The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) is consulting on proposals to develop a new system for alternative providers of higher education.
The consultation’s aims are:

• to provide an overview of the new system for alternative providers that wish their students to be able to access student support from the Student Loans Company
• to seek responses to specific proposals on student number controls
• to invite views, particularly from alternative providers, on how this will operate in practice.

This consultation forms part of a review of the course designation system for alternative providers.
It is envisaged that the new system will involve more robust and transparent requirements in the areas of quality assurance, financial sustainability, and management and governance. Read the Government’s consultation.

This page shows data and evidence about the current and future supply of graduates and postgraduates by broad subject area.
The data give a ten-year picture of the numbers studying at A-level, applying to higher education (HE), and studying in HE at undergraduate and postgraduate level.‌
Overview
These datasets inform our approach to strategically important and vulnerable subjects. We use them to monitor where a subject might be at risk, and they help us and our partner organisations decide when, where and how to intervene.
We do not rely only on these data. Evidence from universities and colleges, employers, the Government and learned societies and subject associations also inform our approach. The HEFCE SIVS advisory group includes representatives from all these stakeholders and will consider this data each year. Read more...

Conférence EIAH 2013 Environnements Informatiques pour l'Apprentissage Humain, 6e édition. 29, 30 & 31 Mai 2013 - Université Paul Sabatier - Toulouse - IRIT.
La conférence est organisée sous l'égide de l'ATIEF (Association des technologies de l'information pour l'Education et la formation). Téléchargez l'affiche de la conférence.
Le champ scientifique des EIAH concerne les environnements informatiques dont la finalité explicite est de susciter et d'accompagner l'apprentissage humain. Ces travaux convoquent des spécialistes de disciplines aussi diverses que la psychologie, les sciences de l'éducation, la didactique, l'informatique, les sciences sociales, l'ergonomie. La conférence EIAH 2013 se donne pour ambition de réunir ces spécialistes et de dégager entre eux des voies de convergence susceptibles de faire progresser une réflexion intégrée sur l'avenir de la recherche dans le domaine, mais aussi de dégager des pistes et des modèles pour la conception et la mise à disposition d'outils et de méthodologies susceptibles de faire progresser l'apprentissage sous toutes ses formes.
La conférence EIAH est organisée tous les deux ans, elle rassemble régulièrement autour de 200 participants, principalement des chercheurs, enseignants chercheurs & doctorants mais est également ouverte à tous les publics (concepteurs, enseignants, formateurs, responsables de formation...) intéressés par les travaux de recherche en EIAH et leur mise en pratique en contexte d'apprentissage.

Colloque « L'université et le monde professionnel - quels enjeux pour le doctorat ? »
Approches sociohistoriques, socioculturelles et socioprofessionnelles, 24-25 Janvier 2013 - CNAM.
A l’initiative du groupe de travail appartenant au programme collaboratif 1 du Labex Hastec deux journées de colloque sont organisées dont l’enjeu est de questionner la thèse de doctorat. En effet, à l’heure où les établissements d’enseignement supérieur professionnels frappent à la porte des universités pour pouvoir offrir à leurs étudiants la possibilité de passer une thèse de doctorat propre au champ professionnel concerné (doctorat en exercice, doctorat professionnel, doctorat en VAE, doctorat en VAP, etc.), il devient urgent d’en dégager les enjeux et d’en comprendre les impacts éventuels.
Ces deux journées ont pour objectifs de clarifier ces demandes, d’en dégager les effets en rapport avec des perspectives historiques, culturelles et professionnelles sur un plan national et international. Quelle est la nature des résistances? Quelles sont les compétences épistémologiques minimum exigées d’une véritable thèse de doctorat quel que soit son domaine? Telles sont les questions abordées lors de ces deux journées.
Des historiens, des épistémologues évoqueront les lignes de force de la thèse de doctorat.
Des universitaires, responsables d’écoles doctorales évoqueront les évolutions récentes du doctorat et la place de la thèse.
Des universitaires étrangers feront part des expériences de leur pays.
Enfin, des témoins, d’une part, de mise en place d’une articulation thèse-monde professionnel, et d’autre part, de travaux de capitalisation et d’analyse de thèses déjà soutenues par les professionnels, permettront de comprendre s’il existe une spécificité ou non d’un doctorat fortement lié à un champ de pratiques professionnelles.

If we are to come out of this crisis in a sustainable way, we are going to need to use all the human talent available. As societies across the world face problems ranging from population ageing to massive youth unemployment to increasing pressure on the environment and scarce natural resources, we need all hands on deck to find solutions and meet new challenges.
We know that greater educational attainment has accounted for about half of the economic growth in OECD countries in the past 50 years – and that owes a lot to bringing more girls to higher levels of education. So when the Taliban shoot a girl on a school bus in Pakistan to deter girls from going to school, it is not just an unpardonable act of violence against one person or community; it is a blow against growth and development for a whole economy.
But once you have your education, you need to be able to use it to reap the full economic benefit, both personally and globally. In OECD countries, more women than men are now graduating from university, and yet women still earn 15% less than men and hold only 10% of boardroom seats in major listed companies -- even though more diverse boards can help improve corporate governance. Women also spend fewer hours in paid work than men, and many more hours in unpaid work – cooking, cleaning, caring for children and ageing parents – and are more likely to end their lives in poverty.

UIL organized in close cooperation with the National Commission of China for UNESCO and the Beijing Municipal Education Commission, a preparatory meeting, held on 1 December 2012 in Beijing, China in anticipation of the the 1st Global Learning Cities Conference. Representatives of UIL, the founding partners of UNESCO GLCN and the Chinese national authorities brainstormed around the main themes of the Conference (scheduled for Autumn 2013) and elaborated on a master plan for preparing the Conference (including an open discussion on the scope of invitations, key presenters, level of experts, the annotated agenda and the overall road map). The Conference is expected to bring together approximately 500 mayors, chairs of city councils, directors of city education departments and experts/resource persons from the five UNESCO regions.
In his inauguration speech of the meeting, Mr Jiang Peimin, Director General of Beijing Municipal Education Commission, expressed the generous commitment of Beijing Municipal Government to host the Conference.  Mr Arne Carlsen, UIL Director, indicated that UIL will, in collaboration with UNESCO Headquarters, UNESCO Regional Bureau in Bangkok, UNESCO Office in Beijing and all founding partners, work closely with the Chinese National Commission for UNESCO and the Beijing Municipal Education Commission for a successful Conference.  Mr Du Yue, Secretary General of the National Commission of China for UNESCO, emphasized in his final remarks that all key documents of the Conference should be ready in early 2013 in order to organize a resonant conference with a high-level profile. While the Chinese partners are fully mobilized in their organizational work, UIL will set up a task force to expedite content preparation for the conference.

Under the framework of the 2012 Hangzhou International Conference on Educational Innovations, UIL, in close cooperation with the National Commission of China for UNESCO and the Education Commission of the Xiacheng District of Hangzhou City, organized an international consultative meeting for establishing the UNESCO Global Learning Cities Network (UNESCO GLCN) from 28 to 29 November in Hangzhou, China. Representatives of the founding partners or potential funding partners for establishing the UNESCO GLCN participated in this meeting. UIL was represented at the conference by its Director, Mr Arne Carlsen, who spoke on the aims and potentials of Learning Cities and Lifelong Learning.
The meeting reviewed progress made in the preparatory phase of setting up the UNESCO GLCN, clarified the objectives and functions of the UNESCO GLCN, and developed a roadmap and a communication strategy for establishing the UNESCO GLCN.  An important content of the meeting was the discussion on drafting a UNESCO GLCN index with both quantitative and qualitative indicators. The emphasis of the discussion was on how to make the index manageable and applicable at city-level in all development contexts.  Based on the discussion in the meeting, UIL will refine the indicators and organize the piloting of the index in a small selection of cities in the various UNESCO regions.

In this article, François Vallaeys, a philosopher specialising in university social responsibility and adviser to the Regional Observatory on Social Responsibility in Latin America and the Caribbean, reflects on the concept of social responsibility and its application in the university context.
1. Lack of theoretical definition: how can a responsibility be social?
The corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement has developed strongly in recent decades. Quality standards now integrate the social and environmental aspects of production and management processes: there is no longer “quality” without “responsibility”. In this context, universities have also become the focus of attention in recent years. We talk about the sustainable and/or responsible campus, publish institutional reports on university social responsibility (USR), and endeavour to relate academic training and research to social participation that supports a more humane, inclusive and sustainable form of development.
However, the meaning and scope of CSR as a concept have not been explored in any real depth. The resulting ambiguity generates endless confusion and misunderstandings, and gives rise to debate about the aptness of the concept and its unrealistic nature. Could CSR be no more than a rehash of good old corporate philanthropy, intended perhaps to soften the disastrous impact of unregulated global capitalism? Or is it really a new way of rationally managing the economy in the global era of the “risk society” (Beck, 1986)? Should we view this responsibility as an optional commitment undertaken voluntarily, or take steps to make it compulsory? In the academic context, is social responsibility a new model for administrative and academic management or just a new label for the kind of solidarity outreach projects many universities have pursued for years?
We are faced with a multitude of practices, but lack a clear theoretical framework. What does it really mean to be “socially responsible”? Where is the theory of social responsibility (SR) we can refer to? How can “responsibility”—which legally and morally speaking concerns autonomous individuals who can be held accountable for their actions—become something “social”, a responsibility of all and for all? Are we to ask society as a whole to be responsible? Society is not a subject! Or will individuals have to take on the burden of their entire society? They are part of society; they are immersed in it and have no power over it! A social responsibility would be so broad, it is impossible to see how it could ever be applied in practice. It could not possibly serve as a sound basis for compelling citizens and organisations to act in a certain way. At best, it would be little more than an invitation to sign up to a “commitment of solidarity” in tackling social issues (poverty, discrimination, pollution, etc), rather than a “responsibility” as such. In fact, this is the way people spontaneously view SR, despite claims that it is not philanthropy. None of these philosophical questions have been answered, and this has practical implications: ISO 26000, the social responsibility standard, does not provide for rigorous certification of clearly defined practices. Rather, it is the result of a process of negotiation, conducted over many years and involving 90 countries and all relevant social actors. Organisational social responsibility is still a fuzzy concept that anyone can lay claim to. And because we have no clear idea what responsibility we are talking about, it remains no more than a voluntary commitment that no one can challenge by invoking a clearly defined obligation. So we need to do a bit of philosophy to better understand what we are dealing with. “There is nothing more practical than a good theory,” as Kurt Lewin (1952) said. Read more...

In this interview, Daniel Mato presents the Project “Cultural Diversity, Interculturality and Higher Education" of the International Institute of UNESCO for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC), which analyzes the current demands and access conditions of Indigenous and Afro-Descendant students within the different types of Latin American Higher Education Institutions, and assesses their impact, responsibilities and challenges in regards to intercultural education, amongst other issues.
What is the “Project on Cultural Diversity, Interculturality, and Higher Education" about?
The Project “Cultural Diversity and Interculturality in Higher Education in Latin America” of the Instituto Internacional de la UNESCO para la Educación Superior en América Latina y el Caribe (IESALC) was created to identify, document and analyze experiences of higher education that are committed to meeting the needs, demands and proposals for higher education among indigenous and Afro-descendant communities in Latin America. The Project thereby seeks to lay the necessary groundwork to inform policy recommendations, generate criteria for the production of statistics and indicators on the field’s development, identify topics of interest for new research projects, and contribute to the development of sustainable collaboration mechanisms between the institutions studied and others with similar interests.
The project is not only about limiting the field of work to the experiences of higher education specifically directed to indigenous and Afro-Descendant communities, but to extend the need of intercultural education to all levels and to all population in Latin America, as many of these experiences point out. The idea of intercultural education for all was explicitly endorsed by the Higher Education Regional Conference (CRES 2008), celebrated in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia) in July 2008. There, 4,500 experts met to create a platform to enhance the development of higher education in Latin America. This was significant because societies in Latin America are pluricultural, for which higher education must incorporate wisdom and knowledge from indigenous and Afro-Descendant communities. It would be “silly” not to do so.
It is also “silly” the fact that conflict resolution modalities of indigenous and Afro-Descendant peoples in the Americas are being studied but not taught. They are only taught in anthropology schools, but not in Law schools. There is a lot of knowledge of indigenous peoples that is of national interest. It is not only about including wisdom and knowledge of these peoples as a sort of favor to them, but also as a favor to all of us. There are two main reasons to include this wisdom and knowledge: mere intelligence (let’s not waste this knowledge), and the fact that we are not ensuring that the established rights by law in constitutions are upheld. Read more...

EU-DRIVERS: Universities and Regional Innovation, A Toolkit to Assist with Building Collaborative Partnerships. 2012. Brussels: European Centre for Strategic Management of Universities.