Jon File

Reform of Higher Education in Europe

Nowhere today is higher education undergoing more substantial change than in Europe. As countries pursue policies designed to integrate their economies, political systems and social structures, it is becoming increasingly clear that higher education, research and innovation are critical components to fully realising the potential gains stemming from the changes ahead. This very idea has been espoused in several highlevel European wide processes and has given rise to a series of ambitious goals and objectives designed to ensure long term European pre-eminence as both a knowledge producer and transmitter. European higher education systems have shown themselves to be no stranger to political reform: for the better part of three decades the sector has been included in the much broader national and international–even global–reforms in Western and Eastern Europe. In order to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of our Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, former and current CHEPS staff have written the chapters of this book analysing and reflecting on issues of reform in European higher education. This introduction provides a brief overview of some of the major issues at stake in European higher education and introduces the contributions to this book.

Old Wine In New Skins

Governance systems in higher education have been ‘modernised’ in many European countries. Far-reaching changes have been made to ‘the steering and coordination of interdependent actors based on institutionalised rule systems’ (Benz, 2004). We observe changing relationships between the State, society and universities and many reforms, mostly initiated by national governments, which aim at increasing the efficiency, effectiveness and responsiveness of internal university governance. The recalibration of governance in accordance with ‘modern’ standards has involved changes in the tasks, positions, roles and composition of many internal governing bodies and sometimes the creation of new governing bodies. The resultant European higher education governance landscape has become exceptionally diverse. A recent European study (Eurydice, 2008) makes a distinction between university decision-making bodies that are responsible for long-term strategic decisions and advisory or supervisory bodies that oversee or monitor the university’s operational, educational and financial activities and are composed solely or largely of external stakeholders.

An Interactive Multidimensional Ranking Web Tool

This chapter presents examples of U-Multirank results, demonstrating the user-driven approach and showing that U-Multirank introduces a second level of interactive ranking beyond the selection of indicators: the selection of a sample of institutions to be compared in focused rankings. U-Multirank has a much broader scope than existing rankings and intends to include a wider variety of institutional profiles. The authors argue that it does not make much sense to compare institutions across diverse institutional profiles and that U-Multirank offers a tool to identify and select institutions that are truly comparable in terms of their institutional profiles.

The Pilot Test and Its Outcomes

This chapter describes the design and outcomes of the pilot test assessing the feasibility of implementing U-Multirank. The authors outline the construction of the global sample of institutions that participated in the pilot test and discuss the feasibility of the data collection procedures and use of the various indicators presented in Chap. 7. Finally, they discuss the level of institutional interest in participating in the pilot and the potential upscaling of U-Multirank to a globally applicable multidimensional ranking tool.