Since its launch in 2006, the European Quality Assurance Forum (EQAF), co-organised by EUA, ENQA, EURASHE and ESU, has become the premier event for quality assurance (QA) in Europe with over 400 participants from across Europe and beyond.
The main purpose of the Forum is to foster a dialogue that bridges national boundaries and leads to a truly European discussion on QA in higher education, and to create a common European understanding of QA through the exchange of ideas and networking among different stakeholder groups.
The Forum organisers are now looking for a university to host the 11th EQAF, which is scheduled to take place in November 2016. More...

The Third European MOOCs Stakeholders Summit, will be held from 18 to 20 May 2015 at Université catholique de Louvain campus in Mons, Belgium.
EUA is chairing the programme committee of the Institutional Policies Track of the conference and is therefore inviting its members and partners to submit proposals for contributions, in one of the four sessions: strategies, changes in learning and teaching, collaboration with industries and communities, and policy horizon. More...

On 21 January EUA published the French version of the report relating to the ‘Rankings in Institutional Strategies and Processes’ (RISP) project. The publication, launched at an event hosted by one of the project partners, the French National Rectors’ Conference (Conférence des presidents d’université - CPU) in Paris, outlines the results of this pan-European study of the impact and influence of rankings on European higher education institutions.
The report can be downloaded here in both English and French. More...

The European Commission has published its third edition of the European Research Area newsletter.
Its December edition focuses on gender in research and highlights the report on Gender Equality Policies in Public Research, which is based on a survey of the Helsinki Group on Gender in Research and Innovation. More...

EUA is pleased to announce that registration is now open for the Annual Conference 2015 that will take place at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, on 16 and 17 April 2015.
Entitled “European Universities in Research and Innovation - People, Policies and Partnerships”, this year’s conference will focus on the role of universities in research and innovation. Members are also encouraged to attend the EUA General Assembly prior to the main conference where the new EUA President and five new board members will be elected. More...

By Terri Macdonald. On 25 March 2014, Senator Eric Abetz, Minister for Employment and Senator Michaelia Cash, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women, announced a public consultation process on reporting requirements established under the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (the Act). This was in response to lobbying by business groups and employers calling on the government to water down the existing reporting requirements and to delay or abandon the additional reporting requirements that were due to come into effect in 2015 and 2016. More...

The government’s latest gambit to try and attract senate support for their unfair university deregulation legislation should be treated with the contempt they deserve, according to the National Tertiary Education Union.
“Let’s be very clear: any discussion about reducing the 20% budget cut is only a return to the status quo of inadequate government investment in students’ education,” said NTEU National President Jeannie Rea. More...

The Monographs and Open Access Project was set up to consider the place of monographs in the arts, humanities and social science disciplines, and how they fit into the developing world of open access to research. The project was led by Geoffrey Crossick, Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and was commissioned by HEFCE in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
Evidence to support the project was gathered through an programme of consultations, surveys, data-gathering and research activities. The research was supported and shaped by an Expert Reference Group of publishers, academics, librarians, funders, open access experts in the UK and overseas. More...

The 1,911 submissions made by 154 UK universities to the 2014 REF have been published on the REF website. The submissions included 52,061 academic staff, 191,150 research outputs (such as journal articles, authored books and book chapters); and 6,975 case studies of the impact of research. More...

HEFCE has agreed to fund the development of a new shared service to support compliance with the policy for open access in the next Research Excellence Framework (REF). At its core, this new service will enable authors and universities to check whether a given publication is compliant with the open access policy. More...