New institutional geographies of higher education: The rise of transregional university alliances
分析了英国大学间跨区域联盟的兴起，揭示了超过50个联盟的形成及其对高等教育不平等的影响，对研究区域发展和高等教育政策的学者有参考价值。
This article opens up debates about the deepening uneven geographies of higher education through a critical analysis of transregional university alliances. Focusing on the formation of research consortia and Doctoral Training Centres, we reveal the emergence of over 50 transregional alliances between United Kingdom universities. Despite each consortium operating at a variously defined regional scale there has been no explicit attempt to account for their geographical basis. Providing the first-ever analysis of this unfolding phenomenon, we demonstrate how the rise of transregional alliances is indicative of, and a response to, universities operating in an intensely neoliberalised political economy. Bringing together emergent theories of regionalism with emerging worlds of (neoliberal) higher education, our article reveals how, why and where universities are engaging in more intensively targeted, exclusive approaches to regional development. We argue that higher education is conducive to the weakening of fixed regional territories, and propose the metaphor of ‘regional constellations’ for interpreting transregional geographies. Finally, our analysis suggests that while high-performing research institutions may compete better by forming consortia, transregional alliances lead to a more unequal and divided university sector.