This edited volume argues for positioning students at the centre of higher education, drawing from the concepts of student agency and self-formation. The volume highlights that higher education has broader and more important purposes than what a neoliberal human capital approach would suggest, and explores how students exercise their agency and realise self-formation as inherently connected concepts throughout university education. With disciplinary, cultural, and contextual diversity, this volume will provide international perspectives to readers interested in higher education theories, policies, and practices.

Bringing together cutting-edge research from over 50 leading international scholars, this forward-looking Research Handbook offers theoretical and empirical insights into the student experience in higher education.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License. It is free to read, download and share on Elgaronline.com. Despite the broad engagement of higher education institutions in most social sectors, limited thinking and hyper-individualistic approaches have dominated discussions of their value to society. Advocating a more rigorous and comprehensive approach, this insightful book discusses the broad range of contributions made by higher education and the many issues entailed in theorising, observing, measuring and evaluating those contributions.

This book sets out the theme of a world that is changing rapidly and higher education being an important agent in shaping that change through knowledge generation, transfer and innovation. The chapters in this book focus on this shaping role of higher education along a number of key areas: governance, sustainability, teaching and learning, student agency, quality and internationalization. From these different topics, this volume presents ways in which higher education helps dealing with and shaping the educational and societal changes that we are facing in the aftermath of the pandemic and challenges that we are expecting in the near future. Contributors are: Victor M. H. Borden, Bruno Broucker, Edel Cassar, Bárbara Coelho Gabriel, Cindy Cogswell, Julia Draghi, Brigitte Ecker, Pınar Eldemir, Klaus Feldmann, Cláudia Figueiredo, Anne Gannon, Jussi Kivistö, Manja Klemenčič, Theodor Leiber, Nandarani Maistry, Sara Moreno Pires, Takalani Muloiwa-Klenam, Darlington Mutakwa, Erna Nairz-Wirth, Ruaidhri Neavyn, Jessica Nooij, Mark O’Hara, Beate Pawle, Alexandra Polido, Maria Pöschl, Silke Preymann, Verena Régent, Lotte Scheeren, Kateryna Suprun, Robertt Valente, Floris J. N. van Berckel Smit, Annemieke van der Horst and Sabine Weiss.

Democratic institutions and laws are essential, but they cannot bring about democracy on their own. They will only function if they build on a culture of democracy, and our societies will not be able to develop and sustain such a culture unless education plays an essential role. Student engagement is crucial: democracy cannot be taught unless it is practised within institutions, among students and in relations between higher education and society in general. This 20th volume of the Council of Europe Higher Education Series demonstrates the importance of student engagement for the development and maintenance of the democratic culture that enables democratic institutions and laws to function in practice. This volume covers three aspects of student engagement that are seldom explored: its role in society through political participation and civic involvement; its place in higher education policy processes and policy-making structures; and how student unions represent the most institutionalised form of student engagement. The authors are accomplished scholars, policy makers, students and student leaders.

Democratic institutions and laws are essential, but they cannot bring about democracy on their own. They will only function if they build on a culture of democracy, and our societies will not be able to develop and sustain such a culture unless education plays an essential role. Student engagement is crucial: democracy cannot be taught unless it is practised within institutions, among students and in relations between higher education and society in general. This 20th volume of the Council of Europe Higher Education Series demonstrates the importance of student engagement for the development and maintenance of the democratic culture that enables democratic institutions and laws to function in practice. This volume covers three aspects of student engagement that are seldom explored: its role in society through political participation and civic involvement; its place in higher education policy processes and policy-making structures; and how student unions represent the most institutionalised form of student engagement. The authors are accomplished scholars, policy makers, students and student leaders.

Students become new and different people through the course of their education. When students earn the right to say, “I am a college graduate,” that new status becomes a part of who they are. The authors in this volume—scholars from a range of fields—offer methods that staff and faculty can use to explore the process through which students develop new personal, civic, and professional identities. The research and ideas in this volume can assist in designing approaches to encourage student growth, and to help us understand what it means to attend and become a graduate of a college or university. This is the 166th volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Higher Education. Addressed to presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other higher education decision makers on all kinds of campuses, it provides timely information and authoritative advice about major issues and administrative problems confronting every institution.