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The paper examines the relationship between changes in European higher education and social science research on this theme and why it matters. Higher Education (HE) research is a new field significantly assisted by European funding, the Bologna process and the massification of HE. The field is populated by many emerging researchers but few established academics. The paper examines the sub-field’s characteristics including lack of theoretical/methodological consensus, co-production of the knowledge base and the differing micro and contextual backgrounds of emerging European HE researchers (drawing on a recent study). It considers three recent major European-funded HE research projects as examples of co-production, specifically looking at the kinds of knowledge produced and the strategies adopted to ensure that research outcomes permeate the policy process. It is suggested that the sub-field needs to develop a better infrastructure to support emerging researchers, but care needs to be taken not to impair their independence from European bureaucrats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The project of the Bologna process to create a 'European Higher Education Area' (EHEA) has established the necessary conditions for the emergence of a new sociopolitical space of higher education in Europe. This space has become a cooperation/competition area that changes the European and national balance of power: the relations the countries maintain both between them and with the European Commission are situated in a cooperation/competition game. The European Commission plays a central role in this area, alongside actor organisations who see themselves forced to discuss issues that had previously divided them and to modify their relationships at a national level. This article can be seen as a contribution to the analysis of international strategy in a global knowledge economy, especially to the two-level game theory of Putnam for which international agreements are negotiated with success only if they lead to national advantages. In particular, it studies the role of the European Commission in this sociopolitical area and the mechanism by which it has taken the piloting of the Bologna process, which was launched in a field of national competency, to make it an instrument for the realisation of the Lisbon strategy aimed at making the European Union the most competitive economy in the world. This paper is based on data sources provided by the analysis of papers produced by the actors of the process and on 50 interviews of these actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bologna Declaration focuses on skill acquisition as a means of improving student employability and fieldwork is considered to be a pivotal teaching method for geography students to obtain such skills. This paper presents results from a major substantive survey of European geography academics and students which investigated their perspectives with regard to the role of geography fieldwork in the gaining of transferable employability skills. Results are compared with past research in the wake of the European Commission's geography ‘TUNING’ project, which provided a set of subject-specific and generic skills attained through fieldwork. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In many parts of the world, higher education is viewed as a prime 'motor' for the development of a knowledge-based economy. Under the banner of this 'new economy', higher education policies, programmes and practices have been increasingly co-opted and shaped by wider geo-strategic political and economic interests. This paper explores three, interlinked, higher education policy spaces - in Europe, the United States, and Australia. It explores how the growing range of educational initiatives at the European level has affected - both directly and indirectly - American and Australian policymaking in higher education. The European higher education project, which is increasingly perceived as having some significance to the global economy, has set off a series of dynamic reactions in both Australia and the United States, which is leading to multiple new logics and new imaginaries about the global higher education landscape. Through this, a more integrated and relational global system of higher education is emerging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a brief description of the evolution of quality assurance in Europe, paying particular attention to its relationship to the rising loss of trust in higher education institutions. We finalise by analysing the role of the European Commission in the setting up of new quality assurance mechanisms that tend to promote accreditation and stratification rather than quality enhancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]