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Since the mid 1990s of last Century, university rankings have become very popular in China. Six institutions have published such rankings; some of them have also detailed their ranking methodologies. This paper features a general introduction to university ranking in China, and to the methodologies of each ranking discussed. The paper also addresses the characteristics inherent to Chinese university rankings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is to elucidate the different meaning of university autonomy historically and comparatively. The paper examines the shift in the definition of the university autonomy in England and Japan. It argues that the definition of university autonomy in England and Japan differed traditionally. In England, university autonomy functioned as the universities' ideology to protect the universities from outside of pressure. In Japan, university autonomy was understood in relation to the Ministerial coordination. The market-oriented policies in those countries have changed the meaning of university autonomy, bringing about “contractual autonomy” in England and institutional autonomy in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective in this paper is to provide an overview of the key themes that can be identified by looking across the contributions to this special issue, and highlight a number of the important observations that emerged during the seminar in which these papers were originally presented. The seminar, which took place in Berlin in October of 2005, was organized by UNESCO-CEPES in collaboration with the Observatory of the Magna Charta Universitatum and the German Commission for UNESCO. [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]

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]

In 2004 the Slovak Academic Ranking and Rating Agency (ARRA) was established as an independent body with the main goal of comparing the performance and quality of Slovak higher education institutions (HEIs) and providing the general public, the academic sector, and the government with an independent view of the quality of the country's HEIs. The first two rankings were published in 2005 and 2006 and the latest one was published at the end of 2007. The twenty public universities and their ninety-nine faculties were ranked in clusters according to the Frascati Manual. This paper describes the methodology and indicators used in this ranking exercise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a case study of the University of Maribor. We emphasize that ranking of heterogeneous young universities without established reputations must be conducted very carefully. Usually, such universities do not appear in lists of the top universities in the world. This should not be understood as a problem, but as an opportunity for development: global university rankings can strongly contribute to university development. Our results show that more successful institutions can have a stimulating effect on the less successful ones. A healthy competition between institutions emerges, representing an important driving force in assuring further development and achieving higher status. The results present an example of good practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to study the use and educational application of technical resources by students of Social Education (SE) in Spain. The reasons for this research were based on the importance of gaining a deep command of the various skills associated with information and communication technologies in the acquisition of generic competencies. The research we conducted was a descriptive and interpretative study designed from a quantitative-qualitative perspective. The questionnaire was selected as the main data collection tool. Among its most important findings, the research has revealed that SE students are not frequent users of most new technologies, and that they usually copy the behaviours of their teachers in their educational application of technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Education for All initiative is one of the best known and most widely referenced policies in the development field. This paper investigates the extent to which the most recent EFA conference in Dakar (2000) addresses the complex issue of women and higher education. Two questions guide this inquiry. First, what are the basic concepts and definitions used in a feminist policy analysis? Second, to what extent, and in what ways is the topic of higher education and women referenced in the document (Dakar Framework for Action, 2000).2 Employing content analysis, this paper reveals the EFA policy's minimal attention to tertiary education for women throughout the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transitional process of the FYR of Macedonia since independence in 1991 has been marked by a severe economic crisis, which has led to a significant increase in the levels of unemployment (31.9 percent in 2002) and poverty (22.7 percent in 2001). The turbulent situation in the Balkan region (war in the countries of the Former Yugoslavia) and finally the internal conflict in 2001 have created a strong tendency for migration. The present study is focused primarily on providing evidence for the migration and outflow of skilled labour. It looks in more depth at the reasons for brain drain, at the current policies of the country to tackle it, and gives some practical recommendations for policy-makers in the area of brain drain. The paper explores the links between unemployment of the highly educated in the FYR of Macedonia and brain drain. Further, the paper discusses the situation within higher education: why has the number of domestic students risen so drastically in recent years and why have more and more students opted to study abroad? What damage will this tendency cause in the short and medium term? Are there some returns from high skilled emigration that offset or even improve source country development prospects? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student loans schemes have developed rapidly alongside China's move towards mass higher education. In this paper, the main features of the existing four types of student loan schemes are compared. In particular, the providers of principal loan, borrower eligibility, loan size, loan origination, interest subsidy, risk-sharing, repayment conditions and loan collection are examined. The authors of this article will then predict the problems and challenges confronting the reform of the student loans system in China and suggest that the feasible option for the future is to allow for the co-existence and competition of a variety of student loans schemes and to explore more mature student loans schemes through institutional innovations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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.

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]

In lieu of the usual ‘From the Editors’ piece, Jan Sadlak, Director of UNESCO-CEPES, and Henryk Ratajczak, Vice-President of the European Academy of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EAASH), describe below the scope and highlights of the International Conference on Ethical and Moral Dimensions for Higher Education and Science in Europe, held in Bucharest on 2–5 September 2004. The articles in this issue, some of which are drawn from Conference presentations, are also introduced here. The Conference was organized by the above two organizations, in collaboration with the United Nations University (UNU) in Tokyo and the Division of Basic and Engineering Sciences of UNESCO in Paris. It took place under the joint high patronage of Mr. Jacques Chirac, President of the French Republic, and Mr. Ion Iliescu, President of Romania, and received further distinction in the form of special messages from Pope John Paul II, HRH Prince El Hassan bin Talal, and Mr. Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO. All Conference documents can be accessed on the UNESCO-CEPES website, . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Alex Usher and Massimo Savino on university ranking and another by Heiko Spitzeck and Claude Patrick Siegenthaler on education for sustainable development.