Javier Vidal

The Teaching and Research Relationship Within an Institutional Evaluation.

The authors present an analysis of the relationship between research and teaching in universities. The aim is to determine to what extent this relationship is strong enough to support the idea that teaching and research should be analyzed together from an institutional evaluation point of view. Two main questions are presented: (a) should research be evaluated from an institutional point of view? And, if so, (b) which specific aspects of research activities can be evaluated within each institution? Empirical data have been obtained within the Spanish National Program for the Evaluation of Quality of Universities and there are supplemented by interviews. Evidence is found of strong connections between research and teaching and in particular areas analysis of the two dimensions together will help in designing better improvement strategies for universities.

Adequate policies and unintended effects in Spanish higher education

Abstract Recent developments in Spanish higher education have been very positive. Universities have become autonomous and are more in tune to regional needs, their internal structure has become flexible, the whole system has become open and accessible, funds have been poured into the system as never before and market forces have started to play a relevant role. Nevertheless, some perverse effects have begun to emerge. We will focus on some of these negative aspects that deserve deeper consideration: the inadequate adaptation to a mass higher education system, and the negative consequences of the collegial model for governing universities and of regionalization.

The impact of the Programme for International Student Assessment on academic journals

The aim of this study is to assess the impact of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) on international scientific journals. A bibliometric analysis was conducted of publications included in three main scientific publication databases: Eric, EBSCOhost and the ISI Web of Knowledge, from 2002 to 2010. The paper focused on four main questions: who carried out these studies, in which academic journals have the articles been published, what has been the evolution of these publications and what were the main article topics? The study concludes that PISA has had a considerable impact on the scientific research, reflected primarily by university-based authors from the areas of education and social sciences analysing student performance. The evolution since 2007 seems to indicate that more articles will be published in coming years through the initiative of researchers (rather than the editorial boards), even from other scientific areas, thus increasing the number of topics of analysis.

Guidance Services in Spanish Universities.

Since the 80s, higher education in Spain hasundergone important modifications such asgreater autonomy, expansion in the number ofstudents and the introduction of more flexibleprogrammes. In this context, guidance serviceshave proliferated in an unstructured way. Thispaper presents a description of guidanceservices in Spanish universities and the maininnovations they have developed. Two sources ofinformation have been used: institutionalwebsites; and telephone interviews to those incharge of guidance services at Spanishuniversities. The study concludes that guidanceservices are in a dynamic situation,characterised by the introduction ofinnovations at some universities in order to bemore cost-effective and to adapt to a morevaried student population. However, the lack ofa legislative framework for guidance, and thelimited interest shown by institutionalauthorities, indicate the necessity of debatingthe importance given to guidance services andtheir impact on quality levels within thehigher education system.

Higher education in Albania: developing third mission activities

The national strategy for higher education of the Albanian government (2008–2013) stated the urgent need for universities to increase their role in the social and economic development of the local and regional environment. In order to achieve this goal, the main action proposed by the strategy was the setting up of regional development centres by public higher education institutions. With this purpose, the Tempus project Developing Third Mission activities in Albanian Universities (U3M-AL) has promoted third mission activities in most of the public universities by training university staff, establishing the regional development centres and creating an Albanian network for promoting third mission. These initiatives are contributing to the external visibility of universities as valuable partners for cooperation. In this paper, we describe the activities developed by this project, the outcomes and the expected impact on Albanian society.