Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

This paper presents a first analysis of the increase of undergraduate tuition fees to £9,000 (€11.000) in English higher education in 2012. I use a semi-experimental research design to estimate the effect of the reforms, based on student enrolment data drawn from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). Taking into account possible anticipation effects of the fee increase, I find that enrolment declined by 15 % in the treated groups as a result of the tuition fee increase. This number is almost three times higher than what previous studies have found, and may represent a serious long term cost for the English economy. The decline in enrolments is particularly pronounced for students in older age groups and students from the service class and the middle class. No effect is visible for students from the working class, indicating that the reforms did not lead to a much-feared increase in class bias in higher education enrolment. The reforms also seem not to have exacerbated ethnic inequality in higher education, as all ethnic groups were negatively affected by the reforms. These results are consistent with earlier research in the United States and the United Kingdom, although they expand our understanding of student price responsiveness in other important ways. The paper argues that younger and older students face different costs and benefits. Older students may be less certain about their benefits, and therefore be more sensitive towards price increases. The strong decrease in mature learners may require a policy response, taking into account these differing incentives.

Student support schemes are one of the main policy instruments that can be found in the European Higher Education Area which aim to enhance equity and help those with an underprivileged background to acquire an university degree. Access to higher education is significant because at individual level it leads to higher income and a better social status, while its absence is a pathway to social polarization. As education inequities lead to social inequities, the lack of national policies for reducing the social gaps (or inefficient implementation of such policies) creates the context for higher education to contribute to the entrenchment of inequalities between different social groups. In Romania, household income of families where the head of the family has a university degree is almost three times higher than in those where the head of the family has only primary education. This article assess whether Romania’s existing student support schemes, as one of the main tools to improve access and participation to higher education, are in Romania. In this context, the article looks both at the scholarship system from a national, legislative and implementation perspective and also with an emphasis on the student body characteristics.

This paper builds an overview of the context for implementing equity public policies targeting the Roma youth in Romania, with a focus on the specially designed study grants (—It refers to study grants offered specially for the Roma young people. They pass the same type of competition for admision at the study program however they only compete with the other Roma potential students accessing these “reserved places”, thus increasing their admission chances. After admission, they never pay for tuition as it is coverd by these study grants from the public budget. We will hereon refer to them as “reserved places”.) for this category of students. In order to determine the impact of present policies and recommend further steps forward, the paper revisits previous studies on this issue and analyzes the existing Romanian regulations on the subject. Furthermore, the paper identifies the difficulties these young Roma persons encounter at higher education level and the factors that supplementary impact on their early dropout. Young Roma people are discouraged to enter higher education by cultural factors such as poor background, lack of family support, traditional role models, but also a difficult integration in the educational community. Their situations are differentiated regionally and, in many cases, participation to education proves to be more a cultural challenge than an academic one. In this challenging context, the paper discusses the implementation of various equity policies addressing Roma people at higher education level. In sum, a comprehensive and coherent, long term approach on the issue is needed.

Given its pivotal position, Doctoral programmes have been looked at from two main angles: education and research.

When fifteen years ago, in 1998, on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of the founding of the University of Paris, four European ministers of education—Claude Allegre (France), Luigi Berlinguer (Italy), Tessa Blackstone (UK) and Jurgen Ruttgers (Germany)—agreed on what is by now known as the Sorbonne Declaration, perhaps a few believed in the political impact that this statement would have had.

The paper looks at the tools useful for the third cycle that have been created by the many Tuning projects carried out over the last 13 years. The Tuning Process has proceeded in parallel with the Bologna Process and consists of a number of University-driven projects, following a common methodology, to create positive and concrete ways of implementing the shift to competence-based learner-centered higher education programs and practices. At present nearly all continents and macro-regions (Europe, Latin America, United States, Canada, Australia, Central Asia, Russian Federation, China and more) have participated or are participating in Tuning. The Tuning methodology has been applied to third cycle studies, both overall and in many key subject areas. Here we give an overview of how the tools and understandings created can enhance third cycle programs in any disciplinary area, including the arts and music.

‘Europe does not perform particularly well in terms of truly outstanding research’ the European Commission Directorate General for Research observed in 2005. Ten years on, the same observation could justifiably be made, with expectations that the combined forces of the European Higher Education Area and the European Research Area would prove a match for the research superpower status of the USA remaining largely unfulfilled. What, then, should Europe be doing to address this problem? What it has done is focus on doctoral education, perceiving it as the cornerstone upon which will be built Europe’s future world class research excellence. Yet this chapter argues that measures to improve European doctoral education do not go far enough; they barely scratch the surface of what needs to be addressed if ‘the new academic generation may be trained to become creative, critical and autonomous intellectual risk takers, pushing the boundaries of frontier research’. The chapter’s overarching message is that whilst structures and systems may support researchers during and after their doctoral programmes, these alone will not achieve high quality research and, by extension, high quality researchers. Doctoral training, it is argued, must incorporate consideration of how researcher development occurs, and the author’s original conceptual model of researcher development is presented as a basis of recommendations for developing policy and practice, not only for developing early career European researchers working for their doctorates and at post-doctoral level, but for developing all researchers working in Europe, and enhancing the quality of European research.

EURODOC, the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers, is a volunteer, not for profit, international federation of 35 national associations representing the interests of early career researchers across Europe. EURODOC works to bring together these organisations, to create a community of doctoral candidates (DCs) and junior researchers (JRs), and to represent their interests at the European level. EURODOC envisions a European Research Area (ERA) and European Higher Education Area (EHEA) where all researchers are duly recognised and respected for the essential contributions. One of EURODOC’s concerns is the promotion of quality and the improvement of quality assurance in doctoral training. Also, ever more doctoral candidates are having to pursue non-academic careers. It is therefore necessary to ensure that doctoral training programmes are enhancing the competencies necessary to succeed outside academia. It is also necessary to ensure that employers, especially in the non-academic sector, understand and recognise the value of the doctorate. Using internal data from EURODOC, in particular EURODOC’s first survey on doctoral candidates, we will discuss these issues and make suggestions on how to best organise and structure doctoral training, and how to ensure a successful transition from being a doctoral candidate to a doctorate holder. Specifically, we will address doctoral candidates and junior researchers perceptions of the type of supervision and training opportunities they have access to, as well as their assessment of the types of skills and their expectations concerning their future careers (within and outside academia).

The Romanian PhD students who work at CERN have been included in some of the most challenging experiments worldwide and have experienced firsthand the dynamics of interdisciplinary research teams. Looking beyond the research output of the collaboration, we show that the PhD students have been effectively bridging between two academic cultures which value differently the diversity of the research landscape, interdisciplinarity and innovation. As the goal of the newly started H2020 programme is that of shortening the distance between scientific research and industrial application, as to insure the transition to a more innovative and competitive Europe, we should broaden our research assessment framework such that we properly account for all forms of scientific output. To allow PhD student to reach their full intellectual potential we should try to complement the current scientometrics evaluations with expert peer-review, as the prescriptive application of assessment standards is not fully compatible with supporting the specificities of each research field and does not catalyze creativity and innovation.

The development and implementation of a Europe of knowledge or the European Higher Education Area has led at institutional, regional, national and European level to a wave or a tsunami of changes to policies, strategies and legal frameworks in a strive for balancing European collaboration and global competition.