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The spatial mobility of students and academics as part of the internationalisation of higher education is becoming increasingly relevant in securing top-tier positions, especially within academia. While the number of doctoral candidates is rising, new positions are not created at the same rate, leading to scarcer career opportunities in academia and the need to develop alternative career paths. Previous studies have much focused on the connection between mobility and career development among junior academics in the STEM fields, but the significance of mobility for SSH PhD candidates and their career development remains unanswered. Does spatial mobility have any effects there, and if so, which? For this reason, this paper studied doctoral SSH candidates from Germany with mobility experiences in the Netherlands. The findings show that spatial mobility affects the perception of the PhD candidate's career in several, sometimes ambivalent ways. It shows that the experience of mobility narrows the planning to a career in academia, contributes to the informal learning process of the candidate, and expands the horizon for possible opportunities in academia. The perceived asset of mobility varies alongside the internationalisation of disciplines and whether the candidate plans to return to Germany or pursue an international career. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that research assessment is of increasing importance as an instrument of New Public Management and within the context of efforts to establish a European Research Area. Specifically, it compares the procedures of research assessment in the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany in an attempt to distil basic design options for such procedures. It is suggested that this general model may be utilised to assist reviews of currently practised procedures and for the development of new ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concepts of differentiation and profiling are cornerstones in discussions about the organisation of contemporary higher education systems, following the trends of massification and global competition. This contribution provides a system-level description and comparison of the German and Dutch higher education systems regarding these topics, and points to possible interactions and development concepts connecting differentiation, strategic profiling of universities and excellence. Though both higher education systems started from very different positions and with differing policies towards differentiation, the global trends and national aspirations for the systems, as well as individual universities in Germany and the Netherlands, are comparable. A look into the resulting ranking positions of German and Dutch universities generally shows a more successful development for the Dutch higher education institutions in the last few years – which could possibly indicate a crucial time lag in the effects of differentiation policies in higher education as the German excellence and differentiation efforts fundamentally took hold more than 10 years after the Dutch initiatives in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]