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European “Transparency Instruments”: Driving the Modernisation of European Higher Education

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European Higher Education at the Crossroads

Abstract

This paper reviews the background and assesses the usefulness of the various transparency instruments (e.g. college guides, accreditation, classification systems, benchmarking models, global rankings). While there are differences between these various “instruments”, they can all be considered as part of the growing trend for greater transparency, accountability and comparability which began with college guides or handbooks around 1970. It will then place the most recent European developments (e.g. U-Map and U-Multirank) and other EU-funded initiatives (Expert Group on the Assessment of University-based Research and the 3-M Project on Third Mission) within this context. In doing so, the paper will discuss the extent to which these initiatives provide greater transparency and information for stakeholders, and the impact that such initiatives are having on higher education. The paper asks to what extent these initiatives support broad higher education policy objectives, e.g. the modernisation agenda of higher education institutions, their strategic orientations and the requirements of knowledge-driven societies.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks for comments and suggestions from Wolfgang Mackiewicz, Jacqueline Smith, Andrée Sursock, and participants at the Bologna Process Researchers Conference, Bucharest, 2011.

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  1. Directorate of Research and Enterprise, and Higher Education Policy Research Unit (HEPRU), Dublin Institute of Technology, 143-147 Rathmines Road, Dublin 6, Ireland

    Ellen Hazelkorn

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Correspondence to Ellen Hazelkorn .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania

    Adrian Curaj

  2. Institute of Education, London, United Kingdom

    Peter Scott

  3. , Sociology Department, Bucharest University, Bucharest, Romania

    Lazăr Vlasceanu

  4. European University Association, Brussels, Belgium

    Lesley Wilson

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Hazelkorn, E. (2012). European “Transparency Instruments”: Driving the Modernisation of European Higher Education. In: Curaj, A., Scott, P., Vlasceanu, L., Wilson, L. (eds) European Higher Education at the Crossroads. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3937-6_19

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