Par Leïla de Comarmond. Le succès des contrats aidés ne se dément décidément pas. Après le violent coup de frein donné par le gouvernement en fin d'année dernière, ils ont redémarré sur les chapeaux de roue. Dans la seconde moitié de 2010, tous les crédits ad hoc ayant déjà été consommés, les prescriptions de contrats aidés avaient brutalement chuté jusqu'à un niveau proche de zéro. Les prescriptions ont repris aussitôt le robinet réouvert et se sont accélérées à partir de mi-février. Sur les quinze premières semaines de 2011, le ministère du Travail a recensé 132.907 prescriptions de contrats uniques d'insertion (CUI), pour un total budgété sur l'année de 440.000 (y compris le coup de pouce de 50.000 annoncé par Nicolas Sarkozy en février).
Le rythme est certes bien plus faible qu'il y a un an, où 181.694 prescriptions de CUI avaient été recensées sur la même période (pour 520.000 sur l'ensemble de 2010). Mais il dépasse de 16 % le niveau planifié par la rue de Grenelle pour la deuxième semaine d'avril.
Non marchand
Le dérapage ne vient pas du secteur privé. Les prescriptions de CUI-CIE, qui lui sont destinés, sont restés inférieures aux volumes prévus : 14.191 au total contre 16.000 souhaités. On est loin des 60.000 comptabilisés mi-avril 2010. Il est vrai que, à l'époque, l'objectif annuel avait été relevé à 100.000 contre 50.000 pour 2011.
L'accélération constatée par le ministère du Travail provient en totalité du secteur non marchand (les collectivités locales, les associations et les gestionnaires de services publics) : 100.000 CUI-CAE, qui leur sont réservés, étaient attendus à la mi-avril, il y en a eu près de 19.000, soit presque 20 % de plus. Près de 70 % de l'enveloppe du premier semestre a donc été déjà dépensée.
Cette surconsommation des contrats aidés joue à plein son rôle contracyclique alors que le chômage se maintient à un niveau élevé. Mais elle n'est pas politiquement idéale pour l'exécutif au regard du calendrier de l'élection présidentielle : le coup d'arrêt aux contrats aidés fin 2010, couplé à la fin de ceux conclus en début d'année (un CUI-CAE dure en moyenne huit mois et demi), avait largement contribué à la poussée du chômage en novembre et décembre dernier. S'il veut obtenir un effet maximum sur les statistiques du chômage au printemps 2012, le gouvernement a donc plus qu'intérêt à se réserver d'importantes marges de manoeuvre pour la seconde moitié de 2011.
Les négociations avec les conseils généraux pour développer les CUI-CAE ciblés sur les bénéficiaires du RSA (« Les Echos » du 14 février) vont véritablement démarrer maintenant, les élections cantonales étant passées. Leur résultat aura une importance majeure. Ces contrats aidés coûteront moins cher à l'Etat que les autres, du fait de leur cofinancement par les départements (au moins à hauteur du RSA) et permettront donc d'aller au-delà des 440.000 contrats aidés annoncés pour 2011. En 2010, 50.000, soit environ la moitié des CUI-CAE occupés par un bénéficiaire du RSA, étaient cofinancés. Le gouvernement espérerait au moins doubler ce chiffre.

The outcomes of the IAU pilot project on Access and Success in Higher Education for Students from Under-Represented Groups are now available online.  They include a comparative review of access and success programs in several pilot universities and the report of the workshop held at the University of Arizona, USA, in November 2010 in collaboration with the University, the World Bank and Lumina Foundation.
Equity in Tertiary Education: a Global Challenge
Jamil Salmi, Tertiary Education Coordinator at The World Bank made a presentation entitled Equity in Tertiary Education: a Global Challenge, prepared jointly with Roberta Malee Bassett, Tertiary Education specialist at The World Bank. He started his presentation with the example of Maria, a six‐year‐old girl living in rural Panama: “Maria has four brothers and sisters, and her mother is an illiterate widow who earns about $180 per month as a subsistence farmer. What are Maria’s chances of becoming a prominent lawyer or a university professor? Not very high, and certainly a lot lower than those of a six‐year‐old boy growing up in Panama City with two parents in his home, both with a secondary education and a good income, and only one sibling. All over the developing world, many people face difficult odds of achieving economic and social success, just like Maria… Equality of opportunity is about giving Maria and all other children in the world the same chance to be successful in life.”
What next? Suggestions for specific actions to undertake
For the IAU, designing a self‐assessment instrument and using 10 pilot universities to implement it and discuss the results in a workshop setting was a second step (following the drafting and adoption of the Policy Statement). So for the Association, it was essential to obtain feedback with regard to the validity of the self‐assessment instrument, how it could be improved, how widely it might be applied and, most importantly, what service(s) IAU could offer in the future (if financial support was found).
The self‐assessment tool needs to be improved in several aspects. Most notably, better formulation of questions concerning the context is required. In this regards, the statistical data provided by The World Bank is very useful (please see: http://data.worldbank.org/topic/education). More work and input is needed to focus and frame key questions that would collect information about official government policies and programs with impact on issues equity and access, overall educational system and admission procedures, demographic data broken down by age, SES, gender, race, ethnicity or language groups, and information about other factors such as general graduate employment rates and, if possible, data disaggregated by target group, etc.
Evaluating the Self-assessment Instrument
Using a standardized questionnaire and approach to learn more about a given area of activity, and/or to assist universities in assessing their own policies and practices in order to improve them, is also worth evaluating as a methodology for further work in this area (promoting and improving the provision of equitable access and success or other areas of higher education policy). So the second issue of importance for IAU in this project, was to learn the extent to which the tool developed to gather the information for this report, can serve effectively inside a single institution and across institutions in different parts of the world.

Fostering the renewal of learning and teaching in the field of aboriginal issues: DIALOG’s Nomadic University
The Nomadic University is an innovative training program created in 2007 by the DIALOG network - Research and knowledge network relating to Aboriginal Peoples. It is one of our knowledge mobilization initiatives developed over the years to encourage the sharing of knowledge, skills and learning between the academic and Aboriginal milieus.
Through the Nomadic University’s activities, DIALOG offers interactive and dynamic teaching that fosters the development of a reflective and comprehensive understanding of Aboriginal issues. The training team for each session includes DIALOG researchers, students, and Aboriginal partners and reflects the inter-institutional, interdisciplinary and intercultural collaboration that characterizes DIALOG. The hands-on learning experience offered by the program occurs within the context of recognized academic curricula and enables students to obtain academic credits. The Nomadic University welcomes students from various universities, researchers, stakeholders, practitioners, civil society actors and the general public.
DIALOG’s Nomadic University is born out of a need, in Québec, Canada and in the rest of the world, to develop alternative approaches to learning in the field of research relating to Aboriginal peoples. Indeed, although a growing recognition about the necessity to renew research methodologies and epistemologies reflecting Aboriginal worldviews exists and has influenced the development of research approaches and ethics guidelines respecting these views, mainstream courses provided within social sciences academic programs (undergraduate and graduate alike), in their frame and content fail to make the changes required to address this recognition. Furthermore, there remains, to this day, an unfulfilled demand in terms of training of non-aboriginal civil servants, practitioners and fieldworkers, who wish to gain greater knowledge about the history and effects of colonialism and to be better equipped for understanding Aboriginal cultures and adapt their practices accordingly. Animated by its vision, which aims at constructing a space for innovative discussion and exchange between First Peoples and academia, DIALOG has developed the Nomadic University: an innovative training program designed to offer a response to these needs. More...

First OAS-UNESCO Caribbean Conference on Higher Education Adopts Declaration of Paramaribo
On April 13, 2010 the participants of the first Caribbean Conference on Higher Education (CCHE) adopted the Declaration of Paramaribo. The conference was opened on April 11 by President Ronald Venetiaan of Suriname, who called for greater collaboration among education and research institutes in the Caribbean. Conference participants included Ministers of Education and other Government representatives, Principals and representatives of academic and educational institutions, university networks and international and other organizations.
The CCHE was organized by the OAS, Department of Human Development, Education and Culture (DHDEC), the UNESCO Kingston Cluster Office for the Caribbean and the UNESCO Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC), in close collaboration with the Government of Suriname’s Ministry of Education.
Conference participants discussed trends and perspectives of higher education in the Caribbean, quality assurance and accreditation, science, technology and innovation in the Caribbean, internationalization and academic cooperation and the revitalization of the higher education system of Haiti. The Declaration of Paramaribo includes a Call for Action on the aforementioned conference issues. It was agreed that the Caribbean Conference on Higher Education would be held bi-annually and that a Technical Committee will be established to follow-up the recommendations and actions of the Conference.

El objetivo que persigue la publicación La Universidad española en cifras es, fundamentalmente, el de completar las informaciones actualmente disponibles, tanto del sistema como de las instituciones universitarias, buscando, a la vez, añadir valor a estas informaciones con la incorporación de una única fuente documental y la aplicación de un proceso de elaboración uniforme que introduzca un mayor grado de rigor a la información institucional, que con frecuencia se ofrece y se trata de manera poco homogénea.
Esta publicación pretende por lo tanto ser un punto de encuentro para las personas que quieren aproximarse a las instituciones universitarias públicas y privadas con intención de conocer su comportamiento productivo y financiero. El objetivo final es crear un espacio transparente que requiere el debate y la reflexión, un foro y un ámbito de análisis para el desarrollo de ideas que desemboquen en programas y proyectos.
Volumen 1: Explicación global de los resultados del estudio, Volumen 2: Universidades públicas, Volumen 3: Universidades privadas.

In this article, Jesús Granados calls for the need of a new education where new forms of knowing and learning how to be human in a different way has a primary role. Thus, he argues, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) has emerged as a paradigm for revising and reorienting today’s education.
Introduction
Our imperfect world is marching inexorably towards uncertain future scenarios, and we must try to redirect it towards sustainability that is, towards a new way of doing things in order to improve our environment while at the same time achieving justice, social equity and economic solvency. But change is impossible without learning, just as learning is impossible without change. In the text that follows, I will analyse the need for a new form of education in today’s society and identify the specific challenges that higher education faces.
Characteristics of our current society
We live in a world in crisis, in a knowledge society, and in an era in which time is liquid: nothing lasts; everything changes and is unstable. The diverse and heterogeneous society of the new millennium is characterised by a series of internal crises in the welfare state: the social crisis, the environmental and unsustainability crisis, the crisis of states, the threat posed by globalisation, and finally, the crisis of democracy. The consequences of these crises include the exacerbation of social and economic inequality; the emergence of a global form of planetary management with new decision-making centres that have undermined the decision-making power of individuals and states; and citizens’ loss of confidence in the democratic system due to the perception that political decisions are distant and difficult to influence...
The need for a new education
In the beginning, education and the ideals it embodied aspired to create a “perfect” citizenry. Later, the objective shifted to ensuring that citizens were well-trained, and more recently it shifted once again to the awakening of the critical spirit. Today, the ideal is creativity: the capacity to learn and a lifelong willingness to face new things and modify learned expectations accordingly; there can be no learning without re-learning, without the revision that must be undertaken when we realise the weakness of what we thought we knew. In a knowledge society, education is the capacity to be creative in an environment of particular uncertainty, the capacity to properly manage the cognitive dissonance that gives rise to our failure to comprehend reality (Innerarity, 2010). Therefore, in the world of liquid modernity, we must move away from sporadic education and towards lifelong learning. This entails overcoming security-driven resistance: the pillars to which we cling because they lend us a sense of security a mistake in a world filled with insecurities and ephemeral validities...
Reformulation of higher education
Einstein once said that no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. Current needs suggest that we must learn to view the world and, therefore, education in a new way. Higher education has in the past demonstrated its crucial role in introducing change and progress in society and is today considered a key agent in educating new generations to build the future, but this does not exempt it from becoming the object of an internal reformulation.
According to the World Declaration on Higher Education for the 21st Century (1998), higher education is facing a number of important challenges at the international, national and institutional levels. At the international level, there are two main challenges. The first is the role of supranational organisations such as UNESCO in advancing the prospection of trends and improvements, as well as in promoting networking and twinning programmes among institutions. The European Union (EC-JRC, 2010), for example, has stressed that higher education must change and adapt to economic and social needs, that institutional change is essential to educational innovation, and that information and communication technologies must form part of the teaching and learning process. The second international challenge is to encourage international cooperation between institutions in order to share knowledge across borders and facilitate collaboration, which, furthermore, represents an essential element for the construction of a planetary (Morin, 2009) and post-cosmopolitan citizenship (Dobson and Bell, 2006): the assumption of interdependence, “deterritorialisation”, participation, co-responsibility, and solidarity among all inhabitants of the planet. States must provide the necessary financing so that universities can carry out their public-service function. States may also enact laws to ensure equality of access and strengthen the role of women in higher education and in society...

The Australian Government is establishing a new national regulatory and quality agency for higher education, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA). Legislation introduced to establish the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency
Today the Australian Government will continue the transformation of Australia’s higher education system by introducing legislation to establish the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA).
The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Bill 2011 and Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provision) Bill 2011 will establish TEQSA as a new national regulatory and quality assurance agency for higher education.
“As the higher education sector goes through a period of expansion, it is important for Australia to have a national system of regulation to assure the quality of all providers,” said Senator Chris Evans, Minister for Tertiary Education.
“TEQSA’s provider standards will underwrite public confidence in research and research training, alongside coursework teaching and learning,” said Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Research.
The establishment of TEQSA was a key recommendation of the Bradley Review of Higher Education.
TEQSA will combine the regulatory activities currently undertaken in the states and territories with the quality assurance activities undertaken by the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA). This will reduce the number of federal, state and territory regulatory and quality assurance bodies from nine to one.
“This will improve the consistency of regulation across the country and enable for appropriate action to be taken when issues of poor quality are identified,” Senator Evans said.
“It will ensure that the anticipated future growth of the higher education system does not come at the expense of quality.
“I welcome the support that the Government has received in developing the TEQSA legislation from Universities Australia, the Council of Private Higher Education, TAFE Directors Australia, the Australian Council for Private Education and Training, the National Tertiary Education Union, the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations and the National Union of Students.”
A key feature of the legislation is the inclusion of three basic principles of regulation to which TEQSA must adhere. These principles require TEQSA to take into account the scale, mission and history of each provider and allow high-quality, lower-risk providers to operate without unnecessary intrusion.
Senator Carr said the legislation would help ensure the independence and diversity of the nation’s universities.
“The Gillard Labor Government understands the importance of an independent university sector that is sustainable and delivers excellence in both education and research,” Senator Carr said.
The TEQSA Bill provides for universities to continue to operate under the State Acts establishing them, preserving the important role of each university’s governing council.
The Government has also explicitly made provision for the transfer of a provider’s self-accrediting authority to the new regulatory environment upon the establishment of TEQSA. A university’s authority to self-accredit will be further enshrined in the Provider Standards.
Given the importance of the TEQSA legislation for the future of higher education, the Government will now refer the Bills to the Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. Responsibility for administering TEQSA is shared between the Minister for Tertiary Education and the Minister for Research.
Provider Standards will be applied by TEQSA under the new quality assurance and regulatory arrangements. A public consultation draft of these is now available below: Draft Provider Standards.
This draft has been prepared based on the National Protocols and National Guidelines for Higher Education Approval Processes and takes account of over 12 months of constructive feedback provided by the higher education sector as well as State and Territory Governments. The assistance of those individuals and groups who engaged in this consultation process is gratefully acknowledged. Stakeholders are invited to submit comments on the draft Provider Standards, using the feedback form below: Feedback Form. Please email your form to teqsa@deewr.gov.au by 5pm Thursday 2 June 2011. The feedback received will be considered by the Minister for Tertiary Education in developing the first set of Threshold Standards.

Author: Hans de Wit. Internationalisation of Higher Education in Europe and its assessment, trends and issues.
Towards a European Programme Label for internationalisation?
From the present overview, some issues come clearly to the forefront:
> There appears a need for quality assessment of internationalisation strategies in higher education
> Around the world, in particular in the USA and Europe, several instruments have been developed over the past 15 years to assess that quality
> They use more or less the same programmatic and organizational categories for assessment
> They are focusing on input and output assessment
> They are mainly taking place at the institutional level
> They address the state of the art and/or the process for improvement
> With preference some form of benchmarking as to create comparison and best practice is appreciated.
At the same time, one can observe that:
> Institutions are reluctant to ongoing assessmen of internationalisation strategies, as this is a time consuming process
> In the present world of branding and ranking, an instrument without some kind of certification is not considered a high priority
> Assessment of institutional strategies denies the diversity of strategies for disciplines and programmes and the different levels within them
> Increasingly, institutions and programmes distinguish between a minimum requirement of internationalisation, applicable to all students and all programmes, and a maximum requirement, applicable to programmes and students with a high international and intercultural focus
> Internationalisation is becoming more mainstream in het higher education agenda, as in the present global knowledge economy internationalisation is strongly linked to innovation, interdisciplinarity and interculturality, and
> Increasingly a link has to be made to learning outcomes for students.
Based on these observations, it appears advisable to develop a system of certification of internationalisation at the programme level. This certification should be able to distinguish programmes for the quality of their internationalisation.
The following characteristics should be taken into consideration:
> The use of different assessment levels in order to indicate the state of internationalisation (what has been achieved so far) and to provide incentives for improvement (where is it heading to or what is attainable)
> The certification is available at least at the level of the programme or a combination of programmes (bachelor and/or master; schools/faculties)
> The assessment procedure is not focused on a specific activity but is comprehensive towards internationalisation (the why, how and what of internationalisation)
> It should focus on how internationalisation contributes to the overall quality by focusing on qualitative indicators (vision, content, provisional elements and outcomes) while using quantitative indicators (e.g. staff mobility figures) as supporting elements
> It should be with preference a regional (European) or international certificate, as the purpose is to position it in a comparative international context
> The assessment should be done by a team which combines expertise on the subject, on quality assurance and on internationalisation, and should include international expertise and the student perspective
> Given the global knowledge economy and the diverse society we live in, both intercultural and international competencies should be addressed
> As much as possible, the assessment should be combined with existing assessment of the programme, as to avoid extra workload and costs.

A study on the degree of diversification of university budget and the share of competitive funding: European university funding and financial autonomy. Authors: Laura de Dominicis, Susana Elena Pérez, Ana Fernández-Zubieta. Editor: European Commission.
Executive Summary
European higher education systems have experienced important changes over recent decades, leading to higher autonomy in most cases. The more autonomous a university is, then it should, in principle, be able to better compete in obtaining funds from different sources, such as competitive funds, contracts with private companies, and donations from the non-profit sector. This could make institutions less dependent on one single stream of income and more able to adapt to a changing environment.
The main objective of this report is to investigate the structure of the budget in a sample of research-active European universities and to analyse to what extent the level of financial autonomy effects the diversification of their budget and the amount of competitive funding they receive.
The study covers 200 research-active universities from 33 European Research Area (ERA) countries (27 Member States and Croatia, Iceland, Israel, Norway, Switzerland and Turkey) within the framework of the 'European Observatory of Research-Active Universities and National Public Research Funding Agencies' (UniObs). The criteria followed to select the list of universities in the sample are based on research performance and country representativeness.
The main findings of the study are as follows:
• Looking at the general budget, 70 % of the total university income comes from government allocations. Sources from private companies represent about 6%, around 3% comes from non-profit sectors and approximately 2% is from abroad. The remaining 19% belongs to a residual category 'Other'.
• Considering only public funding coming from government (national and regional) we observe that, on average, about 20 % is assigned on a competitive basis, with UK institutions and, in general, technological universities having the highest shares of competitive funds.
• We observe large within-country variability in the shares of government competitive funds, which could be attributed to the strategic behaviour of single institutions in acquiring funds or to their ability to compete successfully against other institutions. Examples of these are the University of Cambridge in the UK, the University of Karlsruhe in Germany, the University of Florence in Italy, and the universities of Leiden and Wageningen in the Netherlands.
• Most institutions with highly diversified budgets are located in the UK.
• University research budgets vary considerably between institutions. Research funds coming from regional authorities are considered important for institutions operating in countries with a more decentralised government structure such as Belgium, Germany or Spain.
• Institutions that declare to be completely autonomous are the ones that have the most diversified budget.
• The share of competitive-based government funds increases with increasing levels of institutional financial autonomy.
• National or institutional settings which do not allow universities to act in a fully financially autonomous way appear to be less likely to produce a real change.
France
Funding data show that universities, generally, have less than 10% of their budget coming from industry. Only in the case of institutions in France, Greece and Croatia, more than 10% of the total budget comes from the private sector.

EUNIS Business Intelligence in Higher Education Conference, Hannover, Germany (17 May 2011).
What do you need if you want to base your decisions on information and facts? The magical word is "Business Intelligence"!
Business Intelligence (BI), sometimes called "Institutional Intelligence" in Higher Education institutions, refers to computer-based techniques used in spotting, digging-out, and analyzing business data.
Business intelligence aims to support better business decision making, and thus can be called a decision support system (DSS). Common functions of business intelligence systems are: *reporting, *online analytical processing (OLAP) to explore data and to answer multi-dimensional queries, *data mining to display clusters and associations in large data sets, *predictive analytics to "make predictions" or discover trends.
BI applications often use a data warehouse, which is a dimensional database fed from the Information System of the Business or Institution. In this case, the BI process also includes modules such as data integration, data quality, data warehousing, and master data management. BI solutions intend to support the experts as well as the top management by offering different analytical tools. The conference aims to give an overview of available products for Business Intelligence in the context of Higher Education. Solutions presented will be commercial as well as Open Source. Last but not least, this conference will be the FIRST CLASS OPPORTUNITY to learn about and discuss BI solutions in Higher Education.
Topics
* Commercial and Open Source BI solutions in European countries (overview)
* Using BI for decision making and policy planning in HE
* Best practice examples for the use and implementation of BI
* Lessons learned / Do's and Don'ts / Beyond the hype: realistic chances and limitations of BI
* Collaboration between institutions, e.g. o developing BI solutions, o defining key indicators
* Regional and nationwide BI solutions: integrated solutions for HE institutes and for politics and ministeries.