Formation Continue du Supérieur

By Palko Karasz. Foreign students in France get a break on work permits. French officials have instructed the local authorities to review work-permit applications from foreign college graduates following criticism from students, heads of schools and companies that immigration rules were forcing highly qualified graduates to leave the country.
A joint memo from the ministries of Interior, Higher Education and Labor last week called on local prefects to “re-examine” requests filed while stricter rules stated in a previous memo, issued on May 31 of last year, were in place. All expulsion procedures against applicants whose papers were rejected under those rules are to be suspended, the memo said.
Non-European holders of at least a French master’s degree or equivalent will have six months after graduation to find a “first work experience” and apply for working papers. They can also file for a regular work permit.
New elements of their résumés such as academic excellence, French state scholarships or French high school diplomas will be taken into account.
The new memo “corrects difficulties and errors that we made,” the higher education minister, Laurent Wauquiez, said on RMC radio. “Yes, France wants to control its immigration policy,” he said, but added, “No, France doesn’t close its doors to foreign students.”
Strict application of immigration rules on foreign graduates sparked fears that the country could become less attractive for students.
“France strongly affirms its willingness to host foreign students,” Pierre Tapie, chairman of the Conférence des Grandes Ecoles, a grouping of some of the country’s most prestigious schools, said in a phone interview last Friday.
The May 31st Collective, a group that campaigned against working-permit refusals, welcomed the new memo, but said it remained worried about the government’s anti-immigration stance.
“It comes too late for some of our friends who already had to leave the country,” said Vincent Chauvet, head of the collective. He said the group had counted up to 1,000 cases of foreign graduates who had encountered problems. The Interior Ministry said in an e-mail that it knew of 674 cases of graduates affected by the original memo.

By Lee Adendorff. Ties between Italian and Chinese academic institutions are set to strengthen with the opening of a branch of eastern China's Ningbo University in Florence, the first Chinese branch campus in the country.
A campus building has been identified in the Tuscan capital for exclusive use by Ningbo and the first Chinese professors and students will arrive in September.
The project was sealed by a formal agreement struck late last year between the municipal authorities of Ningbo, in Zhejiang Province, and Florence, when a Chinese delegation visited the city.
The Florence municipal council has agreed to provide a physical structure for the campus, while running costs will be borne by Ningbo University, which has 23,000 students in China.
Florentine officials say that as the agreement is between the council and Ningbo, it does not need ministerial authorisation. But the government will not regard it as an official campus regulated under Italian higher education rules – for this to happen, ministerial authorisation would be needed.
While the first students and professors, just 10 and two respectively, to arrive this year will be hosted by a local institution, an ex-courthouse building in the city centre has been earmarked as a likely site for the future campus, enabling the project to mushroom in size.
Florentine local councillor and Ningbo city honorary citizen Mario Razzanelli has been instrumental in developing the collaboration between the two cities after a series of cultural exchanges that began in 2003. Over the years these have included the donation of two replica sculptures, one of Michelangelo's David and one of Florentine statesman and poet Dante, to the city of Ningbo by Florence.
“Often these agreements between institutions come to nothing but in this case we have something concrete happening. Political will is important and that is certainly there,” Razzanelli told University World News.
He said that although practical details such as housing were still being finalised, the first courses to be run in Italy by the Chinese institution would be focused on art and culture, taking advantage of Florence’s trove of art treasures. Students will also undertake English language courses.
“I have been to China 30 times and language is perhaps the biggest barrier to overcome. An Italian who goes to China and doesn't speak either Chinese or English is lost. Students who come here must likewise be able to speak at least English,” Razzanelli said.
Italy is an increasingly attractive destination for Chinese students who wish to study abroad and the country has actively encouraged Chinese student participation in recent years though the Italian government’s Marco Polo overseas study programme.
It allows Chinese students to arrive six months before their tertiary course commences to undertake Italian language studies, also giving universities the discretion to reserve course places for Marco Polo participants.
The programme has seen constant growth since its launch in 2004 and Chinese students are now the second largest national grouping of foreign university students in Italy, after Albanians. Chinese students numbered 5,269 last year, up from just 74 in 2003.
Florence is a strategic location for a Chinese university, not only due to its cultural history – it is regarded as the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance – but also as a centre of modern industry.
The nearby city of Prato, 18 kilometres to the west, is home to the biggest Chinese community in Italy and one of the country’s biggest garment districts, where Chinese participation both as business owners and in the local work force is significant.
Dozens of foreign campuses are based in Italy and the country reaps significant benefits from so-called academic tourism.
A 2008 study by the Tuscan Regional Institute for Economic Planning estimated that as many as 12% of visitors to national monuments and sites of historic interest were foreign students, contributing EUR397 million (US$508 million) directly to the local economy or as much as EUR632 million when combined with indirect expenditure.

By Yojana Sharma. China is to take stock this year of international branch campuses and foreign higher education provision with a comprehensive evaluation of Sino-foreign joint university programmes, foreign diplomats in Beijing told University World News.
The evaluation is to prepare for clearer guidelines for foreign universities on the kind of partnerships China is willing to support. The Ministry of Education puts the number of Sino-foreign education programmes at around 1,200. A number of new foreign joint programmes went ahead in 2011, notably New York University’s campus in Shanghai in partnership with East China Normal University, and Lancaster University in the UK’s tie-up with Guangdong University of Foreign Studies to set up a new campus in Guangzhou called Guanwai-Lancaster University.
At the end of last year the University of California, Berkeley, signed a deal with Shanghai to establish a university in the city, and the ministry announced that it had approved a joint campus run by Kean University from New Jersey in the US and the government of Wenzhou in Eastern Zhejiang province. Although approved by the municipal and provincial governments in 2006, the project had taken another four years to secure ministry approval. Despite the spate of approvals, according to the ministry more than 70% of the applications for joint Sino-foreign university programmes presented by China’s provinces and cities during 2011 were rejected.
The low quality of proposed foreign education and “unreasonable” agreements between the two sides were the main reasons for rejection, the ministry said in December. Most tie-ups are negotiated with municipal governments, and there is a tendency for a foreign university to celebrate once a deal is inked with the municipal authorities.
“But the municipalities and provincial education authorities are not making the decisions on their own, they have to go to the Ministry of Education,” said Steven Robinson, a Shanghai-based partner at the legal firm Hogan Lovells International, which represents a number of foreign universities.
“Beijing has not delegated that responsibility to any municipalities and there is also not much desire for Beijing to hear from the foreign partners in that process.”
National interest
Experts said the wider evaluation ordered by Beijing did not necessarily mean a clamp-down on foreign university partnerships, but was aimed at bringing joint programmes more in line with China’s own national needs rather than a foreign partner’s wish list. Beijing-based diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the government was seeking to align new foreign provision more closely with China’s national interests as it moves towards a knowledge economy under its 2010-20 ‘innovation society’ plan. Future collaborations will need to serve national interests as well as local interest groups and local party officials, said Christopher Ziguras, deputy dean of the International School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning at Melbourne’s RMIT University in Australia.
“Educational sovereignty is a preoccupation in China which leads to a wariness of foreign provision that has stalled some foreign branch campuses,” Ziguras told University World News, adding:
“New programme approvals [by foreign partnerships] are very cumbersome. The government asks do we really need these programmes? They will only accept programmes that their own institutions cannot deliver and that do not pose competition for their own universities.”
Pilot evaluation
The latest evaluation follows a pilot programme conducted in 2011 by provincial education departments after the education ministry said it would tighten supervision of joint programmes. The ministry also said at the time that it would draw up sanctions for those who do not comply. The pilot evaluation was described officially as protecting the interests of students, and ensuring excellence of joint programmes. The ministry explained that some joint projects attracted students “with bold advertisements” but failed to deliver high quality teaching. Others failed to honour promises to send students abroad as part of the programme. Results of the pilot have not been released officially, nor have the authorities revealed how many programmes were evaluated during the pilot phase.
The rate of approvals may have slowed while the pilot evaluation was taking place, but it is far from the temporary freeze on new Sino-foreign partnerships suggested by some official media last year. The Observatory for Borderless Higher Education said in a just-released report that the number of international branch campuses in China has increased from 10 to 17 between 2009 and 2011, with at least seven more in the works – five from the US and two from the UK. And Steven Robinson described 2011 as “a busy year” for foreign universities wanting to enter China. His firm is handling several new applications from foreign universities “of which three to four could mature,” he said.
“The interest from foreign universities is continuing unabated and in a whole variety of shapes and sizes,” Robinson said.
Caution by authorities
Nonetheless, one of the international universities exploring partnerships in China that did not wish to be named said the authorities had been cautious during the last year. “A lot of opportunities for collaboration are being stymied by the authorities,” he said.
Ultimately, many approvals hinge on finances, with the ministry seeking out the most prestigious degrees for the lowest price. While many foreign universities openly admit wanting to go into China to tap into a large fee-paying student market, this may not sit well with the authorities.
“How do you produce a Harvard [quality] degree for local university tuition fee levels – that is the goal of all the institutions,” said Robinson. “Beijing does not want students paying two to three times local tuition and not getting a job afterwards.
“At present tuition and fees have to be approved by pricing authorities. In the US, they don’t have to deal with pricing authorities, they are looking at the threshold of pain people are willing to bear and what other universities are charging,” said Robinson.
In addition, the ministry has told diplomats that it wants a mix of foreign provision and host cities, not just US universities with partnerships clustered in a few cities such as Shanghai.
“China reserves the right to control the content, the fees and which institutions deliver which programmes to which students under which circumstances,” said Christopher Ziguras of RMIT.
“The impression I got is that in order for a foreign campus to get up and running, it should pose no threat and no competition to any of the existing [Chinese] universities,” he said.
But the most significant change, according to diplomats, is that the ministry is no longer willing to approve programmes in disciplines that already have a high graduate unemployment rate in China. This means that joint programmes in engineering and finance, for example, have a higher chance of approval. Significantly, Berkeley’s joint centre in Shanghai was a partnership signed with Berkeley’s college of engineering, and does not yet include undergraduate provision that could compete with Shanghai’s existing prestige universities. The first degrees to be offered by Kean will be in finance, English and technology, all areas with good employment prospects.
China is also looking to foreign partners to deliver courses that encourage innovation. The 2010-20 plan “makes provisions for a new style of higher education, like the type offered [by UK’s Nottingham University] in Ningbo that encourages creativity and innovation and generally equips citizens to take the lead in global business and scientific endeavours,” said Nick Miles, provost and CEO of the University of Nottingham Ningbo. But Robinson does not envisage any new laws in the wake of the evaluation. The review will be more about clarifying existing regulations on Sino-foreign university partnerships which were drawn up in 2003 and, he said, are “very broad and deep”.
If universities understand China’s needs, there is still room for foreign collaborations and the rules can sometimes appear stricter on paper than in practice, according to Robinson: “The authorities have been accommodating and very pragmatic and willing to listen,” he said.

By Jon Marcus. Just as the Internet has made news free and music cheap, it may be about to vastly lower the cost of one of the most expensive commodities in America: college.
Several new companies and organizations with impressive pedigrees are harnessing the Internet to provide college courses for free, or for next to nothing. And while many traditional universities are slowing this trend by refusing to give academic credit toward degrees to students who complete such programs, several no- and low-cost startups are doing an end-run around this monopoly by inventing new kinds of credentials that employers may consider just as good.
“If I were the universities, I might be a little nervous,” said Alana Harrington, director of Saylor.org,a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit established by entrepreneur Michael Saylor that offers 200 free online college courses in 12 majors.
Among other similar initiatives are Peer-to-Peer University, or P2PU,which also offers free online courses and is supported by the web-browser company Mozilla and the Hewlett Foundation, and University of the People,which charges $10 to $50 for any of more than 40 online courses, and whose backers include the Clinton Global Initiative. Both are also nonprofits.
The content they use comes from top universities, including MIT, Tufts, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Michigan. Those are among some 250 institutions worldwide that have put a collective 15,000 courses online in what has become known as the open-courseware movement.
The universities’ intention is to widen access to course content, including to prospective students. At MIT, for instance, a pioneer of open courseware, half of incoming freshmen report that they’ve looked at MIT online courses and a third say it influenced their decision to go there.
But the material, which includes videos of lectures by top academics, can also be scooped up by others and organized into catalogs of free content. And while the number of students using these services so far is low— at a time when 6.1 million people are taking (and paying for) online courses from nonprofit and for-profit universities, P2PU says it has had 25,000 people open user accounts and University of the People has registered 1,100 students in two years (while Saylor.org has no way of tracking its enrollment)—the momentum is picking up as colleges continue to increase costs and students take on more and more debt to pay for tuition.
A Baltimore-based for-profit company called StraighterLinealso offers online courses for $99 a month plus a $39 registration fee per class, which is less than the cost of tuition at most U.S. community colleges.
“Maybe these upstarts don’t have all the bells and whistles of the beautiful campuses. But people are deciding it’s not worth paying for that,” said Michael Horn, executive director for education at the Innosight Institute, a nonprofit think tank.
Still, conventional colleges and universities are largely refusing to accept transfer credits from these programs, making them less appealing to students. Universities’ currency is, after all, academic credit toward degrees, which employers depend on to determine the qualifications of job applicants. Although they do take transfer credits on a case-by-case basis, the universities say they can’t always judge the quality of courses offered by others, and that reading online content alone, or even watching lectures, is not the same as attending in-person classes.
“Libraries are free, too,” says Carol Geary Schneider, president of the Association of American Colleges and Universities.“You can roam around, read books and study. But hardly anyone would say that spending time in the library is a good preparation to work in any economy, much less this one.”
So rather than transfer credit they’ve earned elsewhere, students who want a degree from a conventional university find that they often have to take—and pay for—the same classes again there.
“The last thing universities have to protect themselves is this withholding of academic credit,” said Philipp Schmidt, cofounder and executive director of P2PU, who said the real reason for the schools’ refusal to accept transfer credits is to prevent competition. “It’s not about a deep concern for the interests of the students. It’s about a deep concern for the interests of the institutions.”
Besides, said Debbie Arthur, who has enrolled in StraighterLine courses toward what she hopes will someday be a degree in education: Many classes at universities are no more personal than the ones she takes online.
“The Pollyanna version of college is that you’re learning and discussing things with your professors,” said Arthur, a custom-jewelry maker who lives in Kingsport, Tenn. “The reality is that you have 450 kids in an auditorium listening to a teaching assistant. They’ve killed the golden goose themselves by being greedy, and I think people have started looking really closely at alternatives.”
Several universities agreed to be formal partners with StraighterLine, but then pulled out. One, Fort Hays State University in Kansas,conceded that it bumped the low-price company because it stood to make more money from its own online program. Documents obtained through a public-records request from another, the University of Akron, show that its formal agreement with StraighterLine was canceled in part because of complaints from the faculty senate that it hadn’t been consulted about the deal.
Horn, coauthor of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns,compares this to the way the U.S. auto industry reacted when it began to be threatened by cheaper foreign competition, particularly from Japan.
“As it became clear the Japanese automakers were more and more threatening, the American automakers spent a lot of time trying to keep the Japanese out by erecting tariffs and so forth,” instead of recognizing that consumers wanted smaller, cheaper cars, he said. “That’s the same kind of thinking we’re seeing here.”
In fact, the free-content providers are already trying to break the universities’ monopoly by coming up with altogether new kinds of credentials in place of credits or degrees. Saylor.org, for instance, will next month introduce an “electronic portfolio,” even more detailed than a college transcript, that its students can use to show employers what they’ve learned.
Also this month, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is wrapping up a $2 million competitionto design digital “badges” that can be used instead of university degrees to prove a candidate’s experience and knowledge to employers. P2PU and Saylor are already experimenting with such badges to show when students have completed courses.
Last month, MIT announced a project called MITxthat, starting this spring, will offer certificates of completion to anyone who successfully finishes courses the university makes available for free online, with a small fee for the certificates themselves.
“There’s a fundamental tension between the fact that people want standardization—which is what credentials and accreditation are—where a lot of these new, interesting educational organizations are coming in and saying, ‘Well, we don’t have to standardize,’ ” said Jessy Kate Schingler, a software developer who lives in Washington, D.C., and who has taken courses from P2PU alongside her doctoral studies in computer science at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Meanwhile, some businesses that offer tuition reimbursement to employees are becoming interested in the free- and low-cost education providers, which could put more pressure on traditional universities to accept credits from outside sources or else face the loss of potential transfer students, observers say.
“If employers start to move into this new world, that’s when it’s really going to take off,” said Horn.
CompuCom,a Dallas IT company with 5,000 employees, already has. It’s begun to work with StraighterLine, whose CEO, Burck Smith, said “colleges that want these students later will have to accept StraighterLine credits” as a result.
What CompuCom is doing, said Ed Rankin, who runs the tuition-reimbursement program there, “is analogous to what’s happening in healthcare, where you’ve got insurance companies negotiating on behalf of their insured for lower costs from their healthcare providers.” That’s because StraighterLine’s $99-a-month price tag not only saves CompuCom money; it saves money for the employees, who have to pay a portion of the cost.
Rankin said “there’s no question” other companies are likely to follow suit.
Universities are watching closely. As one direct response, the American Council on Educationplans to set up a blue-ribbon commission to look into alternatives to conventional teaching using new technology, said ACE President Molly Corbett Broad.
“This is a period of significant transformation,” Broad said. She said she expects that higher education is approaching a point at which people will be able “to snap modules together or link them in ways that produce what are sometimes called stackable credentials,” including credits from, for example, community colleges, universities, life experience, online content and other sources.
“There certainly is, I think, going to be competition, and by and large I think competition is a good thing,” Broad said.
A handful of universities have already embraced the low- and no-cost education movement. Albany State University in Georgiaencourages incoming students to take StraighterLine courses before they even arrive, accumulating credit toward their degrees and improving graduation rates.
“The resistance will be there for at least a little while longer,” said the university’s president, Everette Freeman, who faced opposition to the idea from his own faculty. “But it will change. It’s on the wrong side of history.”
Steve Carson, external relations director for MIT’s OpenCourseWare program,who is also on the advisory board of P2PU, said, “There’s no doubt this is a period of uncertainty for universities.” But he said that open-education systems will ultimately help the market grow.
“If there is a way to lower the price of higher education, you can’t stand there for long and say, ‘I’ll resist this and prevent it from happening,’ ” said Shai Reshef, founder and president of University of the People and an entrepreneur who once ran a for-profit higher-education company. “Maybe it will take a long time, and maybe it will be a harder road than it needs to be. But it will happen.” A version of this story appeared in The Washington Post on January 23, 2012.

Change and competition in American higher education
If providers of low- and no-cost online courses can invent credentials that will be accepted by employers in lieu of university degrees, it could forever change the world of higher education. What are the prospects for that? The pros and cons? The potential outcomes? Higher-education leaders and observers weigh in:
Molly Broad, president, American Council on Education
This is a period of significant transformation. I hope [conventional universities] are paying attention to it. We are at or approaching a point of inflection that may have as much to do with modularizing your advanced education—that is, where people are able to snap modules together or link them in ways that produce what are sometimes called stackable credentials. We’re just really in an experimental stage with some of these things. We are in the process of learning more about what works for different individuals with different learning preferences. It is not beyond our reach to think that there will be a wide array of choices that can be mixed and matched by institutions, by other kinds of non-higher-education institutions, and by individuals pursuing independent learning. … The brick-and-mortar campus, and in loco parentis, really now serves only a portion of the population. The challenges that our nation faces on sustaining economic growth and prosperity mean not just that we need to do a better job of raising educational attainment for our kids in K-12 going into higher education, but for adults. There’s not one right answer about the best ways to advance their attainment. There certainly is, I think, going to be competition, and by and large I think competition is a good thing. We hear corporations express frustration that American higher education is not preparing the kind of workforce that they need. I’d like to be able to say to them, ‘Don’t stand on the sidelines. Work with us. We can help you build those credentials inside your organization so you can continue to improve the competitiveness of your workforce and your company.’

Pasqualino Guidotti. Uno studio inglese rivela la folta presenza di università straniere nel continente asiatico. I paesi asiatici stanno registrando una forte presenza di campus universitari stranieri: a rivelarlo è uno studio dell’Observatory on Borderless Higher Education (OBHE), un centro di ricerca inglese che si occupa di problematiche legate all’istruzione superiore.
“La presenza di campus stranieri nel Medio Oriente, una volte notevole, è diminuita di molto – afferma William Lawton, direttore dell’OBHE – mentre in Asia è in forte crescita.” Tra i vari Paesi asiatici che ospitano campus di università straniere, la crescita maggiore si è registrata in Cina, dove in due anni i campus stranieri sono passati da 10 a 17. Al secondo posto troviamo Singapore, che al 2011 ospitava 18 campus stranieri contro i 12 del 2009.
Nel complesso, lo studio dell’OBHE ha registrato nel 2011 la presenza in Asia di 200 campus internazionali a fronte di soli 82 nel 2006: inoltre, nei prossimi due anni è prevista l’apertura di altri 37 campus stranieri, principalmente di università inglesi e americane. “La scelta di molte università occidentali di aprire un proprio campus in Asia, piuttosto che in Medio Oriente o in Africa – spiega Lawton – nasce dal sostegno economico dei paesi ospitanti. In Cina, Singapore e Malesia, i governi hanno deciso di accollarsi i costi per la realizzazione dei campus, incentivando l’arrivo delle università straniere.”
Le università americane mantengono il primato per numero di campus aperti in Asia ma la crescita più rapida si è registrata per le università di Francia e Regno Unito: mentre i francesi hanno aperto ben 12 nuove filiali dell’ESMOD International Fashion University, gli inglesi hanno intensificato la loro presenza nel continente asiatico con ben 25 campus internazionali.

Destiné à promouvoir et améliorer la visibilité au niveau national de l’offre de formation continue des écoles et des partenaires institutionnels de la profession, ce site mis en place sous l’égide du Conseil national des barreaux facilite l’accès à la formation et sa visibilité en dehors du ressort des écoles.
Une plateforme pour simplifier la recherche de formation continue des avocats
• Elle permet aux avocats de disposer d’une palette élargie de formations et de leur proposer des thématiques directement orientées métier, d’un niveau d’expertise spécifique ou sur des sujets plus pointus adaptés à leur pratique quotidienne.
• Cette plateforme de type portail, entièrement consacrée à la formation continue a également pour vocation d’y sensibiliser les avocats et de leur donner toutes les informations pratiques en la matière.
• Un moteur multicritères permet une recherche sur les programmes des actions de formation proposées par les 15 écoles par thème, mots-clés, localisation, niveau, homologation, …
La Commission Formation du Conseil National des Barreaux a décidé de proposer, en complément du site du Conseil National, une plateforme dédiée à la formation continue avec pour objectifs:
• Offrir aux avocats un service leur facilitant l’accès à l’offre de formation continue au niveau national en permettant la consultation en ligne sur une même plateforme de tous les programmes des actions formation proposées par les 15 Ecoles d'Avocats;
• Faciliter l’accès à formation des avocats en dehors de leur ressort afin qu’ils disposent d’une offre de formation élargie;
• Mettre en valeur l’offre de formation continue des 15 Ecoles d’Avocats, y compris auprès des non‐avocats, et faire de cet outil un moyen de promotion de cette offre;
• Mettre à disposition des écoles ne disposant pas de site internet ou d’espace "Formation continue" et/ou de système d’inscription en ligne, une plateforme leur permettant de donner plus de visibilité à leur offre de formation et d’en faciliter la communication et la gestion.

Conférence générale de l'IMHE 2012: L’enseignement supérieur démocratique: y parvenir et le soutenir. 17-19 septembre 2012, www.oecd.org. La Conférence générale 2012 de l'IMHE aura lieu à Paris les 17-19 septembre 2012. Elle se tiendra au Centre de conférences de l'OCDE, 2 rue André-Pascal, 75016 Paris, France (plan de quartier). Voir également le site Internet au www.oecd.org/centredeconferences.
Partout dans le monde, les politiques de développement locales, nationales et régionales mettent l'accent sur l'importance de l'enseignement supérieur. Pourtant, les taux de participation et d'accès à l’enseignement supérieur, les ressources humaines ainsi que les financements qui y sont affectés varient largement.
Différents choix sont faits sur un large éventail de questions, telles que la sélection, la réglementation et l'assurance qualité, la diversité du système, l'investissement public/privé, et l’articulation entre éducation et recherche. Dans la plupart des pays développés, maintenir le financement public du système d'enseignement supérieur massifié a atteint un point critique, tout comme la question de remplacer un corps académique vieillissant. En même temps, dans de nombreuses économies connaissant une rapide croissance, notamment en Asie, les investissements dans la recherche et l'éducation augmentent à un rythme accéléré. Pour autant ces mêmes pays sont confrontés - tout comme la plupart pays en développement du monde entier - aux grandes questions portant  sur l’accès et la qualité de l’enseignement supérieur, ainsi que le recrutement et la reconnaissance du personnel académique.
La Conférence cherchera à identifier les tendances à long terme et comportera des analyses de politiques nationales et institutionnelles ainsi que des études de cas et présentera les dernières recherches de l'OCDE et ailleurs.
La Conférence générale biennale de l’IMHE est un événement unique qui attire environ 500 participants, composée notamment de décideurs politiques en matière d’enseignement supérieur, d’administrateurs d’établissements et d’experts universitaires. Des intervenants notables et des séances stimulantes permettent aux membres de l’IMHE et aux non membres de partager leurs opinions et leurs idées, de débattre sur des thèmes importants, de discuter des tendances à venir et d’interagir entre eux. Contact: imhe@oecd.org.
IMHE General Conference 2012: Attaining and Sustaining Mass Higher Education, Paris, 17-19 September 2012, www.oecd.org/edu/imhe/generalconference.
Around the world, local, national and regional development policies are emphasising the importance of higher education. Yet the level of participation and access, as well as human and financial resourcing, varies widely.
Different choices are being made about a wide range of issues, such as selectivity, regulation and quality assurance, system diversity, public/private investment, and combinations of education and research. In much of the developed world, sustaining public funding for the mass higher education system and replacing an ageing academic population are reaching a critical point. While at the very same time, investments in research and education are booming in many rapidly growing economies, notably in Asia. However, even for these countries, as for much of the rest of the developing world, major questions loom about quality, accessibility and retaining academic capital.
The conference will seek to identify longer-term trends and will include analyses of national and institutional policies, case studies and the latest research from the OECD and elsewhere.
The IMHE biennial General Conference is IMHE's standout event, attracting around 500 participants comprised of higher education policy makers, institutional leaders and academic experts. Notable speakers and stimulating sessions provide an opportunity for members and non-members to share their views and ideas, discuss relevant topics and forthcoming trends, as well as network.

Par Laure-Elisabeth Bourdaud. Vous êtes demandeurs d’emploi et vous voulez vous former? Il est désormais tout à fait possible de faire valoir votre droit individuel à la formation (DIF) dans certains cas. Explications de Jean-Pierre Willems, consultant spécialiste en droit de la formation.
Peut-on bénéficier de ses heures DIF en période de chômage?
Jean-Pierre Willems: "Lorsque l'on quitte une entreprise, elle remet un certificat de travail qui mentionne les heures de DIF restantes, le budget auquel ces heures donnent droit et le nom de l'OPCA dont dépend l'entreprise. Pour bénéficier de la portabilité du DIF, il est nécessaire que la rupture du contrat de travail ouvre droit à indemnisation du chômage (licenciement, rupture conventionnelle, fin de CDD, démission pour un motif reconnu légitime par l'assurance chômage)."
Qu’entend-t-on par portabilité du DIF?
J-P W: "La portabilité est la possibilité de bénéficier d'un financement correspondant au droit acquis dans le cadre d'un contrat de travail postérieurement à la rupture de ce contrat."
Et que signifie la transférabilité?
J-P W: "La transférabilité du DIF n'est pas prévue par la loi mais par certains accords de branche ou de groupe. Il s'agit d'une reprise des heures acquises dans une entreprise par un nouvel employeur. Ainsi, le salarié quittant l'entreprise A et qui dispose de 40 heures de DIF verra son compteur démarrer à 40 heures, et non à 0, chez un nouvel employeur B. Cela existe dans quelques secteurs (agriculture, BTP) ainsi que dans des groupes en cas de mobilité."
À qui doit-on s’adresser pour faire sa demande en période de chômage?
J-P W:  "Il faut s'adresser à l' Organisme paritaire collecteur agréé (OPCA) de son ancienne entreprise. La demande doit comprendre l'avis du conseiller Pôle Emploi. Le nom de l'OPCA figure sur le certificat de travail remis par l'employeur à la fin du contrat. Attention, l'accès au financement n'est pas automatique et n'est pas un droit. Il faut que l'OPCA donne son accord qui peut dépendre de la formation choisie, de l'objectif poursuivi, etc."
Et en cas de chômage partiel, peut-on bénéficier du cumul de ses heures?
J-P W: "Oui, et comme pour tous les cas de demande de DIF, il faut obtenir l’accord de l'employeur."
A noter: le droit individuel à la formation (DIF) permet à un salarié de se constituer un crédit d’heures de formation de 20 heures par an, cumulable sur six ans dans la limite de 120 heures. Avant l’adoption de la loi du 24 novembre 2009 relative à l'orientation et à la formation professionnelle, un salarié qui quittait son entreprise perdait ses heures de DIF non utilisées.

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Accompagner la modernisation du patrimoine des universités
Pour améliorer leur attractivité et se moderniser, les universités accèdent à un nouveau statut d’autonomie. Le groupe Caisse des Dépôts a choisi de les accompagner dans cette évolution, en faisant des universités et de l’économie de la connaissance une priorité stratégique, inscrite dans son plan Élan 2020.
La Caisse des Dépôts accompagne tous les établissements de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche – publics ou privés – qui le souhaitent dans l’élaboration de leur projet, par de l’ingénierie, et dans leur mise en oeuvre, par des financements en prêts et en investissements.
Elle appuie les collectivités territoriales pour faire de leurs sites universitaires et de recherche des moteurs du développement durable et de la compétitivité de leurs territoires.
GROUPE CAISSE DES DÉPÔTS UNIVERSITÉS ET ÉCONOMIE DE LA CONNAISSANCE, LES CHIFFRES CLÉS
20 M€ de crédits engagés pour accompagner les études en lien avec la Conférence des Présidents d’Universités;
55 M€ d’engagements prévisionnels en investissement, dont 20 M€ sur le projet relatif aux brevets;
44 M€ de prêts sur fonds d’épargne de l’enveloppe infrastructure d’intérêt général (Université Paris Sorbonne, Paris 4; Université Paris Diderot, Paris 7).
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