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Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions pp 1–5Cite as

Non-university Higher Education

Synonyms

Community colleges; Fachhochschulen; Institutes of technology; Polytechnics; Short-cycle higher education; University colleges; Universities of applied science

Definition

Organizations formally recognized as higher education institutions, whose main activity is to provide tertiary education with a focus on professional and vocational education, possibly research active but no right to award doctoral degrees.

Introduction: Conceptual Clarity

Non-university higher education institutions are named in several ways in different countries, such as universities of applied science, colleges, institutes of technology, and polytechnics. Such variety of labels is partly indicative of the heterogeneity of institutions that are, in different places, considered as part of the non-university higher education sector. On the one hand, like universities, these institutions are entities nationally recognized as higher education institutions (HEIs) – e.g., recognized in national law, officially...

Keywords

  • High Education Institution
  • Applied Science
  • Vocational Education
  • High Education System
  • Research Mission

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CHEGG, Centre for Higher Education Governance Ghent, Department of Sociology, Ghent University Korte Meer 3, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Marco Seeber

Authors
  1. Marco Seeber
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Correspondence to Marco Seeber .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of)

    Jung Cheol Shin

  2. CIPES, Faculty of Economics, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Pedro Teixeira

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Seeber, M. (2016). Non-university Higher Education. In: Shin, J., Teixeira, P. (eds) Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_26-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_26-1

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