I’ve asked the question before whether ASEAN was becoming like the EU. I agreed with former ASEAN Secretary General Severino who answered that it is “most likely not. At least not exactly”. Now we can ask another question: is the ASEAN starting its own Bologna process? It appears to be doing so…

The Australian reports on a meeting in Bangkok last week:

Arguing the case for an extensive overhaul of co-operation and compatibility involving 6500 higher education institutions and 12 million students in 10 widely differing nations is no easy task; and it’s particularly onerous if the deadline for implementation is 2015.

Five of its member countries were asked by SEAMEO RIHED to explore the possibility of a higher education common space in the ASEAN region. Summarising the findings, Malaysia’s Higher Education deputy director-general Yusof Kasim told the conference that:

there was broad agreement that harmonisation was beneficial, at least among those who were aware of the philosophy.

We don’t want to have one system but compatible and comparable systems. We can agree on certain standards, the most important thing is the outcome. Equivalency was crucial but it should be equivalency of outcomes rather than years spent earning a degree.

These initial discussions definitely sound similar to the ones at the start of the Bologna process. Considering the diversity of higher education systems in the ASEAN region - mixtures of English and American systems, sometimes with a Dutch, French or Spanish flavour and adapted to local  cultures and on top of that, a huge variety in terms of quality - it will be a considerable task. I do believe that in the end it can be very beneficial to the ASEAN member countries and their universities. Although I think that seven years might be a bit over-optimistic, I definitely welcome the initiative. Let’s see whether - in ten years - we’ll be talking about the Bangkok Process…

Filed in: Asia, Europe, Higher Education | 3 Comments »

There have been quite some controversies about the salaries of university leaders, especially those in the public sector. Philip Altbach and his colleagues from the Boston College Center for International Higher Education have now published a report comparing the salaries of academics around the world. Here are the results, summarised in one single picture:

Conclusion? It pays of to work hard in order to get to the top, especially in South Africa, New Zealand and above all, Saudi Arabia. Not so in France and Germany (surprise?). Furthermore, an advice for academics who aspire to have an international career and want to maximise their salaries: look for extreme weather conditions. They would be best of to start their career in Canada and end up in the global classrooms in the Saudi Arabian desserts.

In addition to offering high salaries for top academics, Saudi Arabia is also actively recruiting scholars from Europe and North America. Global Higher-Ed has a post on a faculty recruitment video of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Conveying a ‘unique semi-territorialized live-work-play message’ they target a mobile “world class” faculty base to come and live, work and play in Saudi Arabia. I’m sure that an average monthly top-level salary of US$8,490 helps. But then again, there are other things that count as well…

Filed in: Economics, Higher Education, World | 2 Comments »

Universities are becoming popular with donors. A recent report from private banking firm Coutts in association with The Centre for Philanthropy, Humanitarianism and Social Justice University of Kent showed that in the UK, rich donors are more likely to give to universities than any other good cause. The Coutts Million Pound Donors Report (pdf) indicates that higher education received 45 donations of over a million pounds in 2006-2007. The total value of million-pound-plus donations to higher education was £296.5 million. Of direct donations over 1 million pounds in the UK, 42% went to higher education, folowed by Health (13.8%), International Aid (11.5%) and Arts & Culture (8.2%).

The Financial Times discusses the issue and asks whether rich people should be giving their money to institutions that also receive millions from government and are in some cases quite wealthy. The fundraising director of Oxfam Cathy Ferrier seems to concur and her words show that there is fierce competition in philanthropy land:

“The higher education sector have very effectively used their contacts, despite the fact there’s state funding for this stuff”. She suggested that rich donors liked schemes which were “highly tangible, relatively visible and close to them”, such as university buildings that “they feel are their legacy”.

The country of million dollar donations is of course the US. According to the Chronicle, the country’s colleges and universities raised $28-billion in private donations in the 2006 fiscal year, $2.4-billion, or 9.4 percent, more than in 2005. Stanford receiving 400 million from Wiliam Hewlett; David G. Booth donating 300 million to the University of Chicago business school; Ratan Tata giving 50 million to his alma mater Cornell, etc. But also outside the Anglo-American world multi-million dollars are being  donated to universities. The Singapore based Lee Foundation donated 50 million to the Singapore Management University - matched by the government with 3 S$ for every donated S$. Coffee magnate and Adecco chairman Klaus Jacobs for instance donated 200 million to the private International University Bremen. Compared to all this, the Netherlands has a long way to go. In 2005, all education and research received 277 million Euros, with 232 coming from business (see Geven in Nederland 2007, pdf).

As for Ferrier’s critique, I think that needs some nuance. Giving 300 million to a business school in order to see your name attached to it - yes it became the University of Chicago Booth School of Business - is not necessarily helping humankind progress all that much. But on the other side, donations for scientific research on HIV or cancer or research on other pressing issues are not necessarily in conflict with donations for health or international aid. Ratan Tata’s donation to Cornell for instance was given for agriculture and nutrition programs in India and for the education of Indian students at Cornell. I’m sure even Oxfam wouldn’t disagree with those objectives.

Filed in: Economics, Higher Education, UK, USA | Comment »

The OECD recently published a very interesting report on skilled migration and the diffusion of knowledge: The Global Competition for Talent: Mobility of the Highly Skilled. This publication can be seen as a follow-up of the 2002 report International Mobility of the Highly Skilled. Here’s a short summary of the summary:

“International mobility of human resources in science and technology is of growing importance and can have important impacts on knowledge creation and diffusion in both receiving and sending countries indicating that it is not necessarily a zero-sum game.

Receiving countries benefit from a variety of positive effects related to knowledge flows and R&D. But sending countries can also experience positive effects. Much of the literature on highly skilled emigration focuses on remittances and brain drain but emigration of skilled workers can also spur human capital accumulation in the sending country. Brain circulation stimulates knowledge flows and builds links between locations. Diaspora networks can function as a conduit in these migration flows so that all countries can benefit.

Most OECD countries are net beneficiaries of highly skilled migration but there are significant variations. Students are increasingly mobile as well and often leads to skilled migration, both short and long term migration. Some evidence suggests that immigrant HRST (Human Resources in Science and Technology) contribute strongly to innovation.”

Skilled migration is an increasingly important rationale for the higher education internationalisation policies of national governments (and of the European Union as well). In this global competition for talent, Australia and Canada have  actively linked the recruitment of foreign students to their skilled migration policies. This approach is also increasingly chosen by European countries. Particularly in the science and technology related fields, skill shortages are becoming apparent and the benefits of (cultural) diversity for innovation are recognised.

And if you need a highly skilled and diverse body of professionals, why not start with foreign students? At Nuffic we recently published an appeal for an increased attention for internationalisation. In this appeal, the skilled migration approach is clearly apparent (see here for the Dutch booklet, or here for the English translation). Obviously, we are of the opinion that such policies should not come at the expense of developing countries…

The new OECD report shows again that such policies can create benefits for both the sending and receiving countries. This goes in  particular for emerging economies where the opportunities for brain circulation are present. Other studies - like this world bank report - show that it are the least developed countries that suffer most from the brain drain because brain circulation does not occur in these countries. Here, skilled migration policies should be accompanied by compensating and mitigating policies for the sending countries (see this CGD publication for some ideas on this issue).

Filed in: Higher Education, Internationalisation, Mobility, Netherlands, World | Comment »

Like last year, I tried to look at the Times Higher education university league tables from a national perspective. I gave a score of 200 for the number one university (Harvard) and 1 for the number 200 (the university of Athens) etc., and than aggregated these scores for every country.

The graph below shows that the United States and the United Kingdom are again superior in the Times rankings, followed by Australia and Canada. The Netherlands is the first non English speaking country, followed by Japan and Germany. The main difference however compared to last years results is that the number of countries represented in the top 200 has increased. The group is now joined by countries like Greece, Argentina, Thailand, Russia and India.

But of course…size matters and it’s easier to have many well performing universities in a large country than in a small country. So here is the result if we take population into account.

This of course works well for the small states like Switzerland, Hong Kong and Singapore. The Netherlands again comes fifth in line. If we control for GDP instead of population we get a similar picture. Here however, Hong Kong clearly outperforms the rest.

For what it’s worth….

Filed in: Higher Education, Ranking, World | 2 Comments »

German students are stretching the scope of European rules in national higher education systems. The last few years have shown a steady increase of German students in its neighboring countries. The number of German students in German speaking countries like Austria and Switzerland have increased. However, the most important destination for foreign students is the Netherlands with almost 14,000 students in 2006 and at least 16,750 in 2007 (pdf), making it also the largest group of international students in the Netherlands.

I recently wrote about a German student, Jacqueline Förster, who claimed Dutch financial support for the period she studied at the University of Maastricht. Now there is a German student appealing for the European Court of Justice in order to be admitted to the Medicine programme at an Austrian University. The case of German students in Austrian medicine departments has been addressed here a couple of times. See the posts on Europeanisation by stealth and the one on more Europeanisation.

Since the last post on this issue, two important developments took place. First of all, Austria got permission to keep their quotas for German students in medicine programmes for a five year period (until 2011). And secondly, the Austrians have abolished the student fees in 2007 – after introducing them in 2000. The quotas are now being contested by the German student. And considering the free education in Austria, universities are fearing an unmanageable rush of German students (‘ein kaum bewältigbaren Ansturm’, as the Vice rector of the University of Salzburg put it).

Of course, the students can’t be blamed for this. They are just exercising the rights given to them. And don’t understand me wrong. I think it’s a good thing that students can make their own choice in the university where they want to study, whether that is in their own country or in another European country. In a European system where higher education is still predominantly publicly funded, and funding is arranged on a national scale, coming from national taxes, this type of mobility however might become unsustainable. That is, if it’s distributed highly unequally.

This doesn’t mean that we have to stop the mobility, but it does imply that we seriously have to look at other funding arrangements. In some countries, like the Netherlands, student financial support is already ‘portable’ for students, meaning that students are eligible for Dutch student support, also if they study abroad. This idea could be extended to student funding.

The portability of student funding within Europe should be a serious option here. In this case that would mean that Germany would fund the German students’ education in the Austrian university. This however would require a common policy, agreed upon by all member states, or at least a large majority of states. Politically it will be hard to reach agreement on an issue like this. But it’s better than the option of doing nothing and letting the ECJ determine the course of higher education in Europe.

Of course it is the ECJ’s job to interpret and observe the rules. But it is about time that the Member States agree on the extent of these rules and put the decision-making process back where it belongs: in the democratic European or national parliaments. The last decades has seen a growth in the higher education related cases brought to the ECJ, especially in the 1980s and in the first part of this decade (see below). This is particularly interesting because formally, the EU has no real authority over higher education. Nevertheless, in these cases, the Court has considerably extended the competencies of the European Union in the field of higher education. And for those that think that this expanding role of the ECJ is just an isolated case for higher education: it clearly is not.

Source: The Emergence and Institutionalisation of the European Higher Education and Research Area Forthcoming in 2008, European Journal of Education  43(4)

Filed in: Europe, Higher Education, Politics | 2 Comments »

Tomorrow’s that day that many university leaders dread. Have they gone up in the rankings or not? For some, rankings may even determine whether they will receive their bonuses or not. But most of all it’s the day for your Vice Chancellor or university president to criticize league tables even though secretly it’s the first thing he or she will check in the morning…

Yes, it’s time for the fifth edition of the Times Higher Education World University Ranking of 2008. Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd, the company responsible for the ranking, claims (again) that the methodology is improved. They are even so blunt to say that ‘the rankings have established themselves as an accepted benchmark of quality’. I beg to differ…

One issue at least seems to be resolved, that is the volatility of the THE ranking (compared for instance with the relatively stable Shanghai Ranking):

The final results will see more countries represented among the top 200 institutions, with Continental Europe beginning to make more of a mark than in previous editions. But there will be less volatility this year, thanks to the change in statistical methodology introduced in 2007. Single outliers no longer have a disproportionate effect on the overall ranking.

The world university ranking will be published here and here tomorrow morning…

Filed in: Higher Education, Ranking, World | 2 Comments »

Excellence needs flagships! That is why Europe must have a strong European Institute of Technology, bringing together the best brains and companies and disseminating the results throughout Europe. That is how José Manuel Durão Barosso introduced the European Institute of Technology about two and a half years ago. Today was the inaugural meeting of the first Governing Board of the EIT.

The Board’s 18 high-level members, coming from the worlds of business, higher education and research all have a track record in top-level innovation and are fully independent in their decision-making. The Board will be responsible for steering the EIT’s strategic orientation and for the selection, monitoring and evaluation of the Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KICs).

After discussions on whether the European version of MIT would become a virtual institute, a brick and mortar institution or something in between… After a study claimed that a European Insitute of Technology was actually not necessary… After feasibility studies had been neglected….

After the decision for the establishment of the EIT was formally taken and published in the Official Journal of the European Union in April earlier this year… After its name was changed into European Institute of Innovation and Technology… After beautiful Budapest won the race and became the official location of the EIT in June… And after the EIT’s first Governing Board was officially appointed on 30th July 2008…

It is now time to get to work!

The only thing still missing is a real logo. As long as there is none, I’ll just keep on using the one I have been using for the last years. Looks familiar, doesn’t it?

Filed in: Europe, Higher Education, Innovation, Technology | Comment »

Today the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development published its annual report ‘Education at a Glance’. Education at a Glance presents data and analysis on education; it provides a rich and up-to-date range of indicators on education systems in the OECD’s 30 member countries and in a number of partner economies. This years highlights are:

Meeting a rapidly rising demand for more and better education is creating intense pressures to raise spending on education and improve its efficiency. Recent years have already seen considerable increases in spending levels, both in absolute terms and as a share of public budgets: The total amount of public spending on educational institutions rose in all OECD countries over the last decade, on average by 19% between 2000 and 2005 alone, and in Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland and Korea by more than twice that amount.

Another visible indication of the efforts governments are making can be seen in the fact that, over the last decade, the share of public budgets devoted to education grew by more than one percentage point – from 11.9% in 1995 to 13.2% in 2005.

The full report and links to the statistics can be found at the EAG 2008 website.

Filed in: Higher Education, World | Comment »

At the EAIR conference in Copenhagen last month I attended an interesting presentation by Trudy Banta, a professor of higher education and vice chancellor for planning and institutional improvement at Indiana University-Purdue University. Her question was clear: Can institutions really be compared using standardised tests?

Policymakers seem determined to assess the quality of HEIs using standardised tests of student learning outcomes. Yet, Dr. Banta claims that such tests do not provide data for valid comparisons and on top of that, they measure other things than institutional performance:

Comparing test scores sounds easy, but are today’s standardised tests of generic skills capable of yielding data for valid comparisons? Twenty years of research conducted in the US using these tests indicates they are not.

It is however not the use of standardised tests as such that was criticized by Banta, but the use of such tests to compare institutions. Research in the US showed that the scores of such tests were highly correlated with the SAT scores (with correlations up to 0.9). It appeared that 81% of the variance between institutions could be explained by previous schooling. This means that the residual 19 percent is explained by a whole range of other factors (e.g. motivation, family situation, etc.), only one of them being institutional performance!

Bante therefore concludes that:

standardized tests of generic intellectual skills do not provide valid evidence of institutional differences in the quality of education provided to students.

Moreover, we see no virtue in attempting to compare institutions, since by design they are pursuing diverse missions and thus attracting students with different interests, abilities, levels of motivation, and career aspirations.

This provides food for thought for many national policy makers, but also for some international actors. I’ve written a few times about the OECD AHELO project. In this project, the OECD tries to differentiate between institutions on the basis of an assessment of the learning outcomes.

AHELO focuses on an assessment of students’ knowledge and skills towards the end of a three or four-year degree programme. The assessment will be based on a written test of the competencies of students, and will be computer delivered.

The feasibility study is expected to demonstrate the feasibility - or otherwise - of comparing HEIs’ performance from the perspective of student learning rather than relying upon research-based measures which are currently being used across the globe as overall proxies of institutional quality.

AHELO can thus partly be seen as a response to the research-biased rankings and league tables. They are presently working on a feasibility study. Whatever will be the result of this, it’s a sure thing that such a (near-)global assessment is going to be an enormously complex exercise. And therefore a very expensive one…

It’s reasonable to expect that results here also correlate strongly with prior learning, just as was the case in the US. Therefore PISA results might better explain AHELO results than institutional performance does. If the AHELO-assessment results only explains a few percentages of the variance between institutions, comparing higher education institutions will be impossible. And then all that money might better be spent otherwise. I would hope the OECD takes these American research findings into account in the feasibility study.

Filed in: Higher Education, Politics, USA, World | Comment »

I’m on my way back to The Hague, returning from the EAIR conference in Copenhagen. Although lots of interesting new studies and findings have been presented there (some of them I’ll discuss in later posts), I actually want to talk about a conference I visited last July in Berlin.

This conference (Transparency in Diversity – Towards a European Classification of Higher Education Institutions) presented the results from the second stage of the project Classifying European Institutions for Higher Education, a project that might turn out to have a major impact on European higher education policy. This project was initiated in 2005 (see this previous post) and is now supported by for instance the European Commission (DG Education) and the German Hochschule Rektorenkonferenz. It’s run by an international team led by Frans van Vught.

The project can be seen as a response to two trends (at least, that’s my interpretation). First of all, there is the emergence of the European higher education area, the objective of the Bologna process. If there’s one space, we need to know what types of institutions are occupying that space and hence, we need a classification or typology.

Secondly, there is the proliferation of ranking and league tables. As I’ve discussed many times before, these rankings present a very uni-dimensional view of the contemporary higher education institution. Basically they only look at the - science heavy - traditional research university. Through this they neglect the quality of a very wide range of other institutions which might be very good at the things they are supposed to do. Here one can think of mono-disciplinary institutions (e.g. colleges of fine arts; schools of economics and business), teaching oriented institutions (like the American liberal arts colleges) ore more professionally and vocationally oriented institutions (like the German and Austrian Fachhochschulen, the Dutch Hogescholen, etc.).

A multidimensional classification of European higher education institutions can on the one hand create more transparency in European higher education, while at the same time clarify which institutions can be compared with each other (so we can compare apples with apples and pears with pears). If you are interested in how they intend to do this, I suggest you have a look at the presentations of the conference. See Frans van Vughts presentation (PDF) to get a better idea about the background of the project and have a look at Frans Kaiser’s presentation (PDF) for the technical aspects of such a multidimensional classification.

What the classification will look like exactly is not yet clear. If it will remain limited to the web tool and the resulting radar graphs, I expect the effects to be rather limited. The question is whether the various stakeholders related to the project will ultimately define real categories of institutions (like the old Carnegie classification did). This however might give the project a more political character. Even though the project-team stresses that they will not create a hierarchical classification, it is interesting to see whether some categories will be perceived as more prestigious than others.

Nevertheless, the classification project seems to be widely supported by institutions throughout Europe and their representative organisations. The feeling that Europe needs to create more transparency is widely shared and at the same time, many institutions are looking for benchmarking opportunities with like-minded institutions. After all, comparisons with Harvard, Oxford and Yale are not very useful for most higher education institutions in Europe…

Filed in: Europe, Higher Education, Politics, Ranking | 1 Comment »

Both the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEST) of the Australian Commonwealth Government and the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) of the British Government are looking for news to organise and coordinate their higher education sector. For this, they have started a similar initiative. Both are relying heavily on input from the field and the broader society to get new ideas, and probably to receive more support for their future polices. Yet, there are some differences as well.

In its Review of Higher Education, the Australian government has asked a small expert panel to write a Higher Education Discussion Paper. This Discussion Paper (PDF, 4 MB) was released in June and addresses a wide range of questions structured around nine key challenges and issues for higher education in Australia over the coming decades.

· Meeting labour market and industry needs
· Opportunities to participate in higher education
· The student experience of higher education
· Connecting with other education and training sectors
· Higher education’s role in the national innovation system
· Australia’s higher education sector in the international arena
· HE’s contribution to Australia’s economic, social and cultural capital
· Resourcing the system
· Governance and regulation

After this release, the Expert Panel invited the community to react to this paper and send in their submissions before 31 July. This has led to 300 submissions responding to the discussion paper. Responses have been submitted by interested individuals, Vice Chancellors, Leaders of intermediary organisations, student unions, etc. There’s also a range of HE experts and researchers that submitted their reactions, and even some HE bloggers (who of course are also experts; for instance Andrew Norton - submission 91 and Steven Schwartz - Submission 66). The Review Panel will provide its report on priority action by the end of October 2008, and final report by the end of the year. I’ll keep an eye on it…

In the UK,  the Secretary of State for DIUS, John Denham, claimed that the UK needs to decide what a world-class HE system of the future should look like and what it should seek to achieve. And he also is asking the public to participate in this Higher Education Debate. Denham first asked eight experts to present their advise and opinions on eight different themes:

· Part-time studies in Higher Education
· Demographic challenge facing Higher Education
· Teaching and student experience
· International issues in Higher Education
· Intellectual property and research benefits
· Academia and public policy making
· Research careers
· Understanding institutional performance

These contributions will lead to a formal public consultation on a policy framework for HE in the autumn. They however also form the input for discussions on these eight topics with the wider public. And the discussions are conducted…yes on a blog. On the Future of Higher Education Blog readers have the opportunity to comment on the opinions of the experts.

The Australian example has shown that there are plenty of HE stakeholders and experts willing to spend some time in drafting future HE plans (I feel sorry for all the staff at DEST that has to go through them all). In some ways their process resembles the consultation process of the European Commission (for instance here, for the EIT).

What the input of the English public will be remains to be seen. Until now, comments on the blog are only few - and not always very constructive contributions. However, the  discussion opportunity has only been online since July. 

Even though the outcomes of these processes are not yet clear, I welcome these new ways of policy making. Even though these new initiatives would fit well in the (consensus oriented) Dutch political culture, - to my knowledge - the use of the Internet in the process of policy making and formulation is still rare. Maybe an idea for Dutch higher education…?

Filed in: Australia, Higher Education, Internet, UK | 1 Comment »

The Financial Times featured an interesting article from business guru Charles Baden Fuller. Professor at the Cass Business School of the City University, London. He observes a decrease in the gap between management research between the US and other regions like Europe and Asia. Although he acknowledges the supremacy of the US in the field, he says that the US share of management research will fall below 50 percent the next few years:

Research output in management is still concentrated: less than 3 per cent of the world’s universities produce more than 70 per cent of global output. Of these 214 universities, 126 are in the US, 13 in Canada, 57 in Europe and 18 in Asia and elsewhere. But comparative world positions have been changing quickly. My research** reveals how the world’s academic business research output has become more dispersed.

While Wharton and Harvard are still the best by a margin, Europe now accounts for 25 per cent of international research output. Its best schools - London Business School, Rotterdam School of Management (Erasmus), Insead and Tilburg are in the global top 30. Asian schools - in China and Singapore especially - are further behind but their stock is rising even faster.

While some of the best US schools admit privately to being worried, publicly they stress their continued dominance - at least, according to their data. But their measurements overemphasise past successes, ignore current trends and importantly use narrowly based research measures, looking only at material published in US journals and ignoring the fact that important new ideas are increasingly being published in highly regarded, peer-reviewed non-US publications.

The interesting part is his explanation for the rise of European and Asian management research. He claims they are more innovative in their approaches and engage more in cross border comparative work than their Colleagues in the US. Another factor is that European and Asian researchers seem to focus more on micro issues where US academics emphasise macrostatistical trends.

I have always admired the US management research and think they have produced some of the most interesting and sophisticated social science studies in the past decades. Not just in the field of economics but especially in sociology where many of the recent breakthroughs have come out of business schools. At the same I indeed found them to be very US centric. I think this is related to their emphasis on macrostatistical trends. If the priority is on the cleanliness of data sets and the complexity of the modeling, than comparative studies are just a nuisance. But of course, social sciences can not be just about data and models, it’s also about reality. And the reality is after all becoming less tidy, more global and less US centred…

Filed in: Asia, Competition, Europe, Higher Education, Social Science, USA | Comment »

Last week, at Global HigherEd, Peter Jones reported on a forthcoming European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling in the case of Jacqueline Förster v IB-Groep. This is one of a range of recent cases handled by the ECJ that might have substantial effects for higher education policies throughout Europe.

In a forthcoming paper for the European Journal of Education I identified the ECJ as one of the main actors in the institutionalisation of the European Higher Education Area. In earlier posts in this blog I discussed recent cases on the German medicine students in Austria and French students in Belgium. In both cases, the principle of non-discrimination plays an important role. The same was the case for the Grzelczyk Case and the Bidar Case, which can be seen as a predecessor of the Förster case.

The Grzelczyk judgment suggests that EU students are entitled to claim maintenance grants when they find themselves in the same situation as nationals of the host Member State. Before the Maastricht Treaty, the Court refused the right to obtain loans and grants while studying in another member state. The Bidar Case changed this. Here, the Court argues that it is legitimate for a host Member State to grant such assistance to students who have demonstrated a certain degree of integration into the society of that State (although the Court made clear that Member States have a right to protect themselves against ‘grant-tourism’).

This ‘certain degree of integration’ is now being tested in the Förster Case. German student Jaqueline Förster went to the Netherlands to study in 2000. She did the minimum number of hours of work in order to be eligible for the Dutch student support. This amount of work apparently provided a substantial enough degree of integration. The Dutch scholarship board initially granted the student aid to her but asked for a partial refund in 2005 because Förster had not worked in the second half of 2003. She took the case to court saying the move was discriminatory as Dutch students do not have to work (see also this article in EU Observer).

An additional issue came up in the Netherlands after Nuffic presented its annual mobility monitor. This showed that the outgoing number of students was lower for the Netherlands than the incoming students and that the largest source of incoming students was Germany. While at least 16,750 German students were enrolled in the Netherlands, only 2,100 Dutch students were enrolled in Germany. A few days later, the ‘Dutch equivalent of the Financial Times’ carried a headline saying that German students cost the Dutch government at least one hundred million Euros. Reason for this is of course the fact that - because of the non-discrimination principle - EU universities can not charge higher tuition fees for foreign EU students than they charge for their own students. Considering Dutch higher education is still heavily subsidised by the government, German students are indeed partially funded by Dutch tax payers money.

(more…)

Filed in: Europe, Higher Education, Internationalisation, Politics | 3 Comments »

Social networking has gone academic. The Web 2.0 principles were already introduced in the field of science and innovation by the iBridge Network. Facebook brought social networking to the university, but it’s main goal was not exactly academic in nature. LinkedIn brought social networking to the professional sphere. Recently there have been some initiatives that bring social networking to academic life: Researchgate and Graduate Junction.

The Graduate Junction was established by Daniel Colegate and Esther Dingley, graduate  students in respectively Chemistry and Education at the University of Durham, in the United Kingdom. They set up The Graduate Junction because they were - in their own words - frustrated by a feeling of isolation in their own research projects and wanted to know who, if anyone, was doing similar research. I have had a quick look at it and it looks good and has the potential to be a valuable tool for graduate students. Much of its success obviously depends on the number of participants it will attract. If I still were a student I would definitely sign up and become member of groups like this.

Researchgate targets a larger community. It is meant as a networking tool for all academics and researchers. It is set up by three students from Germany (one of them now being at Harvard). Two of them in Medicine, one in Computer Science. The concept is backed by a world wide network of experts and advisers. Researchgate has big aspirations. Next to a networking tool, it sees itself as the start of a more profound change where researchers take more and more control over their publications and research findings.

So where will all this lead? Well…my experiences with these new tools for - often conservative - academics have not always been positive. Nevertheless I’m positive about these new tools. Graduate Junction has the advantage that it targets a younger group of people and probably more open to these kind of innovations. In addition, I think that the need of these tools might be more substantial with graduate students than with researchers in general. This is simply because the ‘normal’ channels such as journals and conferences are not so readily available to them and don’t provide that many opportunities for direct interaction.

Researchgate on the other hand has a more professional look and already is backed by a large network of academics. It also seems to provide more advanced technological opportunities like importing endnote libraries and linking with databases such as PubMed. I would love to see a further expansion to enable more interaction and maybe new opportunities for open peer reviewing.

I hope both initiatives will succeed. It’s about time for the academic community to start using the technological opportunities available. Both might turn out to be great new opportunities for inter-organisational, interdisciplinary and international cooperation.

Filed in: Higher Education, Internet, Science, Technology, World | 2 Comments »