Manja Klemenčič

The Changing Conceptions of Student Participation in HE Governance in the EHEA

Student participation in HE governance is considered one of the foundational values in European HE. It can be traced back to the medieval universities and it resurged with the student revolts in 1960s.Today, students as a collective body are in some way represented in HE governance in basically every European country. Accordingly we can find advanced – but also highly diversified – multilevel systems of student representation. The issue of student participation in HE governance has featured prominently in policy making within the Bologna Process. The European Ministers referred to student participation in affirmative terms in every Communique after the Prague Ministerial Summit in 2001. European Students’ Union [ESU], the representative platform of the European national unions of students, was granted a consultative membership and has participated in the governing structures of the Process. Yet, despite this high political involvement, ESU continues to report deteriorating student influence when it comes to institutional governance. This raises questions about the interactions and interrelations between student participation as a concept and social phenomenon and EHEA policy developments. The chapter addresses the ideational and normative foundations regarding student participation emerging from the two – intertwined – policy developments: the Bologna Process and the ‘modernisation agenda for universities’. In view of these developments, it investigates changes in the conception of student participation as depicted in the four main relationship constellations involving students: between the state and students, between university and students, between the academics and students, and between student representatives and students.

Student power in a global perspective and contemporary trends in student organising

Students, if organised into representative student governments or movements, can be a highly influential agency shaping higher education policy. This article introduces the Special Issue on student power in a global perspective, which addresses the question of how students are organised in different world regions and what role they play in higher education policymaking within universities or at the national level. The article discusses conceptual considerations in the study of student governments and movements and reviews the contemporary trends in student organising globally.

Student representation in Western Europe: introduction to the special issue

Abstract This article introduces the special issue of European Journal of Higher Education dedicated to the cross-national comparison of student representation in Western Europe. Student representative organisations, whose primary aim is to represent and defend the interests of the collective student body, are core participants in European higher education (HE) governance. Yet, these organisations are strikingly absent in scholarly literature. This special issue is guided by the question of how students as a collective body are organised, and how their interests are aggregated, articulated and intermediated into the national policy processes. The article develops the conceptual framework guiding the investigation of national student associations and systems of student representation and interest intermediation; and it introduces the five empirically-driven articles on student representation in Norway, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy compared, and Spain.

Global Challenges, Local Responses in Higher Education

History of the social sciences could be followed via keywords that characterize each period of its development. Globalization is a term that suddenly appeared at the end of the last century pushing its brand in the forefront where it still insists. Depending on the viewing angle it is invoked once as a “solution” and other time as “destruction.” At the same time it opens up yet other perspectives; one of them is articulated as glocalization.

The future of higher education research in Europe and the European Journal of Higher Education

European research on higher education continues to grow rapidly. Academic conferences, both on specialized topics as well as those organized by the three major academic associations in Europe – Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER), Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) and European Association for Institutional Research (EAIR) – point to a vibrant international community of researchers, of which graduate students and young researcher present an ever larger share. The three mentioned associations have contributed significantly to offset the isolation of researchers working on higher education within their individual disciplines and paved the way for more multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research. As Teichler (2013, 251) suggests in the case of CHER: ‘[S]cholars involved in CHER are convinced that the quantitative expansion and improvement of quality in higher education research in many countries have been assisted by CHER’. Furthermore, ‘[t]he international collaboration of higher education researchers contributed to the growth of the number of book series and journals on higher education in the English language’ (Teichler 2013, 251). Academic associations, conferences and journals have indeed made a significant contribution to the development of the field. The growth of European research on higher education has been driven by the prominence higher education has gained politically. The ever larger share of European population enrolled in higher education exposed both the limitations of the existing structures and the potential this has for the advancement of European societies and economies. When the European Union highlighted higher education as one of the key drivers of the economic competitiveness, politicians and general public became more interested in what higher education institutions do and more assertive in posing demands on what they should do. The Lisbon Agenda gave the European Commission a clear political mandate to influence and support the member states towards the modernization of European higher education. In subsequent years, the European Commission has issued a series of influential documents with ideological foundations in New Public Management advocating more autonomy for higher education institutions while demanding more accountability, a process that has in some countries began already in 1980s. Along with the Lisbon Agenda, and slightly ahead of it in time, evolved the Bologna Process. This intergovernmental initiative led to dramatic convergence of degree structures, basic standards of quality assurance and mobility tools. It also revolutionized policy-making, bringing it from almost exclusively national domain into a European political forum. The early years of these political processes saw some resistance against ‘marketization of higher education’, but the tensions aggravated with the beginning of the financial and Euro zone crisis. From about 2009, public higher education institutions in Europe have been experiencing severe cuts in public funding due to austerity measures. Many European Journal of Higher Education, 2014 Vol. 4, No. 1, 1–5, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2013.871206

Institutional Research in a European Context: A Forward Look.

The article addresses the opportunities and drawbacks of institutional research as a particular form of higher education research in Europe and its relationship to institutional-level policymaking. Through emphasis on institutional research on student matters, and student experience and engagement in particular, we offer suggestions for future directions of institutional research arguing in favour of methodological pluralism and especially ‘interpretivist turn’ by a way of application of critical-reflexive approaches. Further, the article makes a case for student engagement in institutional research to aid relevance, legitimacy and accountability of this type of research.

Ahead of 2015 Bologna Ministerial Conference: a new agenda for the European Higher Education Area

For European higher education, the spring of 2015 will be marked by the Bologna Ministerial Conference scheduled to take place in Yerevan, Armenia in May. As the Bologna Process has arguably been running out of steam, this conference is crucial in deciding what is next on the agenda for the future of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Should ministers go back to the origins and direct energy towards correctives in implementation of Bologna recommendations across all member states? Or has the time come for new issues to be brought onto the agenda, and if yes, which are the issues that call for intergovernmental policy cooperation? The political limelight of the Ministerial Conferences has potentially important implications for higher education research in Europe. As it happened at the second Bologna Researchers’ Conference in November 2014, researchers come together to reflect on the developments in higher education research within the EHEA and to assess the influence research has had on policy-making. Such reflection is well-placed, given that European higher education has been experiencing approximately two decades of dramatic reforms and continues to be in a flux with new transformative forces emerging, such as technological innovations in teaching and learning or attention to measuring institutional performance. As European higher education remains in a great flux (as elsewhere in the world) and higher education enrollments continue to rise in most parts of Europe, this dynamic calls for new policy responses and simultaneously also drives proliferation of higher education research. Higher education research develops within the context of higher education policy: it is shaped and fuelled by this context, and vice versa. And the salient political events, such as the Bologna Ministerial Conference, give the research an extra push, and expectantly also a new agenda. So what is in the cards? While a number of governments wish to go back to the ‘origins’ of Bologna, there are also a number of those who are looking for a new powerful, unifying theme that will bring the governments together and give the EHEA a new momentum. One theme that is frequently mentioned (and also in a way means ‘going back to the origins’) is the advancement of teaching and learning. In the early Bologna communiques, teaching and learning has been completely absent. It had been first brought onto the agenda in 2005 in reference to quality assurance, and from 2007 with the introduction of a new pedagogic approach – student-centred learning expounded and repeatedly reaffirmed by the ministers. Nevertheless, the advancement of teaching and learning has not yet been transposed into the national policy contexts in the same way as this has taken place with structural reforms. The national approaches to the advancement of teaching and learning vary significantly across Europe. In some countries, governments have developed specific polices directed towards the advancement of teaching and learning, and have endowed agencies or research centres to guide the implementation and to support basic and applied research and capacity-building activities (such as training events, exchange of best European Journal of Higher Education, 2015 Vol. 5, No. 1, 1–3, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2015.998405

Slovenia: The Slow Decline of Academic Inbreeding

In a country with only one major university for a long time, academic inbreeding was necessary and inevitable. As part of socialist Yugoslavia, Slovenia was its most developed region and professors of Slovenian universities were rarely graduates of the Yugoslav universities. Further, due to the “non-aligned” character of Yugoslav foreign politics, borders with Western Europe were open and study at foreign universities was not impossible, especially in science, technology, and medicine. Nevertheless, the possibilities for study abroad were fairly limited due to economic conditions. Moreover, study abroad has often led to brain drain. Despite rising enrollments since the 1990s, Slovenia is still a small higher education system (with only four universities) and academic inbreeding is a recognizable feature.

How Do We Know How Students Experience Higher Education? On the Use of Student Surveys

How students experience higher education? What activities they conduct inside and outside classroom? Are they satisfied with teaching, with learning environments and student services? These questions are of central importance for university officials, for prospective students and their families, and for the state as the main funder of higher education in Europe. Student surveys have become one of the largest and most frequently used data source for quality assessment in higher education. The widespread use of student survey data raises questions of reliability and validity of student survey data used as evidence in higher education decision-making. This chapter addresses the development of student survey instruments, and the use of student data analytics for the improvement of teaching and learning practices and learning environments. First, we discuss policy context in which student survey research has proliferated. Next, we offer an overview of the most influential student survey designs and discuss their limitations. Third, we present different institutional approaches to student data analytics as part of institutional research. In conclusion, we offer recommendations to policy-makers regarding quality standards for survey design, and the use of student survey data as evidence in decision-making. Among other things we suggest that the advances in educational technology and students‘ universal use of technology offer new possibilities for data collection directly from students. Methods, such as digital ethnography, which seeks to adapt qualitative methods to digital use, are particularly promising.

Teaching and Learning: An Overview of the Thematic Section [Overview Paper]

Higher education institutions today operate in a rapidly changing environment and this is undoubtedly reflected in their core functions of teaching and learning. Teaching and learning in higher education are influenced by a well-rehearsed set of global trends such as the changing demography of student populations and higher participation of non-traditional students; growing global interconnectedness and the proliferation of digital media; and an increasing market orientation in higher education.