Formation Continue du Supérieur

The Universidad Veracruzana Intercultural (UVI) is organising a cross-cultural education programme, Aldea Intercultural, which will take place at their Las Selvas campus in Veracruz, Mexico, from 16 to 27 June 2014.
The event, which is open to professors, researchers and students and other stakeholders interested in indigenous cultures and/or community development, will include a series of courses and workshops on topics such as regional culture, local language, traditional cuisine and music, and local crafts.
More information, including an English brochure, is also available on the university website. More...

The European Journal of Education has published a special issue on “Global University Rankings. A Critical Assessment”, which is available for free download.
The issue, which includes a contribution from Andrejs Rauhvargers (author of EUA’s 2013 report on global university rankings), has been guest-edited by Barbara Kehm and Tero Erkkilä and can be downloaded here. More...

EUA member swissuniversities has announced that following the suspension of negotiations on Switzerland’s association to the Erasmus+ Programme, the Swiss Confederation has decided on some interim solutions with regard to Swiss participation in Erasmus+ in 2014.
Full details and a fact sheet are available on the Swiss Confederation website. The Swiss Confederation website notes that the interim solution gives priority to mobility activities and is based on the principle that Switzerland wishes to regain full associate country status. More...

The European Forum for Entrepreneurship Research (EFER) European Entrepreneurship Colloquium will take place at Vlerick Business School, Brussels, Belgium, from 6 to 12 July 2014.
The Colloquium is an intensive one-week residential programme, designed for “European professors and educators seeking to integrate more effective, appropriate and interactive approaches, and practical skills in teaching entrepreneurship”.
For more information, please visit the EFER website. More...

 The second and third country workshops and focus groups of the project “Mobility Policy-Practice Connect” (MPPC) have recently taken place in Vilnius and Budapest, respectively, with the aim of examining and enhancing current national mobility strategies. 
Coordinated by EUA, in cooperation with the Academic Cooperation Association (ACA) and the national rectors’ conferences of France (CPU), Lithuania (LURK) and Hungary (HRC), these events have brought together university vice-rectors and heads of international offices, as well as national agencies, ministries and student representatives. More...

EUA is pleased to announce that its Institutional Evaluation Programme (IEP) has had its full membership of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) renewed for five years, until 2019.
The decision by the ENQA Board was made following a successful external review of the IEP’s compliance with the membership criteria of ENQA and, therefore, with the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG). The ENQA review report on IEP can be viewed on the IEP website. More...

EUA is pleased to announce that registration is now open for its 2nd Funding Forum, taking place at the University of Bergamo in Italy from 9 to 10 October. The event is aimed at all higher education funding stakeholders – including university leaders and managers, researchers, students, as well as representatives of public authorities, public and private funders and partners.
This second edition focuses on the theme: “designing strategies for efficient and sustainable funding of higher education in Europe”, a key question of the ongoing EUA-led DEFINE project. More...

EUA was invited to the Third Annual Meeting of the Global Research Council (GRC) which took place from 27 to 28 May in Beijing, China, and was hosted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).
The GRC is a virtual organisation, comprised of the heads of science and engineering funding agencies from around the world, dedicated to promoting the sharing of data and best practices for collaboration among funding agencies worldwide. This is the second time that EUA, which was represented by its President Professor Helena Nazaré, has been invited as an observer to the GRC Annual Meeting. President Nazaré had also participated in a preparatory meeting hosted by Carnegie Mellon University, Washington, USA, in April this year. More...

Around 25 university leaders and senior managers from 19 countries across Europe gathered in Brussels on 5 June for a roundtable organised in the framework of the EUA-led project on university rankings entitled: “Rankings in Institutional Strategies and Processes” (RISP). The event was organised in order for the project team to engage in further data collection as well as to discuss and get feedback on the preliminary findings of the RISP project.
Universities worldwide are increasingly being confronted with ranking and classification initiatives both at national and international level. While many institutions have reservations about the methodologies used by the ranking compilers, there is a growing recognition that rankings and classifications are here to stay and many universities feel the need to respond. The RISP project is the first European-wide survey which seeks to analyse the ways in which universities across Europe respond to rankings – consciously or unconsciously – and it will also look in the final report to propose recommendations on how rankings can be used to promote institutional development while also identifying potential pitfalls that the universities should avoid.
The project partners, EUA, the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), the French Rectors’ Conference (CPU) and the Academic Information Centre (AIC) in Latvia, now plan to carry out a detailed analysis of all of the quantitative and qualitative information that has been collected during the project survey, site visits, and roundtable in order to formulate a comprehensive report that will be launched in Brussels in November. More information on the RISP project, which is supported by funding from the EU Lifelong Learning Programme, is available on the project website. More...

On 19 June 1999 about 30 countries came together and signed the Bologna Declaration expressing their commitment to enhance the European area for higher education and to promote the European system of higher education worldwide. The day earmarked the laying of the cornerstones of the pan-European process.

Happy Anniversary to all of us!