Blogs
Here Nuffic staff and external experts provide background information on current events and analyse ongoing developments in international higher education.
Can benchmarks on education output advise on international cooperation strategies?
Many countries and institutions seek cooperation with growth markets, such as the BRICs. A look at ranks on education output shows that these countries do not always score high. In some circles, this has raised a question: shouldn’t we focus more on co-operation with countries that traditionally score high on benchmarks, such as Finland and South Korea?
The Learning Curve: On tertiary education and internationalisation
As part of a project to create a better understanding of what leads to successful educational outcomes, Pearsons in collaboration with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) published a report last week that received global press coverage. The report 'The Learning Curve. Lessons in country performance in education' formulates lessons and insights for policymakers to achieve better results on national education outcomes.
JDAZ - A reference guide on joint degrees
Joint degrees are high on the internationalisation agenda in the European Higher Education Area. This month a new project started titled ‘Joint Degrees from A to Z’ (JDAZ) The project, which Nuffic coordinates, aims to provide clarity by developing a reference guide on joint degrees. But why develop a new guide if so much has already been published about joint degrees over the last years? And how to make sure that such a guide keeps providing state of the art information?
EAR2 project at the ENIC-NARIC conference
Just before summer, the ENIC-NARIC network held its annual conference. Among the many technical, procedural and informative items on the agenda, there was also room for interaction. The EAR2 project team was glad to participate in that, and gratefully accepted the invitation to organise a workshop.
E-TRAIN
Last June, the E-TRAIN project held a conference in Madrid, Spain. It was organised to disseminate the results of the project on training experts on quality assurance.
Finalised IMPI tool for benchmarking internationalisation
The final symposium of the IMPI project took place in Brussels on 10 May and was attended by participants from all over Europe. The symposium obviously included detailed information on the IMPI project but also provided information on related projects, such as AHELO and MAUNIMO.
EAR2 – online recognition manual and training
On 24 April, the kick-off meeting for the EAR2 project took place in The Hague. EAR is short for European Area of Recognition, and EAR2 is one of the follow-ups to the successful EAR project that ended last January with the delivery of the European recognition manual. This manual aims to provide clarity in the divergent world of recognition procedures for foreign qualifications by agreeing on recognition standards and providing examples of good practices in Europe.
Recommendation EAR manual in Bucharest Communiqué major boost for fair recognition practices in the EHEA
On 26 and 27 April the ministers of education of 47 countries gathered in Bucharest, Romania to take stock of the Bologna Process and set out the key policy issues and goals for the next three years. The outcomes have been published in the Communiqué, one of the main political documents of the European Higher Education Area EHEA. One of its recommendations is the use of the European Area of Recognition manual.
Benchmarking internationalisation
In this blog we look at how higher education institutions can benchmark their internationalisation initiatives.
NVAO launches platform for good practices in internationalisation
In Australia good practices in Quality Assurance have been made public through a digital archive for many years now. Personally I find this a very good source of information. So why not launch one in the Netherlands as well? That is exactly what NVAO, the Dutch Flemish Accreditation Organisation, did earlier this month.
OBHE report on international branch campuses
The Observatory on Borderless Higher Education (OBHE) recently published its fourth report on international branch campus (IBCs), one of the intriguing developments in internationalisation in higher education of recent years.
Regional harmonization of higher education: a global perspective
Developments in various parts of the world indicate that there is a global trend towards regional harmonization of higher education (i.e. working towards greater comparability of higher education structures and practices – not necessarily standardization of higher education).
HR capacity building firmly embedded in Europe’s current growth strategy
Human resource development is a major cross-cutting theme in Europe's overall growth strategy for the current decade: Europe 2020.
Debating the value of NQFs in developing countries
The rife use of old boy networks in job placement does not and should not make continued implementation of National Qualification Frameworks redundant.