Nadia Manzoni and Alina Felder Universities not only produce Europe’s intellectual elites and scientific knowledge, but they are also key actors in science diplomacy, regional innovation ecosystems and cultural reproduction. The European Union (EU) is increasingly recognizing this and engages in the steering of European universities, for example through its funding programmes. The most recent […]

Alina Felder Last month, the first endorsed workshop by the ECPR Standing Group Knowledge Politics and Policies unfolded at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops in Lüneburg (Germany). The workshop with the theme “The Politics and Policies of Skills Shortage” brought together thirteen scholars from across Europe who are working on the issue of skills […]

Adrienn Nyircsak Higher education is increasingly transformed through internationalisation and Europeanisation. One of the drivers of this change is the emergence of transnational stakeholder communities who channel local experiences with policy implementation into policy-making through peer exchange.  My doctoral dissertation focused on the dynamic interaction between different levels of policy-making and the specific institutional and […]

Jens Jungblut Several people have argued in recent years that higher education has become a more important policy sector in most if not all countries around the world (see e.g. Busemeyer, Garritzmann, & Neimanns, 2020; Garritzmann, 2016; Gornitzka & Maassen, 2014). An increasing percentage of the global population pursues or attains a tertiary education degree, […]

Alina Felder & Merli Tamtik Even though barrier‐free access to student mobility has become a significant policy problem for governments (Cairns, 2019), issues of social justice have been largely absent from institutional strategies of higher education (HE) internationalisation (Buckner et al., 2020a; Özturgut 2017). With our research we contribute to this aspect, offering a comparative […]

The 2023 edition of the General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) took place in Prague, 4-8 September. The section of our ECPR Standing Group Knowledge Politics and Policies included nine panels on politics and policy of academic mobility and diplomacy, universities, higher and vocational education, research, and Artificial Intelligence. This year […]

Andrew Gunn The UK Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) has returned following revisions, but how has it changed? Are we any nearer to solving the wicked problem of measuring university teaching? And why did England, which already has mature quality assurance arrangements, need to introduce the TEF in the first place?   New Framework This September […]