From metrics to meaning in research evaluation

Defining, encouraging, and evaluating "expanded scholarship" as productivity in academic institutions

"Expanded scholarship" includes produced items whose contributions are related to or inspired by broad scholarly knowledge and research, including expressing and problem-solving research questions. Expanded scholarship expresses ideas beyond current hegemonies of form and substance within a discipline and the academy. It is essential to discuss how these products are reported, evaluated, and valued within institutional frameworks. Expansion of conceptualizations of "what counts" requires a multilevel critical examination of traditional understandings of productivity and engagement with intersectional approaches to valuation. Evaluation and review processes currently entrenched within institutional structures and norms differentially impact indigenous peoples, women, gender diverse and LGBTQ people, and people of color. This article offers the authors' perspective to encourage transformational change at the individual, unit, and institutional levels, and provides an opportunity to discuss and enact a more systemic intersectional approach to faculty evaluations and holistic conceptualizations of research and scholarship. We conclude with suggested discussion prompts leading to an action plan for institutions to recognize and reward the value of expanded scholarship. Keywords: evaluations, productivity, promotion, tenure, Review, creativity

Beyond Teaching and Research: Measuring the Societal Impact of Universities

Higher education institutions face growing pressure to demonstrate and quantify societal contributions beyond research and teaching; this study addresses measurement challenges for third-mission activity by developing both a conceptual typology and a practical assessment framework. We developed a four-dimension typology—research-based impact, teaching-based impact, campus-management-anchored impact, and administrative infrastructure—that synthesizes the existing literature while drawing attention to under-examined areas such as campus operations and institutional support. Methodologically, we synthesize the literature, analyze national and international best practices, and design an assessment approach that combines individual case studies and evidence-based questionnaires with automated metrics applied in multi-year cycles. We demonstrate that the typology reflects a broad range of impact pathways and argue that the proposed framework balances rigor and feasibility while surfacing key measurement tensions—breadth versus depth; general-purpose versus domain-specific metrics; input versus output indicators; levels of analysis; and assessment burden versus outcome quality. We conclude with actionable recommendations for academic staff, institutional leaders, and national agencies to integrate third-mission activities into evaluation and funding systems, offering a methodological toolkit that may support impact assessment into HEI evaluation without overstating conclusions.

Beyond the numbers: Scientific evaluation, bibliometric metrics, and institutional responsibility in Latin America

Discourses and alternatives of quality culture in higher education

This paper examines how quality culture has been discursively constructed in higher education scholarship and policy, and develops an alternative conceptualization grounded in academic values rather than governance imperatives. Quality culture has become a central reference point in higher education, frequently positioned as a bridge between compliance-oriented quality assurance and enhancement-focused approaches. Despite its collegial rhetoric, the concept is embedded in wider socio-political rationalities that shape how institutions understand and enact quality. Drawing on Torraco's (2005) integrative review Grant and Booth's (2009) typology, the paper conducts a critical review of foundational, empirical, and policy-oriented scholarship on quality culture. It identifies three dominant framings of neoliberalism: quality culture, situated in accountability and efficiency; managerialism, which appropriates collegial language to advance organizational control; and global competition, which positions it as a mechanism for rankings and reputation. The analysis shows that these framings are not separate problems but expressions of a single functionalist commitment: culture treated as a property of the institution that can be managed. The same conception reabsorbs ostensibly alternative frameworks, which keep culture as a variable to be specified and measured. The division that matters, then, is not between dominant and alternative discourses but between treating culture as something the institution has and something it is. Quality culture must be re-anchored in trust, collegiality, student partnership, and public purpose, treated as emergent conditions rather than managed outcomes, if it is to be distinguished from institutional compliance.

Affirmative Action in Education: A Systematic and Comparative Review of Policy, Equity and Outcomes

This study synthesizes scholarship on affirmative action in education from 2015 to 2025, drawing on 49 sources across the social sciences and allied fields. Using a PRISMA-guided systematic review of the literature, the article explores the conceptual framings that distinguish equality from equity; undertakes a comparative analysis of policy instruments across the United States, Brazil, South Africa and India; and surveys methodological trends spanning quasi-experimental, qualitative and mixed-methods designs. Three visual diagnostics—a themes-by-country heatmap, a theme source quadrant map and a keyword co-occurrence heatmap—identify jurisprudential, remedial/social justice and gender/intersectional clusters that structure the global discourse. The evidence indicates that well-designed affirmative action, when paired with transparent eligibility rules and sustained academic and financial support, expands access and representation without systematic academic disadvantage, while improving campus climate and longer-term inclusion outcomes. The review concludes with implementation guidance emphasizing design clarity, institutional support, measurement and communication, and continuous evaluation to ensure that equity goals translate into durable capability gains for historically excluded students.

Comparing from Here: The Gulf, International Assessments, and the Technological Promise

This Gulf Comparative Education Society (GCES) Presidential Address takes “comparing from here” as an epistemic and methodological starting point for engaging with international large-scale assessments in the Gulf. Rather than rejecting comparison, it asks what comparison makes possible when the region is read from its own historical trajectories, social formations, and educational conditions. In doing so, the address moves away from two reductive readings. The first is exceptionalism, which positions the Gulf as if it were outside wider debates on global education policy. The second is genericism, which absorbs the region into international rankings as another comparable data point, detached from the migration histories, school stratification, linguistic arrangements, and socioeconomic inequalities that shape education systems. Drawing on policy mobility scholarship and Biesta’s critique of measurement culture, the address examines how international assessments, inspections, rankings, and performance indicators have become central to the ways education systems are described, compared, and governed. This is not only a technical process of measurement but also a political and epistemic process through which some realities become visible, while others are rendered marginal or invisible. The address extends this discussion to human capital narratives, particularly Brown et al.’s critique of the assumption that schooling necessarily guarantees earnings, with direct relevance to nationalization policies such as Emiratization, Saudization, and Kuwaitization. It also considers how generative AI circulates alongside assessment regimes, raising questions about educational purpose when student thinking can be partially outsourced. Taking this into consideration, the address outlines the GCES 2026–2027 agenda around four linked questions: (i) What does comparison do when it becomes a technology of governance rather than only a method of inquiry? (ii) What becomes visible and invisible when educational quality is organized through international assessments, inspections, rankings, and performance indicators? (iii) How are new technologies, including AI, reshaping the purposes and practices of education in systems already governed by measurable outputs? (iv) What forms of knowledge and educational purpose should schools and universities protect when human capital promises are unstable and when thinking can be outsourced?