This guest editorial comments on the rapidly changing environment for the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in African Higher Education Institutions (HEI), introduces the e/merge online conferences and gives a brief introduction to the papers in the special issue.

Over the past two decades Romanian higher education has been the subject of numerous policy reforms aiming to increase the overall quality and performance of higher education institutions (HEIs): two comprehensive laws on education and several second-order legislative acts intended to transform the sphere of higher education into a modern system of teaching and research. Funding was one of the ...

As open access (OA) publication of research outputs becomes increasingly common and is mandated by institutions and research funders, it is important to understand different aspects of the costs involved. This paper provides an early review of administrative costs incurred by universities in making research outputs OA, either via publication in journals (“Gold” OA), involving payment of article...

In higher educational institutions, ethics is the very core of the people that institutions are trying to morally shape. In a few years’ time, these students will be assigned to some work place where they will be forced to make decisions which can affect businesses and more importantly – human lives. In that respect, what seems like a simple doubt about right or wrong, becomes alarmingly signif...

The paper focuses on disabled students in higher education (HE) and their use of technologies to support their learning. Disabled students commonly report that they feel they have to work harder than other students because they have to manage both their disability and their study. Access to and accessibility of technologies affects how well disabled students manage this workload. Data were coll...

This essay examines the internationalization of university cooperation, and in particular university participation in the European Community Framework Programme. We develop a theoretical framework for the analysis of the mechanisms that are driving the participants' selection into the Framework Programmes. As the quality of applicants is an unobservable characteristic we stress the relevance of...

The world has witnessed that knowledge has become a valuable resource and asset in a new economy, which demands people not only to create knowledge, but also to attain, apply and share knowledge effectively. Knowledge sharing is viewed as a natural activity in higher education institutions (HEIs), especially in pertain to its core activity, i.e. research. This study emphasises on a nature of re...

To gain competitive advantage in a fast changing environment, the higher education institution (HEI) must continuously adjust the strategies to that environment. One important strategy is how to determine appropriate practical actions based on what students really need and want. Despite the abundance of research on service quality management, there is no universal consensus on how best to deter...

The aim of this paper is to answer the question what do we know about relationships between research and teaching in higher education? This is not a new debate and is not exclusive to the UK. However, the debate is of considerable relevance to individuals and institutions in this sector. The literature review focused upon four leading UK higher education journals: Higher Education, Higher Educa...

This paper presents the framework of higher education quality assessment. The estimates of education quality can be used by the chiefs of higher education establishments (HEE) to take management decisions. The suggested approach is based on SERVQUAL method, supposing that education quality is the quality of provided service. Within the elaborated framework students fill in the questionnaire, th...