Leon Cremonini

Accreditation in Vietnam's higher education system

Since the late 1980s the Vietnamese labour market has become increasingly diversified and dynamic, calling for more socially and economically relevant careers. As a result, coordinated efforts to assure the quality of Vietnamese higher education and introduce an accreditation system have recently been initiated. This chapter illustrates the development of accreditation and quality assurance processes in Vietnam, focusing on the contributions of ProfQim, a pilot project funded by the Dutch government. ProfQim supported the General Directory for Educational Testing and Accreditation in the Ministry of Education and Training to establish quality assurance centres and to execute pilot accreditations in select number of Vietnamese universities. The chapter reviews the phases of the 4-year ProfQim project and describes its relationship with the First Higher Education Project, funded by The World Bank, and already running at the time ProfQim was commenced. The chapter points to the strengths, weaknesses and lessons learnt by the convergence of these two projects.

Dropout and completion in higher education in Europe: main report

Improving completion and reducing dropout in higher education are key concerns for higher education in Europe. This study on dropout and completion in higher education in Europe demonstrates that national governments and higher education institutions use three different study success objectives: completion, time-to-degree and retention. To address these objectives policy makers at national and institutional level apply various policy instruments. These can be categorized under three main policy headings: financial incentives; information and support for students; and organizational issues. The evidence indicates that countries that have more explicit study success objectives, targets and policies are likely to be more successful. Particularly if the policy approach is comprehensive and consistent. As such, it is important that study success is an issue in the information provision to (prospective) students, in financial incentives for students and institutions, in quality assurance, and in the education pathways offered to students. Furthermore, increasing the responsibility of higher education institutions for study success, for example in the area of selecting, matching, tracking, counselling, mentoring and integrating students in academic life is clearly effective. Finally, to support the policy debate and monitoring of study success evidence, there is a need for more systematic international comparative data and thorough analysis of the effectiveness of study success policies

Reconciling Republican ‘Egalité’ and Global Excellence Values in French Higher Education

Building prestigious higher education is today one of the main drivers of public policy. Many governments have initiated policies to support or create elite universities in the belief that they will boost their system’s prestige in the world. Despite the assumption that all countries will make similar world-class university policy choices, a growing body of criticism points out that elite universities are in fact an ideal type drawn from a narrow pool, Anglo-American in nature, and currently dominant. By examining how a system with different public norms and values managed excellence policies, the chapter considers how the idea of ‘world-class university’ might be generalised. The chapter looks at excellence initiatives in France to explore (a) how world-class university policies are introduced in a system with values which contradict those embodied by today’s prevailing notion of global excellence and (b) whether these initiatives benefit the system as a whole.

Ranking Goes International

The basic idea underlying the pilot project ‘CHE Ranking of European Universities’ is that the evolution of a common European Higher Education Area in the context of the Bologna process and a common European Research Area in the Lisbon strategy will lead to growing European mobility of students and higher education staff. Hence, comparable information about European higher education institutions will become more important for students as well as for academics in order for them to make well-informed choices in selecting where to go in the large European space, with perhaps 4,000 higher education institutions in more than 40 countries.

Branding by Proxy? How Hubs Market (or not) Higher Education Systems Globally: The Example of Qatar

This chapter proposes a framework to understand if and how hubs contribute to stronger positioning of higher education system in global competition, and uses the case of Qatar to draw conclusions. Increasingly, governments around the world invest in so-called “education hubs,” which host excellent tertiary providers. Hubs show how, on a global level, new forms of competition between higher education systems are evolving. By being home to top universities, hubs are believed to be both a country’s “branding tool” and a means for developing internal capacity. The analysis suggests that a hub does not necessarily strengthen the national position but may actually reinforce existing inequalities in perceived prestige between systems.