Strategic curriculum change: global trends in universities

The curriculum is a live issue in universities across the world. Many stakeholders - governments, employers, professional and disciplinary groups and parents - express strong and often conflicting views about what higher education should achieve for its students. Many universities are reviewing their curricula at an institutional level, aware that they are in a competitive climate in which league tables encourage students to see themselves as consumers and the university as a product, or even a 'brand'. The move has prompted renewed concern for some central educational questions, about both what is learnt and how. Strategic Curriculum Change in Universities explores the ways in which major universities across the world are reviewing their approaches to teaching and learning. It unites institution-level strategy with the underlying educational issues. The book is grounded in a major study of curriculum change in over twenty internationally-focused, research-intensive universities in the UK, US, Australia, The Netherlands, South Africa and Hong Kong.