Higher Education in Europe beyond 2010

Higher education institutions are being subjected to a variety of pressures that seek, primarily, to enhance higher education’s contribution to the successful creation of so-called ‘knowledge societies’, together with, and receiving only slightly less emphasis, the achievement of greater equity and social justice.

The report Higher Education Looking Forward: An Agenda for Future Research has examined the relevant higher education research literature in terms of its underlying conceptual approaches and empirical findings across a number of selected sub-themes (see below) in order to derive a future research agenda that will address scientific questions of long term strategic concern to the future of higher education.

The Themes
The five themes that have been addressed are:

• Higher education and the needs of the knowledge society

Key questions within this theme will be the adequacy of human capital theory in explaining
changing relationships between higher education and work, the balance between initial formation and continuing professional development in knowledge-based economies, and the division of labour between higher education institutions and employers in meeting education and training needs.

• Higher education and the achievement of equity and social justice

Key questions here concern the relationship between higher education’s roles in social reproduction and its roles in extending opportunities for social mobility and the achievement of greater social justice.

• Higher education and its communities: interconnections and interdependencies

Key questions will concern whether new function can be performed without detriment to the old and what are the change mechanisms within higher education institutions and systems needed to bring about effective realignments between higher education and its various communities

• Steering and governance of higher education

Key questions for this theme are to do with the implications of different forms of decision-making, accountability and funding for higher education’s ability to perform existing and new functions.

• Differentiation and diversity of institutional forms and professional roles

The questions raised within theme five relate to the preceding themes and to whether further differentiation within national systems will be accompanied by greater convergence between systems if higher education is to respond effectively to changing social and economic climates in European countries

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