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'World class universities' (WCU) are an issue of intense debate among the academic community. To define a WCU supposes that only those universities that fit the 'quality' criteria established under benchmarking conditions can be considered as such. The good news is that several dimensions could be used to defined excellence, not only classical academic and research criteria. This paper intends to address conceptual aspects of WCU with regard to relations between university 'mission' development and why, how and when an institution is considered a WCU from non-classical criteria. The main purpose of this paper is to propose new dimensions to rank University Missions. Going beyond teaching and research, the University Third Mission - services to Society - has at least 3 dimensions: a non profit - social - approach; an entrepreneur focus; and an innovative approximation. This paper will consider the various implications that a third mission measurement and benchmark could introduce in the controversial ranking business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the legislation on higher education in Serbia was enacted in the summer of 2005, Serbian universities started a reform process, which has still not been completed. Since the new law leaves room for any institution to organize itself within the given framework, it is hard to predict the final shape the universities are going to adopt. Consequently, this paper focuses on the existing practice in recruitment policy indicating the eventual pitfalls that threaten the institution in the reform process. In order to allow for a better understanding of the environment in which recruitment is taking place, the first part of the paper outlines the existing environment in terms of the institutional structure, financing and management. The second part concentrates on the recruitment policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents key new developments in the THES - QS World University Rankings in 2007, related to enhancements to the Peer Review, Data Collection and Statistical Aggregation utilised in this ranking as well as discussing the decision to utilise Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) figures for personnel statistics. Indicator correlation is also discussed as well as the role/purpose of the rankings. The paper reflects a continuing effort to refine the measures used in the ranking, QS have recommended some subtle but significant changes to both the methodology and the data collection approach that have been embraced by THES and will have an impact on 2007 results and beyond in order to reach some measure of understanding the relative quality of different higher education institutions around the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2010 sees the end of the process of establishing the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Although not all countries may have achieved all the objectives, many are those countries and universities who have implemented many of the targets set. Within the Bologna Process, there have been many developments such as: European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) for the transfer of period of study abroad; joint degrees; and quality assurance aspects among others. Guidelines for Quality Assurance and the development of an overarching European Qualifications Framework have been developed. While the Bologna Process brings with it many advantages on an education level, the discussion has not really considered the legal aspects of such a system. Once the EHEA is implemented comprehensively across Europe, situations may arise which would require universities to consider the legal aspects of learning that students may have experienced within different tertiary institutions. This paper considers what problems may arise, for example with fraudulent behaviour by students in the acquisition of ECTS credits in another university; with weaknesses or failure to prove quality of learning following an external quality assurance audit in another university; with the failure to deliver learning by one of the partner universities running joint degrees etc., and explores the possible legal implications of such situations as well as identifying the legal lacunae which exist and which need to be taken into consideration if the EHEA is to maintain the reputation that it aims for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Today the worldwide web (web) is one of the main sources of information and the main showcase for everyone (institutions, business enterprises, individuals, etc.) who wants to be recognized on in the 'real world'. At the academic level, universities have a very important role as a means to communicate scientific and cultural achievements. Web publication by scholars is not only a tool for scholarly communication but it is also a means to reach larger audiences and in general a reflection of the performance of the institutions. There have been several efforts to develop web indicators that can ultimately lead to build a university's rankings. This paper presents the Webometric Ranking of World Universities which is built using a combined indicator called WR that takes into account the number of published web pages (S) (twenty-five percent), the number of rich files, those in pdf, ps, doc and ppt format (R) (12.5 percent), the number of articles gathered from the Google Scholar Database (Sc) (12.5 percent,) and the total number of external inlinks (V) (fifty percent). The results show that there is a larger than expected academic digital divide between higher education institutions in the United States and those in the European Union. This kind of rankings using web indicators should be used to measure universities' performance in conjunction with more traditional academic indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transparent and consistent credit transfer procedures are essential if EU Universities are to successfully build the European Higher Education Area and thrive in the emerging global knowledge economy. Currently, the European Credit Transfer System is the most widely used mechanism to enable credit transfer between universities in different EU nations. Using data from 20 universities in four EU member states, this paper examines the problems in calculating and using ECTS grades. The results demonstrate that the alignment of ECTS grades varies within nation states and show that, despite the fact that ECTS grading is a norm-referenced system, while national systems are usually criterion-referenced, the ECTS conversion tables provided by universities indicate straight line transference from institutional to ECTS grades. Given the anticipated increase in student mobility following the EU enlargement to 25 nations, this paper proposes a re-alignment of ECTS towards a criterion-referenced system. Such a new system would acknowledge and build on the diversity of EU higher education systems, unlike the current mechanistic system. The latter masks this diversity and is flawed in calculation and ad hoc in operation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the main functions that university plays in society and describes the seminar methodology created at Ramon Llull University. Specifically the article focuses on and explains how seminars help to promote complex knowledge in students. An empirical study with students participating in seminars is designed to assess the improvement in students' cognitive complexity. Cognitive complexity is understood as personal construct system complexity measured through different differentiation and integration indexes. Results are that participation in a semester seminar work results in an increase in cognitive complexity, improving all differentiation indexes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing awareness in the UK and mainland Europe of the importance of higher education to the development of a knowledge-based economy. European universities are increasingly required to produce highly mobile graduates able to respond to the ever-changing needs of the contemporary workplace. Following the Bologna Declaration (1999), higher education across Europe has expanded rapidly. This has resulted in questions being raised about the quality of the graduate labour market and the ability of graduates to meet the needs of employers. This paper analyses graduate and employer perspectives of graduate employability in four European countries (UK, Austria, Slovenia and Romania). In doing so it adds to current debates in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rankings of universities that are based on aggregate measures ignore the discipline coverage within institutions. In this paper, for each of Australia's thirty-seven public universities, performance in research and teaching in broad discipline groups is evaluated and then aggregated up to obtain whole-of-institution rankings. Relative staff numbers are used as weights to aggregate research performance; student numbers are used to weight teaching performance. The performance attributes chosen are those that contribute to international academic standing. We find that the rankings of the Australian National University (ANU) and some technologically oriented universities are raised when scope is allowed for, but elsewhere the changes are minor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How influential has the US News Best Colleges ranking been over the last twenty-five years since it was first started in 1983? In what ways does this influence manifest itself? There is strong evidence of the impact of the US News rankings among consumers, prospective students and their parents, and the higher education establishment in the United States. Their influence has now gone global since the US News rankings, according to some, have been the model for what has become a worldwide trend. This paper will look at all of these effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rankings have become a widespread phenomenon in an increasingly competitive world of higher education. They differ with regard to their aims, objectives, target groups, and with regard to their relationship to quality and quality assessment. Generally, rankings are an external assessment of the performance of higher education institutions; they enable transparency about systems of higher education. This paper discusses the relationship of rankings and quality assurance on an institutional and a system level. A clear conception of the differences between rankings and other forms of assessment of higher education institutions helps to understand the usefulness as well as the limitations of rankings and helps to prevent false or unrealistic expectations of rankings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Access to undergraduate education has expanded rapidly in recent years. This is one manifestation of a rise in the relative importance of market-based resource allocation in higher education and a weakening of allocation based upon traditional views of merit. This change in priority has influenced the content of the undergraduate curriculum and introduced both content and methods whose legitimacy and educational value some question as universities market their products to attract enrolment. The paper discusses the relationship between allocation mechanism and "curriculum as product" and examines critically some of the more significant implications for undergraduate education such as course rigour and full-spectrum grading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives a short overview of the history of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEF) and European Language Portfolio (ELP)1 and explains their aims and functions. It then provides a summary of the ELP use in Europe and in Spain by showing a pilot study of its implementation carried out at the Schools of Civil Engineering and Architecture in the Polytechnic University of Madrid, as well as including specific data derived from this study. The general results obtained so far have been mixed. Thus, whereas positive effects on the learning process, learning outcome, and learner motivation have been observed, many drawbacks have been likewise encountered by students and teachers, such as the rigidness of the self-assessment descriptors, the difficulty in handling and updating, and the amount of time and work that the implementation of the ELP involves. Finally, in view of these difficulties and drawing from our own experience, some suggestions particularly applicable to our case study are shown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas most ranking schemes aim at the identification of the universally best performing universities, value-driven rankings take a focused perspective: they aim at monitoring the progress of some kind of societal agenda based on social values and hence look for progress concerning specific educational contents. The emerging field of education for sustainable development provides a good case for studying evaluation criteria of a value-based ranking. This paper proposes a framework for a stakeholder-based university evaluation and maps the territory of rankings addressing sustainable development. Finally a complementing evaluation is proposed to address identified shortcomings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, pressures for change in universities in the United Kingdom have stimulated the emergence of new models of institutional governance and management. In turn, these new models have led to significant changes in the position of academic staff in the running of their institutions. This paper looks at change within four leading UK universities, the motivation for change, the new models that have developed, some of the issues which have emerged and the impact upon academic staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes briefly the academic tenure and its legislative terms in the UK, over the last twenty years. The author refers to the current wider situation/trends in the international higher education arena of two categories of academic staff - "established" staff (on permanent contract) and fixed-term staff - and to how their levels of protection can have an impact on the overall health of the universities and their academic freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the question of when it can be advantageous, for both academics and universities, for individuals to be employed by more than one institution by first analysing the meanings of "advantage", understood as profitable and valuable, and "disadvantage". The question is whether it is possible to reach a matrix-like balance of these opposing meanings/factors in higher education. The analysis is followed by a presentation of the Polish higher education case study seen through three possible scenarios, or Situations: when the alma mater is (1) the only place, (2) the principal place, and (3) one of [too] many places of employment and revenue. The quantitative growth of Polish higher education and its consequences are thought to be the main reason for the emergence of Situation 3. But, with the introduction of a new Law on Higher Education and efforts to create a new institutional culture there are signs of a shift from Situation 3 to Situation 2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of this paper has been to define a quality university from the user's perspective, based on what students expressed regarding different aspects of the institution. Two methodologically different formats of collecting information have assisted in testing the coherence of their opinions. A qualitative and quantitative approach helped to evaluate the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how university leaders in Finland implement quality management in their respective institutions. The study uses a modified model of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model as a theoretical base in eliciting information on quality management strategies from the senior academic leaders in these universities. The main objective of the study is to explore the different management approaches in quality improvement in university management as perceived by the leaders. The study has made use of administration questionnaires and interviews as methods of data collection. Although the findings show many approaches to quality improvement in university management, one of the conclusions emerging from the study is that Finnish responses to their management styles may serve as inspiration for other universities especially with regard to quality control and leadership styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how the Excellence Model® developed by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) can be used and applied within higher education, with practical examples accompanying the Model in a Russian University to raise management quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on two theoretical frameworks of integration (neo-functionalism and liberal inter-governmentalism), exploring their implications for current trends of integration in European higher education: the marketization of and trade in educational services, the involvement of supranational institutions, and the focus on quality assessment at the possible expense of academic freedom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This author focuses on the ethical aspects of conducting university research and teaching. What function does the university perform in making the contemporary world more humane, and what threats are connected today with this mission? Scientific work is, of course, also practised outside the university, and teaching does not have to follow the university model; however it cannot be denied that the university is a ubiquitous scientific and educational institution, the values of which should be remembered and emphasized in light of modern scientific and cultural developments. This paper highlights first the features specific to the university, with an emphasis on educational and cultural production. Next, the challenges faced by the university in the context of modern civilization are addressed. To conclude, a few personal observations about moral dimensions and challenges are shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European universities must face the crisis of the Humboldtian model, and find new organisational solutions. This paper proceeds from two starting observations. The first is the one according to which we are in a “cultural shift” that makes culture the element on which performance, including technologically and cognitively, depends. The development of societies now depends on the culture shared by human beings more than on their economy or technology. The second observation is that culture itself and its ethical underpinning should be open for consideration. The development of society now depends on culture and on its adaptive capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Written with the intent to argue for the purposeful place of ethics in the curriculum, this paper examines the role of the university in the knowledge society, the moral challenges that arise from this, and the importance of developing a pragmatic ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the apparent conspiracy of silence and/or culture of disinterest with regard to ethical issues in higher education. A first interpretation treats it as an almost entirely negative phenomenon – the subordination of university values to external political and market forces. The second interpretation, elaborated here, is more nuanced and less judgmental; the apparent erosion of the autonomy of the university and growing fuzziness of traditional academic values are seen as evidence not of decline-and-fall but of higher education's success within the expanding territory of the knowledge society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents and describes various kinds of multinational universities. These include the national universities in multi-ethnic developing countries, the universities that have been created in developed countries to serve large numbers of foreign students, and the universities, that, although created in the developed countries for the nationals of these countries, have ended up attracting large numbers of foreign students owing to their prestige. Then, evoking the role of universities and education in general as an aid to the foreign policies of given countries, the author concludes his paper with a presentation of the mission and the functioning of the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on student activity and how students experience learning. A teaching programme was both led and researched by the one teacher. The article describes a master's level teaching programme and presents the data collection strategies used by the teacher-researcher and presents learning viewed from the students' perspective. The teaching and researching processes are carried out in the framework of socio-cultural theory. In Vygotsky's and Bakhtin's theories, as part of the socio-cultural tradition, language and dialogue are viewed as decisive factors in learning and understanding, and hence in the researched teaching programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes how the Australian university system has become increasingly multi-ethnic and multicultural as a reflection of the greater Australian society that is also increasingly multicultural and multi-ethnic. As the universities have evolved from being élitist institutions, based on a British model and accessible to only a small proportion of the population, to units making up a mass system, they have had to contend with two contradictory forces: government mandated efforts to increase the representation on university campuses of disadvantaged groups and pressures to reduce government spending for higher education. Increasing efforts, after 1990, on the part of Australian universities to recruit full-fee paying foreign students have intensified student multi-ethnicity on Australian campuses while providing near windfall sources of extra funds. Yet there are voices being raised regarding the propriety and the ethics of selling higher education in this way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Ignacio J. Alfaro and colleagues on the student opinion of the information policies of four Spanish universities with regard to Erasmus and other international programmes, one by Joanna Urban and colleagues on the general concept of benchmarking and its application in higher education in Europe, and one by Amparo Jimenez Vivas and colleagues on the professionalization in universities and European convergence.

This article presents a comparative study of the recent developments of the academic profession in European universities drawing on the results of a policy questionnaire. First, it outlines that the profession is highly diversified and hierarchical, with an unsolved gender issue. Second, it discusses the reasons behind its attractiveness, paying particular attention to the balance between duties and salaries. Third, it presents evidence regarding the evolution of the profession in the context of the broader changes operating in the European higher education arena. And finally, it highlights the political issues that are likely to shape the evolution of the profession in the coming years and the pending political agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work reflects the results of a student survey and focus-group discussions and in-depth interviews with educators and policy practitioners to examine the connections between the higher education system and labour market demands in Azerbaijan. A notion of an Index of Students' Optimism regarding employment prospects has been introduced in this study. It is found that private university students are much more optimistic about employment opportunities as compared with their public university fellows. Available options are considered for the Azerbaijan state policy modernization in the higher education area that would promote students' capacity to cope with competitive challenges in the job market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2006, an international comparison study investigated the organization and management of university continuing education (UCE). The Finnish continuing education system proved to be especially advanced in this study. On the other hand, it became clear that Germany was still lagging behind in continuing education. In this article, German and Finnish universities are compared with respect to organizational forms and management structures in order to derive potentials for UCE and to identify decisive factors of success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The London Communique of the Conference of Ministers responsible for Higher Education in the countries participating in the Bologna Process (2007) emphasized as priorities for 2009 the “action taken at national level to promote the mobility of students and staff, including measures for future evaluation”. Certain responsibilities are incumbent upon the various member states while others fall to the universities themselves. The present study explores student perceptions of the policies and programmes to encourage this mobility in four public universities in Spain, representative in their variety, size, and level of student mobility. The aim of the study was to determine how students view the usefulness and the importance of the information and the mobility programmes offered by their universities, as well as the value of the various sources and contents of such information. The results are based on a survey administered to 2427 students who had already made the decision to go abroad the following academic year and who were in the process of being selected and completing the final application details before departure. The results provide interesting information on the need for universities to enhance their strategies and policies to facilitate student mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The evaluation of a preliminary study on the possible implementation of a Mentorship Plan in the Faculty of Teacher Education at the University of Lleida (UdL) is described. A total of sixty-seven first-year Special- and Nursery School-education teacher students participated in this survey. Results were evaluated in both qualitative and quantitative terms. Participating students declared themselves satisfied with the contents of the Plan. However, further analysis of results indicates the convenience of adapting the Plan to the particular needs of each university degree, and of improving some organisational and methodological aspects observed during this preliminary survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that in today's knowledge societies, European universities are called upon to make students more employable, by cultivating their skills and by encouraging them to lifelong learning for enhancing their flexibility in the labour market. Employability is emphatically stressed and, to a certain extent, is associated with equity concerns. However, the special emphasis on employability is strongly associated with the emergence of the 'market-driven' or 'pragmatic' university, as pressures increase for the university to abandon the Humboldtian ideals of its autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The French university system is in crisis. After its dismantlement during the French revolution, its rebirth was progressive under the third republic (1871-1945). But it was only after 1968 that the current universities developed, with an autonomy that is strictly supervised by the state. Since 1986 all experiments at modernizing the management of universities have failed. A research crisis in 2004, followed by another one in the winter of 2006, demonstrated an urgent need to set up necessary reform. Several university leaders and politicians urged it. The law of August 2007 is a first step towards achieving these hopes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the idea of a European doctorate has been discussed since the earliest years of the European Union it is only very recently that its time has finally come. This progress is the product of the efforts of a number of important players, including the European Commission, the European University Association, the main representative of institutions of higher education awarding doctoral degrees in Europe, and the Bologna Process. In synergy with the European Research Area's goals, the Bologna Process, in particular, has played a vital role in providing a new impulse to internationalisation of the doctorate in Europe. Despite the important steps already achieved towards the joint European doctorate, full recognition of its legal value is still a work in progress. Problems arise because of the national laws of some European Union members, but are also due to a still pervasive conservative view in European higher education that encourages academic 'protectionism' instead of promoting cooperation. The two main reasons for resistance to innovative joint doctoral programmes remain, however, the misinterpretation of international mobility as the goal rather than one of the strategic tools of doctoral training and a widespread fear that harmonisation will homogenise the diversity of European doctoral curricula, reducing its current richness to uniformity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the case of student mobility through the ERASMUS programme at the University of Patras in Greece. Through research based on official records, questionnaires and interviews with students of the University of Patras who participated in mobility programmes during the period 2000-2005, this article examines the way Greek students perceive their participation in the ERASMUS programme, the problems and difficulties they encounter as well as the benefits they deem they derive from their participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This multiple case study features interviews with forty-two migrant scholars, from twenty-seven countries, in five Finnish universities. In Finland, an aging, culturally homogeneous population is experiencing a rapidly transforming labour force and uncertainties about migration dynamics. This analysis illuminates a surprising degree of stratification, in a society normally associated with the absence of stratification. The framework presented in this study draws on higher education theory to highlight tensions between societal expectations of equity, in an age of global academic capitalism. The implications for stakeholders center on assessing higher education's capacity for explaining change within higher education, as well as society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses "Universities of the Third Age", whose function is quite distinct from established universities' traditional role in teaching, research, and community services. Consequently, there is an urgent need to develop a model of partnership between traditional universities and Universities of the Third Age, ensuring better training for educators working with senior citizens. Determining the roles of teachers, supervisors, and students will facilitate greater cooperation, and allow for a linkage of Universities of the Third Age (U3A) with traditional faculties of education, as well as further refinement of the theoretical and practical professional training of future educators of older people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several teachers at the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Belgrade recognised the need to improve teaching methods in order to actively involve students in the teaching process, help them learn more effectively, and reduce the low exam pass rate. This led to a purpose-designed course on improving academic skills, after which the author has been implementing interactive teaching methods for the past three academic years, with positive results in improving student exam performances as well as enabling the acquisition of valuable generic skills. Presented here are attempts to test students' ability to assess themselves and each other by introducing student peer reviewing and student self-assessment exercises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are broad concerns in Italy about public sector efficiency. Within the public sector higher education (HE) has a major role, providing the economy with research outputs and graduates. Italian universities claim to have expanded teaching and research services to keep pace with the growth of the "knowledge society." An important question is whether this expansion is benefiting the Italian HE sector. To address this issue, the cost structure of Italian university system is examined. A quadratic cost function is employed to test both the existence of efficiency linkages between teaching and research services and the presence of scale economies. These results are used to investigate the implications of a more specialized HE sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers some patterns of ranking higher education institutions which are used in the Russian Federation to reveal strengths and weaknesses in meeting the national individual, societal and state-related needs, as well as those of the international academic community concerning relevant information on Russian higher education institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If we take into account the growing functional differentiation in the late modernity, and the changes in society, knowledge, as well as the new needs, then there are reasons to question the activity profile of many institutions of today (political, military, communicational, commercial, etc.). In the case of the university, the changes involve fundamental aspects, such that the second oldest institution in Europe - after the Church - is requested to legitimise itself once again in a society already torn away from the continuity of history and reconfigured as a result of reorganisation of its own resources: money, administrative power, knowledge, information, culture. The author approaches the legitimacy of the European university, its cultural legitimacy by evoking the initial legitimization of universities which modelled the history of European higher education, by identifying the mission and the functions of the European university, and by showing the challenges that the legitimization of the European university faces today, and by highlighting its cultural profile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution deals with the development of entrepreneurship education at university level in Germany. Starting with a definition of the concept, the article focuses on relevant issues of entrepreneurship education, such as target groups and teaching formats. With particular emphasis on empirical studies carried out by the German Association for Promoting Academic Entrepreneurship Research (FGF), noteworthy milestones in the development of entrepreneurship education in Germany will be discussed, along with those trends that are likely to be important in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For this article Institutional entrepreneurialism at Babes-Bolyai University (Romania) serves as a premise for more general reflections. These include discussion of the market sensitivity of entrepreneurialism; that is how a university can be very entrepreneurial in one market and less entrepreneurial in another. Consideration is also given to the idea that institutional entrepreneurialism can sometimes collide with the individual entrepreneurialism of academic staff, and universities are then forced to take defensive measures. We also touch on the academic reward system and how it could be changed in order to stimulate academics to exploit their knowledge and create market relevant products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What does being an entrepreneurial university mean? The University of Novi Sad in Serbia is taken as an example of how one University in a transition country, which was lacking tradition in entrepreneurial practices, is striving to become an entrepreneurial university. Examples of new practices are also described such as the establishment of a university incubator, introduction of a course in entrepreneurship offered to all students, diversification of income sources, development of institutional links and strategies for the closer flow of ideas, information, and research results between the University and its stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the many requests for change which the University of Belgrade, as a university in a transition country, has been facing from its foundation to the present day. Over the last decade, the University of Belgrade has had to overcome a range of difficulties in an attempt to follow European trends in reforming higher education at the institutional level. Today, it is obvious that the outcome of higher education reform will depend entirely on the academic community, which must play an active role and enter the "knowledge business", as a prerequisite for the success of future generations of university graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fashion is easily understood as something to do with style and consumption. However, the concept of fashion can also be applied when organisations and the change in them is analysed and explained. Universities and their departments adopt different kinds of policy fashions. This article approaches management by results and evaluation in the Finnish context as fashions and success stories which universities and their departments have either accepted or rejected. Fashions and reactions to them have created new practices and cultures, and simultaneously either displaced the old practices or taken their place with them. Fashions are further translated into local action at universities and their departments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the best ways of incentivating the use of ICTs as university teaching tools is by providing clear evidence that this technology helps to increase educational benefits, i.e., that students learn more and more effectively – in conditions of equivalent efforts by both teachers and students. The point, however, is that little has been reported on the specific impact of Web enhancements on classroom activities – the face‐to‐face component of traditional courses – and the nature of that impact. This contribution is intended to publish some evidence based on two well‐documented experiments on the use of the Campus Global, the e‐learning platform for undergraduate, traditional face‐to‐face courses introduced at the Pompeu Fabra University as early as 1998. The first analyses the failures that often accompany the introduction of ICTs into traditional teaching. The second describes the results of an experiment aimed at comparing the academic performance of two equivalent groups of students of the same subject, one receiving ordinary, lecture‐based teaching and the other being taught with the novel use of ICTs. Finally, the results are discussed and future lines of research are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]