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The relatively short repayment periods of four or six years after graduation under the Government-Subsidized Student Loan (GSSL), the main student loans programme in China, has, since its implementation in 1999, imposed considerable hardship in repaying loans. This paper presents a new diversified repayment model, the 'geometric proportion repayment' model in which the repayment ratio is kept within 10 per cent of income, thus both easing the burden of repayment and reducing subsequent default. The results of an ordinal regression model, based on data from a sample of university graduates, provides a method of estimating the (unknown) salaries of graduate borrowers on the basis of known information of their work/employment situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While higher education is regarded a high priority for economic development in many countries, public budgets often fall short to support desired levels of expansion in higher education. This leads to cost-sharing: students and their families are required to contribute more to the costs of higher education. This paper explores worldwide trends to cope with this issue based on the following questions: Is it fair to ask for larger contributions from students? What are the global patterns and forms of higher private shares in the costs of higher education? And what is the impact of cost-sharing on higher education access and equity? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Bologna Declaration attempts to reform the structure of the higher education system in forty-six European countries in a convergent way. By 2010, the European space for higher education should be completed. In the 2005-2006 academic year, the University of Murcia, Spain, started promoting initiatives to adapt individual modules and entire courses to the ECTS-compatible credit system. In this paper, we describe the development of an experiment under the ECTS credit scheme for the module English Language and Literature I, a course for first year students of French Studies. This experiment took place in the 2005-2006 academic year. This was the first experiment of its kind to be carried out in the Faculty of Arts under the Bologna principles. A teaching team made up of three experienced language teachers was put together for this purpose. The experiment would have a very strict follow-through: three different types of questionnaires were designed and given to the students, teacher and observers respectively in order to establish how the new teaching plan was working. The data obtained from the questionnaires revealed how successful and rewarding this experiment was for the students and teachers involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the results of a case study exploring perceptions of selected administrators and instructors at a Ukrainian state institution regarding the effectiveness of the Bologna Process at their institution. Data were collected from focus group interviews with five volunteer instructors involved in the implementation process. The findings indicate that the success of the new initiative was hindered by: centralized administration; insufficient training; scarce resources; participants' attachment to the old system; the perceived decreased quality of education; and loss of tradition. Recommendations are presented for other institutions experiencing a similar transition, keeping in mind their individual history, culture, location, financial resources, students and staff. [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]

The authors reflect on raising the visibility and embedding the quality of university rankings. The authors state that the initial interest in rankings was primarily from the perspective of analysts and researchers interested in gaining a comprehensive picture of indicators describing developments in higher education within individual nations. They further state that positive developments in the way rankings are constructed reduce the risk of bias and distortion.

While the ranking of higher education institutions (HEIs) has become more and more popular, there are increasing concerns about the quality of such ranking. In response to such legitimate expectations, in May 2006, the International Ranking Expert Group (IREG) developed and endorsed a guideline document - the Berlin Principles on Ranking of Higher Education Institutions (hereafter called the Berlin Principles), which consist of sixteen descriptive and prescriptive principles for ranking covering four aspects: the purpose and goal of ranking; the design and weighting of indicators; the collection and processing of data; and the presentation of ranking results. The purpose of this paper is to examine selected HEIs rankings according to the Berlin Principles as well as to propose concrete 'Fourteen Criteria' which, if followed, could enhance the quality of ranking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University rankings often include surveys that involve self-assessments, but little is known about the effects of these self-assessments on results. This paper tests for the existence of leniency effects and differential leniency effects, terms borrowed from the performance assessment literature, with a data set of ratings and rankings of Australian university disciplines by Australian academics. It finds support for the leniency effect - these academics rate and rank their own universities higher than others do. It finds less support, however, for the differential leniency effect - academics at the lower-rated universities do not seem to overrate their universities more than do academics from the higher-rated universities. [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]

'Classification' and 'ranking' are tools for comparing colleges and universities, albeit for different purposes. Although 'classification' focuses on identifying similarities rather than ordering institutions, it is closely intertwined with 'ranking', whether directly through its content, structure, and procedures, or indirectly through the ways it is used and understood by the wider community of users (e.g., researchers, policymakers, institutional leaders, etc.). For this reason, many of the standards, protocols, and best practices established for ranking systems apply as well to the case of classification. This paper examines the interplay between 'classification' and 'ranking' in some detail, and applies the Berlin Principles on Ranking of Higher Education Institutions which were adopted in May 2006 to the case of classification, focusing on the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. [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]

The use of appropriate indicators of public and private expenditures, from which statistically significant differences in funding policies can be identified, constitutes a solid foundation in which the assessment of the role of governments in promoting higher education can be grounded. Based on a carefully selected set of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development indicators, this paper explores the effects of education funding policies, along with research and development expenditures and tax levels, on the entry rate to higher education. The results from the statistical analysis of the data confirm the existence of two distinct approaches to higher education funding, the Scandinavian approach and Anglo-American approach, and help to define their characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the feasibility of higher education in relation to the demands of work life. The research is a comparative study involving four European countries: Sweden, Norway, Poland, and Germany. The research focuses on the view of freshmen, senior students and later graduates in Psychology and Political Science. Data were obtained by semi-structured interviews, which were subjected to qualitative analyses. The results indicate that higher education, with some exceptions, seems to produce a discipline-based identity among the students. These findings may be indicative of the value for employability of classical academic generic skills. [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]

The European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) has been developed and instituted to facilitate student mobility and academic recognition. This paper presents, discuss, and illustrates the pertinence and the limitation of the current statistical distribution of the ECTS grades, and we propose an alternative way to calculate the ECTS grades attribution in order to improve the ECTS system. [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]

The paper intends to contribute to the debate on ranking and league tables by adopting a critical approach to ranking methodologies from the point of view of a university benchmarking exercise. The absence of a strict benchmarking exercise in the ranking process has been, in the opinion of the author, one of the major problems encountered in the ranking systems and procedures at all levels, regional, national and international. The benchmarking exercise of ten Canadian research intensive universities at the departmental level should contribute to a re-examination of the typology of the world class ranking systems and suggest reconstruction paths on several major issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the methodical problems of the ranking of Russian universities by the independent ranking agency RatER1 . The main features of this ranking system are public estimations of the quality of the higher education in Russia. The results of the sociological study were processed by the original statistical methods. The procedure involves the opinions of the graduate students, teaching staff, employers and independent experts. The interviews show the current state of the education system in different regions of the Russian Federation. The paper also attempts to provide some recommendations for the development of the proposed ranking method. [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]

This paper discusses a special agreement for scientific professions that is expected to reform structures and working conditions of staff in higher education and research institutions in Germany. While differentiating their professional levels and careers, such an agreement should also deal with issues of income, promotion of women, brain drain - brain gain, and the Europeanisation of higher education in Germany, with the aim of increasing the attractiveness of the academic profession. [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 presents both the formal and methodological variety of ranking approaches, and asks whether a really objective ranking is possible. A ranking represents compiled information, provided according to a criterion or set of criteria. Its purpose is to highlight real or perceived differences in quality. Ranking methodology refers to its criteria, the features allowing for measurement. Methods of aggregation, which focus on weightings, and different means of classification, suggest that a single, objective ranking could not exist. [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]

The development of higher education and research constitutes a possible pathway to innovation and global competitiveness. Nation states, however, often seek the quickest adaptations, with minimum investment, ignoring essential political and structural changes. Turkey maintains its highly centralized system of higher education observing the national policies in the field. This paper addresses the international aspects of Turkish higher education, with special focus on student and academic mobility. Present day Turkish higher education system has been shaped by two dominant major events: the post-Soviet era and the country's integration into the European Union. [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]

Highlights the World Education Series symposium sponsored by the European University Association and a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization publication. Discussions pertaining to academic mobility, skilled migration, brain drain and "brain circulation" in labor; Preference of young highly skilled citizens to go to distant regional labor markets; Consideration of the collapse of "real socialism".

This paper presents some theoretical and methodological considerations associated with the geographical and professional mobility of science professionals, including the conduct by the authors of a large scale survey questionnaire in Poland in 1994. It does not directly relate to research conducted elsewhere in the region, but does reflect selected issues and problems encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the massification of higher education has come a heightened awareness of its responsibilities in regard to the whole of society and of the need for it to diversify its role. The research role, traditionally at the centre of the higher education effort, has been broadened so as to increase the emphasis on application. Constituency interest has also been diversified with increased societal emphasis on the outcome of higher education. An increasing diversity of partnerships is driving the further structural diversity of higher education. The overall importance of higher education to economic and social development worldwide is recognized everywhere. [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]

Introduces a series of articles on transnational education. Challenge to Latin American universities of electronically delivered transnational higher education; Philosophy of education for tolerance and inductive learning in Indonesia; Accreditation and quality control in higher education.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including the papers about the changing nature of academic work that were presented at the Berlin seminar in October 2005.

Introduces a series of articles focused on the impact of information and communication technologies on higher education. Paradigm shift in higher education from teaching to learning; Role of the teacher; Discussion of the issue on staff recruitment and development and the academic career structure.