Universities are the unique places for production and dissemination of new knowledge, which are fundamentally important for society. Universities have been benefitting from, and contributing to the EU research framework programmes (FPs) for decades. More...

The Open Public Consultation on the mid-term evaluation of the Erasmus+ Programme, carried out by the European Commission (EC), will end on 31 May 2017. This consultation invites various stakeholders as well as the general public to reflect on the relevance of the Erasmus+ programme, including its objectives, the effectiveness of measures taken to achieve them, and the efficiency of their implementation. More...

The High-Level Group specifically brings together university rectors and other leaders engaged in the negotiation of “big deals” with publishers on behalf of universities, and supports universities and national rectors’ conferences (NRCs) in these processes. For its fourth meeting, the group  focused on two main issues related to the transition towards an open scientific publishing system: offset agreements in negotiations for open access (OA) to research publications situated within a gold OA context, and recommendations for green OA compliance. The group also discussed future models of sustainable and open academic publishing. More...

The European University Association is worried about the latest developments in Romanian research policy. Universities thrive and contribute to their societies when they can build on research excellence in an open exchange across borders. More...

The discussions of the RPWG referred to recent EUA activities and major developments in European research policy, for example, the update of the EUA Autonomy Scorecard and the association’s recent call for ambitious funding in Europe post-2020. While the two main foci of the meeting were dedicated to taking forward the EUA Vision for FP9 and preparing the next steps in the area of smart specialisation, the RPWG also reflected on the state of play of the interim evaluation of Horizon 2020; underlined the need for new momentum in realising the European Research Area as proposed in the March 2017 joint statement by EUA, CESAER, LERU and Science Europe; and touched upon defence research. More...

The focus groups were organised by ESU, EUA, EURASHE, EI and ENQA for their respective members: students, quality assurance practitioners in universities and institutions for professional higher education, academics and representatives from quality assurance agencies. Each group had wide ranging discussions about the purposes of higher education and approaches to defining quality and subsequently addressed additional concrete issues related to QA, many of which are linked to the expectations set out by the Standards and guidelines for quality assurance in the EHEA (ESG 2015). More...

The registration period for EUA’s Institutional Evaluation Programme (IEP) is open until 30 June 2017. IEP is an EQAR-listed quality assurance agency which offers comprehensive, improvement-oriented institutional evaluations conducted by a team of experienced higher education leaders. Since its establishment in 1994, IEP has carried out more than 400 evaluations of diverse higher education institutions in Europe and worldwide. More...

The Annual Meeting will bring together European stakeholders and highlight different perspectives on the changing role of doctoral education in the context of digitalisation, offering concrete examples across different disciplines to show how doctoral schools are adapting their practices to keep up with digitalisation. Against this background, the meeting will explore how universities can develop policies to support and guide early-stage researchers in their endeavours in a coherent and responsible manner. More...

Europe’s universities want to do much more together. This is the essence of a discussion I chaired recently between the European National Rectors’ Conferences (the national associations of universities). The debate was generated by the European Commission’s White Paper on the Future of Europe discussing the European project after its 60 years’ anniversary and – importantly – after Brexit. More...

As of beginning of May 2017, 3900 public employees have been arrested, and even larger number suspended according to news reports. Among the sacked are also 484 academic and 98 administrative staff from different universities. As for other sacked public employees, their names have published on the website of the Turkish Official Journal, on Saturday, 29 April. More...