For the first time ECA has awarded a Certificate for Quality in Internationalisation to a university outside Europe. A panel of four experts chaired by Prof Hans de Wit and facilitated by the National Accreditation Council of Colombia (CNA) assessed La Salle University in Bogotá, Colombia. The procedure was part of ECA’s CeQuInt project. More...

By Rahul Choudaha. The confluence of cost and funding pressures, technology-enabled learning innovations and new paradigms of quality and teaching will continue to force higher education institutions to redefine their value. However, higher education institutions are unwilling to embrace new definitions of value and quality "as valid, even when they can see that customers increasingly prefer the new value offerings," notes a report from TIAA-CREF Institute. More...

Online registration is an important part of a NICHE project in Mali, that supports innovation of the management and administration of the whole higher education system in Mali. Digitalising the registration process will reduce costs and improve governance and planning.
This summer, the Malian Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, mister Me Mountaga Tall, officially launched a new website for student enrollment. In an interview he explained the benefits of the new system.
Read the whole interview on MaliWeb.net (in French). More...

Small learning subsidies are available to NICHE project implementers who wish to organise an innovative activity to encourage mutual learning between NICHE projects or make outcomes more visible to other stakeholders and a broader audience. A new call has been published.
Because we think it is important to continue learning from and with each other within the NICHE Programme, we have decided to open another round of applications, with deadline 15 September 2015.
Go to the call and apply for the subsidy. More...

Despite all good intentions, gaps in access to higher education opportunities remain persistent. This issue is addressed in EAIE Forum magazine’s Spring 2015 edition.
The issue features an article by EP-Nuffic’s senior programme administrators Miriam Langeveld and Hélène Bernot Ullerö about the gender gap among academic staff at universities in the South.
More scholarships for women
To close the gap, the authors argue that EP-Nuffic capacity building projects should allocate 70 to 100% of their scholarships for postgraduate studies to women over a number of years. Some projects, however, allocate 50%, while most follow the (less ambitious) national policies of the partner countries, with targets of between 20 and 30%. At such a rate the gender gap will not be closed in the foreseeable future.
Innovative approach
The authors note that many projects struggle to do more than raising awareness, although there are some examples of innovative approaches.
One such example, described by Langeveld and Bernot Ullerö in their article, is the clever approach used by the Faculty of Agriculture and Environment at Gulu University, Northern Uganda, to attract more young women to agricultural studies.

Read the article in Forum Magazine (2.0 MB)

Read the article in French (598.1 KB). More...