Maarja Beerkens

Barriers to International Student Mobility Evidence From the Erasmus Program

In this article, we look at the barriers to international student mobility, with particular reference to the European Erasmus program. Much is known about factors that support or limit student mobility, but very few studies have made comparisons between participants and nonparticipants. Making use of a large data set on Erasmus and non-Erasmus students in seven European countries, we look at the barriers for participation. Results reveal the overall impact of financial barriers but suggest that it is personal barriers that help us to better differentiate between Erasmus and non-Erasmus students. The analysis suggests a two-pronged approach to increase participation: one focusing on better information and communication and the other stressing the benefits of Erasmus mobility.

Public Policy for Academic Quality

This volume summarizes a significant body of research systematically analyzing innovative external quality assurance policies in higher education around the world. It will be essential reading for policy makers, administrators and researchers alike. Over the last decade the structure of higher education in most countries has undergone significant change. This change, brought about by social demands for expanded access, technological developments, and market forces, has seen the traditional concerns with access and cost supplemented by a fresh concern with academic quality. As a result new public policies on academic quality assurance have rapidly emerged and migrated around the globe. However, the public debate about new academic quality assurance policies, both within and across countries, has not always been informed by reliable analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of these innovative instruments. It is this gap that the current edited volume seeks to fill. It is based on the work of the Public Policy for Academic Quality research program (PPAQ), which was designed to provide systematic analyses of innovative external quality assurance policies around the world. This volume, informed by key international scholars, presents the fourteen analyses conducted as part of the PPAQ research program. Each analysis examines the policy goals, implementation problems, and impacts of these newly developed national quality assurance instruments. The book concludes with an assessment of the lessons learned from these collected policy analyses and outlines the framework conditions that appear essential for assuring academic standards in the university sector.

Reflections and Conclusions

The massification of higher education, the rapid development of new academic subjects and fields, the growing international market competition among universities, the associated deregulation of government policy and growing institutional autonomy, the commercial provision of quality information, and the resulting academic arms race for research reputation and prestige have challenged the traditional ways of maintaining academic standards. In this concluding chapter we reflect on the lessons to be learned from our studies of professional regulation, market regulation, and state regulation of academic quality and we explore how the necessary balance among the different forces can best be accomplished. We also attempt to derive from these studies of individual instruments some general guidelines that may prove useful in designing national framework conditions for assuring academic standards in the university sector.

Quality assurance in the political context: in the midst of different expectations and conflicting goals

Higher education quality assurance systems develop within a complex political environment where national level goals and priorities interact with European and global developments. Furthermore, quality assurance is influenced by broader processes in the public sector that set expectations with respect to accountability, legitimacy and regulatory quality. As a result, quality assurance systems often face different and even conflicting goals from different parts of society. The traditional goals of securing minimum standards and facilitating improvement within universities are augmented with such goals as providing information to the public, supporting inter-institutional competition and positioning institutions or higher education systems in the global competition. The relative priority of these goals is in a constant change over time. This paper aims to map the main tensions that emerge from the conflicting demands and discusses the extent to which impact evaluation can address some of the difficulties.

Similar students and different countries? An analysis of the barriers and drivers for ERASMUS participation in seven countries

Increasing participation in the Erasmus study abroad program in Europe is a clear policy goal, and student-reported barriers and drivers are regularly monitored. This article uses student survey data from seven countries to examine the extent to which student-level barriers can explain the considerable cross-country variation in Erasmus participation rates. We observe remarkable similarities between countries with respect to how barriers cluster for students and what barriers characterize non-participants compared with participants. The study confirms that home ties and lack of interest are most robust predictors for non-participation. Data on student-level barriers and motivations, however, give surprisingly little information to explain why students in some countries are considerably more active participants. For further understanding, we need to study more how national and institutional policies and context influence students’ decision making and help them overcome perceived barriers to mobility.

The CHE University Ranking in Germany

University rankings have become widely influential in the last 10 years, both on a national and international scale. Rankings as a consumer information tool can function as an effective quality assurance mechanism. Most existing university rankings, however, seem to distort rather than improve the higher education market. The CHE ranking in Germany is an exception. It is a carefully designed ranking that minimizes the main conceptual and methodological problems that university rankings commonly face. The analysis in the chapter concludes that commercially oriented entities alone cannot provide a high quality university ranking. Original data collection and data verification is a costly activity and there is a strong incentive for commercial providers to rely on easily available statistics. Therefore, even if a commercial venue can be effective in compiling, presenting and marketing relevant information, the quality of a university ranking depends on the data collected by public or not-for-profit agencies.

Agencification Challenges in Higher Education Quality Assurance

The 1990s were characterized by the rise of quality assurance in higher education (Dill, 1995). Over the last two decades, quality assurance systems in Europe have changed and evolved significantly. There is now much variety in how countries regulate academic quality (Dill & Beerkens, 2010; Schwartz & Westerheijden, 2007), but despite of the variety we can see increasing convergence in the organizational structure that countries use for quality assurance.

The Effect of the Erasmus Programme on European Higher Education

For the last few decades, European higher education has gone through significant transformation which has been driven by broad global developments, such as massification of higher education, a global competition, and economic benefits of education (Maassen & Stensaker, forthcoming). The direct and indirect influence of the European dimension is another force that gradually changes the nature of higher education in Europe. The pace of change has accelerated since the 1990s, particularly with the Sorbonne Declaration (1998), the Bologna Declaration (1999), and the Lisbon Strategy (2000). The first two have led to a process to make study programmes more compatible and transparent across Europe as well as to the outside world. The Lisbon process seeks to reform the continent’s still fragmented national systems into a more powerful and more integrated knowledge-based economy in which higher education is regarded one of the key drivers of innovative capacity. Subsequent communications from European policy makers have strengthened the belief that higher education institutions will be crucial to Europe’s future well-being and that stronger cooperation between countries and universities in this endeavour is a necessary condition for success.

Evidence-based policy and higher education quality assurance: progress, pitfalls and promise

ABSTRACT Evidence-based policy has become a norm in the current policy-making rhetoric, affecting also higher education quality assurance. This article agrees with critics that rigorous ex-post impact studies are highly challenging in the field of quality assurance. Nevertheless, there are alternative ways how evidence can effectively guide quality assurance policies and how evidence-based mentality can be encouraged by government policies. A more realistic view on how evidence informs policies (indirectly and via stakeholders’ arguments) and how professionals incorporate evidence in their work (selectively and next to other information sources) broadens the scope for useful evidence for higher education quality assurance.