Modernising higher education – Let professors be teachers too

ByAlan Osborn. Not enough emphasis is placed on teaching as opposed to research in many of Europe’s top universities, concludes the European Union’s (EU) High Level Group on the Modernisation of Higher Education. Its central recommendation is that by 2020 “all staff teaching in higher education institutions should have received certified pedagogical training”.
The group, headed by the former president of Ireland Mary McAleese and composed of a number of distinguished European academics plus the chair of Microsoft Corporation in Europe Jan Muehlfeit, makes 16 recommendations in support of its basic pitch that “teaching matters as much as research matters – we must put the quality of teaching and learning centre-stage”. Read more...