Formation Continue du Supérieur

There are four sub-programmes which fund projects at different levels of education and training:

• Comenius for schools
• Erasmus for higher education
• Leonardo da Vinci for vocational education and training
• Grundtvig for adult education

Other projects in areas that are relevant to all levels of education, such as language learning, information and communication technologies, policy co-operation and dissemination and exploitation of project results are funded through the "transversal" part of the programme. Read more...

• The European Framework of Key Competences is a tool for policy-makers across the EU which identifies the fundamental skills that people need to lead successful lives in today's world.

• The European Qualification Framework for lifelong learning (EQF) aims to better link different national qualifications systems, acting as a translation device for employers and individuals to better understand qualifications from different EU countries, thus making it easier to work, study or hire staff abroad.

• The European Quality Assurance Reference framework for Vocational Education and Training (EQAVET) helps national authorities to improve their Vocational Education and Training (VET) systems, through the development of common European references.

• The European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) provides a common basis to recognise higher education study periods abroad.

• The Diploma Supplement (DS) accompanies a higher education diploma, providing a standardized description of the nature, level, context, content and status of the studies completed by its holder.

• The European Credit system for Vocational Education and Training (ECVET) is being developed to help the transfer and recognition of learning experiences in Europe, including those outside formal training systems.

• Europass helps people make their qualifications and skills better understood and recognised throughout Europe, increasing their employment prospects. Its web portal includes interactive tools that, for example, allow users to create a CV in a common European format.

• The National Academic Recognition Information Centres (NARIC) provide information and advice on the academic recognition of diplomas and periods of study abroad. 

• Other guidance tools and information sources on learning and career opportunities in the EU, including the PLOTEUS portal and the Euroguidance network.

Other tools are being developed for the validation of informal and non-formal learning. Read more about actions to help recognition of qualifications across the EU.

By David Matthews. Home Office ‘looking into’ partnership between Glyndwr University and London School of Business and Finance. A university has suspended entry to a programme in which it sponsored overseas students so they could work in the UK while a private college provided teaching and collected tuition fees. It is understood that the Home Office has been looking into the partnership between Glyndwr University and the London School of Business and Finance, although there is no suggestion that any rules have been broken. The breakdown of the arrangement follows the end of a similar partnership that the LSBF had last year with London Metropolitan University. Read more...

By David Matthews. Eastern institutions slow to make inroads into Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities table.
View the Times Higher Education World University Rankings. The long-heralded shift of global academic power towards Asia appears to be happening at a glacial pace, if at all, according to this year’s Shanghai Jiao Tong university rankings.
Both the US and the UK have one fewer institution in the top 500 this year, but there was a better performance by some North American and European countries and little evidence of more Asian representation in the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2013.
There are now no Asian universities in the top 20 after the University of Tokyo was displaced by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich at number 20. Read more...

By Herb Keinon. Foreign Ministry official says Jerusalem won’t join program unless settlement guideline issues are resolved. If “positive understandings” with the EU regarding implementation of settlement guidelines cannot be reached, Israel will not join the Horizon 2020 R&D program, a Foreign Ministry official said on Wednesday at the opening of talks on the issue. At the beginning, in Tel Aviv, of the first EU-Israel meeting to discuss Israel’s participation in the lucrative project, Foreign Minister deputy director-general for economic affairs Irit Ben-Abba – who led the Israeli delegation at the talks – made it clear that Israel took a grave view of the new EU guidelines, which prohibit funding to Israel entities in east Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and the West Bank. Read more...

By Jim Farmer. Nearly five years ago on October 27, 2008 Clayton Christensen and Michael Horn briefed participants at an American Enterprise Institute [AEI] meeting on “Disruptive Innovation in Education and Health Care.” Christensen and his work were well known by this Washington DC group. AEI described the meeting:

The ability of technology to “disrupt” long-established business practices–dramatically changing the landscape of industries by increasing access, cutting costs, and revolutionizing delivery–has been a subject discussed for decades and is the topic of Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen’s iconic volumes, The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution. Yet, as Christensen has observed, these radical, innovation-driven transformations have been largely absent in the education and health industries–perhaps the two most important arenas of everyday life.

At that time of the AEI briefing, Christensen and Horn’s book Disrupting Class had just been published. Subsequently, their work has been interpreted by some in the press as resolving the problems of students’ access to (in both a physical and economic sense), and success in, higher education. Christensen and Horn’s presentations and the discussion focused on “online learning”. It should be noted that data from MOOCs [Massive Open Online Courses] would not be available for three more years. Both presentations were far more nuanced than reported. Read more...

By Graham Attwell. I’ve avoided writing  much about MOOCs lately. Not because I am not interested or because I don’ think MOOCs are important, but mainly because I have been overwhelmed by the deluge of announcements and developments, blog posts, studies and lets face it, just hype. Some couple of weeks ago, I was invited to join a partnership for a tender application to the EU about MOOCs for web developers. So I have spent soem time looking rather more intensively at the literature and trying to make some sense of it. Here are a few observations. Firstly are MOOCs really disrupting universities. I guess the answer is yes and no. The great majority of MOOCs are free, and despite emergent business models around for example, selling e books or charging for accreditation, there remains question marks over the business models for MOOCs. Of course if the purpose and structure of universities is to provide free and open higher education then this wouldn’t be so important. But in an era where university funding in many countries is increasingly reliant on fees, this does become a major issue. Read more...