In the period February-June 2015 ACA conducted a survey on Open Education commissioned by the European Commission’s Institute for Prospective Technological Studies that targeted higher education institutions in five EU countries (France, Germany, Poland, Spain and the UK). The main aim of the survey was to understand if, how and to what extent higher education institutions in the five countries engage in Open Education (OE), or if not, why not. More...

The Institute of International Education (IIE) has published the 2016 edition of its annual print directory Funding for United States Study: A Guide for International Students and Professionals, the print companion to IIE's online search engine www.fundingusstudy.org. With more than 800 grant and scholarship listings, Funding for United States Study is the most comprehensive directory on finding funding for study in the United States, making it an invaluable resource for advisers and international students worldwide. More...

In February 2014, negotiations on Swiss participation in the European education programme ‘Erasmus+’ were suspended and Switzerland was demoted to the status of a third country (‘partner country’). Switzerland still has this status in the Erasmus+ Call for proposals 2016. As a result, Swiss institutions can only participate in a reduced number of activities within Erasmus+ as described in the Erasmus+ Programme Guide. Switzerland is therefore again participating only indirectly, via an interim solution for Erasmus+ 2016 supported by Swiss funding. More...

On 10 December ACA dedicated its last seminar in 2015 to the pressing issue spreading across countries, sectors and institutions in Europe and beyond. The aim of ACA´s European Policy Seminar - The international refugee crisis. What role for European higher education? - was to provide a comprehensive overview of the current initiatives dealing with the large influx of immigrants and to bring together relevant higher education actors in order to jointly search for adequate responses and possible solutions. With more than 100 participants and almost 20 speakers, ACA firmly believes that its objectives have been accomplished and that the seminar has paved the way to a series of follow-up events of the kind. More...

New research released on 9 December by the UK Higher Education International Unit revealed that international undergraduates studying at UK institutions are overwhelmingly satisfied with their experience. The report, International Undergraduate Students: The UK's Competitive Advantage, is part of a series commissioned to analyse the UK’s standing in the international market for higher education. The findings are based on the data from the International Student Barometer, an online survey conducted by i-Graduate, which collected feedback from 365 754 students enrolled in programmes outside their home countries. More...

The European Union is planning to harmonise entry and residence rules for non-EU students and researchers in its quest to attract top talent from around the world. The new rules, agreed upon informally among MEPs and Council Ministers earlier this month, would improve conditions for non-EU nationals pursuing studies or research in the EU by easing their movement within the Union and ensuring their equal access to the labour market in all member states. More...

Education is of central importance to the integration of refugees. More than half of the refugees currently arriving in Germany are under 25 years of age. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in cooperation with the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) will support those refugees who are willing to study and possess necessary qualifications. The ministry has made approximately EUR 1 million available during the next four years for the integration of refugees into the German higher education system, with EUR 27 million already available in 2016. More...

ACA is pleased to announce the publication of a new study titled University Quality Indicators: A Critical Assessment, written by ACA and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) for the European Parliament. The study reviews the latest developments in two different approaches to higher education quality assessment, quality assurance (QA) and global rankings, and presents a comparative analysis of these approaches. More...

U-Multirank’s team divided 1200 universities into four groups based on their founding year: before 1870; 1870 - 1945; 1945 - 1980; and after 1980. The results showed that the likelihood of a group’s universities scoring top grades on research performance indicators increased with their age. This trend was displayed across all four measures of research performance used by U-Multirank: citation rate, total number of publications, number of publications relative to the number of students and the proportion of top cited publications.  For instance, 38% of universities in the group of institutions founded before 1870 received the top score on citation rate (defined as the average number of times that the university's publications are cited), compared to just 10% of the universities founded after 1980 scoring equally well on this measure. More...