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On 10 July 2013, the Parliament of Flanders (Belgium) amended legislation allowing the government of Flanders wide competences to regulate the recognition of foreign degrees. The government can now draw up regulations to declare either the level of a foreign degree equivalent to the Flemish degrees (Associate, Bachelor, Master and Doctoral Degree) or to fully recognise the foreign degree. The Original Amendment as adopted by the Parliament of the Flemish Community (in Dutch).
Level equivalency
Level equivalency refers to for example the fact that a foreign Bachelor degree is equivalent to a Flemish Bachelor degree, thus without referring to the subject or discipline. The preconditions for level equivalency are:

• A quality assurance system in line with the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area. This quality assurance system needs to demonstrate in a verifiable way that the learning outcomes are achieved; and
• A higher education degree structure in line with that of the European Higher Education Area and integrated in a (sub)national qualifications framework. 
  This qualifications framework needs to be (1) in line with the Framework for Qualifications of the European Higher Education Area adopted at the Bergen meeting of ministers responsible for higher education in May 2005 and (2) is required to have been internationally reviewed as compatible.

The list of these self-certified qualifications frameworks is published on the former Bologna Secretariat website and on the ENIC-NARIC website. Read more...

In recent years, both the award of joint degrees and the recognition of these degrees have caused considerable discussions and difficulties. The Guidelines for Good Practice for Awarding Joint Degrees published earlier this year and the newly published Framework for Fair Recognition of Joint Degrees aims to provide more consistency and substantiation in awarding and recognising joint degrees.
The main problem addressed by the Framework for Fair Recognition of Joint Degrees was the finding that national information centres on recognition (ENIC-NARICs) dealt very differently with joint degrees and other degrees awarded for joint programmes. The same problem was found even more clearly among credential evaluators at higher education institutions.
In order to facilitate the fair and flexible recognition of joint degrees, the European Consortium for Accreditation (ECA) and ENIC-NARICs have established a long-term cooperation. One of the results of this cooperation has been the publication of Guidelines for Good Practice for Awarding Joint Degrees. That publication is aimed at higher education institutions and their joint programmes. The other side of the same coin is the Framework for Fair Recognition of Joint Degrees. This publication is aimed at credential evaluators, those who will need to recognise the joint degree or give advice on it.
About the publication
The elements that play a role when evaluating a degree (such as the status of the institutions, the awarding of the degree, the quality, etc.) are of course the same for both regular and joint degrees. The context of these elements is however quite different. This makes the recognition of joint degrees not always as straightforward as the recognition of regular degrees. The Framework for Fair Recognition of Joint Degrees presents a substantiation of the elements that might influence how credential evaluators look at an awarded joint degree. All these issues are then dealt with separately through examples. Each issue or example presents a conclusion for recognising the joint degree discussed. Download the Framework for Fair Recognition of Joint Degrees.

The 25th Annual Conference of the European Association for International Education (EAIE) will take place from 10–13 September 2013 at the bridge between continents, in Istanbul.
The 25th Annual Conference of the European Association for International Education (EAIE) will take place from 10–13 September 2013 at the bridge between continents, in Istanbul. This year's theme is 'Weaving the future of global partnerships'. Join more than 4500 higher education professionals from over 80 countries to celebrate this milestone event, expand your professional circle and explore the new developments in international higher education. The event will feature more than 240 inspiring activities and will have as keynote speakers one of Turkey’s most acclaimed female writers,Elif Shafak, and global futurist, Jack Uldrich. Register by 21 August and be part of Europe’s largest international education conference!

The JOQAR Dissemination Conference "Quality Assurance and Recognition of Joint Programmes: The Art and the Passion" took place in Círculo de Bellas Artes in Madrid on 20-21 June 2013. The JOQAR project is co-funded by the European Commission and is the acronym of: Joint programmes - Quality Assurance and Recognition of degrees awarded.
Today, quality assurance and recognition of joint programmes is still a major challenge. The conference provided higher education institutions, recognition authorities, quality assurance and accreditation agencies, and policy makers with the latest update on the solutions developed by the European Consortium for Accreditation (ECA) in the framework of the JOQAR project. Read more...

On 14 December 2010 ECA members launched the Multilateral Agreement on the Mutual Recognition of Accreditation Results regarding Joint Programmes (MULTRA). The purpose of the MULTRA is to simplify the accreditation and recognition of joint programmes and degrees awarded and to provide an efficient way to expand mutual recognition to more countries.
For the first time, MULTRA has been signed by a non-European Agency: Consejo Nacional de Acreditación (CNA), Republic of Colombia. In the same month MULTRA was also signed by a German accreditation agency: Agentur für Qualitätssicherung durch Akkreditierung von Studiengängen e.V. (AQAS). 
We are happy to note that our efforts to simplify the accreditation of joint programmes and to provide an efficient way to implement mutual recognition is confirmed by these new signatories to MULTRA.  ECA is determined to pursue its efforts in this direction in the upcoming years and thus to continue providing truly global solutions to global needs.
The agreement was signed on behalf of CNA by Patricia Martínes Barrios, Deputy Minister of Higher Education of the Republic of Colombia on 21 June 2013 at the occasion of JOQAR Dissemination Conference "Quality Assurance and Recognition of Joint Programmes" hosted by ANECA in Madrid.

Holding the Line is the theme of the NTEU’s Bluestocking Week 2013 to be celebrated this year between 12 -16 August.
2013 has been a tumultuous period for gender politics. This makes this year’s Bluestocking Week an even more critical moment for women working in higher education. The theme is ‘Holding the Line’ and the necessity of resistance to sexism in public life has perhaps never been so pronounced.
Bluestocking Week is named for the first generations of university women of the 19^th century who grabbed the term, and even as it was used by their opponents as a derogatory dismissal of their achievements and proudly wore it as a badge of serious scholarship. The term originates from the latter part of the 18^th century as women started organising literary societies in their homes and began campaigning for women’s access to university and more generally for women’s rights to equality in work, under the law and access into the parliaments. Many of the middle and upper class leaders of the suffragist and suffragette movements started out in or were influenced by these literary societies, as did some of the male supporters of women’s rights. Indeed the term blue stocking is often attributed to a male member of the circle who arrived at meetings in his everyday worsted wool blue stockings rather than white silk ones usually worn by men when meeting with men. This was taken up as distinguishing the women’s initiative.*
See www.nteu.org.au/bluestockingweek and the 2012 edition of Agenda, the NTEU’s annual women’s magazine (link) for details of the origins and histories of the Bluestockings.
We focused last year upon celebrating the success of women in higher education drawing upon the history of women’s sometimes slow, but determined struggle for participation in universities as students and staff, as well as upon challenging gendered discrimination in the construction and transmission of knowledge. Read more...

By Paul Clifton (Uni Casual). There’s nothing casual about casual employment. The working conditions experienced by tens of thousands of casual academics in Australia’s public and private universities demonstrate that casualisation, as an employment strategy, is both widespread and systemic.
These images form part of a double spread infographic in the upcoming issue of Connect, the NTEU and CAPA magazine for casual academics. Facts and figures from the Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education (DIICCSRTE) and the Work and Careers in Australian Universities Survey (WCAU) point out how bad casualisation has become. Read more...

By Jeannie Rea. University women across Australia are donning blue stockings and putting their best foot (and leg) forward for Bluestocking Week, 12-16 August.
NTEU National President, Jeannie Rea, who launched Bluestocking Week in Melbourne today, said that the theme this year was ‘holding the line’.
“2013 has been a tumultuous period for gender politics. This makes this year’s Bluestocking Week an even more critical moment for women working in higher education. The necessity to resist to sexism in public life has perhaps never been so pronounced,” she said.
“Underpinning this is the persistent gender pay gap. Men out-earn women in every occupational group in Australia, even in those jobs dominated by women. Gender inequity is still a major issue in university employment, even while more women than men study and work at universities.”
Today’s launch had women literally ‘holding the line’ – a clothes line with large cardboard blue stockings displaying facts about women’s pay inequity. Read more...

By Jeannie Rea. The Review of Higher Education released today by Minister for Higher Education, Senator Kim Carr, will be welcomed members of the National Tertiary Education Union because it explicitly recognises the distinction between regulation and quality assurance, National President Jeannie Rea said today.
“The NTEU strongly agrees with the finding of the review that the legislation which governs the operation of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) is not operating in a manner intended by the Government or the sector,” Rea said.
“The NTEU shares the concern of the authors Professors Kong Lee Dow and Valarie Braithwaite that the operation of TEQSA does not reflect the regulatory principles of risk, proportionality and necessity as outlined in the legislation, but rather constitutes a data collection and audit model where all institutions are treated as equal regardless of their size, history or reputation. Read more...

By Jeannie Rea. The release yesterday of Universities Australia’s report, University student finances in 2012, clearly shows that students need much more support while they are studying at university, Jeannie Rea National President of the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) said today.
“It’s a national disgrace that almost one in five university students reports going without food and ends up graduating with an average debt of almost $38,000,” Rea said.
“While the report acknowledges that the changes introduced by the Labor government resulted in student income support being better targeted, it is unacceptable that 17% of students regularly go without food and other necessities. A university degree should be built on more than two-minute noodles.
“Eighty percent of full-time university students have a job to support themselves and they work, on average, 16 hours a week. Around a quarter of those with jobs work more than 20 hours a week so altogether it’s no surprise that over half of all students indicated that work was interfering with their studies.
“Over many years working in a university, I have seen too many students stop attending classes and submitting assignments because they need to take on more hours of paid work. Their performances suffer and, too often, they end up abandoning their courses but still have to pay their accumulated HECs debt.”
Australian students pay amongst the highest tuition fees to attend a public university in the world. These fees which are repaid through the income contingent HECS scheme range between $18,000 and $60,000, Rea said. Read more...