Higher education is fundamental to both national and global contemporary knowledge economies. It is also a driver for social change (see for example) which crucially includes making higher education available and relevant to a wider section of society and improving the mobility and relevance of its graduates in the workplace. New tools are required to integrate such developments with the sector's traditional functions of teaching and research. However, every student is different, each programme is different, each university is different and the needs of professions and nations also differ. Therefore, research leading to the development of such tools is fundamental to the development of modern society. One such tool, whose importance has recently been recognised, is the use of profiles at institutional, regional (geographic, cultural or discipline) and programme levels. Such profiles are a concise, precise and portable description of the particular academic entity. They have diverse uses ranging from ranking of institutions, aiding academic programme selection by a student, facilitating graduate mobility and as a tool for professional accreditation. We have, therefore, selected the topic of profiles for the first issue of the Tuning Journal for Higher Education. Whilst we cannot hope to cover the totality of this subject in one issue, we trust that it will stimulate debate and further promote research on the types, design and uses of profiles. The first and perhaps the most important question we address is what should be profiled?