ACA Annual Report 2011 available online

ACA is pleased to announce that its 2011 Annual Report has just become available for download on the ACA website. The website also gives access to all previous annual reports starting from the year 2000. The 2011 report provides a thorough overview of all key activities of ACA over the past calendar year. ACA’s membership developments, project activities, publications, seminars and conferences, governance issues, staffing and financial information are all covered in detail in this seventeen-page retrospective.
To receive print copies of the report, please write to the ACA Secretariat directly. Download Annual Report 2011.
Annual Report 2011
In 2011, ACA was delighted to admit three fine organisations as new members: Agence Europe-Education-Formation France (2e2f): Created in 2000, 2e2f serves as France’s National Agency for the Lifelong Learning Programme, as well as the National Contact Point for Erasmus Mundus, Tempus, the Bologna Experts French Team, Europass and Euroguidance. The Bordeaux-based agency manages all aspects of the European programmes for which it is responsible; it also liaises with national organisations in the fields of education and vocational training and organises many conferences, seminars and workshops.
Foundation for the Development of the Education System (FRSE): FRSE serves as Poland’s National Agency for the Lifelong Learning Programme, the National Structure of the Erasmus Mundus Programme, and the National Contact Point for Tempus. Since its founding in 1993, FRSE has administered the main European education programmes and been involved in national efforts to modernise the education system, particularly with regard to quality and competitiveness. It has also promoted the Polish higher education system abroad.
Foundation for Federal Co-operation: Headquartered in Solothurn, the CH Foundation (as it is more commonly known) is an inter-cantonal organisation with members from all 26 Swiss cantons. It was created in 1967 and has for many years been engaged in efforts to support national and international educational, cultural and linguistic exchange and mobility activities. Since 2011, the CH Foundation also acts as the Swiss National Agency for the Lifelong Learning Programme.
Mapping Mobility in European Higher Education
2011 saw the much-awaited conclusion of Mapping mobility in European higher education, one of ACA’s largest and most complex projects of the last few years. Work on this European Commission-funded study was initiated in October 2009 and focused on two primary lines of inquiry. First, through an analysis of existing data from EUROSTAT, OECD and UNESCO’s Institute of Statistics, the project sought to provide a clear picture of the volume and patterns of student (and to a lesser extent staff) mobility into, out of and between the so-called Europe 32 countries over a recent ten-year period. “Europe 32” in the context of this study, consists of those countries covered by the EU’s Lifelong Learning Programme: the 27 EU Member States, the four European Free Trade Association states (Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway and Switzerland), and Turkey. Second, the project aimed to assess the adequacy of the international data stock – and the approaches to its collection – with regard to the mobility phenomenon in the Europe 32 countries.
ACA served as the coordinator of the project, in close collaboration with Ulrich Teichler of INCHER at the University of Kassel. The work also benefitted from significant contributions by Campus France and DAAD (both ACA member organisations), as well as HIS (a German social science research institute). A number of researchers connected to Professor Teichler also participated in this mammoth exercise, which involved extensive analysis of both quantitative information and contextual considerations across the 32 very diverse countries covered by the study.
The final two-volume report provides amongst other things:
• a state of the art picture of student mobility into, out of and between the Europe 32 countries, on the criteria of both nationality and country of prior education/residence (‘real mobility’); it also features an historical account of this information (time series), displaying the major mobility trends
• in-depth studies of student mobility in 11 EU countries
• a critical assessment of the present state of international data collection and analysis, with recommendations for improved practice in the future
• a state of the art picture, including a historical dimension, of student mobility in European programmes (mainly Erasmus)
• a presentation of the (few) available data on staff mobility in Europe, as well as a suggested methodology for future data collection in this area
• an analysis of national policies for international mobility in all 32 countries covered by the study
• recommendations to boost student and staff mobility in Europe.
The full text of this epic report was made available on the European Commission’s website in autumn 2011. DAAD also graciously provided support for the publication of a hard copy version of the study, which came out in its Dok&Mat series in December 2011.
Study on European and National Mobility Policies (ENPMOB)
Over the course of 2011, ACA devoted significant resources to the completion of the Study on European and National Mobility Policies (ENPMOB). This project, initiated in November 2010, was dedicated to the exploration and analysis of mobility policies and strategies at both the European level and in the same 32 countries covered in Mapping Mobility in European Higher Education project (see previous section).
Building on the quantitative foundation laid by Mapping Mobility, ENPMOB has aimed to make sense of the concrete set of objectives, instruments, responsible actors, monitoring actions, and timeline specifications for mobility articulated in the study countries and within the broader EU framework. This work was made possible by funding from the ERASMUS Programme’s ‘Accompanying Measures’. ACA served as project coordinator and worked closely with colleagues from Nuffic and DAAD to realise the project’s goals.
ENPMOB’s final report is due in early 2012 and will provide a substantial contribution to ACA’s body of work focused on international mobility. This will include a macro-level comparison of the mobility policies of the 32 Lifelong Learning Programme countries and the European Union itself. There will be a historical account and analysis of the evolution of EU mobility policies over the past 25 years as well as in-depth presentation of the national mobility policies in eight European countries – Austria, Cyprus, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom.
A central consideration within the study is the question of convergence or divergence. That is to say, the final report will endeavour to shed light on the fundamental issue of if, how and to what degree national and European-level policies are exerting an effect on one another. There will also be attention paid to the alignment (or lack thereof) between stated policy objectives and the ‘real world’, in the form of discernible mobility trends and the practical application of steering instruments. The final report will be published in ACA’s own monograph series, the ACA Papers on International Cooperation in Education.
Indicators for Mapping and Profiling Internationalisation (IMPI)
Building on its core expertise in the area of internationalisation, ACA in 2011 continued to play an active role in the on-going IMPI project, which was launched in 2009. Coordinated by CHE Consult GmbH (Centre for Higher Education Development) in Germany, Indicators for Mapping and Profiling Internationalisation is a three-year project funded by the European Commission. ACA members CampusFrance, NUFFIC, Perspektywy and SIU are also core partners in this work, which is focused on the development and testing of a set of internationalisation indicators that can be used by European higher education institutions through the medium of an online interactive “toolkit”. The indicators allow both for self-assessment of different dimensions of internationalisation by individual institutions, or they can be used for a coordinated benchmarking exercise among groups of institutions.
In 2011, ACA took the lead on a variety of IMPI-related activities, principally focused on guiding the team of core partners (and 20 participating higher education institutions from across Europe) through an in-depth testing phase of the indicators. Key activities included oversight of two day-long workshops—one in Vienna in May, the second in Copenhagen in September—as well as the convening of an external experts’ meeting in Brussels in April, which provided important feedback on the project’s achievements to that point, and its on-going development.
The IMPI project is due to be completed in 2012. ACA will be a central actor until the end, hosting the project’s final symposium in Brussels in May 2012.
Mapping “mobility windows ” in European higher education. Examples from selected countries (MOwin)
October 2011 saw the launch of MOWIN, a project led by ACA and developed in partnership with ACA’s Finnish member, CIMO, as well as HIS, a German social science research institute. MOWIN is funded by the Lifelong Learning Programme and its objective is to ‘unpack’ the concept of “mobility windows”, an increasingly popular instrument for integrating study abroad periods into higher education programming. The project will have a lifespan of two years and, among other things, aims to provide a robust working definition of the (often vague) term “mobility window”, create an inventory and a typology of the different types of “windows”, and investigate how different mobility window models are implemented in a small group of countries and institutions.
The European University in the 21st Century. Reconciling the social dimension, excellence, internationalisation and sustainable funding (EUSEIF)
The EUSEIF project was launched in late 2011, with financial support from the Lifelong Learning Programme. This oneyear initiative is focused on analysing the interrelations between five issues of central importance to European higher education today, but which are rarely examined jointly. A core consideration will be the extent to which (if at all) the agendas of these different imperatives—social inclusiveness, excellent institutional performance, internationalisation, mobility, and funding—can be attained in parallel, or if and to what extent they are mutually exclusive. Five high-level concept papers will be produced by a team of experts, and an international conference will be convened in 2012, designed around the project’s main thematic tracks. The conference proceedings will subsequently be published in ACA’s monograph series, the ACA Papers on International Cooperation in Education.
European Parliament Framework Contract
In January 2011, ACA and DAAD jointly submitted a “Detailed Briefing Note” to the European Parliament (EP), under the title The Bologna Process: Stocktaking and Prospects. This work was specifically commissioned by the EP and came as a result of DAAD and ACA having successfully responded in late 2010 to an EP call for tenders for a ‘framework service contract’.
This very short yet dense report, published electronically by the EP, presented a concise overview of the Bologna Process since 1998, as well as an assessment of strengths and weakness in terms of the overall performance of the Bologna countries. Also included in the publication were nine ‘thematic status reports’ on the main achievements and challenges seen across the main Bologna action lines, from mobility to employability, and from the quality assurance to the external dimension.
Annual Reports
You can download our Annual Reports in PDF format below. Annual Report 2011.  Annual Report 2010. Annual Report 2009.Annual Report 2008. Annual Report 2007. Annual Report 2006. Annual Report 2005. Annual Report 2004. Annual Report 2003. Annual Report 2002. Annual Report 2001. Annual Report 2000.