Elephants in the room, and all that: more ‘reactions’ to the Bologna Process Leuven Communiqué

Editor’s Note: As those of you following GlobalHigherEd well know, the big news story of April on the higher education calender was the release of the Leuven Communiqué following the the 6th Bologna  Ministerial Conference held in Leuven/Louvain-la-Neuve,  28-29th April, 2009.
46 Bologna countries gathered together to review progress toward realizing the objectives of the [...]

Read Full Post »

Bologna: beyond 2010 and over the Ocean – but where to? On new Bologna reports and C. Adelman’s last essay

Editor’s note: this guest entry is by Pavel Zgaga, Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Pavel began his academic career at the University of Ljubljana in 1978. In 1990-92 and 2001-2004 he was a member of the University Senate; in 2001-2004 he was Dean of the Faculty of Education. He is Director of the [...]

Read Full Post »

Anne Corbett on the “Six to be reckoned with at the Bologna conference” in Leuven this week

Catch Anne Corbett’s interesting reflections published in the Guardian on this week’s big European higher education event in Leuven, Belgium: the 6th Bologna Ministerial Conference, 28-29th April, 2009.  Let’s see what events unfold once the Conference Communique is put into action.

Anne Corbett is Visiting Fellow, European Institute, London School of Economics, and former journalist. Anne  [...]

Read Full Post »

‘Tuning USA’: reforming higher education in the US, Europe style

Many of us are likely to be familiar with the film An American in Paris (1951), at least by name. Somehow the romantic encounters of an ex-GI turned struggling American painter, with an heiress  in one of Europe’s most famous cities — Paris, seems like the way things should be.
So when the US-based Lumina [...]

Read Full Post »

Finland’s Aalto University (est. 2010): institutionalizing interdisciplinary thinking for innovation in the knowledge economy

Yesterday’s Financial Times included an informative story (‘Merger with innovation at its heart‘) on the development process of Aalto University in Finland.  Aalto University is being created through the merger of three existing institutions – the Helsinki School of Economics, the University of Art and Design Helsinki and the Helsinki University of Technology – and [...]

Read Full Post »

CRELL: critiquing global university rankings and their methodologies

This guest entry has been kindly prepared for us by Beatrice d’Hombres and Michaela Saisana of the EU-funded Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning (CRELL) and Joint Research Centre. This entry is part of a series on the processes and politics of global university rankings (see here,  here, here and here).
Since 2006, Beatrice d’Hombres has [...]

Read Full Post »

Mapping out Europe’s progress towards a knowledge-based economy

The European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research has just published an informative and data-laden report titled Science, Technology and Competitiveness Key Figures Report 2008/2009. As the press release notes, the main findings are:
1. Research is a key competitive asset in a globalised world.
Major S&T players have emerged, notably in Asia. Knowledge is more and more evenly [...]

Read Full Post »

US-European academic collaboration via transatlantic joint and dual degree programs

Back in May 2008, we profiled a call for input into a survey by the US-based Institute of International Education (IIE) and the Germany-based Freie Universität Berlin regarding joint and dual/double degrees (see ‘Special survey on transatlantic joint and dual/double degree programs’). We’re interested in this phenomenon as it helps to suture together and de-nationalize, albeit [...]

Read Full Post »

Ranking – in a different (CHE) way?

GlobalHigherEd has been profiling a series of entries on university rankings as an emerging industry and technology of governance. This entry has been kindly prepared for us by Uwe Brandenburg. Since 2006 Uwe has been project manager at the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHE) and CHE Consult, a think tank and consultancy focusing [...]

Read Full Post »

European ambitions: towards a ‘multi-dimensional global university ranking’

Further to our recent entries on European reactions and activities in relationship to global rankings schemes:

International university rankings, classifications & mappings – a view from the European University Association
The global obsession with rankings: how should Ireland respond?
Multi-scalar governance technologies vs recurring revenue: the dual logics of the rankings phenomenon
‘University Systems Ranking (USR)’: an alternative ranking [...]

Read Full Post »

International university rankings, classifications & mappings – a view from the European University Association

Source: European University Association Newsletter, No. 20, 5 December 2008.
Note: also see ‘Multi-scalar governance technologies vs recurring revenue: the dual logics of the rankings phenomenon‘

Read Full Post »

Multi-scalar governance technologies vs recurring revenue: the dual logics of the rankings phenomenon

Our most recent entry (‘University Systems Ranking (USR)’: an alternative ranking framework from EU think-tank‘) is getting heavy traffic these days, a sign that the rankings phenomenon just won’t go away.  Indeed there is every sign that debates about rankings will be heating up over the next 1-2 year in particular, courtesy of the desire [...]

Read Full Post »