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In the last 30 years, major changes have taken place in the public sector worldwide under the rubric of New Public Management [NPM]. The education sector is perhaps one of the key areas drawing an intense interest and discussion in the wake of NPM. The Russian State seems to be no longer an exception to this global trend. In line with this, the Russian education sector was declared as a large-scale top priority national project in the late summer of 2005, which was aimed to help raise the living standards of each Russian citizen. This empirical paper seeks to reveal the major institutional and legal changes taking place in Russian higher education over time. This insight is vital as it points to the contexts in which Russian public universities operate. To make the acquaintance of a system of Russian higher education, this research sketches its evolution. It commences from the Soviet era to the present time, highlighting the most significant government initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is no doubt that what is generally referred to as ‘Ph.D education’ has undergone dramatic changes in Europe in recent years. Whereas the Bologna Process, launched in 1999, originally had in mind to make it easier for undergraduate students to gain international experience and enhance their employability by facilitating mobility and transparency of higher education in Europe, the idea of a ‘third cycle’ of doctoral studies came relatively late in the discussion (2003). For some academic cultures, the idea of educating doctoral students was and still is perceived as a threat against academic freedom, originality and credibility. Other academic cultures have already long adopted Ph.D training schemes as an integrated part of training future scientists and knowledge workers. This article presents the result of a recent survey on Ph.D training in the Nordic-Baltic Area (Andreas Önnerfors: ‘Ph.D-training/PGT in the Nordic-Baltic Area’, Exploring the North: papers in Scandinavian Culture and Society 2006:1, Lund 2006) initiated by the Nordic research organisation NordForsk, which discusses new concepts of doctoral education and training in the five Nordic and the three Baltic countries as well as in Russia, Poland and three northern states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Whereas there is great correspondence in the performance of doctoral training and education in the Nordic countries and changes have been introduced permanently for about 30 years, Poland, Germany and Russia are battling with their academic traditions and the challenge of adapting their academic cultures to joint European standards. This concerns especially the phenomenon of two postgraduate degrees (the Ph.D and a further degree) and the view upon training elements in doctoral studies. After their independence, the three Baltic countries rapidly adapted their systems of higher education to the Nordic model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]