Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Mark Keese of the OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs. Six years after the start of the financial crisis, employment still hasn’t got back to pre-2007 levels in many countries, and for many people working conditions have got worse, according to the OECD’s Employment Outlook 2014, released today. Talk of ‘sovereign defaults’ and the whole system unravelling has faded, but – at a personal level – the conversation of the Great Recession has become one about job loss amongst family and friends, cutbacks at work, falling wages, under-employment, insecurity, and what this means for simply trying to make ends meet. More...

EUA monitors European-level developments at the interface of the Bologna Process and the EU Directive on the recognition of professional qualifications.
The latest update on developments – which has been posted on the EUA website – follows EUA’s recent briefing note on the amended Directive (2013/55/EU) that was published at the end of December 2013.
The latest update deals with developments in the Bologna Process, the EU institutions, and professional, academic and regulatory bodies; it makes particular reference to the sectoral professions (including medical doctor, dentist, general care nurse, pharmacist and architect).
Please click here to read more on professional qualifications. More...

The 2nd EUA Funding Forum will take place at the University of Bergamo in Italy from 9 to 10 October 2014. Registration for the event is open until 21 September. This year’s Forum focuses on designing strategies for efficient and sustainable funding of higher education in Europe and will be attended by delegates from over 35 countries.
The full programme – which is available on the event website – notably features the Italian Minister for Education Stefania Giannini, MEP Christian Ehler, European Commission representatives and an array of experienced university leaders and managers who will share their perspectives with participants. It will also include the presentation of the 2014 update of EUA’s Public Funding Observatory which monitors trends in funding to universities in over 20 European countries.
The two-day Forum is structured around the issue  of funding efficiency in the sector and how related measures may have a deep impact on the configuration of higher education landscapes in Europe – a focus of EUA’s current DEFINE study. Therefore discussions will explore the topics of performance-based funding, but also university mergers and excellence initiatives. They will also take a transversal look at the role leaders play in times of change, and draw comparisons with trends in North American universities.
Discussions at the Forum will contribute to the future higher education funding policy agenda at regional, national and European level.
For more information and to register, please visit the Forum website. More...

The HEKATE workshop, ‘Turning ideas into business opportunities’ has been developed in the course of the HEKATE – Higher Education and Enterprises: Knowledge Alliances for the Training of Entrepreneurs – project.
The workshop, which takes place from 26-28 November at the TuTech Innovation premises in Hamburg, is aimed at early stage researchers and early career business professionals and follows an experience-based learning approach. The workshop website also notes that participants will learn strategies and tools to pursue a business idea throughout different development stages within both company and academic settings.
Please visit www.hekate-project.eu for further details on the workshop and project. More...

The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya’s (UOC) UNESCO Chair in Education & Technology for Social Change has published a a ‘call for demonstrations’ for its International Seminar entitled “Revisiting the fundamentals of traditional curricula. R / Evolution: what “R” would mean for education”, that will take place in Barcelona from 1 to 2 December 2014.
More specific information on the call, and format of presentations, is available on this website. The deadline for proposals is 30 September 2014. More...

The final conference of the EQArep project¸ ‘Transparency of European higher education through public quality assurance reports’ will take place on 23 September in Brussels, Belgium. EQArep is a two-year project, led by the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA), and supported by funding from the EU Lifelong Learning programme. More...

In the framework of the STREAM project, a survey is now open for admissions officers in higher education institutions and others that may deal with the evaluation of foreign qualifications (e.g. quality assurance staff, student counsellors and ombudspersons).
The platform will be based on the Lisbon Recognition Convention (LRC) and the European Area of Recognition – Higher Education Institutions (EAR HEI) manual, which was published early 2014.
The survey consists of 18 questions and will be open until 1 October 2014.
For more information about the project and to access the survey please click here.
The EAR HEI manual can be downloaded here. More...