On 30th of September, University World News published an entry by Androulla Vassiliou (the Commissioner of Edudcation in the European Commission) and Mary McAleese, with a subtitle of “Bringing teaching in from the cold”.
The article announced and highlighted Commissions increasing emphasis on teaching, one of the core activities in higher education, and increasing ventures of the Commission to the area of higher education. In the article, they announce the establishment of a new High Level Group (HLG) on the Modernisation of Higher Education.
The High Level Group has a varied membership of both industry representatives, academics and also politicians. Mary McAleese, a former President of Ireland will be chairing the group, and the other members include Agneta Bladh (amongst else a former rector of the University of Kalmar), Vincent Berger (president of University Paris Diderot), Christian Bode (long time secretary general of the German Academic Exchange Service and one of the founders of ACA), Jan Muehlfeit (chairman of Microsoft Corporation in Europe), Tea Petrin (professor of economics from University in Ljubljana), Alessandro Schiesaro (professor at and director of the Sapienza School of Advanced Studies), and Loukas Tsoukalis (Professor of European integration at the University of Athens).
The press release on the establishment of the HLG argued once more that national systems are clearly not doing enough to modernise their higher education systems – in essence pointing towards the fact that the proposed reform agenda by the Commission that has been pushed forward more clearly since the first Modernisation agenda has not provided expected results. In essence, the arguments presented do not differ much from 2005 and in the UWN article it was argued that “quality of teaching in higher education institutions is key to unlocking the full potential of students and creating a healthy economy and society“, and in the usual type of argument: ”few countries invest systematically in efforts to improve the quality of university teaching“. While one can debate what a systematic investment really means, one can also wonder where the basis for such claims comes from.
The results of the high level group will be presented in the form of a recommendation in 2013.