Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

The present study provides a first analysis of higher education institutions’ experience with a crossborder quality review (evaluation/audit/accreditation, at programme or institutional level). The paper, based on the results of 13 case-study interviews, paints a comparative picture of the rationale as well as of the benefits and challenges experienced by higher education institutions that had their external quality assessment carried out by a quality assurance agency from another country. The study explores whether these reviews are embedded in the internationalisation strategy of the institution, how they contribute to the organisation’s quality culture and the role, played by the national legislative framework as inhibiting or facilitating factors for such reviews. The paper complements these case studies with a macro level analysis on the national openness of European Higher Education Area (EHEA) countries to quality assurance agencies working across borders, based on substantial compliance with the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance (ESG) attested by its listing in the European Quality Assurance Register for higher education (EQAR). The macro level analysis looks at the commitment taken by EHEA Ministers to “allow EQAR-registered agencies to perform their activities across the EHEA, while complying with national requirements”.

This chapter asks how evaluations in Romanian universities can be made more meaningful. To answer this question, we develop a number of recommendations based on an analysis of 186 interviews with a cross-section of decision-makers, professors, students and administrators in 5 Romanian universities, as well as an examination of key policy documents in this area. We argue that Romanian faculty members, students and administrators are caught in a “merry-go-round” of evaluations. There are no less than 10 different evaluation instruments at national level, imposing a total of 294 external standards on universities. These national standards are typically complemented by evaluation procedures at university, faculty and departmental level. Interviewees argue that the main problem is that the evaluations fail to achieve substantial reflection on higher education and scientific research. More concretely, they consider that (1) the current evaluation practices are too bureaucratic and irrelevant, (2) that academics and students do not feel ownership of the evaluations, and (3) existing standards are inconsistent. Accordingly, we provide three objectives for future policy-making in this area. We think that policy-makers could focus on (1) simplifying the procedures, (2) allowing professors and students to set more of their own standards in education and research, and (3) applying a more consistent and open concept of ‘quality’.

The European Standard and Guidelines for Quality Assurance (ESG) of 2005 can be defined as one of the major Bologna documents aimed at furthering the role of students as stakeholders in internal quality assurance processes at higher education institutions (HEIs). Still little is known about students’ real position in such processes. To overcome this research gap, this paper examines the role of students as stakeholders in HEIs’ internal quality assurance procedures within the policy context of the ESG. Hereby, we specifically take a look at how students are actively involved and influence internal quality assurance processes at the studied HEIs. This study is an exploratory comparative case study of one German and one Dutch university faculty which draws on a range of qualitative methodologies, including desk research, semi-structured interviews and a student survey to investigate students’ role as stakeholders from an institutional and student perspective. Moreover this study applies the stakeholder theory of Mitchell et al. (1997) to evaluate students’ stakeholder position. The findings of this study revealed that the role of students majorly differs between the studied HEIs. While in the Dutch case students enjoy a high stakeholder position as weak Definitive stakeholders, students in the German case can only be defined as weak Dependent Stakeholders. In both cases, internal quality assurance systems are majorly in line with the ESG, though HEIs’ compliance evolves rather unconsciously. Thus, in this study the ESG do not seem to have a major impact on students’ role as stakeholders in internal quality assurance.

In this paper, we shed light on the evolution of a framework for quality within University College Cork, Ireland amid a rapidly changing terrain of higher education globally. We move beyond a culture of compliance and accountability to analyze what happens when students (undergraduate and post graduate) are positioned in the higher education transitional space that requires the crossing of thresholds. A liminal space (Turner, 1969) is a transformative state in the process of learning in which there is an epistemological reformulation of a students’ meaning frame and an ontological or subjective shift. This ‘betwixt and between space’ can be experienced as vulnerable but also as pregnant with opportunities for transformation and empowerment. Drawing on student perspectives and using the anthropological concept of ‘liminality’ we illustrate how students, with the help of both formal institutional strategies and less formal experiences, negotiate this higher education space. We explore the extent to which innovative strategies create ‘safe places’ that host ambiguity, where tension is flagged and ameliorated, and which encourage freedom provide opportunities to see and test alternative textings of reality (Brueggemann, 1995). This paper brings together micro student experience in higher education and the theory of threshold concepts and liminality. It provides a lens through which to further explore and develop institutional approaches and sector wide best practice that facilitates and supports a high quality student experience.

In spring 2014, several members and consultative members of the BFUG launched a discussion of the future of the EHEA in preparation of the 2015 Ministerial meeting. This initiative stems partly form a feeling that the development of the European Higher Education Area is stalling and partly from the fact that ministers seem to lose political interest. The article discusses the future of the EHEA in terms of current actions that need to be wrapped up, the challenge of relating the Bologna Process to developments in other regions of the world, possible new policy priorities, and the need to review the governance of the EHEA. The author argues that the EHEA has undergone four distinct development phases so far and that the outcomes of the debate on the future of the EHEA will determine whether the Yerevan ministerial conference in May 2015 will mark the start of a fifth phase marked by stronger commitment by member countries toward a European Higher Education Area based on commitments that are not only made but also honored.

In its 15th year, the Bologna Process has reached a critical threshold. The international, national and institutional experiences within this period have created valuable common knowledge not only for the 47 member countries of the EHEA but also on a global scale. Along with the widespread positive effects during this time, there have been criticisms and even protests in some countries. Certain action lines, such as the three cycle degree systems, have been not easily and properly implemented in some countries. However, the EHEA, launched in 2010, remains a unique project based on voluntary participation and is expanding beyond Europe. This large and comprehensive structure has been monitored and revised through the intensive work done by BFUG and approved by the Ministerial Conferences on a regular basis. During the past 15 years, socio-political and economic conditions have changed in Europe and worldwide; furthermore, both the scope and the area of the EHEA have been expanded thematically and geographically since 1999. These conditions set the stage for a more inclusive and more participative European Higher Education Area for the coming decades. This paper aims to contribute to the discussion of the future of the EHEA by exploring the Turkish higher education experience, as one of the largest systems in the EHEA. To achieve this aim, it examines the outcomes and lessons of the Turkish higher education system and analyzes focus group interviews with key actors, such as policymakers, rectors, academic staff and national student representatives. Moreover, it offers some recommendations to increase global connections, mobility and partnership between national authorities. The recommendations include peer-learning activities and thematic projects to improve the participation and implementation of different authorities; and, more inclusiveness, experience sharing and dialogue between the countries and institutions overall to understand, motivate and maintain sustainability of the common tools for the EHEA in the coming decade.

The Bologna Process increasingly prioritizes its dialogues and negotiations with regions over individual countries, thus expanding its outreach to a larger scale. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations—ASEAN and ASEAN+3—which are developing collective mechanisms for regional harmonization, have become one of the strategic regions for the EU partnerships in higher education. This paper draws on policy diffusion approach in regional studies literature and a constructivist approach to policy movement and mutation in geography to examine how Bologna policies have travelled to ASEAN and transformed their features and effects in the new context. Bringing the theoretical frameworks from political science and geography into higher education studies, this paper attempts to make a novel methodological contribution. Tracing the evolution of the ASEAN regional cooperation in higher education over the last four decades and using first-hand empirical data, this paper argues that although the Bologna Process provides a point of reference for ASEAN, the active construction of an ASEAN regional higher education space in its flexible institutional design can become a model in its own right and potentially provide a useful source for reflecting on European Bologna practices.

The launch of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in 2010 posed many of the central questions already asked of the Bologna Process (BP) with a renewed urgency, reflecting a growing sense among participants of a possible exhaustion of the initial process. Taking as its point of departure the irrevocably “soft law” character of the BP as a pan-European process, the present paper seeks to develop an understanding of how the process might be re-energized with reference to a model of “experimentalist governance” derived from the work of Sabel and Zeitlin. The paper first maps the functioning of the BP to date, relative to the strictures of this experimentalist model, particularly identifying the absence of a strong dynamic of iterative policy learning as a major shortcoming. Building on this diagnosis, four broad lessons are then drawn for the possible future development of the EHEA. These lessons concern the role of expertise (and experts) in the process; the representative function of European-level stakeholder groups; the higher education policy discourse of the European Commission; and the reframing of national higher education policy debates in a manner that overcomes an identified logic of “discursive closure”.

Higher education is at the heart of the national public agenda in a growing number of countries. Decision-makers need to consider more systematically the role of universities as instruments of economic development and social mobility, making it imperative important to ground higher education policies carefully on evidence about what works. Similarly, at the institutional level, universities must learn to guide their transformative efforts with a more thorough analysis of their strengths and weaknesses and a deeper understanding of the factors behind the results of successful universities. This introductory article shows how the lessons of experience can help understand what works and what does not work in higher education policy under various conditions and circumstances, in order to increase the probability of success and avoid repeating the mistakes of others.

Higher education research is a small field with fuzzy borderlines between those closely attached to this thematic focus and representatives of various disciplines touching this theme occasionally, as well as between researchers and other experts involved in knowledge production on higher education along other tasks. It is a sizeable field of research in some European countries and marginal in others, whereby the themes of research are diverse and the institutional basis is varied. A national focus dominates everywhere. The results of research are unevenly spread across Europe as a consequence of the different role of the English language in the various countries. Europe-wide and international communication and collaboration among higher education researchers has grown substantially since the 1980s, and many analyses are of a comparative nature or address similar developments across countries – as a result of both the researchers’ own initiatives and of a growing influence of supra-national policies and developments of higher education. European support for policy-oriented analyses and ‘targeted’ research is viewed by the researchers both as counter-productive constraints, and as an opportunity for improved research and for a dialogue relevant for the future of higher education research, as well as for the future of higher education policy and practice.