"Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence”, George Orwell wrote in 1943. And in an era of ‘fake news’ and post-truth, it resembles our world today. More...

In 2015, 193 countries committed to achieving the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, a shared vision of humanity that provides the missing piece of the globalisation puzzle. The extent to which that vision becomes a reality will in no small way depend on what is happening in today’s classrooms. Indeed, it is educators who hold the key to ensuring that the SDGs become a real social contract with citizens. More...

The latest Education Indicators in Focus policy brief analyses long-term trends in employment outcomes of adults based on their highest level of educational attainment. The figure above shows that, in all OECD countries, adults with tertiary education still enjoy higher employment rates than those without by 10 percentage points, on average, and this advantage has changed little over the past two decades. More...

The conference, which was organised in Bucharest, Romania, on 27-29 November, is part of the European Higher Education Area official calendar of events and conferences, promoting and sustaining the development of EHEA. It aims at providing a unique forum for dialogue between researchers, experts and policy makers in the field of higher education. The conference brought together higher education researchers ahead of the Bologna Process Ministerial Conference to be held in Paris in May 2018. More...

More than 30 higher education managers, policy makers and sector representatives met in Dublin last week with the aim to exchange good practices in efficiency and effectiveness of higher education management at various levels. This second USTREAM peer learning seminar was jointly organised by the Irish Universities Association (IUA) and EUA on 4 and 5 December. More...

Thirty-nine countries from Asia and Europe, as well as the European Union, stakeholder organisations and international organisations, were represented in the meeting, which aimed to identify common perspectives for collaboration in the next decade, and seek how to effectively fulfil them. The Seoul Declaration, adopted by the Ministers’ Meeting, focuses on balanced mobility between Asia and Europe, as well as skills development, with an emphasis on better employability through improving the quality of education. More...

Participants discussed the current state of academic freedom and different forms of political, religious and commercial pressures to which individual scientists and academic institutions are increasingly being subjected. The aim of the conference was to consider the implications of these developments, both at the individual and institutional levels, and to identify ways of countering them. EUA provided input on its extensive and long-standing work on institutional autonomy, and commented on the challenge of continuing to engage with scholars and universities in countries in which democratic traditions and academic freedom are under threat. More...

There are different drivers that lead institutions to develop specific strategies in the area. In several systems there are certain legal requirements that request universities to foster equal opportunities e.g. through specific policies or offices, but many also reported that they see it as an important part of the university’s mission to serve society as a whole. While at first many institutions approached the topic from a gender equality perspective, several participants reported that more recently the approaches had been broadened to encompass diversity in various dimensions such as gender, age, physical/mental condition, socio-economic background, ethnic origin or cultural and religious background. Several also referred to the increased influx of refugees that had put the issue again on the agenda. More...