Formation Continue du Supérieur

The same procedure as every year – looking back at 2013 shows that ACA’s news coverage was – as usual – extensive. From New Zealand to Norway, from Chile to Russia, from China to the US – we tried our best to make sure that you are up-to-date on what is happening out there in higher education. With more than 140 articles on national and international developments in higher education and alike, ACA’s newsletter team covered once again more than 40 countries and world regions. Carefully monitoring events around the EU, its institutions, framework programmes and more, ACA dedicated exactly 60 articles to developments on a European Union level. In addition, we reviewed around 106 books, publications and reports relevant to our field. Moreover, we kept an eye on funding opportunities and drew our readership’s attention to 26 calls. More...

The Europe-Education-Formation France Agency is the French national agency in charge of the European Erasmus+ program for education and training. Each year it allocates more than 110 million euros of European funds to French education and training organisations for actions in the area of mobility and European cooperation. Through the seminars and conferences it organises, the studies and surveys it conducts, and the work groups in which it participates, the Agency contributes to discussion on sectoral, national and European issues in the field of school education, higher education, vocational training and adult education.

Transnational education ‘made in Germany’ 
Whether in Jordan, Egypt, Oman or Vietnam the number of students are steadily increasing for German transnational education (TNE) programmes. The TNE projects are funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) under the German Study Programmes Abroad programme. Over 17 000 students are enrolled at the seven binational universities. In the past years, over 10 000 students have successfully completed their studies. Their employability is promising due to a very practical approach of the study programmes. 

Press release (in German). More...

ACA event - Mobility Windows and the Internationalisation of the Curriculum

ACA event - For mutual gain: Euro-African Cooperation in Higher Education. More...

On 17 December, ACA and Deutsches Studentenwerk (DSW) jointly presented a webinar on the key findings of the one-year project State Grants and Loans as a Means to Increase Outgoing Mobility (STiME). The Webinar was made in Berlin and moderated by Ulrich Teichler (INCHER-Kassel), the external advisor of the project. In the 1.5 hour session, Danja Oste (DSW) started the webinar with an introduction to the project and a simple overview of the state of portability of the different grant and loan schemes in 31 European countries. This was followed by a presentation of key data on the opportunities and actual use of portable grants and loans for outward mobility by Queenie Lam (ACA). By opportunities, the presenters stressed that focus must not only be placed on the numbers of portable grants available or used, but also the conditions for portability. A simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ on the map of portability tends to indicate little about the potential impact of grants and loans for mobility.
The short presentations served as the basis for an interactive discussion on the portability of state grants and loans among the research team, including Bernd Wächter who joined from a distance from Brussels, and around forty participants who took part in the webinar from different corners of the world. Recording of the webinar has been shared with the 90 registered participants from around 35 different countries. It is now also available to readers of the ACA newsletter.
To watch the recording, please follow the link below.

STiME webinar

Last month, ACA drew attention to the upcoming European Policy seminar What’s new in Brussels?, to be held on 30 January 2014. Having ended last month’s article with “seats go fast”, we would kindly like to remind you that they do, indeed.
Offering an opportunity to get valuable information on the new EU funding programmes Erasmus+, Horizon 2020 and the European Commission supported U-Multirank, ACA’s first policy seminar in 2014 is a good way to ensure to be well prepared for the new framework programmes. More...

• Growth-Jobs-Cohesion;
• Further integration of the Eurozone;
• Migration-Borders-Mobility; and
• Maritime Policies.

With regard to education, the Greek government announced the intention to put a strong focus on quality assurance, effective and innovative training and education, the EU multidimensional higher education ranking system U-Multirank, the potential of MOOCs and the issue of skills mismatch with regard to labour market demands (see ACA Newsletter – Education Europe, November 2013). However, it still remains to be seen to which extent higher education and research will play a role during the upcoming Greek Presidency. 

Greek Presidency press release - Top priorities

Greek Presidency press release - Educational affairs.