Book Launch and Policy Forum

The Governance of European Higher Education: Convergence or Divergence?

Date: Friday, 29 September 2023 9:00 am - 1:30 pm

Location: Theater 5 (NU building), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands/Teams (Hybrid event)

Speaker(s):

The conclusion of the Bologna Process and the establishment of the European Higher Education Area promised the harmonisation of European higher education. Recent research, embodied in The Governance of European Higher Education: Convergence or Divergence? ( Michael Shattock, Aniko Horvath and Jurgen Enders, 2023, Bloomsbury) raises questions about whether this ambition is being realised. Based on a detailed study of five representative European national systems and on 180 face to face interviews the findings suggest that any unification of systems is being overtaken by national policy initiatives—threats to institutional autonomy, the imposition of severe economies, changing expectations of institutional mission, the pressures of massification. The aim of this Policy Forum will be to test out this thesis and consider the future directions that European higher education might take.

Schedule:

9.00 – 9.30 Arrival, coffee, discussions

9.30 – 10.30 Book launch of The Governance of European Higher Education: Convergence or
Divergence?
Discussion of the book by the three authors: Professor Michael Shattock – University College London and University of Oxford; Professor Jurgen Enders – University of Bath; Aniko Horvath – VU Amsterdam and the University of Oxford;
View recording

10.30 – 11.30 Keynote by Professor Pedro Teixeira, State Secretary of Higher Education of Portugal
and Professor of Economics and Higher Education at the University of Porto
Title: Governance trends in European Higher Education – Convergence or Divergence?
View recording

11.30 – 12.00 noon – coffee break

12.00 – 1.30 Panel discussion on Higher Education governance trends in Europe and globally
Panel discussants:
Professor Gregor Halff, Dean Faculty of Social Sciences VU Amsterdam
Professor Bjorn Stensaker, Vice Rector for Education at University of Oslo
Thomas Jorgensen, Director of Policy at the European University Association,
View recording

Gov book w200

Event Notes

Teams Link – https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3ameeting_ZDkyYjJmNGYtMGI2MC00OGI5LTg0ZDEtZGUyMDUwZjIzY2Rj%40thread.v2/0?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22462a9c9c-2da6-4bfb-b318-0f83043fe49b%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2239e2f3fc-4496-4611-8888-761890a273e7%22%7d

Professor Simon Marginson

Simon Marginson is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, founding Director of the ESRC/RE Centre for Global Higher Education (CGHE), Joint Editor-in-Chief of Higher Education, and a Professorial Associate with the University of Melbourne. Simon’s research is focused primarily on global and international higher education, the global science system, higher education in East Asia, the contributions of higher education, and higher education and social inequality. Simon led CGHE’s project 8 which investigated the public good role of higher education in ten countries. The project found that while a broad notion of public good has been largely emptied out of policy in the English-speaking countries, where economic definitions of individualised pecuniary value are dominant, recognition of the broader individual and collective outcomes of higher education continues in different ways in other jurisdictions including France, Finland, South Korea and China. The study in England discovered however that despite the narrow economic framing used by Westminster policy makers, both higher education practitioners and policy professionals believe that higher education makes a large and multiple contribution to both national and global public goods.

Pedro N. Teixeira

Pedro N. Teixeira is the Secretary of State for Higher Education in the Portuguese Government. He is Professor in Economics at the Faculty of Economics (University of Porto) and Director of CIPES (Centre of Research on Higher Education Policy)

Professor Michael Shattock

Michael Shattock is a Visiting Professor at UCL Institute of Education and an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Education at Oxford. He was formerly Registrar of the University of Warwick. He holds Honorary Degrees from Aberdeen, Leicester, Reading and Warwick Universities and from the University of Education, Ghana and is an OBE. He led the Governance group within CGHE which has been responsible for the following books published by Bloomsbury: The Governance of British Higher Education—The impact of governmental, financial and market pressures (2019), The Governance of European Higher Education—Convergence or Divergence? (2023), and Universities and Regions—The impact of locality and region on university governance and strategies (2023).

Dr Aniko Horvath

Aniko Horvath is a CGHE Co-Investigator on Project 6, ‘The impact of locality and region on university governance’.

Professor Jürgen Enders

Jürgen Enders is Professor at the School of Management, University of Bath, UK. His academic interest is focused on the study of institutional change in the field of universities, and their role in society and economy. He has written and (co)edited 15 books and published more than 150 articles in books and journals including Organization Studies, Public Management, Public Management Review, Studies in Higher Education, Higher Education and Scientometrics. He is member of the editorial board of the journals Higher Education and European Journal of Higher Education. Elsevier and University of Stanford released data has recently named him among the top 2% of most highly cited academics in the world in the social sciences. Jürgen is an affiliate of the Center for Global Higher Education, Fellow of the Academia Europaea and of the German Academe of Science and Engineering, and Honorary Fellow of the Society for Research in Higher Education.

Professor Bjørn Stensaker

Bjørn Stensaker is Professor of Higher Education and Vice-Rector for Education at the University of Oslo.

Thomas Ekman Jørgensen

Thomas Ekman Jørgensen is Director for Policy Coordination and Foresight at the European University Association.

Professor Gregor Halff

Professor Gregor Halff is the Dean of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Faculty of Social Sciences.