Higher Education in Times of Change
By: Maria José Sá, Sandro Serpa
CIPES – Centre for Research in Higher Education Policies Portugal
Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, University of the Azores, Portugal
DOI: 10.14738/eb.55.2020
The overall common thread of this e-Book is education in general and higher education in particular. At a time of profound changes in the educational arena and across society at large, thinking higher education and its dynamics is paramount. This e-Book gathers five selected articles published by the authors between 2018 and 2020 that tackle, analyse and discuss some very current topics, such as the transversal competences higher education institutions need to provide their students with, considering their relevance to preparing the future professionals; the importance of Sociology of Education in promoting sustainability literacy in higher education; the COVID-19 pandemic and how it is reshaping the educational arena and the learning and teaching process; and the funding of the scientific publication in Open Access, an increasingly central outlet for the dissemination of the scientific production.
The authors hope to offer the educational field some insights, hindrances but also possibilities that lie ahead of the higher education dynamics, actors, policies and forces.
Maria José Sá holds a Bachelor’s in Education from the University of Minho and a PhD in Studies in Higher Education from the University of Aveiro, Portugal. She is a researcher at CIPES – Centre for Research in Higher Education Policies. Her research areas include, among others: student satisfaction; student success; institutional actors; student experience; gender studies; and higher education in developing countries. She has participated in several funded research projects in the areas of marketing, teachers’ training and student satisfaction. She has also worked in the field of higher education institutions’ Assurance of Learning (AOL) and international accreditation.
Sandro Serpa has been a higher education faculty member since 2000. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the University of the Azores since 2013. He received his Master’s in Sociology from the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of the Nova University of Lisbon in 2004, and his PhD in Education, with speciality in Sociology of Education, in 2013, from the University of the Azores. He is an integrated researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre of Social Sciences – Campus of the University of the Azores, CICS.NOVA.UAc. He has more than 200 publications in international journals, books and other scientific outlets in Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Italy, Pakistan, Portugal, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.
