance ofthe competition is to work on internationalization as any modern university should do to get to the tenders andgrants. Same idea was expressed by the internalization strategy leader of UniHumans: “the international

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competition makes a French university to choose well his international strategy…before we had foreign students
from the French ex-colonies or other French-speaking countries, we did not reflect a lot on the non Frenchspeaking countries, and now our privileged partners are from Brazil, India and Asia, in general… We need to
attract the best students to be better ranked and get he access to the programs of ANR” (Agence National de laRecherhce – state agency that manages the programs of the state support of the higher education and the researchin the form of tenders for universities and research institutions). Internationalization strategy leader of UniScience
also focused more on the national aspect, as he wants to make more university more attractive in order that theforeign partnering universities prefer to send the exchange students to UniScience than to another university withthe similar programs in French. Therefore, the international competition reveals the best foreign universities andalso the trends in global students’ mobility to take into consideration while choosing the partners to be morecompetitive nationally (Loyola, D., 2013).
Two of three interviewees criticized rankings for their non-applicability to the different contexts including the
French context which is clearly less homogeneous than Ivy League context. One interviewee said that “since weare the best in France in Shanghai ranking, then Shanghai ranking is a good one”. Despite the certain scepticism
towards rankings all three decision-makers admit that they take into account the criteria of rankings while working
on their internationalization strategy, but neither of them take the criteria as something to achieve, but rather
something to consider and be aware of. All three interviewees outlined clearly the zones of their interest: Asia
(China, particularly) and the countries of Bricks.
To the question to reflect on the trends on the international market of higher education all three interviewees
stated that the priority is to develop the research at universities. For UniMed it is the creations of international“scientific platforms”, so the universities could exchange their scientific knowledge or trade it for service to havewin-win intra-university cooperation. There was a description of the collaboration with Chinese traditional
medicine university which tries to find a partner for the better understanding how to adapt Chinese pharmacology
to the European norms. UniMed got against the necessary missing data on traditional Chinese medicine.
Apart from the research development, the internationalization strategy leader of UniScience mentioned theimportance of the development of the international professional integration of students. These ideas make recall
the higher education policy of excellence of Sarkozy government with the promotion of research within higher
education institutions and the reinforcement of the university mission to integrate students into a professional life
with better orientation and better service to help students work on their employability as it is done in the UK
where the fees are high and the students need to feel employable, secure and supported in the construction of theircareer path after getting into a student loan to pay for many years after graduation. Internalization strategy leaderof UniHumans underlined the importance “to produce the original goods as, for example, the curriculum ParisNew York-Paris, or three semesters at best European universities to be different from others’ (Loyola, D., 2013).
Internationalization of high education is a necessity as France wishes to play an important role in the world politics
and still keep the influence over certain regions of the world. Also, being international for French university is aprerequisite to have access to the national and European funds. To be more international French universities workon the mobility figures promoting the exchange programs among their students, offering mobility scholarships
and partnering with attractive universities. So they could furthermore develop joint diplomas and get moreinternational, more recognized and gain better reputation to win national and European trends. This isinternationalization of higher education in France. “Within my mandate (3 years) I want to double the mobility
numbers” (UniHumans). “It is so difficult to deal with a individual demand (individual mobility - students
applying for Bachelor and Masters programs), because there are fake diplomas, fake grades, we do not really know
the schools or universities of those applicants…It is much more interesting not to take the students who knock
the door because hey see the light, but those from universities we know well, with whom we have agreements. It
is a collective demand (exchange programs mobility)” – UniScience (Loyola, D., 2013).
Do French universities look at the rankings, study their criteria and be aware who is considered the best of theworld and why? Yes, they do. However, it is more of an observation then a study. They look at the rankings
because the students look at the rankings and also because it is a mode of university evaluation. They look who is
the leader too. But the system is different, culture is different. Any French university is dreaming of the glory of
Ivy League, but every university policy leader knows that the systems are incomparable and the conditions aredifferent. They do try to work on the image of university, on the products, but the price for those products is to alittlest extent defined by the international, a little more regional and much more of the national market.

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However, there are two important aspects of being international for a French university which might point out
the inclination of French higher education culture towards academic capitalism and the inspiration form themarket leaders: the acceptance of the idea of higher fees for public institutions and the promotion of the Englishtaught programs.
Two of three universities leaders (UniHumans and UniScience) agreed that anglophonization of higher educationin France is inevitable. Internationalization strategy leader of UniMed was uncertain if it is necessary to introduce
more English in the education programs: “For me, it is a stupid debate. Internationalization strategy leader of
UniHumans admitted that he “has to say yes to anglophonization”: “Today, if you want to have at once students
from the North America, South America… Africans, Asians, Russians and Chinese, you have to speak English”.
However, he revealed that he tries to promote the idea of an introductory year of integration for the foreign
students applying for Bachelor programs. “Since we are lucky in France to have Bachelor in 3 years and not in 4
years, like in other countries, than why not to create the firs year of French integration?” Internationalization
strategy leader of UniScience said that he is in favour to augment the number of English-taught programs, butwith the French method: “Our offer on the market is poor because of the language…We have so many partners(foreign universities) who ask us why we do not offer programs in English?.. There is “speaking French” and“thinking French”, and I think, France, we have something to give in terms of thinking. We think differently:
there in French journalism, French architecture. We want to teach something in a French way, we can do it inEnglish… I think English language is fundamental.”
All the three universities are in favour of the raise of tuition fees. Internationalization strategy leader of
UniHumans warned that “if we stay in this dynamics of not raising the fees we will see the death of the public
higher education”. Internationalization strategy leader of UniScience is “extremely in favour” of higher fees:“There is a private offer from the schools of managements which make pay an expensive price and they offer
something extraordinary. We can not offer anything extraordinary in terms of service. I think, it is necessary that
French students pay more. And foreign students should pay the cost”. Internationalization strategy leader of
UniMed claims that “our education is not considered as a good one, because it is not expensive. But in fact it has
he same cost as in other European countries, it is just the state that pays. I do not see the problem in raising thefees. Foreign students pay more? No, I do not think so. Equality should be there”. One of the interviewed
acknowledged that the academic capitalism is inevitable even though France will fight for its higher education
cultural identity (Loyola, D., 2013).
Conclusion
Higher education in France has taken its turn to internationalization by its own path. The governments work on
the image of French universities and set the rules to be “rankable” and recognizable. Internationalization for thevery universities – it is like a mayonnaise for a sandwich – one of the layers they must think about to be taken into
consideration. However, there are few opportunities for commercialization and visibly little marketisation ofhigher education institutions. The government will be the one to give a green light for marchandialisation ofuniversity programs. Before the tuition fees rise, the internationalization at French universities would probablekeep the following features:
•  
•  
•  

No policy of attractiveness for Bachelor programs;
Allying with ranked universities from developed world and emerging states to create joint degrees andreceive students on paid programs;
Making efforts to raise their mobility figures to upgrade the status of university nationally and regionally.

These tactics create a certain level of “internationality” for French universities to keep France in the top 5 of hostcountries, but do not change dramatically French higher education culture before the tuition fees go up.

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References
ARWU: Academic Ranking of Worlds Universities, 2013. [online] Available at
http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2013.html [Accessed 1 August 2013].
Buisson, L. « Analyse comparative de l'enseignement supérieur et de la recherche en France et aux Etats-Unis »,Revue française d'administration publique 4/2004 (no112), p. 747-756. [e-journal] Available atwww.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-administration-publique-2004-4-page-747.htm. [Accessed 1 June 2013].
Campus France, 2012. [online] Available at http://www.campusfrance.org/fr/page/les-universites-et-lespres>[Accessed 1 June 2013].
Code de l'éducation - Article L141-6. [online] Available at
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticle=LEGIARTI000006524457&cidTexte=LEGITE
XT000006071191&dateTexte=20060418 [Accessed 1 June 2013].
Conférence annuelle du DIM IS2-IT 2013. L’irrésistible ascension du capitalisme académique ? 18 – 19 avril
2013, Paris, France. [online] Available at http://dim-is2it.com/agenda/test-evenement/ [Accessed 1 June 2013].
Cuthbert, R., 2009. Changing the Higher education culture – Is it possible?. Report for the 18th Annual
Conference EAN, Changing the Culture of the Campus Towards an Inclusive Higher Education - Ten Years
On, York St.John University, England, UK, 22nd June-24th June 2009. [online] Available at www.eanedu.org/upload_data/york%20presentation/Rob-Cuthbert.ppt [Accessed 1 July 2013].
Egron-Polak, E., Campus France, 2012. L’internationalisation de l’enseignement superieur: Tendances etindicateurs [online] Available at
http://ressources.campusfrance.org/noindex/indicateurs/03_eva_egron_polak_aiu.pdf. [Accessed 1 June 2013].
French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. Ministere de l’enseignement superieur et de recherche.
Available at http://www.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/cid20195/frais-inscription-pour-rentreeuniversitaire-2012.html [Accessed 1 June 2013].
Gilot, D., Dupont A., 2013. L'autonomie des universités depuis la loi LRU : le big-bang à l'heure du bilan
Rapport d'information n° 446 (2012-2013) de Mme Dominique GILLOT et M. Ambroise DUPONT, fait au
nom de la commission pour le contrôle de l'application des lois, déposé le 26 mars 2013. [online] Available at
http://www.senat.fr/rap/r12-446/r12-446_mono.html [Accessed 1 June 2013].
Loi no 2007-1199 du 10 aout 2007 relative aux libertés et responsabilités des universities. [online] Available at
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000824315 [Accessed 1 June 2013].
Loi n° 2013-660 du 22 juillet 2013 relative à l'enseignement supérieur et à la recherche (1) [online] Available at
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000027735009 [Accessed 15 August2013].
Loyola, D., Field Research Report. Interviews of 21 June 2013, 24 June 2013 and 26 June 2013. Scripts
available upon a request at daryaloyola@hotmail.com
OECD (2012), “How much is spent per student?”, in Education at a Glance 2012: Highlights, OECD
Publishing. Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/eag_highlights-2012-16-en [Accessed 1 July 2013].
Premfors, R. How Much Higher Education Is Enough? A Comparison of Public Policy in France, Sweden, andthe United Kingdom, Comparative Education Review Vol. 24, No. 3 (Oct., 1980), pp. 302-322 Published by:
The University of Chicago Press.

Times Higher Education, World University Ranking 2012 - 2013. [e-journal] Available at
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/2012-13/world-ranking [Accessed 1 August2013].

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UNESCO, Institute of statistics, 2012. Global Flow of Tertiary-Level Students. [online] Available at
http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Pages/international-student-flow-viz.aspx [Accessed 1 July 2013].
Email: daryaloyola@hotmail.com
Image: Philippe Leroyer/Flickr Creative Commons

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Is it Cheating if Nobody’s Watching?
Conflicting Beliefs about Dishonesty in Online Learning

By Christine Piper, Clemson University, USA
Lori K. Tanner, Clemson University, USA
Richard Hartsell, University of South Carolina Upstate, USA
Abstract
This paper addresses part of an extensive study investigating faculty and student perceptions of academic integrityin online courses. This analysis compares the quantitative responses to the qualitative responses of a survey sent
to three institutions asking 1800 faculty and students their beliefs about cheating in online courses. The
conclusions drawn from this analysis of the qualitative data and a comparison to the previous analysis of thequantitative data is that faculty and students report the possibility for cheating in online courses at different rates.
This phenomenon may be due to either a propensity for faculty to over report or for students to under report theextent to which cheating is occurring in online courses. Regardless, there is a conflicting belief about academic
integrity between faculty and students interacting in an online course.
Keywords: academic honesty, distance learning, online courses, cheating, integrity

Introduction
With a myriad of mobile technology in the hands of students and the academic pressure to succeed in college, theavailability of online information lures students into believing they are not cheating if they can find, rather thanknow, the answer. Globally, institutions are afflicted with academic dishonesty among their student body (Bowers,
1964, Diekhoff et al., 1996, Hinman, 2002, King, Guyette, & Pitrowski, 2009, and McCabe, 2002). As
institutions move more of their courses online, students are no longer in close vicinity to their instructors orclassmates. “Whether judged positively or the contrary, institutions of higher education have been impacted by
the adoption of internet technologies” (Tanner & Piper, 2010 p. 1457). The conversation about enforcement of
academic values and honesty is not new to the digital era. (Diekhoff et al., 1996, Jordan, 2001, and McCabe etal., 1999). Research continues to show evidence that academic dishonesty in online classes is no more prevalent

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than in traditional face-to-face education (Grijalva, Nowell, & Kerkvliet’s, 2006). However, with the movement
towards campuses encouraging mobile technology and courses being designed for hybrid and/or online delivery,
the internet has given students an extensive and unrestricted opportunity to cheat (Bedford, Gregg, & Clinton,
2009, Brock, 2008, Rowe, 2004, Tanner & Piper, 2010). Academic integrity, especially in the online
environment, continues to be a concern for universities (Bowers, 1964, King, Guyette & Pitrowski, 2009, Kitahara& Westfall, 2007 and McCabe, 2002).
Brock’s (2008) idea of moral relativity may be what is necessary to understand the temptations students areexperiencing. He suggests that academic integrity and honesty do not have clear boundaries and, in certain
situations or circumstances, “students believe that cheating and plagiarizing can be…acceptable” (p. 2). Moralrelativity in virtual environments only adds to the frustration faculty experience when teaching online courses.
There is more temptation to cheat in online courses primarily because the student is more distant from the
instructor and secondary, many students taking online courses are busy in careers and are not invested in the
integrity of the distance-learning programs as they would be in traditional face-to-face programs (Rowe, 2004).
In the virtual environment, students seem to have a technological advantage because many faculty andadministrators are still unaware of the possibilities for cheating online (Rowe, 2004 and Rogers, 2006). Thisdifference in the belief about online cheating was the stimulation for this research study.
The purpose of the study was to uncover the beliefs about academic integrity, specifically academic honesty, withrespect to online courses and compare the faculty and student perceptions. The objectives were to determine if
and why students felt that it was easier to cheat in a distance learning course than a traditional face-to-face course.
Methodology
Three public institutions of higher education were sites for recruiting participation in our survey. The participants
were either students (undergraduate and graduate) or faculty (full and part-time). The institutions are public fouryear universities. The smallest university is a regional commuter campus in the southeastern part of the UnitedStates with an enrollment of 5400 students and approximately 500 full and part-time faculty. The second andlargest university is also in the southern part of the country and considered a top-tier research university with astudent enrollment of 18,000 and approximately 1200 full and part-time faculty. The third university is locatedin the south central Midwest part of the country with a student enrollment of 17,000 and approximately 1400 fulland part-time faculty offering degrees in more than 100 areas as well as master and doctoral programs in mostprograms. The universities offer traditional, hybrid and online courses.
A cross-sectional online survey was developed to incorporate the measurement variables for the constructs
conceptualizing student and faculty beliefs about academic honesty with respect to online courses. Questions werestructured in the format of multiple answers, Likert-scales, and open-ended comments for the purpose ofcomparing student and faculty responses. The surveys were developed and disseminated via survey monkey, an
online tool that allows for the self-administration of surveys and data collection.
There were 243 faculty and 1649 students that responded to the larger survey. For this research paper, which is a
subpart of the larger study, the qualitative data was examined by focusing on responses given to the open-ended
student question “Is it easier to cheat in a distance learning course?” There were 644 student responses to thisquestion and 541 of those responses were able to be coded into one of three categories: Lack of Supervision,
Unclear Boundaries and Open Source. Each of the three categories corresponded to one of the relationships
between faculty and student definitions of cheating suggested by the study’s quantitative data. The coding was
performed by one of the researchers and the responses were grouped into one of these three categories. Thisqualitative analysis compares the open-ended responses to the earlier quantitative analysis (Tanner & Piper, 2010)
which is summarized in the background section.
Limitations
This study is not without its limitations. When using an online survey distribution tool, the participants are
expected to have email in order to receive the invitation to participate, as well as access to the specific domain
housing the survey instrument. Response rates for online surveys are usually lower than traditional postal mail or
telephone interviews. However, this sample was one of convenience and purposive in that the researchers wereaffiliated with the institutions chosen for participant selection and the population selected from the institutions
were only faculty and students rather than the entire populations of the institutions. All students and faculty at

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each participating institution had regular internet and email access. This can be problematic in that internet based
sampling is not representative of general populations. However, it is rare that university communities are not fully
integrating the expectation of primarily email correspondence.
Two different survey instruments were used to collect data. Students were asked questions similar to, but notexactly the same, as the questions asked of the faculty. Faculty were asked about their experiences with cheatingin their online courses; whereas, students were asked if they knew of someone who cheated in an online course.
Data sets for faculty responses and student responses were kept separated for the analysis. Responses to similar
questions were compared using descriptive statistics and one-way analysis of variance (Tanner & Piper, 2010).
The separate analyses were compared, but no causal or correlation statistics were run with aggregated data due tothe differences between instruments (Tanner & Piper, 2010).
It was not possible to control for duplicate responses due to the nature of the questioning around cheating andthe ethics review board recommendations. The researchers were not permitted to limit the number of responses
per internet protocol (IP) address or require individual passwords in order to ensure anonymity of participants(Tanner & Piper, 2010). The researchers realize that the sensitivity of the topic of cheating may discourage thehonesty of the student responses out of fear of being caught or incriminated. However, the response rate of 18%
for each group of participants (faculty and students) was similar among the participating institutions (Tanner &Piper, 2010).
BackgroundPrevious analysis of this research data (Tanner & Piper, 2010) showed that students perceive it is easier to cheatin an online course vs. a traditional face-to-face course for the following most commonly cited reasons: (1) lackof proctoring, supervision, being watched or monitored makes it easy to cheat and difficult for instructor to catchcheating; (2) unlimited test time allows one to look up answers to the test online or via cell phone, texting or
emailing a classmate; (3) all course materials can be laid out for reference and one can also work with a classmate
at the same time and not get caught; and (4) one classmate can take the test and email or text answers to others.
Based on the previous analysis of this research data (Tanner & Piper, 2010), the research results indicated thatdishonesty exists; and the temptation and occurrences of cheating occurs most frequently on tests and quizzes,
then homework assignments, and finally, major papers. Both faculty and students were equally divided on whether
or not instructors can control academic dishonesty and the difficulty of enforcing academic honesty. The findings
suggest that faculty perceive cheating to be occurring at a higher rate in online courses than in traditional courses.
However, the study also indicates that students consider cheating to be occurring at a lower rate in online courses
than faculty assume. The somewhat contradictory nature of these two findings is reflected in much of the literaturesurrounding academic honesty in online courses. A number of studies, such as Lanier (2006), Kennedy, Nowak,
Raghuraman, Thomas, and Davis (2000) and King, Guyette, and Piotrowski (2009), indicated that both faculty
and students consider cheating in online courses to be easier and more prevalent than cheating in traditionalcourses. However, other studies indicated a divergence between faculty and student perceptions of cheating with
Grijalva et al (2006) suggesting students considered there was no difference between the amount of cheating in
online and traditional courses. Complicating the matter even more, studies by Stuber-McEwen, Wiseley, and
Hoggatti (2009) and Watson and Sottie (2010) suggested students believe less cheating occurs in online classes.
Analysis
Further analysis of the study’s quantitative results suggests three possible scenarios for explaining the discrepancy
between student and faculty perceptions of academic honesty in online courses. These scenarios are based on theassumption that mutual understandings between faculty and students regarding academic integrity are more
problematic in online courses due to the lack of face-to-face interpersonal contact and to the open source natureof digital information (Scanlon & Issroff 2005). The first scenario suggests students and faculty may perceive
different levels of cheating occurring in online courses because students tend to underreport personal acts ofdishonesty while faculty over report cheating due to the fact they are more acutely aware than students of thepotential for the relatively un-policed nature of online courses to encourage student cheating. In this scenario, astable, shared definition of what is and what is not academic dishonesty skew reported faculty and student
perceptions of the amount of cheating occurring in online courses in opposite directions due to different levels of
willingness to acknowledge the possibilities for cheating. Studies such as Trenholm (2006) and Sanders, Wenzel,
and Stivason (2008), which emphasize increased monitoring of online courses as the primary remedy to cheating,

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support this scenario in that the call for increased monitoring at least tacitly assumes a shared definition of cheating
between faculty and students.
The second scenario for explaining discrepancies between faculty and student perceptions of academic honesty inonline courses centers on the confusion which may occur as the result of shifting definitions of the distinction
between collusion and collaboration. Because the distinction between these two concepts is not absolute and canvary from teacher to teacher and thus from course to course, students may occasionally incorrectly assume certain
behaviors are collaborative as opposed to collisional. In such cases, students would once again tend to report fewer
instances of cheating than faculty. Such a scenario also assumes a stable definition of academic honesty. However,in this case, the definition is conceptually, but not operationally, shared; faculty and students simply interpret
similar behaviors in different manners. Studies such as Barrett and Cox (2005), Turner (2005), and Jakes (2009)
support this scenario in that they indicate web-based courses either create or enhance confusion regarding exactly
which behaviors should be considered collaboration as opposed to collusion. Such studies’ prescriptions formaintaining academic integrity in online courses emphasizes such techniques as creating assignments that are
inherently collaborative, and specifically identifying for students the few circumstances in which collaboration is
not permitted, i.e. where collaboration will be considered collusion.
The third scenario for explaining the study’s findings of student and faculty’s perceptions of academic honesty inonline courses envisions a generational redefinition of the concepts surrounding intellectual property. Such a
redefinition is created by the possibilities digitalization provides for the open sourcing of information (Evans,2009). In this scenario, the operating assumption is students report less cheating in online courses than faculty
because students’ views on ownership of information, particularly digital information accessed online, arefundamentally different than the views of faculty. Students, due to their more open-source orientation to digital
information, are assumed to have a far less restrictive notion of the possibilities for legitimately accessing andsharing information online. Moreover, not only is their view less restrictive where compared to faculty views, it isalso less restrictive than their own views of non-online information. In much the same way students tend to makemore of an ethical distinction than faculty between downloading a pirated cd than shoplifting the same cd,
students from this point of view see information mediated through the internet as significantly more open tocommon use than information obtained in other manners. Such a student open source perspective on digital
information translates in online courses as a far less restrictive notion of academic honesty than faculty typically
have. Thus, in this third scenario, the discrepancies between faculty and student perceptions are explained by thefact that faculty and students approach open source resources in online courses with significantly different
definitions of cheating.
The three scenarios presented range from a completely shared definition of what is and what is not cheating (lackof supervision) in the first scenario to a conceptually shared but, somewhat operationally, fuzzy definition (unclear
boundaries) in the second scenario to a final scenario in which faculty and students operate under different
conceptions of academic honesty with respect to open source information (open source). Because of the variationin alignment between student and faculty conceptions of cheating the three scenarios represent, each scenario calls
for fundamentally different actions for successful amelioration. The first scenario, for instance, would simply callfor a higher level of monitoring students, while the second and third scenarios would require clarification andnegotiation of a shared definition of academic honesty, respectively. Successfully coping with cheating in online
courses is dependent on which of the possible scenarios suggested by the study’s quantitative data is most likely.
In order to establish the relative likelihood of each of the possible scenarios arising out of the study’s quantitative
data, an element of the study’s qualitative data was examined. This element focused on responses given to the
open-ended student question:[Is it] easier to cheat in a distance learning course?
Of the 644 student responses to this question, 84 percent (541 categorized responses) were able to be coded into
one of the three categories: Lack of Supervision, Unclear Boundaries and Open Source. Each of the three
categories corresponded to one of the scenarios between faculty and student definitions of cheating previously
explained. Of the 541 categorized responses 273, or 51 per cent, were identified as belonging to Scenario 1 Lackof Supervision - the category corresponding to a shared, common definition of cheating between students andfaculty (see Figure 1) which included directly quoted responses such as:•   No one is watching.
•   No one is there to prevent you from taking a test collaboratively.

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•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  
•  

There is no direct face-to-face interaction with instructor to develop rapport and respect.
No one is there to prevent you from using books, notes, and the internet.
I have a relative whose wife took all his tests for him.
There is no one to hold you accountable, and it is very difficult for professors to catch cheaters and evenharder for them to prove academic dishonesty if they suspect it.
There is no way to monitor it and there are more opportunities for cheating to occur.
If no one is watching you take the exam, there is little chance you will get caught looking up the answers.
There is less oversight in distance learning courses.
Testing is often not proctored or monitored. Some students may use resources that are supposed to beforbidden.

Such responses agreed with the near universal faculty view, evidenced by the study’s quantitative data, thatcheating, or at the least the opportunity for cheating, was more prevalent in online courses due to the inherent
difficulties of monitoring student behavior in such courses.
Responses coded into the Scenario 2 Unclear Boundaries totaled 169, or 31 percent of the total responses coded,
assumed a shared general concept of cheating, but also indicated some confusion as to the application of the shareddefinition in certain specific instances. Sample of directly quoted comments include:•   Most of the time professors don’t define cheating.
•   The boundaries of what is and what is not cheating become blurred.
•   Students are encouraged to seek input from others.
•   Cheating in distance learning classes is no different than if we were given the same ‘take home’assignment in a traditional classroom setting.
•   Groups can collaborate.
•   Depends upon the rules, guidelines and preventative measures put in place.
•   If it is an online course and you are doing it on your own time, then anything is fair game.
•   It can hardly be called cheating when it’s distance learning – if the time and resources are available, they’ll
be utilized.
•   Not sure what you could define as cheating in an online class.
•   I have never been monitored during distance learning courses so I am allowed any sources I choose.
•   There is not a barrier to prevent students from doing assignments/tests together.
•   Just because teachers don't specifically say, "Don't use the internet to help. Don't call other people."
Without those restrictions, people think it is okay.
•   Humans need and use references every day so it's not a big deal as long as the comprehension is there.
Responses in this category suggested that students share a similar definition of academic honesty with faculty, but
are often uncertain in online classes if certain specific behaviors are ultimately considered fair or foul in regard to
the shared definition of academic honesty.
Scenario 3 Open Source accounted for 18 per cent (99 out of 541 responses) of the student responses and suggested
students and faculty operate from significantly different definitions of academic honesty as it relates to online
courses. This category of responses relates to the third scenario for explaining discrepancies in using open source
resources between faculty and student perceptions of cheating in online courses. Directly quoted responses in thiscategory include:•   Most of the work is done and submitted online and a student can give anyone their sign-in information,
look-up answers on the internet, or have help from an additional person.
•   Data can be looked up in real-time and applied immediately without knowledge from a professor.
•   I know of some people who will have a second window up on their computer to search for answers while
taking an online test.
•   Able to use a book, family member, friend, or the internet on exams, papers, and projects.
•   Because if it's taken on the internet there's no stopping anyone to look on google for the answer or to ask
someone sitting next to them the answer to a question.
•   You can look up material on the internet that you would not originally know during a test.
•   Because you have the book right in front of you and can look at class notes.
•   You have more resources around you that tempt students more than a traditional structured class room
would be in a traditional course.

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Volume 2 Issue 2•  Because you can look up everything online. Even with things like Respondus Lockdown, it is simple tobypass or use another computer.

Responses in this category implied that students, due to generational differences toward the open sourcing of
information made possible by digitalization, operate in online courses with a fundamentally different view ofintellectual property and, by extension, a fundamentally different set of assumptions about academic honesty inonline courses than faculty.
Responses coded into the Other category totaled 103, or 16 per cent of the total responses, dwelled on a myriad
set of responses having to do with ethical beliefs about cheating, instructor techniques used to prevent cheating,and students’ perceptions of their instructor’s ability to design and administer distance learning assignments andtests. Samples of quoted comments from this category include:•   If someone has integrity issues and is going to cheat, it doesn’t matter if it’s in a classroom or not.
•   There are time limits set on tests to make looking up information a little more difficult.
•   Teachers don’t know how to use their own computers and make it easy to cheat. For example, Art History– place pictures on test to identify, but pictures are file named with what they are so it’s easy to get points
on test.
•   Most of my teachers allow open book and make the questions more difficult.
•   The instructor cannot control whether or not you use outside resources.
•   If there is not a camera on the person taking an online test, someone else could complete the test.
•   Somebody else has already taken it usually, & can tell other people what's on it. I knew one time thatsomeone even put a digital recorder in their shirt, went into a testing center and quietly read every
question to himself & then gave the recording of the final exam to their friend.
•   A few years ago, yes, it would have been extremely easy. Now, it would be slightly less so, due to theadvent of things like Turnitin, though I question their effectiveness, because effectiveness of a program
like that is based on volume of samples available, and I seriously doubt that the volume is sufficient totruly do what they claim to do.

Figure 1: Why Students Cheat in Online Courses

Conclusions
Public institutions are being pressured to complete with for profit virtual campuses by offering more online courses
and degrees. There are critical challenges and barriers to any online course or program (Tanner, 2007 and Yang
& Cornelious, 2005). The challenge of upholding high academic standards, specifically academic honesty,
becomes arduous. Faculty and students know and admit that cheating is occurring in online courses (Tanner &Piper, 2010, Piper & Tanner, 2011 and Tanner, Hartsell, & Piper, 2012). However, faculty are at a distinct
disadvantage as there is still a “generational digital literacy divide” (Tanner, 2007, p. 126).
Based on analysis of student answers in the qualitative part of the study, it would appear that a primary question
raised by the findings of the study’s quantitative data “Does dishonesty exist in online courses?” is definitively answered

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in the positive. The fact that responses coded into Scenario 1 Lack of Supervision, the category most suggestive ofa common definition of cheating among students and faculty, were almost the same in percentage as the responses
coded into Scenario 2 Unclear Boundaries and Scenario 3 Open Source combined, assumes that online courses are
exposing a digital divide between faculty and students over the parameters of academic honesty. Moreover, thefact that both Scenario 1 Lack of Supervision and Scenario 2 Unclear Boundaries presuppose a common definitionof academic honesty only serves to further advance the assumption of a shared definition. Because the distinction
between Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 rests on how a shared definition of academic honesty is operationally appliedin different circumstances, not on different concepts of academic honesty, it would require that responses coded
into Scenario 3 be greater than responses coded into Scenarios 1 and 2 combined before it could be stated that amajority of responses indicated students and faculty operate from different notions of what constitutes cheating
in online courses. Thus, at least based on the study’s student responses, if digitalization and the open-access to
information it provides is indeed forcing, as Pfannenstiel suggested (2010), a generational redefinition of theconcept of individual versus community ownership of intellectual property, such a redefinition has yet to create afundamental divide between faculty and student definitions of academic honesty.

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References
Barrett, R., & Cox, A.L. (2005). At least they’re learning something: The hazy line between collaboration andcollusion. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 30 (2), 107-122.
Bedford, W., Gregg, J., & Clinton, S. (2009). Implementing technology to prevent online cheating: A case study
at a small southern regional university. Journal of Online Learning and Teaching 5(2), 230-238.
Bowers, W. J. (1964). Student dishonesty and its control in college. New York: Bureau of Applied Social Research,
Columbia University.
Brock, P. A. (2008). Lead us into temptation: The big business of cyber-cheating. The Journal of Social Work Values
and Ethics, 5(1), 1-2.
Diekhoff, G., LaBeff, E. Clark, R., Williams, L., Francis, B., & Haines V. (1996). College cheating: Ten years
later. Research in Higher Education, 37(4), 487-502.
Evans, J. (2009). High-tech cheating? Students have a different perspective. eSchool News, 12 (8), 20-21.
Grijalva, T. C., Nowell, C., & Kerkvliet, J. (2006). Academic honesty and online courses. College Student Journal,
40, 180-185.
Hinman, L. M. (2002). Academic integrity and the world wide web. Computers and Society 31(1), 33.
Jakes, D. (2009). Cheater or collaborator? Technology and Learning, 29 (12), 50.
Jordan, A. (2001). College student cheating: The role of motivation, perceived norms, attitudes, and knowledgeof institutional policy. Ethics and Behavior, 11(3), 233-247.
Kennedy, K., Nowak, S., Raghuraman, R., Thomas, J., & Davis, S., (2000). Academic dishonesty and distancelearning: Student and faculty views. College Student Journal, 34 (2), 309-314.
King, C. G., Guyette, R. W., & Piotrowski, C. (2009). Online exams and cheating: An empirical analysis ofbusiness students’ views. The Journal of Educators Online 6(1), 1-11.
Kitahara, R. T. & Westfall, F. (2007) Promoting academic integrity in online distance learning courses. Journalof Online Learning and Teaching, 3(3), 265-276.
Lanier, M. (2006). Academic integrity and distance learning. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 17 (2), 244261.
McCabe, D. L., Klebe Trevino, L., & Butterfield, K. (1999). Cheating in academic institutions: A decade ofresearch. Ethics and Behavior, 11(3), 219-232.
McCabe, D. L. (2002). Cheating: Why students do it and how we can help them stop. American Educator, Winter,
38-43.
Pfannenstiel, A.N. (2010). Digital literacies and academic integrity. International Journal for Educational Integrity,
6 (2), 41-49.
Piper, C. & Tanner, L. (2011). Just a click or phone call away: Faculty & student perceptions about completing
online coursework independently In Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government,
Healthcare, and Higher Education 2011 (pp. 1457-1466). Chesapeake, VA: AACE
Rogers, C. F. (2006). Faculty perceptions about e-cheating during online testing. The Journal of Computing Sciencesin Colleges, 22(2), 206-212.
Rowe, N. C. (2004). Cheating in online student assessment: Beyond plagiarism. Online Journal of Distance
Learning Administration, 7(2).

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Saunders, G., Wenzel, L., & Stivason, C. (2008). Internet courses; Who is doing the work? Journal of College
teaching and Learning, 5 (6), 25-35.
Scanlon, E., & Issroff, K. (2005). Activity theory and higher education: Evaluating learning technologies. Journalof Computer Assisted Learning, 21(6), 430-439.
Stuber-McEwen, D. Wiseley, P. & Hoggatt, S. (2009). Point, click, and cheat: Frequency and type of academic
dishonesty in the virtual classroom. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 12(3), 1-10
Tanner, L. K. (2007). Critical challenges and barriers to online learning: Nontraditional adult students in a
nontraditional teacher licensing program. Saarbrucken, Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Muller.
Tanner, L. K. , Hartsell, R., & Piper, C. (2012). Collaboration or collusion: Perceptions of Academic Honestyin Online courses. In Proceedings of the 4th Paris International Conference on Education, Economy & Society Paris
France.
Tanner, L. & Piper, C. (2010). Succumbing to temptation--To cheat or not to cheat? Faculty and student
perceptions of academic integrity in distance education courses. In Proceedings of World Conference on E-Learningin Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2010 (pp. 1457-1466). Chesapeake, VA: AACE
Trenholm, S. (2006). A review of cheating in fully asynchronous online courses: A math or fact-based course
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Turner, C. (2005). A new honesty for a new game: Distinguishing cheating from learning in a web-based testing
environment. Journal of Political Science Education, 1, 163-174.
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Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 8 (1).
Yang, Y. & Cornelious, L. F. (2005). Preparing instructors for quality online instruction. Online Journal of Distance
Learning Administration, 8(1) http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring81/yang81.htm
Contact email: cpiper@clemson.edu
Image: Anita Canita/Flickr Creative Commons

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Critical Thinking as a Tool for the Development of Interdisciplinarity in
University Education

By Maria Bednarikova, Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava, Slovakia
Abstract
In this essay the relationship between critical thinking and interdisciplinarity is examined. Critical thinking is
explained as a multilayer phenomenon that should be examined systematically on interdisciplinary platform. The
basic issues linked to an interdisciplinary research of critical thinking are: relations between critical thinking andlanguage, logical and cognitive operations in the process of critical analysis, methods of critical thinking and theiranchoring in the methodology of science, the process of critical thinking in relation to personal dispositions andattitudes, possibilities of development and evaluation of critical thinking within educational and learning
processes.
An interdisciplinary approach is a synthesis of two or more disciplines that result in establishment of a newscientific discourse, while the knowledge that results from it has an integrative character. Basic goal ofinterdisciplinary research lies in the deeper level of analysis, creation of a new explanatory frame (researchparadigm) and identification of new operative causes. These enable us to offer unified explanation of seemingly
heterogeneous phenomena. Meaning and importance of the interdisciplinarity is illustrated through the example
of formation and development of cognitive sciences.
Fundament of the education at the level of higher schools or universities should not lie only in the transfer offactual information, but also in intentional and purposeful development of cognitive abilities of students. The
ability of critical thinking is one of the interdisciplinary skills. Education in the area of critical thinking is
associated with the interdisciplinary approach. Therefore, critical thinking and interdisciplinary approach arecontingent on and stimulate each other.
Keywords: critical thinking, interdisciplinarity, research, cognitive science, education

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Introduction
The ability to think critically is indicated as a key competence of the 21st century by many authors (compare
Halpern, 2003, Huitt, 1995, Thomas & Smoot, 1994, Bowell & Kemp, 2002 and others). Also development in
the area of interdisciplinarity can be considered as an important principle participating in massive advancementof science and technology at the beginning of this century. Both of these phenomena are mutually pertinent andcontingent on each other. It is the role of university (general or all-embracing) education to reflect systematicallyboth the improvement in critical thinking as well as development of interdisciplinary relations in the frame ofscientific-technological study and research. In this contribution we deal with:
1.   Defining and clarifying the terms critical thinking and interdisciplinarity
2.   Enlightening the mutually conditional relation between critical thinking and interdisciplinarity,
particularly:
2.1   interdisciplinary research in the frame of critical thinking
2.2   critical thinking in the area of interdisciplinary research
3.   Introducing the critical thinking as a tool for development of interdisciplinarity in the frame of higher
education
Relationship between Critical Thinking and Interdisciplinarity
The term critical thinking can be described as a set of formal operations that influence the processing of
information and reaching the planned goals and desired outcomes. Critical thinking is a suitable tool for workwith a set of factual information (in a similar way as Aristotle´s work on logic was called the “pipe organ” ofthinking). Critical thinking can be determined either from the epistemological point of view as a logically correct
way of thinking (that enables us to distinguish between logically correct and incorrect arguments) or from thepractical point of view as a condition for efficient and purposeful action (that is not determined by extreme
manipulative tactics). Many definitions of critical thinking are based on this dual understanding of its meaning:
1.   Critical thinking as a tool for correct cogitation:
-  
-  
-  
-  

„... active, systematic process of understanding and evaluation of arguments“ (Mayer & Goodchild, 1990,
p. 4);„... ability to analyze facts, generate and organize ides, defend opinions, make comparisons, makeinferences, evaluate arguments and solve problems.“ (Chance, 1986, p. 6);„... involving analytical thinking for the purpose of evaluating what is read“ (Hickey, 1990, p. 175);„... the cognitive competences most relevant to critical thinking are metacognitive rather than cognitivecompetencies. In contrast to first-order cognitive skills that enable one to know about the world,
metacognitive skills are second-order meta-knowing skills that entail knowing about one's own (and others')
knowing.“ (Kuhn, 1999, p. 17);2.   critical thinking as a tool for making good decisions:
-  
-  
-  
-  

„... the ability to analyze people’s attempts to persuade ... and evaluate whether or not they are giving a goodargument.“ (Bowell & Kemp, 2002, pp. 2-3);„Critical thinking is the use of those cognitive skills or strategies that increase the probability of a desirable
outcome.”(Halpern, 2003, p. 6);„Critical thinking is reasonable and reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do.”(Norris & Ennis, 1989, p. 1)„... challenging a claim or an opinion (either one`s own or another person`s) with the purpose of finding out
what to believe or to do. “ (O’Hare & McGuinness, 2009, p. 123).

Critical thinking as a tool for processing information can be characterized by its “keystones” - the thought
operations. There are some calculations and classifications of these fundamental thought operations in practice;for example, interpretation, analysis, evaluation, inference, explanation, self-regulation (Facione, 1990, p. 6); purposes,
question at issue, interpretation and inference, concepts, assumptions, implications and consequences, point of view (Pauland Elder, 2008); metacognitive monitoring, verbal intelligence, analysis of arguments, testing of hypotheses,
estimation of probability and making decisions (Halpern, 2003, p. 20). We propose following way of classificationof fundamental thought operations that create and support the ability of critical thinking:The IAFOR Academic Review

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-  
-  
-  

Cognitive operations (CO): analysis, synthesis, comparison, abstraction, idealization, generalization,
concretization, analogy, classification, modelling and others,
Formal-logical operations (FLO): implication, equivalency, conjunction, disjunction, negation andothers,Complex operations of critical thinking (COCT): argumentation, evaluation, interpretation, inference(in broader sense), deduction (in broader sense), induction and others.

This system of classification is organized in hierarchical order (from basic cognitive operations up to complex
operations of critical thinking). The next two categories are contingent by the first one: so that we are able tounderstand the FLO and COCT we must be able to master the CO. Difference between CO and FLO lies in
the possibility of their formal script. Whilst the formal-logical operations use exact conditions for setting the verity(validity), in case of cognitive operations there is no exact formal algorithm which can serve as a criterion for theverity or validity. COCT deal with the vast informational units what makes them difficult to be identified bothfrom the point of view of their formal algorithm and conditions of their validity.
Critical thinking as a tool for creation of reasoned decisions supports the following abilities: be open to criticism
and argumentation, look for alternatives, take into account the total situation, be well informed (Ennis, 1985, pp. 46–47); truth–seeking, open-mindedness, analyticity, systematicity, critical thinking self – confidence, inquisitiveness andmaturity of judgment (Facione et al., 1995, p.6); intellectual humility, autonomy, empathy, integrity, perseverance, fairmindedness, intellectual courage, confidence in reason (Paul & Elder, 2008, p.15).
The abovementioned abilities and attributes help to transfer critical thinking from the epistemological level into
pragmatic one and thanks to this transfer we can apply the outcomes of critical analysis to reach the desirable aim.
Thought operations and personal dispositions are mutually conditioned and create the ability to process
information and to reach specified goals. Character and degree of this mutual influence has not been definedexactly so far. Thought operations hand in hand with personal dispositions are developing in the frame of
ontogenesis of an individual human being more or less in exactly demarcated phases. Kuhn (1999) defines threeforms of so called metacognition (second stage cognition) which condition the human ability to think critically:
metacognition (getting to know the process of cognition), metastrategy (development of criteria that are used tojudge the validity of cognition) and the form of epistemological attitude of an identifying subject (there are four
categories of human attitude towards reality – realist, absolutist, versatile person and evaluating person).
Metacognitive strategies are systematically orientated on the cognitive process, on its subject and object, criteriaof correctness, error correction and evaluation of cognition of other people. Metacognition conditions the origin
and existence of a consistent file of evaluating criteria that are applied systematically, notwithstanding particular
object, subject or situation. The possible improvement and implementation of the principles of critical thinking
is conditioned by the development of the second degree cognition and the existence of evaluating criteria (p. 23).
According to Piaget and Inhelderová (2010, p. 45-68), any development of cognitive abilities is conditioned by
the existence of so called symbolic function which emerges thanks to the developed motor-sensory intelligence at
the age of approximately two years. It is based on the ability to present or imagine something, or to create
conceptual schemes. Basic principle of the symbolic function is defined by the existing difference between
identified and identifying. Complex representative (semiotic or symbolic function) is a crucial condition for the
possibility of creation of a symbolic gesture, figurative image and speech. Children usually do not use figurative
images in their motor-sensory period. Progressive commencement of new cognitive functions at the beginning of
the second year of human life should go along with the child´s capability to imagine the object and consequent
ability to create the image of such object when that is not present anymore. Symbolic function goes across phasesof so called distant imitation (for example imitative gestures), symbolic or fictional play (pretended sleep) anddrawing or graphic visualization (which presents the crossover from play to figurative imagination). This isfollowed by the visual image (in sense of the interiorized imitation) and the whole process is finally topped by thecreation of a language sign. Step by step the imitating act is setting apart from the current context and is becoming
a generalized marking symbol – an image in human mind. Mental image is separated from the outer acts and by
its generalized and formal nature it becomes the base for further development of higher cognitive functions.
Nowadays, interdisciplinarity is being more and more put into effect in contemporary research practice. It is
important to define it in relation to multidisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. The term multidisciplinarity refers
to systematic accumulation of knowledge from various scientific disciplines, while the subjects of their research
do not overlap and the final outcome of their connection has the additive character and not the integrative one.

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In case of multidisciplinary research there are some scientific disciplines participating in examination of thecommon research subject. Accumulation of knowledge is peculiar to this type of approach, borders between
particular scientific disciplines, as well as their terminological vocabularies and methodological apparatuses remain
mutually exclusive. According to Frodeman (2010, p. 234-245) knowledge obtained through the multidisciplinary
approach is juxtapositional, sequential and coordinated. Cognitive processes in living organisms had been thesubject matter for variety of scientific disciplines (philosophy, psychology, linguistics or neuroscience) even before
genesis of cognitive sciences, but this type of research was only of multidisciplinary character. There was not any
unifying, conceptual or methodological frame (common paradigm) for creation of theories about cognition.
On the other hand, interdisciplinary approach leads to the implementation of a new scientific paradigm which
integrates methodological apparatus and terminological vocabulary of different scientific disciplines. Deploymentof various mathematical models in the process of explanation the principles of how social or economic sciences
work, can serve as a good example (game theory, chaos theory and the like). And what about the implementationof knowledge from the area of nuclear physics in medical diagnoses. Interdisciplinary approach frequently leads
to the creation of a new scientific discipline (as it is in case of cognitive sciences, biochemistry, biotechnologies,
eco-philosophy and so on).
The aim of interdisciplinary approach is to explore the limits of explanatory frames of different scientificdisciplines towards their consecutive approximation. Multidisciplinarity is characteristic by its outer coherence(common research subject), whereby the final goal is to reach as high level of complexity of knowledge as possible.
Interdisciplinarity leads us towards deepening of internal coherence (beside common research subject there is an
obvious unification of methodology and terminology). Basic goal of interdisciplinary research lies in the deeper
level of analysis, creation of a new explanatory frame (research paradigm) and identification of new operativecauses. These enable us to offer unified explanation of seemingly heterogeneous phenomena.
In case of interdisciplinary researches, one of the key methodological approaches is so called reductive method.
Reductive explanation is about glossing either events, phenomena, attributes and subjects (ontological reduction),or theories, terms, models and schemes (epistemological reduction). Beside this division we can also distinguishbetween different degrees of scientific reduction: (1) reductions in the frame of the only level (mathematicalderivations including approximations), (2) abstract multilevel (inter-theoretical) reductions (explanation of thehigher level attribute through the attribute of lower level), (3) spatial multilevel or strong reductions (scientificexplanation concentrates on the description of behaviour of elementary particles) (Sarkar 1998, pp. 424 - 434).
Inter-theoretical reductions are characteristic feature of interdisciplinary explanation.
“Inter-theoretical reduction is the relation between two different conceptual frames describing the phenomenon
itself; nonetheless, sometimes it is confusingly described as a relation between two different attributes of thephenomenon. The very sense of reduction is to show that what we considered to be consisting of two spheres isin fact only one sphere described by two or more different vocabularies.” (Churchland, Churchland 1998, p. 69).
A good example of inter-theoretical reduction is the heat theory as an average molecular energy or identificationof sound with pressure waves spreading across the atmosphere. The most well-known reduction of modern scienceis the reduction of Newton´s Laws of Motion into the Einstein´s Special Theory of Relativity.
Critical thinking is extremely complex and multilayer phenomenon and that is why we have to examine andexplain its principles through the interdisciplinary paradigm. We propose following scheme for the interdisciplinary research of critical thinking:1.   Critical thinking in relation to language (area of cognitive linguistics)
2.   Critical thinking in relation to cognitive and logic (both formal and informal) operations (area of logic,
cognitive psychology and information science)
3.   Critical thinking in relation to methodology of science (area of the philosophy of science)
4.   Critical thinking in relation to personal dispositions and social attitudes (area of the personality
psychology, cognitive anthropology, ethics and others)
5.   Critical thinking in relation to pedagogy and other educational sciences (area of pedagogy andpedagogical sciences)
In the frame of the first three research areas, the critical thinking is examined from the point of view of its
epistemological nature. The key factor here is its cognitive function. That what plays the crucial role in this process
are the questions regarding relation between thinking and language, regarding validity criteria for logical-formal

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thought operations and possibilities for their deployment in the frame of complex (non-formal) operations ofcritical thinking. Cognitive linguistics is searching for the connection between the structure of language
representations, their processing and their neuronal base. One of the up-to-date and quite interesting topics is theissue of the existence of algorithm for cognitive operations (analysis, abstraction, idealization, modelling and thelike) which consequently can be simulated by artificial intelligences or by self-learning systems.
The process of critical thinking as an exactly defined way of processing information is based on the methodologicalprogress of science. Scientific method which is the subject matter for the examination in the area of philosophyof science can be generally described in three basic steps: 1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or agroup of phenomena; 2. Formulation of a hypothesis that should explain the observed phenomenon through theprinciple of causality; 3. Based on the predictions in hypothesis, the tests are being created which can either
confirm or deny the hypothesis; 4. In the last step, repeatedly confirmed hypothesis is integrated into the systemof other confirmed assumptions and laws of scientific theories (Bednáriková, 2013, pp.14-15). Also in case ofcritical analysis we advance from defining the problem, through collecting the information, inductive or deductive
pondering, identifying hidden logical errors or contradictions, up to the eduction of one´s own conclusions.
Scientific explanation has a character of deductive or inductive derivation from two premises: general affirmation(natural law, statistical findings) and description of particular occurrence (initial conditions). By subsuming of
concretely described occurrence under the general law we are capable of explaining such occurrence and we candefine its cause (why the things happen in the way they do, and not in any different way). Critical thinking
advances analogically towards the scientific cognition and explanation. Some conclusions can be deduced frompremises (assumptions) based on the logical inference rules, others can be obtained by means of generalization(induction) with certain probability measure.
In the frame of last research field we propose to examine possibilities of systematic development of critical thinking
hand in hand with its objective assessment. The issues regarding development of cognitive operations and logicalthought procedures of students on one side and also the problems regarding the way of upbringing towards desired
personal attitudes and social-culture strategies on the other side play the important role in this process that isclosely connected to the sphere of critical thinking (see above). More than any other feature, it is just the pragmatic
aspect of critical thinking as a tool for correct (reasoned) process of making decisions and actions that is beingemphasised at this place.
Relationship between the critical thinking and the interdisciplinarity can be explained in a following way: criticalthinking is a primary interdisciplinary phenomenon that cannot be explained at sufficient level in the frame of
explanatory framework of a single scientific discipline. On the other hand, the interdisciplinary research that is
rapidly moving ahead in many fields of human cognition nowadays, is strictly conditioned by the abilities of criticalanalysis, assessment of relevance, terminological clarification, identification of connections and analogies,
conception of theoretical models and many others, in other words, it is conditioned by the complex operations ofcritical thinking. A good example of such mutually conditioned relation between critical thinking andinterdisciplinary research can be the origin of cognitive-scientific paradigm in the middle of the 20th century. Fromthe very beginning of philosophical analyses it was the phenomenon of thinking or cognition that was one of themost frequently explained as well as one of the least clarified phenomena. Its multilayer character had been besidethe possibility of its adequate understanding in the frame of one terminological and methodological explanatory
framework. In the moment of establishment of the cognitive science, scientific discourses from the fields oftheoretical linguistics (analyzing possibilities for language modelling based on its syntactic rules), artificial
intelligence (explaining the thinking as a calculating process – algorithm for dealing with symbols), andexperimental psychology (searching for the possibilities of connection of mental operations with mechanicalprocedures) created a brand new scientific union (compare Wilson, Keil, 1999, pp.15-36). In the 1970s a groupof other disciplines subjoined the abovementioned fields which were philosophy, anthropology and evolutionary
biology. Also cognitive neuroscience played an important role in the whole procedure. Is was moving ahead withgiant leaps especially thanks to the invention of displaying methods in the process of brain examination (PET,MRI and fMRI). Nowadays, cognitive science from the point of view of the interdisciplinarity is being
systematically unified based on some fundamental axioms. The main goal of cognitive-scientific research is tocreate empirically testable hypotheses that explain structural and procedural aspects of human cognition. In thiscontext cognition can be understood as a complex of all mental structures and processes of human knowledge andcognition (from sensory perception and behaviour up to the human speech and thinking) and this is what we callthe mental knowledge structure. Thinking is in the frame of this paradigm explained simply, but really efficiently:
as the ability to process information. Cognitive operations can be understood as the calculations directed by exact

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algorithms (by sets of rules for procedures of information processing). The outcome is the transformation fromone state of cognitive system into another one. Hypotheses in cognitive research must be eventually empiricallyfalsifiable by the observable psychological and neurophysiological facts. This way of explanation of cognitive
operations brought an extensive explanatory power to the new theories and the justness of cognitive-scientificparadigm can be seen also in rapid advance of systems of artificial intelligence and robotics (see e.g. Návrat, 2007).
Conclusion
Fundament of the education at the level of higher schools or universities should not lie only in the transfer offactual information, but also in intentional and purposeful development of cognitive abilities of students. So called
metacognitive processes play a crucial role in this procedure. In its frame there are analyses and assessment s of all
cognitive processes running. Students must be able not only to memorize new knowledge and information, butalso to deal with them in the context and evolve them step by step. They also should systematically and criticallymonitor and verify their thought operations. Only thanks to the education that repeatedly instigates the abilityof critical analysis, evaluation, verification, creation of one´s own information databases, argumentation or
prognosis of future impacts, it will always be possible to apply the principles of permanently sustainable
development.
One of the most important attributes of a thinking human being is the effort to think in a broad context of
occurrences and facts. This so called systematic approach means preferring the holistic perspective and circularcausality to the linear one. An example of this type of causality is the feedback loop that can be illustrated throughthe relation between a predator and its prey. An over reproduction of predators causes less and less amount of prey
per one predator and this consequently leads to decrease in the number of predators. This again causes the effectof an over reproduction of the hunted animals what leads to the increment in the number of predators. (Leonard,
Beer, 2003). Application of the systematic approach enables identification of new relationships, connections andcausalities and it presents the fundament for the implementation of interdisciplinary approach.
In this contribution we have tried to clarify the interdisciplinary character of critical thinking. Research in the areaof critical thinking includes the scientific fields of cognitive linguistics, logic, cognitive psychology, information
science, philosophy of science, personality psychology, ethics and educational sciences. So, if we want to improve
the ability of critical thinking in the frame of the university education, we inevitably must “work” on more scientificfields at once. On the other hand, if the subject matter of the education is targeting at the cognitive andmetacognitive operations, their further development is possible in any particular area of education since it deals
with the improvement of formal processes and not with the factual knowledge.
Critical thinking, its improvement and the process of upbringing in the frame of university education goes handin hand with the development of interdisciplinarity. It leads students towards more efficient division andclassification of obtained information in sense of systematization of knowledge from different academic subjects
or disciplines. This way of thinking presents a fundamental condition for implementation of interdisciplinary
approach which nowadays seems to be most fruitful and very inventive.

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References
Bowell, T. & Kemp, G. (2002). Critical Thinking. A Concise Guide. London: Routledge.
Chance, P. (1986). Thinking in the classroom: A survey of programs. New York: Teachers College, Columbia
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Ennis, R., H. (October 1985). A Logical Basis for Measuring Critical Thinking Skills. Educational Leadership, 40(10), 44-48.
Facione, P., A. (1990). Critical Thinking: A Statement of Expert Consensus for Purposes of Educational Assessment andInstruction. “The Delphi Report“. Millbrae: California Academic Press.
Facione P.A, Giancarlo C.A, Facione N.C, Gainen J. (1995). The disposition toward critical thinking. Journal of
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Halpern, F., D. (2003). Thought and Knowledge: An Introduction to Critical Thinking (4th ed.). Mahwah, NJ:
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Huitt, W. (1995). Success in the information age: A paradigm shift. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University.
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Kuhn, D. (March, 1999). A Developmental Model of Critical Thinking. Educational Researcher, 28(2), 16-25.
Mayer, R. & Goodchild, F. (1990). The critical thinker. New York: Wm. C. Brown.
Norris, S.,P. & Ennis, R. (1989). Evaluating Critical Thinking. Pacific Grove, CA: Midwest Publications.
O’Hare, L. & McGuinness, C. (2009). Measuring critical thinking, intelligence, and academic performance in
psychology undergraduates. The Irish Journal of Psychology , 30 (3-4), 123-131.
Paul, R., Elder, L. (2008). The Miniature Guide to Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools. Retrieved fromhttp://www.jarwancenter.com/download/english_books/english_booksandreferences/The%20Miniature%20Gui
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Thomas, G., & Smoot, G. (1994, February/March). Critical thinking: A vital work skill. Trust for Educational
Leadership, 23, 34-38.
Email: maria.bednarikova@stuba.sk
Image: Shutterstock

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The IAFOR
Academic Review
Volume 2 | Issue 2

Collected Essays on
Higher Education

Published by The International Academic Forum(IAFOR), Japan
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ISSN: 2188-9570
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