The DFG funded Research Group "Multiple Competition in Higher Education" has been working since 2021 on a comprehensive understanding of multiple competition in higher education. Researchers in eight sub-projects at ten universities are involved in this research. For the first three years of the funding period, the focus was on the German higher education system. The researchers now want to discuss their findings at an international conference with academics working on similar issues. A further contribution will be made by contributions on the subject of multiple competition in the higher education sector, which will look at the topic from a comparative perspective.

The conference topic "multiple competition" refers to the observation that more actors are involved in competition in higher educations and that this competition intensified over time, but also focuses on if and how the performance in (or avoidance of) one competition has effects on other competitions. We discuss the strategic positioning of different actors (individuals, scientific communities, organizations, and the state), dynamics related to their approaches, and its intended and/or unintended consequences. These dynamics on different levels contribute to the multiplicity of competition in higher education. Most of the time, actors in this sector are involved in not just one but several competitions. Universities as organizations, researchers as individual actors, and partly also state actors are simultaneously embedded in different, nested, and interdependent competitions. Individual and collective actors must face heterogeneous – albeit interrelated and even self-reinforcing – forms of competition for scarce symbolic and material goods like attention, reputation, ranking positions, research grants, high-quality publications, personnel, and employment.

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Click here for the program: https://www.uni-kassel.de/forschung/files/Incher/PDFs/Program_final.pdf

More information: https://goto.uni-kassel.de/go/conference24multiplecompetition

Contact:

Susanne Koch

Organizing Committee Secretary
International Conference
"Multiple Competition in Higher Education – and Beyond"