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This is a 'position paper' elaborated by Working Group 2 (wg2) 'Quality and Recognition in Engineering Education' of the EU-supported Thematic Network 'Higher Engineering Education for Europe' (H3E), operative from January 1997 to July 1999. G. Heitmann was the Rapporteur, and G. Augusti the Chairman of wg2. Before approval at the H3E final Congress in Budapest (July 1999), the paper had been discussed at several wg2 and public meetings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper critiques key international teaching excellence and higher education outcomes frameworks for their lack of attention to epistemic equality. It subsequently argues that adequate 'datafication' of these frameworks, to demonstrate the extent to which universities offer teaching experiences which promote intellectual equivalence of all 'knowers' could advance present understandings of teaching excellence beyond benchmarked performativity. The paper theorises the philosophical basis of a changed 'datafication' process under selected national and supra-national frameworks for measuring teaching excellence at universities and shows, by statistically modelling selected national data, how a 'metric' evaluating universities on epistemic equality could work in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing optimum solutions to engineering problems typically relies on structured and complex thought processes that require evaluation, interpretation and opinion. Well-developed critical thinking (CT) skills are essential for dealing with the multi-dimensional nature of these problems. CT in an engineering context is well reported in teaching and learning academic literature. However, much of this is framed within theoretical and conceptual frameworks. Practical approaches of how CT skills are best promoted in engineering curricula are less common. A state-of-art review of practical interventions that target the development of CT in engineering students is presented. The review draws on 25 selected peer-reviewed journal articles in established engineering databases and focusses on teaching strategies where their effects in promoting CT skills in students are measured. Considerable variability in the reviewed literature was apparent. CT interventions and strategies are often reported, but metrics of their success in enhancing students' CT is often limited to qualitative, subjective inferences. To more robustly and holistically ensure that CT is clearly embedded in university curricula, there needs to be well-funded research programmes that allow different methods to be developed and trialled over extended periods in higher education engineering programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses research papers on globalization policies and the practices in European universities in regards to the development of language proficiency and intercultural competence and European citizenship awareness and student mobility programmes.

This review intends to reveal the current status of the instructional practices used to enhance Critical Thinking (CrT), Clinical Reasoning and Clinical Judgement (CJ) skills and dispositions in Health Sciences Higher Education programmes. After a three-step filtering process, 28 empirical studies on the effectiveness of the instructional strategies were analysed, following PICOS methodology. The analysis tackled the type of strategy, methods and outcomes, the research design, and assessment tools used. Diverse instructional designs, different in length, were used with variable success when compared with traditional lecturing. Several limitations were found, such as insufficient information regarding the intervention design and the alignment between learning outcomes and the assessment instruments. Due to the variability in sample sizes and research designs, it is difficult to conclude on the effectiveness of particular instructional strategies. Researchers ought to recognize the concerns herein discussed when designing, implementing and assessing future interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory paper sets out the central themes and main argument of papers within this special issue, which focuses on the contribution of higher education to the European Union’s agenda on lifelong learning. The focus on lifelong learning in Europe coincided with the resurgence of capitalism in post-socialist European states in eastern and central Europe and the rapid enlargement of the EU in the mid-1990s. This period of European expansion and growth was followed from 2007 onwards by an ongoing financial crisis, prompting a rolling back of the state in most European countries. The papers in this special issue examine the role played by higher education in facilitating social mobility for some groups, whilst also, somewhat paradoxically, facilitating the reproduction of existing economic inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of an affective assemblage approach in the study and practice of decolonizing "the University" in Europe. In particular, the analysis aims to better account for the affective dimensions of decolonizing "the University" in Europe, taking into consideration that neither "the University" in Europe assumes a monolithic institution nor "decolonization" constitutes a monolithic project. Although the paper is theoretical, it provides examples of the meaning and function of decolonizing "the University" in various settings within the European higher education context. The paper contributes to the critical problematics of ongoing efforts to decolonize universities in Europe by exploring the prospects of affective assemblages as a working concept that helps education theorists, researchers, and policymakers in European higher education come to terms with both the intellectual and affective demands of decolonization processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite existing empirical work that explores the multiple ways in which students develop a sense of belonging in higher education, there is a dearth of comparative research about the extent to which the concepts of community and belonging are central to what it means to be a student and how students in different national contexts (beyond Anglophone countries) construct community and belonging. Drawing on qualitative data from students from six European countries, we provide an account of conceptualisations of community and belonging. Specifically, this paper extends discussions around community and belonging in higher education through comparative inquiry. Notwithstanding the individualised and consumerist framing of students accompanied by market reforms in higher education across Europe, it shows that the notion of community and/or belonging features prominently in students' narratives. We also demonstrate how a sense of community and belonging is experienced on different levels. Crucially, the emphasis placed on community in students' sense of belonging varies by the country, pointing towards the continued influence of distinctive national traditions, structures and norms of higher education. Our analysis contributes to wider debates about the development of a European Higher Education Area and its impact on European homogenisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reforms in higher education have been passed in many European countries in the last decades, mostly trying to adapt national systems to new European and global challenges. This study examines some consequences of such major reforms in France and Spain. Specifically, these reforms introduced new agencies whose remit was inter alia to provide evaluation of research and to make such assessments pivotal for academic career progression. The paper investigates empirically whether, and to what extent, these new forms of authority have been capable of engendering the expected change to the system of academic career evaluation. The respective policy approaches and policy implementation in France and Spain reveal that these reforms triggered a reconfiguration of powers at various levels of academic life – affecting strategies for successful career development. Policy-making implications are relevant when these two countries are compared, suggesting that more radical policy approaches (coercive isomorphism, the French case) do not result in more change to academic evaluation practices than mimetic ones (the Spanish case). It is also important to note that coercive isomorphism encountered more frictions in its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Classifications are a basic tool for research, which allow summarizing the diversity of objects in a number of categories that fits the cognitive abilities of the human mind. Their relevance for higher education is emphasized by the differentiation of institutional profiles. Yet, unlike in the US, there is currently no classification of European Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). This paper fills this gap by developing a classification of European HEIs, which focuses on differences in activity profiles and subject scope. To this aim, it uses data from an enriched version of the European Tertiary Education Register on a sample of more than 2000 HEIs in a large number of European countries. The classification comprises six classes that occupy distinct positions in a configuration space defined by two dimensions, i.e. research vs. educational orientation and subject specialization. Ex-post analysis shows that classes are identifiable and can be attributed meaningful labels; the class of research universities comprises most European HEIs competing in international rankings, while a class of generalist HEIs with lower research orientation that cuts across the traditional distinction between universities and Universities of Applied Sciences can be distinguished. Furthermore, three classes of specialist HEIs can be identified. The classification provides a meaningful representation of European higher education that is more fine-grained than the distinction between university and non-university sectors while remaining parsimonious. We, finally show how national categories map to the classification, displaying its potential to compare differences in national institutional settings across Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The restructuring of European higher education (EHE) since the 1980s is a widely studied subject. However, this paper argues that previous studies have paid insufficient attention to the role of transnational policy-making groups in this complex and multilevel process. This argument is supported by focusing on how the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT) has participated in this restructuring since the mid-1980s. This paper's focus is especially in two ERT documents that were published in the 1980s. The main finding is that the current restructuring of EHE reflects interests of the ERT that represents the emerging transnational capitalist class (TCC) at European level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

What happens when neoliberalism as a structural and structuring force is taken up within institutions of higher education, and works upon academics in higher education individually? Employing a critical authoethnographic approach, this paper explores the way technologies of research performance management, specifically, work to produce academics (and academic managers) as particular kinds of neoliberal subject. The struggle to make oneself visible is seen to occur under the gaze of academic normativity – the norms of academic practice that include both locally negotiated practices and the performative demands of auditing and metrics that characterise the neoliberal university. The paper indicates how the dual process of being worked upon and working upon ourselves can produce personally harmful effects. The result is a process of systemic violence. This paper invites higher education workers and policy-makers to think higher education otherwise and to reconsider our personal and collective complicity in the processes shaping higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The objective of this paper is an efficiency analysis concerning higher education systems in European countries. Data have been extracted from OECD data-sets (Education at a Glance, several years), using a non-parametric technique - data envelopment analysis - to calculate efficiency scores. This paper represents the first attempt to conduct such an efficiency analysis at a system-level in a cross-country comparison, while focusing only on tertiary education. The role of the public sector has also been analysed, by looking at the percentage of public spending devoted to higher education, and the way the public funds are used (channelled through private subsidies or directly assigned to institutions). It has been found that there is a small core of efficient units (e.g. Switzerland, United Kingdom), and that the influence of the public sector seems to play a role in determining efficiency scores. Many elements, related to critical policies, have also been analysed adopting a semi-parametric approach, to better explain the performances and efficiency differentials. Some key-policy implications have been derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the initiation of the Erasmus programme in 1987, intra-European student exchanges in higher education are expected to promote a sense of European identity and citizenship among European exchange students. Panel studies grasping students' identification before and after participating in an exchange programme, however, remain remarkably scarce today. Moreover, the few existing studies report conflicting results. This paper adds to this debate, presenting the results of a survey conducted in 2009 and 2010 among non-exchange and exchange students from thirteen European countries, based on a pretest - posttest nonequivalent groups design (n = 400). My analyses did not find any statistically significant differences over time within and between the groups of exchange and non-exchange students, and neither between students with similar identification scores at wave 1. Finally, an analysis of the relationship between social network types and identification patterns did also not yield any significant results. Altogether, these findings suggest the impact of European exchange programmes on European citizenship and a sense of European identity is relatively limited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our paper adds to a growing literature of doctoral training by studying factors that drive time-to-completion based on a new and unique data set from an international European graduate school. While previous research focused on individual factors, we inspect the role of institutional factors and the organization of PhD programs for PhD completion. Based on a theoretical model, we elaborate hypotheses on three sets of institutional factors for thesis submission rates. We use event history analysis to analyze register data on 30 entry cohorts of PhD students. Our findings demonstrate the relevance of the factors related to the institutional environment like the density of supervision and support. Furthermore, our results underscore the importance of program structuration through clear deadlines and sufficient length of funding. We conclude with a discussion on effective measures that can be taken by program designers and grant authorities aiming to improve completion rates in PhD schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a growing body of scholarship on how students see themselves, and also on how they are conceptualised by other social actors. However, what has been less explored is how students believe they are seen by others, and how this impacts them. Drawing on focus groups with students across Europe – and particularly plasticine models students made to depict how they felt they were seen by relevant others – this paper will illustrate how the four most common ways in which students felt they were constructed were as hedonistic and lazy; useless and a burden; clever, hardworking, and successful; and a resource to be exploited. It will argue that such stereotypes had significant material impact on students' lives and how they experienced being a student. Finally, it will analyse how specific national contexts accounted for a range of variations in how students articulated these constructions. Supplemental data for this article is available online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01425692.2021.2007358. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the experiences gained in the pilot project on mutual recognition conducted by the quality assurance agencies in the Nordic countries and the future perspective for international quality assurance of national quality assurance agencies. The background of the project was the need, on the one hand, to advance internationalisation of quality assurance of higher education, and on the other hand, allow for the differences in the national approaches to quality assurance. The paper will focus on two issues: first, the strength and weaknesses of the method employed and of the use of the ENQA-membership provision as a basis for the evaluative procedure; and second, the pros and cons of using mutual recognition as international evaluative procedure compared with other approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the current national legislations, the quality assurance approaches and the activities of impact analysis of three quality assurance agencies from Romania, Spain and Germany are described from a strategic perspective. The analysis shows that the general methodologies (comprising, for example, self-evaluation reports, peer reviews, on-site visits, assessment reports, follow-up measures) and main subjects of quality assurance in higher education (such as study programmes and institutional structures and processes) are very similar in the sample cases. However, up to now, impact evaluation of quality assurance has not been implemented systematically in the sample agencies (as in many others). This is the more relevant since the European standards of quality assurance in higher education oblige quality assurance agencies to analyse their general findings and observe the effects of their activities. Against that background, it is argued that methodologically sound impact analyses of quality assurance interventions in higher education institutions should be seen as an integral part of the agencies’ own quality assurance because it would make their work more transparent and easier to improve systematically. The paper identifies some professionalisation needs required for impact evaluation competences: staff and peers who are qualified by methodological knowledge but also by ‘soft’ skills such as project and conflict management. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper examines the transfer of the Bologna Process (BP) outside Europe, focusing on its ‘external dimension’ and dynamics in global settings. It argues that the BP impacts on the internationalisation activities of universities, especially with regard to cross-border transparency of qualifications, transnational improvement of quality assurance and interregional mobility of students or scholars. However, the outcomes following the international transfer of the BP-model are unclear. As the BP-model makes its way to regional, national and local contexts, it meets existing policy discourses and practices, whose priorities may in fact differ from its postulates. The paper asserts that the non-linear conceptualisation of this model outside Europe is significantly affected by the socio-economic, political, historical and cultural context of each region. National visions, economic demands, political will, social objectives, administrative regulations, cultural traditions, ideological norms and philosophical ideals transform the BP-model as it is incorporated into each system of higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The paper examines the relationship between changes in European higher education and social science research on this theme and why it matters. Higher Education (HE) research is a new field significantly assisted by European funding, the Bologna process and the massification of HE. The field is populated by many emerging researchers but few established academics. The paper examines the sub-field’s characteristics including lack of theoretical/methodological consensus, co-production of the knowledge base and the differing micro and contextual backgrounds of emerging European HE researchers (drawing on a recent study). It considers three recent major European-funded HE research projects as examples of co-production, specifically looking at the kinds of knowledge produced and the strategies adopted to ensure that research outcomes permeate the policy process. It is suggested that the sub-field needs to develop a better infrastructure to support emerging researchers, but care needs to be taken not to impair their independence from European bureaucrats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roma, today perceived as the most numerous European minority, face marginalisation and exclusion. Education is considered to be one of the focal points for improvement, and numerous studies have analysed and reported on the educational situation of Roma. Several studies have argued that Romani cultural values are not compatible with institutional schooling and that Romani families perceive schools as an alien institution. Other studies have drawn upon cultural–ecological theory (CE theory), developed by Ogbu and colleagues, and argue that the Romani cultural frame of reference is oppositional to academic success and thus suggest that successful Romani students distance themselves from Romani culture. The paper discusses the application of CE theory in the context of the academic discourse about the educational achievement of Romani students. Drawing on interviews with Spanish Romani university students, the paper argues that Romani students themselves challenge the assumption that educational success leads to cultural alienation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The aim of the paper is to investigate the consequences of the expansion of higher education on two goals of the education system, namely promoting equity of educational opportunities and providing credentials that facilitate the matching of labour supply and demand. The first goal is typically studied by research on inequality of educational opportunity; the second by research on returns to education and credential inflation. The key idea of the paper is that educational expansion can have different and possibly opposite effects on the two goals. (a) If, with educational expansion, equality of educational opportunities increases, while the occupational value of the titles decreases, one has a trade-off scenario. For example, an increase in equality of educational opportunities is matched by a decline in the value of higher education in the labour market. (b) If equality of opportunities does not increase, despite the expansion of higher education, and the returns of higher education degrees decline, one has then a worst-off scenario. (c) Finally, if with educational expansion equality of opportunities increases and there is no credential inflation, one has a best-off scenario. In this paper, we systematically investigate these alternative scenarios. We perform the same empirical analysis on two distinct data sets in order to test the robustness of our findings. We use micro data from EU-SILC 2005 and from the five merged waves of the European Social Survey (2002–2010), covering 23 countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Spolsky's definition of language policy, this introductory paper offers a brief reflection on the three main lines of research that are represented in this special issue regarding the relationship between internationalisation and language policies in higher education: management and planning, practices, and beliefs. In the first part, we comment on Englishisation and the establishment of multilingual policies as responses to the globalisation of higher education. The attitudes deriving from the interaction between English and local languages as a consequence of internationalisation are presented in the second part. Finally, the third part points at the interest of studying how the members of the academic community accomplish the management of language diversity in specific settings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses the first women to hold teaching and research positions in Spanish universities during the first third of the twentieth century. It traces the paths of the pioneers who used their intellectual capacity to broaden the scope for their working lives. Legal changes introduced in 1910 made it possible for women with a university degree to work as professors in the university or in secondary schools, and in libraries, museums or archives. The writer Emilia Pardo Bazán, was the first woman to be appointed as a lecturer for her literary merits. She taught on a PhD course at the University of Madrid, and was followed by other female lecturers, at the Faculties of Philosophy and Letters, Science, Pharmacy and Law; in this order. The paper recalls these first female lecturers, the posts they occupied, the situations they encountered, and their overall trajectories. All began to work in the midst of a strong androcentric culture. Very few of those who started as lecturers before 1936 – the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War – continued later at university on a permanent basis. The majority chose other types of employment which offered greater stability in less time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents and discusses an arts-based project, carried out by the first-year students in the classroom, at the Department of Social Work, in Athens, Greece. The project was designed for raising ethical awareness and knowledge of the 2015 Europe's refugee crisis among social work students. The purpose of this project was three-fold: (1) to help students to better understand the refugee crisis as an emerging problem in Europe and in the rest of the world; (2) to help students raise their ethical awareness about the plight of refugees and to learn how to avoid discrimination and racism and (3) to improve student's abilities to work effectively with refugee populations. The project used art-based activities (drawing, writing, photos, etc.) as a powerful pedagogical tool for teaching students and supporting their learning in the classroom. As the literature has shown, the use of arts in social work education helps student to learn through an artistic and creative way and provides a secure base, from which they can explore real-life situations and try to give meaning to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various studies show that higher education institutions contribute to regional economic development by R&D, creation of human capital, knowledge and technology transfer, and by creation of a favourable milieu. It is brought out that the basic procedure is to sum expenditures of the college community (students, faculty, staff and visitors) created by the presence of the institution and apply multipliers to account for the interdependency of economic activity in a local economy, resulting in an estimated ‘local economic impact'. The aim of the paper is to investigate the relationship between students in tertiary education and economic growth in NUTS 2 level in Europe from 1998 to 2008 by looking whether the share of tertiary students (measuring human capital) is correlated with the share of knowledge-intensive employment (KIE) in different regions. The increase in KIE is related to increasing levels of GDP per capita and R&D expenditures. Taking into account regional-level fixed effects, the share of tertiary students is not statistically significant. We found out that the increase in KIE is related to increasing levels of GDP per capita and R&D expenditures. The share of students five periods ago has a positive relation with the KIE: as we assumed, it takes time for the human capital to contribute to the economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper draws from interviews with mobile science researchers to explore experiences of mobility and fixed-term employment in the EU. The paper takes a socio-legal approach, aiming to understand the contribution of EU law and policy to the resource framework within which career decisions are made. The high incidence of fixed-term employment and the expectation of geographic mobility in science labour markets has made science researchers very ‘flexible’ employees and, arguably, model EU citizens. But how are these factors managed in the context of every-day life? Developing sound empirical evidence of how individuals experience mobility and fixed-term employment could lead to more sensitive and effective policy making. This is particularly pertinent as human resource issues in science research have become central to achieving the EU's overarching strategies for growth and jobs (the Lisbon Strategy and Europe 2020). A range of policies designed to increase the mobility of researchers and to manage the use of fixed-term contracts have been put in place. This paper draws on empirical evidence to inform our understandings of these developing areas of law and policy in the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Despite sustained efforts to promote engineering careers to young women, it remains the most male-dominated academic discipline in Europe. This paper will provide an overview of UK data and research on women in engineering higher education, within the context of Europe. Comparisons between data from European countries representing various regions of Europe will highlight key differences and similarities between these nations in terms of women in engineering. Also, drawing on qualitative research the paper will explore UK students’ experiences of gender, with a particular focus on the decision to study engineering and their experiences in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International student mobility amongst and between countries has become increasingly common and forms a central feature of the global higher education system. This paper examines the key learning experiences relating to the student mobility component of the Canadian-European Initiative for Health Promotion Advanced Learning (CEIHPAL) project. CEIHPAL was a unique and innovative project that fostered advanced intercontinental education and learning in health promotion from 2005–2008. With co-funding from the European Commission and the Canadian Government, the project facilitated institutional, student and faculty cooperation, by developing a high level of international communication. In particular, this paper focuses on the student mobility component and experiences of the CEIHPAL programme, a central part of the project activities. Feedback from both Canadian and European students themselves is used to document their participation in the programme, including the benefits derived from taking part as well as the problems and difficulties they encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on the EU discourse on Higher Education and analyses this discourse within the context of globalisation. Importance is attached to the issues of lifelong learning, competitiveness, diversification, entrepreneurship, access, knowledge society, modernisation, quality assurance, innovation and creativity, governance and business-HE partnerships. The paper also provides a critical analysis of this discourse focusing on certain issues involved in policy borrowing and transfer, the corporatisation of HE, international competition with the USA and Asia and the implications of all these aspects of the dominant EU HE policy discourse for HE and the public sphere. The paper seeks to tease out the tension that exists in the discourse between neo-liberal tenets and the idea of a Social Europe. References throughout the paper will be made to the situation concerning HE in a variety of contexts in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the relationships between higher education and the labour market in Serbia. In order to understand this relationship better, this paper will first provide a brief history of the country and the history of its higher education structures. The paper will then discuss higher education from post Second World War until the fall of communism, highlighting how tertiary education met the goal of preparing young people for life in a socialist economy. The second part of the paper will discuss higher education after the fall of communism, and will show how higher education is not inadequately preparing Serbian graduates for the needs not only of the free market, but the new global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Funding, equity, and efficiency of higher education are three dimensions of higher education that have been of increasing interest to scholars and policy-makers during the past two decades in Europe and elsewhere. Analysing these phenomena and the relations between them is the main topic of this paper, considering the funding system as the basic issue. The paper presents each of three phenomena using a joint approach (definition of the phenomenon, its measurement, prevailing global world trends) and endeavours to explore the possibilities of measuring their mutual relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a brief outline of the European Consortium for Accreditation in Higher Education project and future intentions. The paper notes that significant progress in the first two milestones in its road map has been achieved: mutual understanding of accreditation organizations and mutual recognition of accreditation procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Bologna Process", started in 1998/99 with the Sorbonne and Bologna Declarations and now involving 40 countries, aims at establishing by 2010 the "European Higher Education Area", based on "a system of easily readable and comparable degrees". The actual implementation of this process and its relevance for the European labour market requires a convergence also of the accreditation procedures of educational programmes, that are still very different from a European country to the other. After defining the term "accreditation" in the context of the formation of engineers, this paper will discuss the present situation of accreditation of engineering educational programmes in Europe, and present some examples. The contribution of the Thematic Network E4 will be illustrated, and the most recent developments, aiming at a European-wide accreditation system, will be introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on experiences with international learning and teaching in a European (ERASMUS) programme on geography and gender during the period 1990–1998. This programme forms an example of collaborative work in which the author and colleagues experimented with an array of models to bring geography students and teachers of diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds together. International learning and teaching is a confrontation with diversity. Diversity in language, in the mastery of English and the resulting hierarchies, in learning and teaching cultures and in defining geography form both challenges and opportunities to profit. In this paper the author will expound on the different strategies to deal with linguistic and cultural differences and to break down hierarchies. Furthermore the opportunities to "use" the differences as learning and teaching contexts will be discussed. Geography is a discipline concerning diversity. Direct contact between persons with different cultural backgrounds can form an efficient, effective and stimulating method to learn about differences in geographies and in teaching methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the development of economic higher education in Czechoslovakia from 1945 to 1953, ie before the emergence of new economic universities with the same name: University of Economics (Vysoká škola ekonomická) in Prague and Bratislava. Its aim is to determine possible similarities and differences in economic education between the Czech lands and Slovakia. Although the paper embraces the issue comprehensively, the main focus is on the comparison of two of the most important colleges, the Commercial College in Prague and Slovak College of Commerce in Bratislava. It concludes and claims that despite the Czechoslovak uniform policy in tertiary education, there were undoubtedly some national differences. Essentially, they stemmed from different networks and the number of economic schools in the Czech lands and Slovakia and from different prior traditions. Overall, Slovaks endeavoured to continue with the preceding development more than Czechs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Starting from the main objective of external quality assurance (EQA) procedures to assure and improve the quality of higher education institutions and its provisions, the paper examines expected impacts of EQA procedures on institutions from the perspectives of three European quality assurance agencies. First, the paper examines the expected impacts of different standard parts of a typical peer review procedure on higher education institutions and assesses when a procedure is most likely to have an effect on the institution. The second part presents the current practices of the three EQA agencies, AQU Catalunya (Spain), Evaluationsagentur Baden-Württemberg (evalag) (Germany) and the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (Finland) on assessing the impact of their EQA procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper presents perspectives and controversies surrounding the use of milestones to assess competency in outcomes-based medical education. Global perspectives (Canada, Europe, and the United States) and developments supporting their rationales are discussed. In Canada, there is a significant movement away from conceptualizing competency based on time, and a move toward demonstration of specific competencies. The success of this movement may require complex (rather than reductionist) milestones that reflect students' progression through complexity and context and a method to narrate their journey. European countries (United Kingdom, France, and Germany) have stressed the complexity associated with time and milestones for medical students to truly achieve competence. To meet the changing demands of medicine, they view time as actually providing students with knowledge and exposure to achieve various milestones. In the United States, milestones are based on sampling throughout professional development to initiate lifelong learning. However, the use of milestones may not imply overall competence (reductionism). Milestones must be developed alongside outcomes-based curriculum with use of faculty and competency committees. The perspectives outlined in this paper underscore emerging challenges for implementing outcomes-based medical education and call for new conceptualizations of competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The recognition of medical professionalism as a complex social construct makes context, geographical location and culture important considerations in any discussion of professional behaviour. Medical students, medical educators and practitioners are now much more on the move globally, exposing them to cultural and social attitudes, values and beliefs that may differ from their own traditional perceptions of professionalism. Aims and Methods: This paper uses the model of the intercultural development continuum and the concept of 'cultural fit' to discuss what might transpire when a student, teacher or doctor is faced with a new cultural environment. Using our own experiences as medical educators working abroad and supported by evidence in the literature, we have developed four anecdotal scenarios to highlight some of the challenges that different cultural contexts bring to our current (Western) understanding of professionalism. Results and Conclusions: The scenarios highlight some of the potentially different regional and/or cultural perspectives and nuances of professional behaviours, attitudes or values that many of us either take for granted or find difficult, depending on our training and socio-cultural upbringing. With this paper, we hope to start a long overdue conversation about global professionalism amongst medical educators, identify potential areas for research and highlight a need for medical schools to embrace a 'global' approach to how professionalism is embedded in their curricula. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Student-centred learning has gradually come to the foreground of the Bologna Process. In parallel, learning outcomes have been advocated as key degree descriptors, illustrative of student-centred approaches. This paper examines learning outcomes in their diverse understandings and enactment in three European countries – England, Portugal and Denmark – further to Bologna policy developments. Resorting to a conceptualisation of the intersection between global and local policy fields and to policy theories highlighting the interpretative nature of policy processes, the implementation of learning outcomes is analysed from the perspective of different policy fields (European, national and institutional). Variation in understandings and usage has been observed especially between the institutional fields in the three national contexts, as well as between academic practice and student experience. A discrepancy has also emerged between the policy discourse which highlights students' centrality in a learning-outcomes-based approach and the limited relevance of learning outcomes to students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The significant increase of entrepreneurship education (EE) is a trend in Europe. Entrepreneurship education is supposed to promote general and specific entrepreneurial abilities and improve academic performance. This paper evaluates whether EE influences academic performance, measured by Grade Point Average. The main indicator used for EE is the Company Program (CP), a program taught in upper-secondary school in 40 European countries. The data derive from surveys conducted in Norway in 2008 (1,400 pupils) and 2011 (1,100 post-graduates). Results from econometric analyses show that there is no difference in the GPA between participants in CP and other forms of EE and non-participants. This indicates that EE is neither good, nor bad as a teaching method for improvement of academic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the wake of the Bologna process, many European universities are undergoing comprehensive educational reform. Our attention in this paper is focused on how a medical university came to terms with the challenges presented therein. We wished to explore how educators identify, understand and deal with opportunities for change at a medical university. To accomplish this, we devised meetings between the respondents and colleagues at the university and examined the reported results of these meetings. Our results suggest that there may be substantial educational crosstalk taking place, whereby people are experiencing a communicative mismatch in terms of negotiating the meaning of change initiatives. This can act as a hindrance for implementation of educational reforms. We acknowledge that educational developers and people in leadership need to consider different ways of creating opportunities for peer review and dialogue around educational issues in order to fully embrace opportunities for change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Responding to the structural and discursive changes that have (re)shaped the area of higher education in Europe over the last decades, the paper presents an analysis of how and with what educational consequences the purpose and value of higher education governance has shifted towards market-relevance and impact as the primary legitimizing factors in institutional quality assessments. The style will be asyndetic: rather than focus on single policy-documents, I purport to avail the justifications of the recent decades' higher education policy through highlighting the use of specific words and certain arguments across a range of documents from the most prominent transnational actors and educational policy-makers in the field. Applying Theodor Adorno's theory of Halbbildung (half-education), I go on to present the notion of Halbbildung as a conceptual lens for unveiling some of the teleological issues at stake in the current proposed purposes and modes of higher education governance. Paraphrasing Adorno's call for commitment to educational authorities, I question the possibility of establishing commitment amongst students to something beyond the logics of applicable competence-building and productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the educational project of Belgium’s acclaimed socialist and modernist architect Renaat Braem (1910–2001). While Braem is foremost remembered as a militant opinion maker, his work as an educator and an artist has received little scrutiny. When Braem was appointed interim director at the Antwerp National Higher Institute for Architecture and Urban Planning (NHIBS) in 1962, his first action point was not to change the curriculum. He instead reconstructed the physical configuration of the school. With an eye-catching staircase painting, he accentuated an important passage in the school building: the one from the administrative offices and library to the architectural studios. Claiming a central position in the institute, the staircase functioned as a stage and an auditorium on which an ideological and educational programme was enacted in an implicit, yet very physical manner. This article not only looks atwhatthe painting represents, but also athowit represents by applying Randolph Starn’s three categories of seeing: the glance, the measured view, and the scan. This threefold reading of the painting enables us to unpack (a) Braem’s educational project based on a socialist ideology and (b) the institutional climate of the 1960s. In the institutional debates, hovering between tradition and the rationalisation of education, Braem’s staircase painting proposed a third way. It revised the existing doctrines by reconciling the rational approach with a stronger focus on the human in the built environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the value of a research-based student inventory from the quality assurance point of view in two culturally different European higher education institutions for veterinary education. Perceived heavy workload is a wellknown problem in veterinary studies and is a challenge to the quality of learning. First- and third-year students in both institutions responded to an inventory consisting of items regarding their approaches to learning, self-efficacy, study workload and the teaching-learning environment. There were differences in students' approaches to learning and perceived workload between the two institutions. In both contexts, the strongest predictor of the workload turned out to be the surface approach to learning. Self-efficacy showed a positive correlation with the deep approach to learning and organised studying. The strengths of the teaching-learning environment varied between the institutions. Moreover, the present study discusses how the gained information could be used in improving the teaching-learning environment and students' learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social class is a major determining factor of people's life chances. Much sociology-based research shows that socio-economic position is still one of the best predictors of who will achieve success, prosperity and social status and, in particular, who will enjoy the highest levels of educational outcomes. Survey data and qualitative studies alike confirm that many people continue to see class as a feature of everyday life, in ways that are connected with their understanding of learning and its possibilities. However, despite its continued significance in people's lives, class has virtually disappeared from modern adult learning research. This paper concludes that in an era when governments across Europe are setting about the dismantling of social support and collective protection produced by social democracy and trade unionism, class analysis presents an important means of understanding change and changing understanding. The existence of persistent social class inequalities in access is a repeated theme of research into higher education (HE) participation. Moreover, socioeconomic inequalities persist in spite of the considerable enlargement of higher education systems that has taken place in many countries since the 1950s (Field, 2003; Alon, 2009; Boliver, 2011; Reay 2012). Moreover, survey data and qualitative accounts confirm that many people continue to see class as an everyday aspect of their lives, in ways that are connected with their understanding of learning and its possibilities. This paper looks at the ways in which experiences and constraints of social class were experienced and 'storied' by a group of non-traditional students in higher education. It starts out with reflections on the current status -- or rather absence -- of class as a key category of critical analysis in adult learning. We then examine briefly the question of class in the context of mass higher education. While much has changed in the social composition of the undergraduate population as a consequence of expansion, taken as a whole there seems to have been relatively little change in undergraduates' socio-economic status. While the overall number of students from broadly working class backgrounds has grown, their relative share of the undergraduate population has not greatly altered (Boliver, 2011). In England, it seems that the proportion of students from poorer families declined during the expansion period of the mid- to late-1990s and recovered to its original position during the early years of the current century (Chowdry et al., 2013). In Scotland, Ianelli concludes that similar fluctuations mean that 'overall the relation between social class of origin and educational attainment has not significantly changed over time' (Ianelli, 2011: 257). What does this mean for the experiences of students from working class backgrounds? We explore this question through a discussion of RANLHE interviews in Scottish higher education. We interviewed a sample of 83 students from three HEIs -- one a highly selective institution, one a former central institution (roughly akin to a polytechnic) and one with a mixed mission emphasising both teaching and research. We recruited students through direct email contacts (both targeted and general), appeals in newsletters, intermediaries such as course leaders, and -- once we had started -- by snowballing; some also approached us, having heard about the project by word of mouth. All interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, with hesitations and repetitions included. We read and re-read the transcripts, which included responses to a standard question on class. Posed late on in the first or early in the second interview, the interviewer asked 'How you would describe your background in terms of class?' and the student's reply was then followed up. The interviewer did not provide a definition of class, though the follow-up discussion could explore definitional issues if the interviewee raised them (hardly anyone did, at least not explicitly). Responses during this initial discussion of class gave us a baseline for a preliminary thematic analysis which, in turn, provided a springboard for undertaking an iterative thematic and contextual examination of the ways in which different people spoke about class or -- in some cases -- deflected a discussion of class. We distinguished between how people spoke about membership of a particular class and how they talked about class as a phenomenon. The students in our sample spoke about class in relation to their own educational disadvantage and/or experiences/perceptions of HE. Often they discussed class obliquely, or in ways that can be understood through socio-cultural perspectives. One arts student, for example, talked of relating the circumstances of Tracey Emin's childhood (material disadvantage, abuse) to the context in which she grew up and being completely alienated during a class discussion by what she perceived as classist and misogynistic contempt shown towards Emin by fellow students. In addition, class affected student experiences in more material ways, both for mature students who had worked themselves and for young students who came from working-class families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the academic year 2010–2011, Spain finished the process of introducing the regulatory changes derived from the Bologna Declaration and the new European Space for Higher Education (ESHE). These changes have implied the updating of university degrees’ structure as well as the inclusion of the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). This paper describes the process of adaptation of two basic first-semester core subjects of computer engineering to one of the basic aspects of the ESHE, the adoption of the ECTS. The process described in the paper was developed in the framework of the pilot plan undertaken by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona between 2005 and 2010. The proposed course design implies a better coordination and integration of the contents of two different subjects that students follow simultaneously, and it is based on the combination of project-based learning and cooperative learning. After the experience finished, an extended quantitative and qualitative analysis of the academic results over the five-year period has shown an improvement in the students’ learning outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Young people who have spent all or part of their childhoods in public care are at particular risk of social exclusion as adults and yet the pathway out of exclusion identified by policy-makers at both European and national levels, namely, education, is very difficult to access. Using data from a five-country study of the post-compulsory educational pathways of young people in public care, this paper examines the rates of participation of young people in further and higher education and considers what might account for the gap, looking at two factors: the impact of background social class on educational support and the educational intentions and practices of the care system. The paper concludes by considering the policy context and some possible tensions between policy aims and young people’s contexts and experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, employability is regarded as an aspect of quality of higher education, or more precisely, the benefit and usefulness of the study programme for career and work tasks. The analyses are based on a comparative survey among graduates in 13 countries, five to six years after graduation. The information about employability, or the usefulness of the study programme related to work is based on the graduates' own perceptions. The extent to which employability is related to characteristics of the study programme is investigated, in addition to country differences and to what extent the differences are affected by the graduates' labour market experiences. The analyses show that study programme characteristics have great impact on the value of the programme in the world of work. These characteristics also have an impact on the initial country differences with regard to employability. The quality indicators have minor influence on the chance of obtaining a job but significant effect on doing the job. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The project of the Bologna process to create a 'European Higher Education Area' (EHEA) has established the necessary conditions for the emergence of a new sociopolitical space of higher education in Europe. This space has become a cooperation/competition area that changes the European and national balance of power: the relations the countries maintain both between them and with the European Commission are situated in a cooperation/competition game. The European Commission plays a central role in this area, alongside actor organisations who see themselves forced to discuss issues that had previously divided them and to modify their relationships at a national level. This article can be seen as a contribution to the analysis of international strategy in a global knowledge economy, especially to the two-level game theory of Putnam for which international agreements are negotiated with success only if they lead to national advantages. In particular, it studies the role of the European Commission in this sociopolitical area and the mechanism by which it has taken the piloting of the Bologna process, which was launched in a field of national competency, to make it an instrument for the realisation of the Lisbon strategy aimed at making the European Union the most competitive economy in the world. This paper is based on data sources provided by the analysis of papers produced by the actors of the process and on 50 interviews of these actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]