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This article considers the problem of vocationalism in Norwegian higher education at the institutional and individual level and uses case studies of curriculum changes at the University of Oslo to examine the university's relationship to the labor market, effects of externally funded research, and academization of the labor market. (DB)

Globalisation, together with readier access to capability-enhancing technologies and to technological insights once restricted to a few leading economies, are resulting in greater competition within Europe, and more widely within the developed world, for influence of all kinds (not just influence over the choices that foreign students make about the Higher Education courses on offer to them from Europe, but also influence of a more overtly imperialist kind, extending to the policies, incomes and futures of others). This article looks at trends in one important market for European Higher Education, the Middle East (particularly the GCC countries), which has many providers from North America and Australia. As observed by the late Edward Said, the USA is particularly forceful in the Middle East. Its technological superiority is accompanied by fervour to introduce American methods and curricula, and strong belief in their merit, reminiscent of the belief of the old French empire that ‘France had a “mission civilisatrice”, to civilize the natives”. The danger, highlighted in a recent UNESCO report ‘New Ignorances, New Literacies’, is that the natives will not be listened to. Is Europe listening more or less than the USA, and is it being listened to? Despite attention-gaining initiatives such as the proposed European Institute of Technology, EIT, and the commitment of EU governments to the Lisbon goals on competitiveness, there are indications of a drop in the influence of European Higher Education institutions in the Middle East. This paper explores the kinds of issues that may be at work, and the implications for European Higher Education policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the current reform of European doctoral education. It is argued that the concrete results of the reform can be better understood by analysing changes in the management of doctoral programmes. This rests on the case study of a Norwegian PhD programme in finance and is based on an analytical framework composed of three public management narratives: New Public Management (NPM), Network Governance (NG) and Neo-Weberian-State (NWS). The latter allows for a particular focus on the instruments, actors and objectives of governance. The article concludes that the examined doctoral programme's management story can be divided into two episodes. The first — the ‘internationalisation’ episode — is shaped by the academic profession in finance which uses a wide range of constraining NPM instruments and applies them in a comprehensive manner to doctoral education in order to achieve its overall objective, namely to implement an internationally competitive PhD programme. The second — the ‘integration’ episode — is about a recently developed policy instrument with relatively non-constraining NWS elements, used by the State to establish National Research Schools. The latter are principally aimed at the better development and coordination of doctoral training between small and large higher education institutions. Due to those differences between the two episodes in terms of constraining character and scope, the reform of the examined doctoral programme is strongly shaped by the first episode. Hence, the reform essentially consists in a doctoral programme with an international and academic character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What do students in England think about school? This article examines the findings of educational research in England on the aspirations and expectations of young people themselves, and how well these are met through schooling. It focuses on the following issues: liking for school; attitudes towards schoolwork; disaffected pupils; attitudes towards teachers; views on the purposes of education; perceptions of parental interest and support; educational aspirations; students’ views on the curriculum; and absence and related factors. It concludes by bringing together and discussing those findings which might well be regarded as positive and those which might instead be regarded as cause for concern. In order to set these research findings in context, a brief overview of schooling in England is given, followed by information on ways in which educational research is funded and conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines three examples of cross-border higher education collaboration in Europe in order to throw light on one European region where such collaboration is only in its early stages of development. The main region examined is the Öresund region covering the Skåne area of Southern Sweden centred on Malmo and the Zealand region of Denmark which incorporates the Copenhagen region. Additionally, and more briefly, the Upper Rhine collaboration of the EUCOR universities and the ALMA collaboration (Netherlands, Germany and Belgium) are considered. Lessons from these examples are then used to assist in the assessment of existing collaboration between higher education institutions in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and the possibilities for further collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]