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By David Crosier and Andrea Puhl. "Have no fear of perfection - you'll never reach it" – Salvador Dali
It took 199 years to build the Tower of Pisa. Only 5 years after construction had started, the tower began to sink. It had been built on too weak a foundation, set in unstable soil. Although beautifully planned and designed, the project was flawed from the beginning. Yet, just because of its flaw and tilt, the tower of Pisa has become one of the best-known monuments worldwide, and teaches us at least two important lessons: foundations matter, and perfection does not equal attraction.
In recent years, the name "Pisa" has become associated with another giant: an international test of educational performance organised by the OECD. Indeed you could say that PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) is now the main reference for assessing student performance in mathematics, reading and science worldwide. By extension, PISA is often treated as a means to rank the effectiveness of national education systems. More...

The Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Education (SIU) has produced a new report on student mobility to and from Norway.
With regard to higher education, the report shows that the 2012/13 academic year saw more Norwegian students travel abroad than ever before. However, if we take into account the growth in the overall student population, the proportion travelling abroad is broadly the same as ten years ago.
SIU report (in Norwegian only). More...

DAAD opens new information centres in Tel Aviv, Israel and Kazan, Russia
On 18 March the president of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Margret Wintermantel, inaugurated the new information centre of the DAAD at the University of Tel Aviv in Israel. The focus of the centre’s work will be on higher education cooperation with academic partners in Israel as well as the promotion of studies and research in Germany. Germany is becoming more attractive for students from Israel. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 10% of Israeli students who go abroad for studies choose to go to Germany.
The DAAD has also opened a new information centre in Kazan, Russia. Alongside the offices in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Novosibirsk this is the fourth centre in Russia. It will be attached to the Kazan Federal University, one of the oldest higher education institutions in Russia. The centre will provide information about studying and research possibilities in Germany and promote cooperation between German and Russian universities. It will also have a role in setting up a German-Russian university in Kazan, called German-Russian Institute of Advanced Technologies (GRIAT). Cooperation between German and Russian higher education institutions has a long tradition. In the winter semester of 2012/2013 almost 11 000 Russian students studied in Germany. More...

The 42nd ACA European Policy Seminar - "Funding student mobility - Scholarships, grants and loans" is taking place on Thursday, April 10, 2014. The Seminar will present the much-needed practical information and critical analysis on existing funding instruments that individual institutions and national governments would find most useful in charting new directions for international student mobility.
The topic that the one-day programme offers are: 

• The brand-new European student loan guarantee for mobile master's students (by Julie Fionda, European Commission)
• New priorities of long-established national mobility scholarships (by Annette Pieper, DAAD; Rait Toompere, Archimedes Foundation; and Anne Marie Graham, Head of Programme, Outward Student Mobility, UK HE International Unit)
• Untapped opportunities offered by portable state grants and loans (by Bernd Wächter, ACA; Danja Oste, DSW; and Chris Eidsaunet, Lånekassen) and 
• The underexplored potential of public universities in raising funds from the private sector (by Ricky Cheng, CUHK Hong Kong). 

International higher education experts (Ulrich Teichler, INCHER; Nicolai Netz, DZHW; Magalie Soenen, Policy Officer, Flemish Ministry of Education and Training - Higher Education Policy) and student representatives (Rok Primozic, ESU) have been invited to share their insights on the correlation between funding availability and student mobility.
For more information and to register for the seminar please click here. More...

The European Union – Brazil Forum on Internationalisation of Higher Education took place in Brussels on 24 February 2014. The Forum represents a follow-up action agreed at the October 2013 Policy Dialogue in Brasilia and builds upon the current, successful cooperation and dialogue in higher education.
State officials, higher education rectors, vice-rectors and other academic staff from both regions exchanged information on the implementation of their respective mobility programmes: EU’s Erasmus+ programme, which offers more EU-Brazil cooperation opportunities, including the opening of the Erasmus programme to students and university staff all over the world, and Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions, which continue to be internationally oriented. Brazilian authorities presented the current state of play and the future plans for their successful Science without Borders programme, emphasising that the European Union was a very popular destination for young Brazilian students and researchers. More...

The Times Higher Education (THE) issued its annual reputation rankings in the first days of March, displaying, for the fourth year in a row, the list of 100 universities considered to be the most renowned by a group of over 10 000 selected scholars from 133 countries around the world.
No changes for Harvard, who maintains the first positions, again followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Stanford has progressed to number three while Cambridge and Oxford have both gone one place down ending as the fourth and fifth, respectively. The remaining five seats in the top 10 belong to the US, making the country the absolute champion, with 8 universities in the top 10 and 46 in the overall list.
THE World Reputation Rankings 2014. More...

Great opportunity for making partnerships, face to face discussions, an occasion for cooperation – these were the strengths of the Central Asian and Central European Higher Education Forum organised by the Hungarian Tempus Public Foundation (TPF), the Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education & Research (OeAD) and the Slovak Academic Association for International Cooperation (SAAIC) on 13-14 March in Almaty, the old capital of Kazakhstan.
The Central Asian and Central European Higher Education Forum was an international meeting point to discuss the topic of joint programmes, capacity building, the changes and benefits of Erasmus+ programme and possibilities of cooperation between the target regions. The event took place in the premises of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University. More than 100 participants from 13 countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia took part in the event. After the Forum the participants had the possibility to visit three Kazakh higher education institutions and to discuss possibilities of partnerships. Finally, on 16 March, representatives of Hungarian higher education institutions exhibited on the a2 International Education Fair – the aim of the massive representation at the fair was to attract Kazakh students to come to study in Hungary. More...

The Erasmus Student Network (ESN) is the biggest interdisciplinary student associations in Europe. It was founded on the 16th October 1989 and its aim at supporting and developing student mobility. ESN conducts several transnational surveys and research project on students’ mobility and internationalisation of higher education each year. ESN is present in more than 450 Higher Education Institutions from 36 countries. ESN works for the creation of a more mobile and flexible education environment by supporting and developing student exchanges on different levels, and providing an intercultural experience also to those students who cannot access a period abroad ('internationalisation at home'). The board of ESN International, based in Brussels, is looking for an Administrative Assistant from June 2014. The position is crucial for the work of ESN Headquarter and it requires flexibility and adaptability skills.

Job description

• Help with the general administration of ESN
• Assist the Director in the office management
• Assist the international board with administrative tasks
• Processing of incoming and outgoing mail
• Administrative management of the network and membership
• Translation (EN-FR-EN essentially according to the necessity and the qualifications of the employee)
• Mailings: posts and other providers
• Management of the orders and shipment
• Preparation of meetings and events

Profile

• You have preferably a degree in secretariat or administration
• You have an experience of at least 3 years
• You are fluent in French (mother tongue level or equivalent)
• You have a very good command of English
• You feel comfortable in an international environment
• You have a very good knowledge of all Office Tools (Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc) and Google Apps
• You work in a very precise and organized way
• You are capable of initiative
• You can work in a team as well as on your own and learn quickly
• You can work with volunteers of different nationalities
• Minimum of a Bachelor degree

Highly valued

• Working experience in the field
• Fluency in other European languages
• Experience in a European network

Term and conditions

• Full time position (38hours/week)
• Permanent contract
• Salary to be negotiated
• Covered expenses for transportation
• Health Insurances covered

Please send your motivation letter and CV to applications@esn.org.

Deadline for the application is April 24, 23:59 CET.

Please don't hesitate to contact us in case you have any additional questions regarding the position. For more information on our research’ projects please visit our website www.esn.org. Read more...

During the International Conference of Learning Cities, held in October 2013 in Beijing, the participants adopted the Beijing Declaration on Building Learning Cities and committed themselves to advancing the development of learning cities. More...