Student mobility was high on the agenda at the 2012 Bologna Process Ministerial Conference held in Bucharest at the end of April.

Held every three years, these ‘summits’ are designed to focus attention on creating a living and workable European Higher Education Area (EHEA) – a key plank in the educational revolution that government ministers wanted to sweep Europe when they launched the so-called ‘Process’ at a meeting in Bologna in June 1999.

Since then, progress has been slower than many predicted, particularly in terms of ‘tearing down the barriers’ to the movement of students and staff across national borders.

When they last met in Leuven/Louvain-la-Neuve in 2009, the Ministers set themselves the goal of 20% of European students spending at least three months studying in another country by 2020.

Ambitious target

While precise figures are notoriously difficult to obtain on outward student mobility, I do know from my own research that the British government estimated that less than 2% of UK domiciled students were enrolled in foreign tertiary education in 2010.  So, for the Brits at least, that is a ten-fold increase in outward mobility in a decade.

And not only do the Education Ministers want to see more students, early stage researchers, teachers and other staff in higher education going abroad to help Europe ‘internationalise’ themselves and their education systems and institutions – but they also want to see a better balance between inward and outward mobility.

That’s going to be another problem, especially for a country like the UK. The British Council reported last year that while there were 370,000 international students in the UK, there were just 33,000 UK students overseas.

So, what’s to be done?

Well, since the Leuven/Louvain-la-Neuve conference three years ago, a Mobility Working Group, chaired by Peter Greisler from Germany, has been trying to produce precise benchmarks to monitor progress, identify problems to a better balance of incoming and outgoing students and looking for examples of good practice.

They discovered structural, legal, financial and other obstacles to mobility of students and staff, such as:

• financing of mobility (including portability of grants and loans and improved information on funding possibilities)
• recognition, curricula, legal and administrative obstacles
• language issues
• lack of motivation and information.

They also found very diverse national mobility strategies and the perception of mobility obstacles, depending on the target group.

Among their conclusions was that Europe should prioritise learning mobility, not cultural exchange; and even where there are specific imbalances, mobility itself is good and therefore should not be restrained. But they did say action should be taken to avoid ‘brain gain, brain drain’ scenarios.

There is also the need to implement national / international mobility strategies with measurable indicators.

The most controversial point revolved around the minimum duration of mobility for the target. Despite some opposition from those wanting to record shorter periods, the Working Group stuck to its guns and decided to recommend only monitoring mobility experiences abroad worth at least 15 European credit transfer system (ECTS) credits, or three months in duration.

They also wanted quality assurance tools used for promoting mobility in the EHEA. ‘Academic staff members need to be part of the strategy – they can act as motivators and multipliers,’ the Working Group declared.

So, what does it all mean for higher education communicators?

Well, again looking at things from the UK, there’s been a flurry of activity since the Bucharest meeting, with the main newspapers read by academics focusing on Bologna for the first time in ages.

Mind, it wasn’t all positive! Peter Scott, a professor of higher education studies, at the London-based Institute of Education, provoked some of his academic colleagues in an ‘Opinion’ piece in The Guardian entitled: ‘A universities revolution that excites the world… except England.’

Perhaps, more positively, the British Universities and Science Minister David Willett told Times Higher Education (3 May, 2012) that he was “very pro student mobility”, adding: “I’m keen to encourage those who wish it to do some of their study overseas. If there are barriers, I want to remove them.”

The ‘Mobility for Better Learning’ strategy finally adopted agreed that all member countries develop and implement their own internationalisation and mobility strategies with concrete aims and measurable mobility targets.

It wants to include both the 15 ECTS credits or three months periods spent abroad, plus those who obtain their degree abroad in the 20% target, and to strive for ‘better balanced mobility in the EHEA’ – hence the flurry of activity by the UK.

It also wants to increase mobility ‘through improved information about study programmes’ and ‘shorter response times for international applications’ as well as better web-based information about study programmes.

The strategy also wants to explore the ‘potential of using common standards for the description of study programmes.’

And another job for us is to improve ‘the communication of the individual, institutional and social benefits of periods spent abroad’ – with the target audiences including parents, career advisors and students.’ And it calls for more regular research into the private and social returns of learning mobility, including better employability records of graduates who have studied abroad.

·      The EUA produced its own report from Bucharest, which focused more on the need for ‘sustainable funding’ to enable Higher Education to be at the heart of efforts to overcome the economic crisis.

For more information:

The EHEA Mobility Strategy and the Bucharest Communiqué

EUA report from the conference

Peter Scott’s article in The Guardian: ‘A universities revolution that excites the world… except England.’

Times Higher Education article: ‘Willetts pledges partial grant to encourage overseas study’

My blog and views on Bologna

I’m getting asked more and more by my friends and colleagues in mainland

Europe: What’s going on in British higher education?

It is a fair question and one that we keep asking ourselves!

And just when we think we understand, we find higher education thrust back on
to the front pages as another row ‘engulfs’ UK universities.

Take undergraduate tuition fees. Yes, the ones that sparked riots in London.
We all thought most universities would charge – at least in England – between
£8,500 to £9,000-a-year to home and EU students from this autumn.

But then the Vice-Chancellors got wind that the government would only allow
universities to expand by either taking more of the very top students based on A level results or through cutting their fees to under £7,500.

The Premier League ones didn’t fancy hordes of more students – it would spoil
their unique appeal. But many of the other universities did want more, and so a flurry of activity led to many (yes, you’ve guessed) cutting their average fees to under £7,500.

How will pay for this? Regrettably by cutting bursaries and scholarships that
were to be targeted in many cases at less well-off students.

The respected broadcaster and education commentator, Mike Baker, said in
a Guardian Opinion piece (21.02.2012): “The twists and turns of (UK) higher
education policy increasingly resemble the fantasy Alice embarked on when she
followed the White Rabbit down the hole for her Adventures in Wonderland.
Nothing is quite as it should be.”

It certainly would make a good plot for a modern-day Lewis Carroll.

Hence this new blog!

So where was I? Ah! Yes, well the British Government, aided by its universities, actually did a remarkably good job – after a poor start – in ‘selling’ the near trebling of tuition fees for full-time first undergraduate courses starting later this year.

Their argument was that students shouldn’t worry about the level of the fees, as they would not have to pay anything until they graduated and got a good job.

And they got a former critic, the Liberal MP Simon Hughes, to front the ‘awareness raising’ campaign.

It worked more, or less!

Fears of a dramatic plunge in applications for 2012-13 turned out to be a more
modest 8.7% decline in the number of British students seeking a place this
autumn.

Yes, I know that might sound bad, but at one point last year some universities
were worried that up to a quarter might be put off.

So, why the last minute dash for the tuition fees sales? And why did the body
set up to encourage a fair fees policy, OFFA, allow universities to slash prices midway through the recruitment cycle so they could squeeze under the
government’s £7,500 tuition fees target?

And where does it leave students who were counting on the bursary to help
them through university and believed that the fee level didn’t matter, as it was ‘buy now, and pay later when you’re earning loads of money’?

Well, as Mike Baker said in The Guardian piece: “Only in an Alice-in-Wonderland world can we make sense of the peculiarities of the new fee arrangements”.

For, it really can work out cheaper to buy something with a £9,000 price tag
rather than something priced at £7,500 or less when it comes to a university
degree.

How?

Well, the graduate with a £9,000 degree could pay back little or nothing if they don’t earn enough, while the graduate who pays the lower fee could easily end up paying all of the original loan plus plenty of interest. Graduates pay back 9% of salary for the loan on earnings over £21,000 whatever the level of the fee.

It is all very peculiar – and the man who has the job now of sorting out where we go from here has been subject to some of the nastiest stories in the Conservative press for daring to speak out.

He is none other than Professor Les Ebdon, a Vice-Chancellor from a modern
university, which stuck to its policy of high fees to fund generous bursaries.

Tory MPs and parts of the right-wing media behaved like the Queen of Hearts, as Mike Baker pointed out, rushing round yelling ‘off with his head!” before sanity was restored and his appointment as ‘Access Tsar’ was rubber-stamped.

So dear reader, I must leave it there, as I have run out of steam. I hope this
introduction has shed some light on the strange and stormy world of UK higher
education. And fear not, I will return soon to continue the story!

The fact is that everyone even loosely connected with a university is potentially going to send out a message about it that others may hear. This message will contribute as much as anything you may have done as professional communicators to your university’s image, and quite possibly more. Some examples? I won’t look very far, my own university provides me with two excellent cases.

The first example is admittedly extreme, but it will apply to a variable degree to less exceptional circumstances too. The president (and previously rector) of my university, Bocconi, and former EU Commissioner Prof Mario Monti is now serving as Italy’s Prime Minister. Add that there are a few other academics among the ministers in his government: inevitably, this will be branded the “Bocconi government”. Prof Monti’s longstanding association with this university is very often cited whenever the government makes the headlines (that is, every day), mostly to praise his competence but sometimes with less flattering intent.

The second tale is about a movie. A group of Bocconi students have recently produced a full-length feature film, “Non è tempo per noi” (see the trailer on YouTube: http://youtu.be/mzljMX3ufw4 ). This is no mean feat for a group of business and economics students, who did everything from writing the screenplay to composing the soundtrack without a formal background in visual arts. The film was screened last November to a packed main university conference hall and predictably attracted wide coverage on student websites and magazines. This project was not initiated by the university, but in the end the institution received great publicity.

We should not be worried when such things happen. First of all, it’s a fact of life: everybody communicates and not all communication takes place within institutional channels. But this merely makes us more responsible.

It was a good opportunity to explain the new approach that EUPRIO had launched and to get acquainted of the rich contribution that Poland could give to the association. Marek Zimnak, the national representative in the Steering Committee stressed the importance of being part of an international networking organisation and tried to convince the 120 participants to become members of EUPRIO.

During the workshops, some colleagues – like Marcin Witkowski (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan) and Agata Kulesza (KRASP, Conference of Polish Rectors) – described how difficult it is to take part to international conferences for the strong financial investment that should be made by each university (this situation seems to be similar in many countries at this moment). Oppositions, anyway, could be bypassed if the return on investments and the benefits are particularly visible.

The President acknowledged the good issues and requests and promised to give them due consideration during the next Steering Committee meeting.

As part of the European Commission funded, ULab project, the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford is organizing an online competition to identify the most innovative outreach and communications / public engagement activities that have been carried out by European Universities.

Both individuals and groups may apply for awards. Competition submissions must be for an activity that has been initiated and sustained at any university or higher education institution within the 27 EU member states, including projects that might have involved collaboration with institutions outside the EU. The entry can be from one or a number of cooperating universities.
The three winning entries will each receive a 5000 EUR prize for their institution plus funding for a representative to attend the award ceremony at the University of Oxford on 8 June 2012. Entries should be submitted by 15 March 2012, 5pm (GMT). After the closing date, all entries will be made public on the website, forming part of an online repository of good practice in outreach. The three winners will be announced on 23 April 2012.

More information

The project “Young Uni” at the University of Innsbruck was launched in September 2001 – the first of its kind in German speaking countries. This year it celebrates its tenth year with the slogan “Setting out into New Worlds”. Read more…

The British daily “The Guardian”, whose Education section is always a source of excellent analysis, came out with a very fine article in December which I would recommend to all EUPRIO members worth their salt. Despite its obvious focus on Britain’s situation (England’s, to be precise), it makes a few interesting points that are, or will become shortly, of universal value.

The main point of the article is that universities are tempted to make promises that they cannot deliver in order to lure prospective students. A worrying sign in this respect is the sharp increase in complaints from students who believe they have been shortchanged.

This is a communication problem, dear friends. At best it’s just poor communication, but I would bet that in many cases there is a wide gap between university decision-makers and communications people (as in “Say this. End of discussion.”). And if that were not bad enough, this may also spring from a delusional attitude over who we really are: the article tells the story of a certain university who had branded itself as “the enterprise university” having supported the new businesses of only two graduates out of 10,000. Ehm.

This is what market research is all about. We need to know how do students perceive us, what do people look for when they choose a university and what deters them from choosing your university: yes, if you only ask your students you miss the most important bit, ie why you lost so many potentially good ones. This is especially true in countries like England (not Scotland, for the time being) where not only tuition fees are going up fast but universities all charge the maximum, creating the idea that they are all top-class. Predictably, students want to know what you are so good at, and will not take you at face value.

But the Internet is rapidly altering how information works, what businesses are viable and what qualifies as a profession. I first noticed this tendency while watching Part III, Chapter 7 of the Frontline documentary News War a few years ago. The documentary discussed how the meaning of news and journalism is being challenged by new media, and how the Internet is killing old media, including a discussion of how websites like Craigslist and Monster.com were killing newspapers by drawing classified listings online. This trend has continued into the present, with a recent report for the US Congress published last year stating that between 2008-2010, eight major American newspapers went bankrupt (also due to the financial crisis) and observing that:

Vin Crosbie, a noted Syracuse University professor and consultant, has predicted that more than half of the approximately 1,400 daily newspapers in the country could be out of business by the end of the next decade.

What does this have to do with education? Simply put, what is true with newspapers is true for the entire economy of information. The Internet translates each information medium into a cheaper, more consolidated form. And it often does this for free.

So telephony moves from traditional phone lines to VOIP applications like Skype. Print encyclopaedias are virtually obsolete, and the much-maligned Wikipedia is about as accurate as Britannica, and you can see sources of information. Book publication is moving from print to e-readers and tablet PCs, and public domain books are free for download. Amazon, EBay and their like threaten the very existence of department stores, allowing shoppers to rate both merchandise and sellers, pay competitive prices and even have goods delivered to your doorstep.

The new media juggernaut is also effecting television, movies, music, magazines, travel agencies, postal services … the list goes on and on. Thus because of the Internet, a vast part of the global economy is being converged online even as the products it sold become cheaper and more diverse. I argue that this represents the slow, long-term demonetisation of all information.

Although recent research by the McKinsey Global Institute indicated that the Internet has created 2.4 jobs for every one it destroys, I find it hard to imagine how that will remain true in the years to come as newspapers, book stores, post offices the entire universe of information converts to digital or falls before it (see the recent demise of Borders Books and Music). The long-term trend seems to be that all information should and will be free (at least for the consumer) and ever more diverse. That includes a university education.

Said a blog by Adrian Hon:

We have a romantic ideal of universities being places of higher education where students absorb knowledge, skills and critical thinking…. We’re wrong. The simple fact is that university lectures never worked that well in the first place…. In fact, the success of top universities, both now and historically, is in spite of lectures, not because of it. … Anyone online can now watch thousands of world-class lectures whenever they want.

And later…

…if universities are going to cost over £7,000 a year, students should think very hard about whether they’re getting value for money.

Indeed. MIT, Harvard, and the rest of the Ivy League offer thousands of university lectures online. These lectures are not limited to the humanities and other soft sciences. There are also highly technical subjects. The Khan Academy, a non-profit website “…with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere” includes hundreds of topics, including Calculus, Chemistry, Trigonometry and Physics.

What this means, to my mind, is this: students no longer buy an education from a university. Whereas in the past a university had a monopoly on knowledge distribution (the ivory tower), today prestigious universities provide thousands of lectures for free. Why? The same reason we ask ourselves what the public is buying with the tax revenue it devotes to universities: the social contract. It’s good public relations for those educational institutions that already have money. It’s not as if the Harvard alumni network isn’t worth the tuition, so who cares if the lectures are free to the capite censi? Plus, as Mr. Hon observes later in his blog, its personal contact hours and knowledge application that actually result in learning, and which are so vital to the university experience. Remember this question of whether journalism and research won’t simply become sets of skills that EVERYONE acquires? If anyone can watch any lecture and access any set of course resources, why not?

Universities do not sell education: they certify it. Tuition buys a certified transcript of educational experiences that demonstrate a person’s pool of knowledge as witnessed by qualified academics. We call it a degree, and it represents the careful oversight of an individual’s development over a long period of time. Plus, universities are great places to grow and try new experiences between home life and career.

I’m not sure what this means for the definition of a university, but it’s most certainly good for students. What is more, just as lectures are open to the public (and does that mean we are all students now, whether we pay tuition or not?) researchers are being empowered by social networks, and not just Facebook and LinkedIn. ResearchGate is a social network for scientists that allows users to create a profile, assemble an online publication library, review other’s research, create groups, share documents and conduct semantic searches of both uploaded researcher publications and (according to Wikipedia) external research databases, “…including PubMed, CiteSeer, arXiv, NASA library and others…” There are also other social networking sites for scientists and researchers, including Academia.edu and Epernicus.

If anyone can join a social network for researchers, does that change the definition of a researcher? Really, if anyone can upload research papers and potentially have them reviewed by qualified peers, does that mean a person can become a ‘researcher’ without making their way through the rigors of a PhD and navigating the politics of a research institute? In how many ways can new media test the borders of university credentialism?