Publications

We found that (a) student evaluation of teaching (SET) is present cross-nationally; (b) SET was initiated in the US during the 1950s by students and adopted in the 1970s by universities, while German and Colombian universities started implementing SET during the 2000s; and that (c) common cultural elements for adopting SET include increasing accountability, competition and student empowerment. Concerns for academic freedom in Germany and faculty diversity in the US influence SET’s diffusion and implementation. Our findings test the neo-institutional proposition about the diffusion of similar evaluation practices into university teaching and allows extending theoretical interpretations of the transfer of evaluation practices.

Sanctions for plagiarism, falsification and fabrication in research are primarily symbolic. This paper investigates sanctions for scientific misconduct and their preceding investigation processes as visible and legitimate symbols. Using three different data sources (retraction notices, expert interviews, and a survey of scientists), we show that sanctions for scientific misconduct operate within a cycle of visibility, in which sanctions are highly visible, while investigation and decision-making procedures remain mostly invisible. This corresponds to high levels of acceptance of sanctions in the scientific community, but a low acceptance of the respective authorities. Such a punitiveness in turn exacerbates confidentiality concerns, so that

Despite educational expansion and different educational reforms, we still observe social inequalities in the transition to higher education and in the choice of field of study. There is little literature investigating to what extent education policies can change these inequalities and who is primarily affected by this. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of cost-related changes on family background–specific inequalities in the transition to higher education and the choice of field of study.