The EU has for some time through various policy instruments getting increasingly involved in higher education across Europe. Initial progress through the Bologna Process has been followed up with activities such as the new multidimensional ranking – U-Multirank as well as an European Qualifications Framework.
Amongst else this resulted in September 2012 in the creation of a high level group on modernisation of higher education that had a specific focus on quality and excellence in teaching, in accordance with the general Modernisation Agenda for Higher Education the Commission has been promoting.
At the launch of the group in 2012 Androulla Vassiliou, Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth emphasized that “With the help of the high level group I want to ensure that every student, regardless of where they live or study in Europe, will benefit from quality teaching. This is a pre-condition for innovation, jobs and growth.” The group was led by former President of Ireland, Mary McAleese and included a number of prominent members (rectors and university professors as well as representatives from the private sector). The activities of the group have been supported by wide scale consultation.
Last month, in June 2013 the high level group delivered its recommendations. At the launch of the report, Commissioner Vassiliou emphasized that the recommendations would not necessitate the use of substantial additional expenditure, and further highlighted the importance of teaching quality as well as Commissions commitment to “do all it can” to support implementation.
The core conclusion in the report is that institutions, while having its core mission divided by teaching and research, tend to focus on the latter. This is perhaps a fact that does not provide to be surprising to anyone studying higher education, provided the current excellence drive and increasing use of performance indicators that largely focus on research. However, the Commission has plans to change this as Vassiliou exmphasized: “The role of teaching in defining academic merit needs a stronger emphasis and recognition, especially in career terms” . Futhermore, greater focus has to be put on training of academics.
The report was summarises as 16 recommendations for how to improve quality in teaching and learning, including thoughts about sufficient funding, strategic planning, student involvement, focus on pedagogical training of staff, role of teaching in promotion decisions, rewarding of excellence, training of research staff, co-operation with labour market on curricular development, focus on learning outcomes, student councelling, entrepreneurialism and innovation, in addition to using new technologies and internationalisation as well as involvement and support from the European Union. This also introduced the establishment of a European Academy for Teaching and Learning that would be led by stakeholders and would have its main role in spreading good practices. You can read the recommendations here.
The group will next focus on new modes of delivery, examining how to “maximize the impact” of the current MOOC trends in higher education and the report will be expected to be finalized in 2014.
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Illustration created with photos from stock:xchng